Black Box Site

6. The Dreams of Ideology

or, What Happens When the Dog Catches the Car

“We are living through a historical drama in which we must defend the monarchy against the monarch, the church against the church hierarchy, the army against its leaders, and the authority of the government against the representatives of that authority.”

– Alexander Guchkov, 1913

On February 23, 1917 – old style, on the Julian calendar – it commenced: the great upheaval that would soon become known as the Russian Revolution.  Unleashed were a series of events that would transform not only Russia, but the entire world; and, not incidentally, initiate a profound experiment in the realm of ideas. 

As with most pivotal developments in human affairs, the revolution was not simply a product of the moment, or due purely to the intervention of dominant personalities, but was the legacy of forces that had been gathering for many years.  In fact, it had been preceded by a failed revolution in 1905 that served as its prototype, but other circumstances leading to its birth emerged long before that.  How far back the thread of causality should be followed is always, to some degree, a debateable proposition; but the conquest and subjugation of the eastern Slavs by the Mongol horde in the thirteenth century would seem, by virtue of its sweeping effects, to be a suitable starting point.

The Mongols destroyed most of the cities of the eastern Slavs, including the leading center of Kiev, and imposed their rule and tribute on the entire region.  It was during this period of foreign domination that Moscow first rose to prominence, previously having been an insignificant town.  The princes of the Grand Duchy of Moscow initially collaborated with the Mongol rulers, as a result of which their domain grew in power and extent, and became the ecclesiastical center of the Orthodox church.  Eventually, however, the princes began to turn against the Mongols, and finally threw off their rule in 1480, under Ivan III.

After more than two centuries under Mongol domination, absolutist autocracy had become the model for the organization of the Russian state, with even members of the nobility in an unusually servile position, in comparison with their counterparts in the West.  Ivan III was the first prince to apply to himself the title of “czar” or “tsar” (a term derived from “Caesar”), followed by Ivan IV (the Terrible) being crowned Czar of All Russia in 1547.  Large military forces had to be maintained under the czardom, for although the Mongols were no longer in a position of supremacy, a successor to their Golden Horde, the Khanate of Crimea, continued to mount invasions and slave raids into Russia, and in 1571 burned Moscow, with only the fortress of the Kremlin surviving.  Further, there were continuing struggles for territory with Poland-Lithuania and Sweden, particularly on the Baltic coast for its access to the sea.  The ultimate result was a militarily powerful state under autocratic rule.

During the latter half of the sixteenth century Russia subdued Kazan and Astrakhan and gained control of Siberia, its settlers reaching the shores of the Pacific Ocean by the end of the seventeenth century.  However, the migration of peasants to these areas only exacerbated the underpopulated condition of central Russia, where they were needed to support its military forces.  In order to bind the peasants to the land, then, they were gradually forced into serfdom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with perhaps 80 percent of the population eventually ending up in that state of servitude – ironically at a time when, due to profound social changes, serfdom came to an end in the West.

Indeed, there was an awareness in Russia of technological and economic development in the Western world, along with the challenge it presented; and in a number of areas the czardom, most notably under Peter the Great, instituted programs of modernization and reform.  (Among other measures, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to the new city of St. Petersburg, Russia’s “window on the West”.)  However, such programs were always bound by the limits of an absolutist autocracy, to be curtailed whenever they conflicted with its authority and traditions.  Thus, under Peter, an advanced (for its time) manufacturing industry was created, but one with a particular emphasis on military needs, and staffed by the forced labor of serfs.  Large commercial enterprises under private ownership were established, but these depended heavily on orders and subsidies from the state.  Social control of the population also steadily tightened under centralized rule.

Over time, then, the Russian Empire grew in influence and extent, transformed from a fragmented backwater into one the major powers of Europe by the end of the eighteenth century.  In fact, under czar Alexander I it famously defeated a massive invasion launched by Napoleon in 1812, which soon led to the latter’s downfall, while the czar became known as the “savior of Europe”.

The successful conclusion of the war against Napoleon produced unanticipated effects, however, as the contrast between Russia’s power in foreign affairs and its internal backwardness only became more pronounced.  Peasants who had served in the army and carried out a scorched earth and guerilla campaign against the invaders were now expected to return to the bonds of serfdom.  Certain elements of the officer corps became convinced that radical change was necessary, and formed the revolutionary movement later known as the “Decembrists”; even Alexander I had initially been sympathetic to a program of reform.  But at that time Russia lacked the extensive middle class that could serve as the base for a genuine political transformation (as opposed to a peasant rebellion, which had often been seen before) – and, as always, when calls for reform threatened the unbridled power of autocracy, they were swiftly suppressed.  Thus an uprising attempted by the Decembrists in 1825 after the death of Alexander was savagely crushed, and under the new czar, Nicholas I, a period of domestic repression commenced, combined with support of conservative autocracies abroad.

The supremacy of the established order in Russia was eventually shaken to its core, however, by a thunderbolt from afar.  In 1853 a dispute concerning possession of churches in Palestine, fuelled by conflicts over a declining Ottoman Empire, culminated  in a war which set Russia against an alliance of Turkey, France, and England.  The principal theater of fighting became the Crimean peninsula when French and British forces landed there to attack Sevastopol, Russia’s naval base on the Black Sea – thus the conflict came to be known as the Crimean War.  After a siege of eleven months Sevastopol fell to the allied forces, and Russia was forced to sue for peace in 1856.

The huge Russian army of potentially a million men had been unable to defeat a smaller expeditionary force operating far from its homelands.  Instead of attempting to invade the heartland of Russia, as Napoleon had done, the allies had struck at a point on its periphery, while in the meantime the Russian army was obliged to guard extensive borders, especially with the Balkans, as fighting also occurred there.  Further, the Crimean War was the first major conflict in which elements of modern technology became important, such as improved rifled firearms, telegraphs, and railways – but Russia generally lacked such technology.  Its army was still largely equipped with smoothbore muskets, and in particular it had practically no railways, with the result that it was easier for France and Britain to send forces to the Crimea (via naval transport) than it was for Russia to dispatch its own troops and supplies there.

As late as the Napoleonic period armies had changed little since ancient times, aside from the introduction of gunpowder weapons.  But those new weapons were relatively slow firing and of short range, while food and fodder continued to be the major logistical concern of armies, which still marched to the front on foot and horseback.  Thus, while Russia’s lack of technological sophistication had been of little concern in the struggle against Napoleon, its full effects had begun to be felt against its opponents in the Crimea.  And those effects could only become more serious in the future, as warfare was becoming increasingly mechanized.  The Russian colossus – an agrarian empire of serfs toiling under an absolute ruler – now appeared to have feet of clay.

It was obvious, then, that change had to come.  As had happened before, Russia was forced to take note of developments in the West, particularly in the military sphere; but also in the economic, as military power became dependent on industrial production.  And with the necessity for change came a new czar: Nicholas I had died shortly before the fall of Sevastopol, to be succeeded by his son, Alexander II.

The new czar was well educated, but not particularly inclined to reform or even vigorous activity.  Nevertheless, the result of the Crimean War, with its profound implications, served as an acute and inescapable impetus for alteration of the existing order – the centerpiece for which became the abolition of serfdom, which, it was hoped, would facilitate the modernization of Russia into an industrial state.  Thus, in overseeing the program which ultimately freed the serfs, Alexander II was to become known (somewhat ironically in view of his essentially conservative nature) as the “czar-liberator”.

The possibility of abolishing serfdom had been considered before by Russia’s ruling order, but nothing substantial had been done to actually accomplish it.  Now rapid action was taken by the regime, with the gentry of the provinces directed to form committees to consider how abolition might proceed.  At first the government appeared to favor a program of landless emancipation – that is, freedom for the serfs without title to the land they had worked.  Needless to say, this was not popular with the peasantry, and fear arose that a huge rural proletariat without ties to the land might fan the flames of widespread unrest or even revolution.

Thus the czardom, in the face of considerable opposition from noble landowners, forced through a program of emancipation with land and payment of redemption, which commenced in 1861.  The program’s terms for the peasants were quite harsh, however.  They were compelled to pay, over a period of years, for both their allotments of land and the loss of their labor to their former masters; further, the size of their allotments was reduced by an average of one-fifth (in some cases more than double this, however), with noble landowners remaining in control of sizable estates.  To survive and pay for their own redemption, then, the peasants were generally forced to lease land from the gentry on unfavorable terms.

The emancipation of the peasants also necessitated certain administrative reforms, since institutions of local government had to be created, to replace the traditional authority of the gentry over their former serfs.  Thus councils were established, “zemstvos” in the districts and provinces, and also “municipal dumas” in the cities.  The members of these councils were elected, though their makeup was heavily weighted toward the gentry.  The old order had divested itself of the few responsibilities it had for peasant welfare and transferred these to the zemstvos, which had been given the right to hire employees and levy taxes for such purposes.  As a result, schools and hospitals were created, staffed by educated elites who, for the first time in the history of Russia, came into extended daily contact with the masses.  At the same time, the czardom refused to establish any larger system of national (as opposed to local) representation, and the zemstvos increasingly came into conflict with the autocracy, with those in their service often becoming radicalized. Measures were taken limit the authority and influence of the zemstvos, but an inherent contradiction could not be escaped: education, such as that provided by the zemstvo schools, provided the technical expertise essential for the industrial modernization of Russia, but also spread ideas that called for changes in the existing political order.

In addition to administrative reform, a relaxation of political repression had initially accompanied the emancipation of the serfs, permitting greater freedom of expression.  But again, this policy eventually came into conflict with the maintenance of autocracy, and the limits it imposed.  The intelligentsia of Russia, increasing both in numbers and resentment of the czardom, began to spawn revolutionary movements, in particular the Narodnik (Russian Populist) movement, which in 1874 sent a wave of young activists into the countryside, where they attempted to enlist the peasantry into their cause.  The effort proved to be a failure, however, in the face of the general indifference and even outright hostility of the illiterate peasants, who were distrustful of the outsiders who had descended among them, and in any case remained devoted to the czar as their “savior” (even though they might resent their immediate masters).

The response of the government to the Narodniks was, of course, repression: mass trials, imprisonment, and exile.  But this only spurred the revolutionaries to adopt terrorist methods, which finally achieved the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 – a strange and paradoxical end for the “czar-liberator”, which, instead of provoking a general uprising, merely brought about the accession of Alexander III, and the imposition of even more harshly repressive measures.  But though the terrorists and their organization were soon destroyed, forces of revolutionary ferment continued to seethe.

It was in this atmosphere that Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born, later known to the world as Lenin.  His father, Ilya Ulyanov, the son of a former serf, graduated from the University of Kazan to become a teacher, then an inspector of schools, and finally rose to the civil rank of Active State Councillor; he might best be described as a liberal monarchist, and not at all a revolutionary.  In fact Lenin himself was, in his youth, an exemplary student.  However, when he was 15 two thunderstrokes befell him: his father died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage, and then, some months later, his older brother Alexander was hanged, after becoming involved in a plot to assassinate the new czar, Alexander III.

Lenin himself entered Kazan University in 1887, and a few months later took part in a demonstration against a government ban on student societies, which resulted in his arrest and expulsion from school.  Thereafter he joined a revolutionary circle, and began to study the work of Karl Marx.  Eventually arrested again, he was imprisoned for a year, and sentenced to a three year term of exile in Siberia; though regarded as only a minor threat by the authorities, he became a prolific writer and activist who completely devoted himself to the cause of revolution.  After his term of exile ended he left Russia for Western Europe to continue his political activities, joining many other expatriates.  At a 1903 congress in London of the Russian Marxist party (officially the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party or RSDLP) a split developed between those who held that party membership should be open to anyone who supported its cause (termed “Mensheviks”) and those, led by Lenin, who insisted that members must be devoted to the party full-time, working in obedience to the elected leadership (termed “Bolsheviks”).

Meanwhile, political conditions inside Russia continued to deteriorate under a facade of autocratic order.  The reforms and policies of greater openness that had accompanied the abolition of serfdom continued to be rolled back, the power of the government being exerted heavily against the zemstvos, courts, universities, and press; while increasing economic pressure was brought to bear upon the peasantry, which contributed to a vast famine and cholera epidemic in 1891-92.  These measures reflected the attitude of Alexander III, and later his son, Nicholas II, who assumed the throne in 1894: namely, that the peace and stability of the realm were maintained by absolute rule, under an authority granted directly by God.  In the face of this intransigence the liberal elite of the nation became ever more sympathetic to revolutionary developments, while extremists commenced a program of assassination, the list of victims eventually including a Grand Duke (Nicholas II’s uncle), a Minister of the Interior, a Governor General of Finland, and a number of other high officials.

The program for industrialization of the economy, on the other hand, actually began to achieve impressive results, especially since the late 1880s.  Huge increases were made in the production of iron and steel, machinery, and coal and oil, and a rail transport system was brought into existence, culminating with the construction of the great Trans-Siberian Railway.  However, Russia had started from such a low point that it still remained well behind the great industrial powers of the West, which had also steadily increased production.

Further, much of the advance in industrialization was made at the expense of the still dominant agricultural sector, through exploitation by tariffs and grain exports.  This meant that the nation did not have an adequate domestic market for its own industrial production, and when the world suffered an economic downturn after 1900, Russia experienced a profound depression.  Exacerbating the situation was the problem of overpopulation in the countryside (in ironic contrast to the underpopulation of a few centuries before); the landholdings of the peasants were often too small to support them, especially given the relatively primitive agricultural techniques in use, and periodic mass famines stalked the land.  But the situation of industrial workers was not much better, given the typically abysmal conditions in the factories, which led to an eruption of strikes and demonstrations beginning in the mid 1890s.

Thus did matters stand when there struck yet another thunderbolt from afar: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.

In the late nineteenth century, the Russian government was confronted with the loss of its dominant position in the Balkans in the face of the growing influence of Austria-Hungary, the challenge of a newly united and powerful Germany, and opposition by Britain in Central Asia.  Thus it had settled upon a two-pronged strategy of alliance with France, and expansion in the far east, where it expected to prevail.

An intervention by Russia, France, and Germany forced Japan to give up Port Arthur in Manchuria, after the latter gained possession of it in a war with China during 1894-95.  However, the port was occupied by the Russians shortly thereafter, and fortified into an important naval base, an action that was regarded by the Japanese as base treachery.  Further, Russian and Japanese interests continued to collide in Korea.  An offer by Japan to recognize a Russian sphere of influence in Manchuria, in exchange for a Japanese sphere of influence in Korea, was rejected by Russia, and so the Japanese government decided to redress the situation by war.

In February 1904 Japanese forces launched a surprise attack against the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, followed by a prolonged siege, which eventually ended with the surrender of the port and the loss of the battleships stationed there.  Then, in early 1905, the great battle of Mukden was fought in Manchuria, in which the Japanese army prevailed, forcing the Russians to retreat.  Finally, in May 1905, the Russian Baltic Fleet, after an epic journey from its home waters, was virtually annihilated by the Japanese Combined Fleet in the Tsushima Straits between Japan and Korea; after which only the Black Sea Fleet remained as a major naval force for Russia.

These devastating defeats shocked Russia (and indeed the world), forcing its government to accept peace terms, just as in the aftermath of the Crimean War.  This time, however, the disaster was intensified by much more serious domestic unrest.  On Sunday, January 9, 1905 (old style, hereafter O.S.), a mass procession approached the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, in an attempt to present the czar (who had already vacated the palace) with a petition, signed by 135,000 workers, that called for better working conditions and the right to form unions; freedom of speech, the press, and religion; the repeal of land redemption payments; and equality of all persons before the law.  However, troops stationed in the area of the palace attacked the procession, killing and wounding hundreds, in a catastrophic incident that became known as “Bloody Sunday”.

In response, a massive wave of strikes began to sweep the country, and a few mutinies even occurred in the armed forces, including one in the battleship Potemkin (made famous by the Eisenstein film).  As an outgrowth of the strike movement the first revolutionary soviet (or council) appeared, an organization of direct democracy by the populace that rejected a parliamentary approach, and generally acted under the leadership of a revolutionary party.  But more fundamentally serious was the erosion of the image of the czar in the opinion of the common people, who had heretofore looked upon him as their champion, but increasingly came to regard their ruler as an oppressor.  The widespread unrest took the authorities by surprise, and insufficient troops were available to simply crush it by force, due to the war with Japan.

In October 1905 the crisis came to a head, when a huge general strike shut down the nation.  The situation having become impossible for the government, the czar was forced to sign a manifesto that promised to grant basic civil rights, allow the formation of political parties, establish a national legislative body in the form of the State Duma, and create a Council of Ministers to oversee the affairs of state.  Further, the payment of redemption by the peasantry was soon ended by imperial decree.

The weeks that followed, the “Days of Freedom”, saw a flood of political publications and meetings, the rise of parties, and the formation of soviets in cities across the land.  The measures of the October manifesto largely satisfied the aims of liberals, though revolutionaries wanted to go much further and replace the existing order entirely, organizing a wave of armed uprisings to do so.  However, with the end of the war with Japan the government once more had substantial military forces at its disposal to quell revolt, and soon gained the upper hand, with tribunals dealing out summary executions.

In the spring of 1906 the First Duma commenced to meet, Russia’s initial experiment in representative government.  As an institution, however, its powers were limited, for any legislation it passed had to be approved by both the czar and the Council of Ministers (half of whose members were appointed by the czar).  Further, members of the Duma were not chosen by universal suffrage, but rather by an electoral system that was heavily weighted toward representation by the upper classes.  Nevertheless, given the huge preponderance of peasants in the Russian population, they elected 40 percent of the Duma’s deputies, a result that was initially viewed as favorable to the czar, in light of the traditional loyalty of the peasants to their ruler.  It soon became clear, however, that this loyalty had deteriorated, as proposals were introduced to broaden the powers of the Duma into a true parliament, declare a political amnesty, and institute major programs of land redistribution.  This was too much for the established order, and the First Duma was dissolved by decree after meeting for only ten weeks.

In the fall of 1906 elections were held for a Second Duma, but the result proved to be no more favorable for the czardom, with parties of revolutionary sympathies in fact increasing their representation; and so it was dissolved in June 1907.  The government then took the step of unilaterally altering the electoral system so that it would be even more favorable to the gentry and the ruling class, with the result that the Third Duma sat for a full five year term – though it ceased to reflect the will of the common people.  Thus, upon the dissolution of the Second Duma, the revolution of 1905 effectively came to an end.

With the demise of the revolution the government resumed its former program of political repression combined with economic expansion, the principle of czarist absolutism having been reaffirmed.  Thus it may have seemed that, in the end, the events of 1905 had little effect.  However, the idea of revolution, once given form in reality, remained alive, and the situation that had engendered it remained largely unaltered.  Further, ominous forces outside of Russia now gathered strength, particularly in the Balkans, where Russian interests collided with those of Austria-Hungary.  The latter had formed a close alliance with Germany in order to protect its position in the Balkans, which it regarded as essential to its very existence; while in the meantime the Russian-French alliance had expanded to include Britain, in order to counter the growing power of Germany.  The great tensions of the situation were only exacerbated by a naval arms race between Germany and Britain, and German resentment at being largely locked out of colonial expansion abroad.  

When the explosion finally occurred, over the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand in the Balkans, Russia was immediately drawn into the resulting conflagration: which ultimately became the third and final blow against the old order.  The preceding blows of the Crimean and Russo-Japanese Wars had been of serious effect, but where the first had inspired a genuine effort of reform, the second brought only half-hearted measures that were largely nullified, leaving the situation vulnerable to further shock.  And when that shock arrived, in the form of the First World War, it gave birth to the event that shook both Russia and the world, as foretold by the organized uprisings of 1905.  Indeed, Lenin described the revolution of 1905 as the “Great Dress Rehearsal”, without which the October Revolution of 1917 would have been impossible.

At first the war produced a great upsurge of patriotic feeling in Russia, though the initial military results were mixed.  In spite of the fact that the bulk of the German army was engaged on the western front versus France and Britain in 1914, what remained in the east was enough to inflict major defeats on invading Russian forces at the battles of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes.  However, Russian armies were more successful versus Austria-Hungary, making sizable advances, and also achieved victories against Turkey in the Transcaucasus region.

In 1915 Germany transferred substantial forces to its eastern front and commenced a major offensive, which soon resulted in serious reverses for Russia, prompting a general retreat.  Poland, which had been a province of the Russian Empire, was lost – as were 2.5 million men of the Russian army.  That army had been the largest in the world at the outbreak of the war, but at full mobilization actually had more men than rifles(!), not to mention severe deficiencies in artillery and supplies of ammunition; in spite of the strides it had made, Russia remained far behind the other major powers of Europe in industrial development, its lack of equipment constituting the foremost factor in its defeats.

Failures on the military front were only compounded by serious domestic problems.  Food shortages developed, accompanied by skyrocketing prices, the mass mobilization of peasants into the army having reduced agricultural production.  The higher prices, in turn, led to strikes for higher wages in the cities, at a time when increased production for the war effort was essential.  Enthusiasm for the war began to transform into sullen opposition among the populace, while dissension between reformist elites and the czarist regime became increasingly bitter.  Something like a parallel government grew up, composed of opposition parties which felt the war effort should be organized on a more rational and effective basis; while czar Nicholas II, on the other hand, decided to take personal command of the army in the field after the defeats of 1915 – a terrible blunder, as he was not an effective leader, and was to be directly blamed for later reverses.  His wife, Alexandra, was left to oversee the government at home, but, amazingly, proved to be even more inept than her husband, having come under the influence of the charlatan mystic Rasputin.

In 1916 the Russians launched the Brusilov offensive, which employed innovative tactics devised by General Alexei Brusilov, and proved to be their most successful military operation of the war.  A great advance was made against Austria-Hungary, which had committed a large army to its front with Italy, and now tottered on the edge of defeat; but once again Germany came to the rescue of its ally, transferring forces to the east that eventually brought the advance to a halt.  The Austro-Hungarian army had been broken, but the Russians had also suffered staggering losses, and were unable to mount further offensive operations.  Thus the final result was stalemate, with the army having suffered a total of 6 million casualties by January 1917 – while morale at the front and at home continued to plummet.

At this point elements of the established order began to organize a coup to replace Nicholas with another member of the royal family, and instigated a plot in which Rasputin was murdered.  These developments were soon pre-empted, however, by events in the capital city of Petrograd (as St. Petersburg had become known, its old name having been thought too “Germanic” after the commencement of the war).  Massive strikes took place in the city, and on February 23, 1917 (O.S.) protests erupted over food rationing, with bread riots breaking out and 200,000 protesters filling the streets the following day.  Most ominously, units of the army soon began to side with the rebellion.  By nightfall on February 27 the capital was effectively in the hands of revolutionaries.

The czar’s train was stopped outside Petrograd on March 1, and the next day Nicholas II was persuaded by leaders from the army and the Duma to abdicate his throne, after which he was eventually placed under house arrest – the inevitable result of having lost the confidence of a majority of every sector of society: the intelligentsia, the industrialists, the nobility, the workers, the peasants, and even the military.  The czar’s brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, realizing that he lacked support to take up the crown himself, refused to accept it at that time; and on March 3 a Provisional Government was announced, formed by action of a committee of the State Duma.

However, the Provisional Government was not the only institution of authority to arise from what became known as the February Revolution.  Four days earlier the Petrograd Soviet had been formed in imitation of the soviets of 1905, a political organization directly elected by the populace, and led by Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs, successors to the populist Narodnik movement).  This led to a system of “dual power”, in which the Provisional Government, composed largely of officials drawn from the State Duma (which had been elected, for the most part, by the upper classes), executed the formal business and bureaucratic routine of the state; but did so under the influence and constraints exerted by the Petrograd Soviet, which could mobilize mass action from the common people and soldiers, support that elevated it to a dominant position in the capital.  And as the effects of the revolution spread, other soviets began to spring up across Russia, some 700 in number.

Although Russia now had a new political system, all the old problems that had contributed to the February Revolution still remained: most critically the war, and a failing economy.  Furthermore, the political situation itself was unstable, with tensions inevitably increasing between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, driven by differing aims and class conflict.  A note sent by the government’s foreign minister to the Allied Powers, which promised to continue the war with essentially the same aims as the old regime, provoked the “April Days” unrest which saw massive street demonstrations against such a policy, and forced the replacement of the first Provisional Government with a coalition that included representatives from the Soviet.  

The increasing assertiveness of the Petrograd Soviet was made possible by the support it received from soldiers of the army.  The character of the army itself had been greatly altered by the war, with its ranks swelled by masses of conscript peasants, and fallen officers replaced by individuals not of the gentry.  News of the czardom’s collapse, coming on the heels of military reverses and heavy casualties, stirred an immediate reaction at the front, with soldiers’ committees being formed in imitation of the soviets.  The army’s commanders had little alternative but to deal with these developments as best they could.

Such was the state of affairs when Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik party, made his reappearance in Russia, on April 3, 1917 (O.S.).  Having been exiled since 1907 (after a brief return during the 1905 revolution), he had arrived from Switzerland by means of a sealed train that was permitted to travel through Germany, the Kaiser’s government hoping that his presence in Russia would help ignite a revolution that would end its war effort – while Lenin, on the other hand, hoped that such a revolution would spread to Germany and other imperial states, ending the war with a victory of the masses over their masters.  

Immediately after his arrival in Petrograd, Lenin announced his April Theses, which called for an end of support for the Provisional Government or indeed any form of traditional parliament, and instead a policy of “all power to the soviets”; an immediate end to Russia’s participation in the war; and nationalization of all land, including confiscation of landed estates.  Further, he advocated the formation of a new revolutionary International, to replace the Second International association of socialist and labor parties – Lenin, and other dissident socialists such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, had been appalled when, on the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, the national parties making up the Second International had abandoned the cause of cross-border worker solidarity, and instead supported the war efforts of their respective countries, always in the name of “defense”.  In this respect, they felt that the old organizations of democratic socialism had completely failed, and that the goal must be a revolution that would sweep across all of Europe.  Indeed, the Bolsheviks were the only major political party in Russia that continuously advocated a policy of internationalist opposition to the war.

However, Lenin’s position, which condemned other revolutionary groups such as the Mensheviks and SRs for their support of the Provisional Government and the war effort, was by no means well received.  Not even among many leading Bolsheviks, at first, though he eventually began to win them over to his unyielding views.  In coming weeks he continued to espouse those views in a relentless public campaign for the policies of the April Theses, with calls for “peace, bread, and land” winning increasing support for the Bolsheviks, though for the time being they remained a minority party.

In the meantime, Alexander Kerensky, a member of an SR faction and a lawyer who had defended many revolutionaries against prosecution by the czarist regime, had become one of the most important leaders of the February Revolution, entering the Provisional Government as Minister of Justice, while simultaneously having membership on the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet – a unique position that straddled both wings of “dual-power”.  After the April Days crisis he became Minister of War, reaffirming support for the authority of soldiers’ committees, while also organizing an ambitious military offensive that was intended to improve Russia’s position on the battlefield versus Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The new offensive failed, however, after heavy casualties began to be taken and replacement units mutinied, refusing to move up to the front.  The debacle provoked mass unrest in Petrograd, with factory workers and soldiers taking to the streets in an event that came to be known as the “July Days” crisis.  The Bolshevik party alone had opposed the offensive, but its leadership declined, for the moment, to take power by insurrection, believing that to do so would be premature, as it would not be supported by most of Russia’s populace.  Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks were blamed by the Provisional Government for the unrest (indeed, rank-and-file members of the party were among those taking part); troops loyal to the government were brought in, Bolshevik leaders were arrested, and Lenin was forced to flee to Finland.

As a result of the July Days the existing coalition government collapsed, and a new one was formed with the politically adroit Kerensky at its head.  However, the Provisional Government also found its power to be increasingly limited.  The Bolsheviks steadily gathered strength in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets during the summer of 1917, led by Lenin (now from afar); while in the countryside the peasants formed their own assemblies and commenced to confiscate the land of the gentry (against the official policies of the government), assisted by armed soldiers from their communities who had deserted or were on leave.

In reaction to the breakdown of Russia’s military effort, the Kerensky government instituted measures to restore the death penalty at the front, and ordered the arrest of Bolsheviks who had been agitating the soldiery.  However, this was not enough for General Lavr Kornilov, commander of the army, and other like-minded individuals, who wished to establish an authoritarian regime that would restore order.  In August, an attempt by Kornilov to seize power caused Kerensky to reverse course and accept Bolshevik support, with railway and telegraph workers delaying and diverting troops sent to pacify Petrograd, and party activists inciting mutiny among the ranks.  Thousands of Red Guards (armed workers) were also organized in the capital.  In the end, the coup attempt was defeated, and Kornilov relieved of command.

As a result of the Kornilov affair the influence of the Bolsheviks increased yet again, solidifying majorities for them in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, and their imprisoned leaders were released.  Lenin returned to the capital in early October, and convinced the party’s Central Committee that, in view of the existing circumstances, the time had come to seize power, winning a vote of 10 to 2 in favor of his proposal.  A revolutionary military committee was formed in the Petrograd Soviet, led by Leon Trotsky, and on October 25 (O.S.) Red Guards occupied key facilities and installations throughout the capital, supported by the city’s garrison, other military units, and a flotilla from the Baltic Sea fleet, including the cruiser Aurora.  These actions met with little opposition from the Provisional Government, which was unable to mount any effective resistance; the entire cabinet of the government was soon placed under arrest, with the exception of Kerensky, who fled the city.  Thus commenced the October Revolution.

Also on October 25 the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened – the Bolshevik uprising had been timed to precede it by a few hours.  The congress was made up of delegates elected by soviets from across Russia, of whom a majority were Bolsheviks, and most of the rest Socialist Revolutionaries or Mensheviks.  However, the Mensheviks were outraged by the fait accompli presented to them by the overthrow of the Provisional Government (in which they had participated), and so walked out of the meeting, as did the “right” SRs, who split from the “left” SRs that remained.  As a result, the Bolsheviks gained a commanding position in the new government instituted by the congress, headed by Lenin. 

On the next day of the congress Lenin announced Decrees on Land and Peace.  The first abolished private ownership of land, which instead was to have a collective basis.  The second called for an immediate truce in the ongoing war, followed by negotiation of a general peace treaty without annexations or indemnities, supported and confirmed by the people of the warring nations themselves – the latter essentially implying a popular revolution across Europe.

In fact fighting was soon suspended, for the time being, on Russia’s front with Germany and Austria, and in December peace negotiations were begun in the fortress of Brest-Litovsk.  Leon Trotsky, as Commissar of Foreign Affairs, eventually took over leadership of the Russian delegation, and attempted to draw out proceedings as long as he could, hoping that the other Allied Powers might join in – or, preferably, that a proletarian insurrection might erupt in Europe.  However, the Allies viewed the Russian withdrawal from the war as nothing more than a betrayal, and no revolution developed in any of the other belligerent nations in response to Russia’s own.

In February 1918 German patience with the negotiations came to an end.  In reaction, the Russian seat of government was relocated from Petrograd to greater safety in Moscow, and the Bolshevik Central Committee, over considerable internal opposition, narrowly approved the signing of a peace agreement, which became known as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk – the terms for which were extremely harsh.  Russia was forced to give up the Ukraine and the Baltic states (the loss of Poland and Finland was already a foregone conclusion), and was called upon to pay monetary reparations as well.  Nevertheless, the situation in eastern Europe remained problematic for the Germans, as a huge occupying force had to be maintained there, which in turn inspired unrest in the local population.  Further, the resources of the region could not immediately be exploited.  A large military force was indeed freed up for transfer to the west for Germany’s big spring offensive of 1918 (the Kaiserschlacht), but in any case that offensive failed to produce victory, and a subsequent Allied counter-offensive, reinforced with newly arrived American troops, finally brought about the defeat of Germany, which was forced to sign an armistice in November.  Thus, with the armistice, the draconian terms of Brest-Litovsk effectively ceased to apply.

Meanwhile, on November 12, 1917 (O.S.), elections for a national Constituent Assembly had been held in Russia.  The former Provisional Government had been “provisional” in the sense that it was originally meant to be replaced by a legislative body chosen by a national election, which had now been accomplished.  However, the Bolsheviks received only a quarter of the vote, with the Socialist Revolutionaries gaining 40 percent, and the remainder going to various other parties.  This was a reflection of the fact that although the Bolsheviks were predominant in the larger cities of Russia and among the common soldiery, the great majority of the population was rural, where the SRs held sway.

Such a result was not received favorably by the Bolsheviks, and Lenin objected that the candidate lists had been drawn up well before the split within the Socialist Revolutionaries (the “right” SRs being over-represented), so that the election did not reflect the true political situation of a coalition between the Bolsheviks and “left” SRs (an objection in which there was some truth).  In any event, when the Constituent Assembly first met on January 5, 1918 (O.S.), a majority of its delegates refused to ratify the Peace and Land Decrees of the Second Congress of Soviets, thus rejecting soviet authority – which led to the assembly being summarily dissolved by the Bolshevik-“left” SR government.  Once having left the initial meeting, the delegates were simply not permitted to return. 

The alliance between the Bolsheviks and “left” SRs was not destined to last much longer, however, for the unfavorable terms of Brest-Litovsk Treaty were not acceptable to the latter, who eventually left the coalition after the agreement was signed.  This left the Bolsheviks in complete control of the government, for they subsequently refused to recognize adverse election results and dissolved anti-Bolshevik soviets, while their opponents among revolutionaries were unable to form a unified front.  Thus the primary opposition to the Bolsheviks became military leaders of the old regime and the forces they commanded, henceforth known as “Whites” – opposition which soon culminated in the Russian Civil War.

The ensuing civil war was a chaotic, vicious, and enormously destructive affair, involving Bolshevik “Reds” and opposing “Whites” as the principal antagonists, but also featuring a host of other combatants, including the Czech Legion (ethnic Czechs and Slovaks who had fought for the czar’s army), an Anarchist Black Army led by Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine, troops of the Baltic states and Poland, and interventionist forces from Britain, France, the U.S., and Japan.

After volunteer militia-style forces proved insufficient, a Red Army was organized for the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Leon Trotsky.  Its ranks were eventually filled by mass conscription and it was commanded by an officer corps drawn largely from the old regime, which necessitated the introduction of political commissars into military units to ensure loyalty, as well as the restoration of the death penalty for disobedience and desertion.  Further, a secret police organization known as the Cheka was established, which was called upon to suppress subversive forces, particularly through the policies of the Red Terror, in which suspected opponents (real or imagined) were “disappeared” and then imprisoned or summarily executed.

During the conflict the Reds dominated the heartland of Russia and major cities such as Petrograd and Moscow, with the Whites holding sway in outlying areas of the south and Siberia.  As a result, the Reds had the advantage of a central position and access to substantial resources and manpower, while their opponents were not well coordinated (though the Whites did have more professionally capable military forces).  Further, even though Russia’s peasants deeply resented the Reds – due to conscription, and the requisition of scarce stocks of foodstuffs to supply starving cities under “war communism” – they hated and feared the Whites even more, for they knew that the latter intended to restore the old order, and take back the land that had been gained under the new regime.  Indeed, a stark premonition of such things was provided by a corresponding White Terror of repression and mass executions.  So it was that, with their advantages and the capable military leadership of Leon Trotsky, the Reds had largely defeated their opponents by the end of 1920, and emerged victorious from the civil war.

The cost of that war had been horrific, however.  Because of the utter chaos that prevailed it is impossible to be precise, but in the neighborhood of 2 million deaths had been caused by battle, disease, and terror.  Yet the indirect effects of the conflict were even more lethal, the result of civil disorder and the devastation of the economy.  Land under cultivation had shrunk to less than two thirds of its pre-WWI total, with the result that in 1921 a severe famine, exacerbated by drought, killed several million; and an epidemic of Typhus killed millions more.  In the industrial sector, production dwindled to a small fraction of its pre-war level.

This dismal state of affairs provoked rising unrest that was directed against the new Communist government (as the Bolsheviks had re-named themselves).  The forced seizure of agricultural produce under the policy of “war communism” had ignited an incipient mass insurrection by the peasantry, with the Cheka reporting 155 incidents of local uprisings across the land in early 1921; while in the cities, shortages of rations and deteriorating conditions gave rise to widespread protests and an exodus to the countryside.  But the exclusive Communist control of the state also inspired resistance in itself.  Sailors at the Baltic naval base of Kronstadt had been crucial supporters of the October revolution, but in 1921 rose in opposition, issuing demands for new elections for the nation’s soviets, in which all socialist and anarchist parties would be permitted to participate; full freedom of speech and the press; and the release of political prisoners.  The government replied with an assault by military force, including elements of the Cheka, which, after initial setbacks and heavy casualties, eventually crushed the uprising.

In response to these rapidly escalating threats, Lenin announced an immediate end to war communism and the launch of a New Economic Policy (NEP).  Under the NEP, as it rapidly evolved, the nation came to have a “mixed” economy, in which the state controlled large industries, banking, and foreign trade, but smaller enterprises and farms could be privately owned.  This new system was criticized by Leon Trotsky and like-minded members of the party as a retreat from centralized allocation of output and capital formation, but Lenin justified it as “state capitalism”, a last step to create an industrialized economy before true socialism could be established – a principle which, at least, was in line with the ideas of Marx himself, in which capitalism was seen as the necessary predecessor of socialism.

In any case, the NEP had sufficient support in the party to go forward, and in fact was championed by leaders such as Nikolai Bukharin.  Perhaps more to the point, it also produced impressive results, with the economy quickly rebounding to pre-World War I levels in a period of only a few years – which was, by any measure, a remarkable achievement.

In contrast to the loosening of the party’s control of the economy, however, its hold on the political system took an opposite turn.  Factions within the party criticized the government for over-centralization (with its attendant bureaucracy), and called for a more important role for labor unions; but, in reaction to such critiques (and the Kronstadt rebellion), a ban on organized factions was announced early in 1921, justified as essential for party unity.  In the years immediately following the ban was honored more in the breach than in the observance, but in the long term it had established an ominous precedent.  Further, all opposition socialist parties in Russia, such as the Mensheviks and SRs, were permanently suppressed after the civil war, their leaders being imprisoned.

However, though the Communist party was now preeminent, its leadership was dealt a severe blow when Lenin fell seriously ill, suffering his first stroke in 1922, and finally dying, after further strokes, in January 1924.  He had been “first among equals”, in a position of unusual authority due to his recognized ability, but the party had always been governed by a collective leadership, and in his absence high officials began jockeying for power – among these being Joseph Stalin.  

Stalin became General Secretary of the party in 1922, an office which had originally been of a purely administrative nature, but which he now used to place his supporters in positions throughout the government.  He also cultivated close relations with the leaders of the secret police.  So far as party politics were concerned, he was initially part of a faction that supported the NEP, and thus stood in opposition to Leon Trotsky.  Trotsky, however, proved to be inept in the intricacies of intra-party struggle, and in the course of a few years was expelled from the Central Committee and exiled from Russia.  Once Trotsky was neutralized, Stalin nimbly reversed course and henceforth became the leader of the opposition to the NEP, all the while consolidating his power.

Though the NEP restored Russia’s industrial output to the level achieved before the First World War, that level had proved insufficient even for its military needs at the time, and many in the party desired to increase the pace of industrialization more rapidly, particularly in view of the nation’s uneasy relations with non-Communist governments, which had brought about a war scare in 1927.  Further, the NEP was often seen as a galling throwback to capitalism, and in any case was supposed (in theory) to be a temporary measure.

Having effectively become the leader of the Communist party, Stalin announced the first of his Five Year Plans in 1928, which ended the NEP and instituted a more radical program of centralized economic development.  The first plan, in particular, specified overly ambitious targets which could not be fulfilled – but, in the end, the plans did greatly accelerate industrial growth, finally allowing Russia to achieve parity with the West in the military sphere (though not in consumer goods production).  Further, a program to forcibly collectivize agriculture commenced, with the goal of consolidating small holdings into large ones that would benefit from mechanization.  However, the agricultural sector was exploited to achieve rapid expansion of the industrial, and was also severely disrupted by unrealistic goals, mismanagement, and peasant resistance to dispossession.  The result was a disastrous famine in 1932-33 in which millions died.

Any opposition (real or simply imagined) to such programs, or the devastating conditions thereby produced, or indeed to party orthodoxy (whatever it was declared to be), was brutally suppressed by the Stalin regime in a series of “purges”, which culminated in the Great Purge of 1936-38.  A host of victims were either summarily executed or sent to Gulag labor camps, and included “kulaks” (well-to-do peasants), suspect ethnic minorities (such as Poles, Finns, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians, etc.), and numerous intellectuals and artists.  The high command of the military also suffered, with over 80 percent of officers of divisional command rank or higher being discharged, in stages, over time; and of these perhaps half were arrested, with many subsequently executed (including three Marshals of the Soviet Union).  Even two heads of the NKVD (the secret police successor to the Cheka) were executed – the very same persons who had overseen earlier phases of the purge itself.  

Finally, there were the infamous public “show trials” of highly placed individuals, in which the defendants made “confessions” of fantastical crimes that were dutifully accepted by the credulous – but in reality had been extracted through torture and threats to family members.  The most spectacular trial was that of Nikolai Bukharin, champion of the NEP and favorite of Lenin, who attempted a veiled defense in accompaniment to his “confession”, but in the end met the same fate as all the other victims: summary execution.  Of the twelve members of the first governing council of the Bolsheviks who were still alive at the time of the Great Purge, eight were executed, one was assassinated abroad (Trotsky, in 1940), one died in prison, and only two died of natural causes at a later date – which included Stalin himself. All domestic opposition had been eliminated.

The situation on the international stage was quite different, however.  A general expansion of military forces was taking place in Europe, so in the late 1930s the Soviet Union (as the greater Russian state became known) commenced a huge military buildup of its own, eventually more than tripling the size of its army.  A decision also had to be made as to which power bloc Russia would align with in the increasingly threatening situation: Britain and France, or Germany.  Negotiations with the former failed, while the Germans promised better relations and a division of territory in Eastern Europe; Stalin also appeared to be impressed by Hitler’s ascendancy, and his methods.  Accordingly, the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union was signed on August 23, 1939 – after which a German attack on Poland was launched on September 1, and with it the Second World War.

Soon after the outbreak of the war Russia subjugated the eastern portion of Poland allotted to it by the non-aggression pact, and then in the winter of 1939-40 launched a military campaign against Finland.  However, in spite of a having a great numerical superiority, the Russians suffered heavy losses in the Winter War against the Finns (as it became known), and a peace agreement was concluded after three and a half months of fighting.  Finland was forced to cede some 11 percent of its territory, but had avoided total conquest, and the Red Army was revealed to have serious weaknesses, partly due to the purges of its leadership – which may have influenced subsequent German policy.

Still, the Russian military proved capable enough to inflict a defeat on the Japanese in the Khalkin Gol battles on the Mongolian border in 1939, which persuaded Japan to remain neutral toward Russia during the remainder of World War II, and thus freed up substantial Russian forces for transfer west, when later needed.  The Soviets also occupied and annexed the Baltic states in 1940.  Yet all the while Russia continued to supply critical resources to the Germans that they needed for their war effort, under the terms of its rapprochement with the Third Reich.

On June 22, 1941, that rapprochement came to an abrupt end, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa: a massive invasion of the Soviet Union.  The Russians were taken completely by surprise and suffered horrific losses; in comparison to the blow suffered by the Americans in the attack on Pearl Harbor a few months later, the disaster for Russia was of vastly greater magnitude.  Yet ample warnings had been given of the impending attack – from the very capable espionage network that the Soviets had abroad, from interrogation of spies and saboteurs captured by border guards earlier in June, and even from a reconnaissance report that German forces were massing for an offensive.  Stalin discounted them all, preferring to believe they were “English provocation”, the false-flag plots of capitalists who were surely the greatest enemies of communism.

The German blitzkrieg cut a swath through the unprepared and disorganized Russian defenses, a catastrophe made even worse when Stalin ordered “no retreat” in circumstances where a prudent withdrawal would have improved the military situation.  German advance units eventually approached within sight of Moscow, but in the end the city could not be captured, due to the unrelenting opposition of the Russian army, severity of a winter that halted the invasion’s progress, and reinforcements of Siberian troops brought in from the east.

The suspension of the blitzkrieg’s momentum gave the Red Army time to reorganize, and to begin to exploit its own advantages – its great size (much larger than the Germans had initially estimated), its support by an industrial sector that could supply it with the military equipment it required (in contrast to the First World War), and an encouragement to fight to the end that was provided by Hitler’s “war of annihilation” policy.  Another German offensive was launched in the summer of 1942, but after initial successes was halted at Stalingrad, and a 1943 offensive failed almost immediately at Kursk.  After this the Russians were able to maintain a general offensive of their own, liberating most of the territory that had been lost by 1944, and finally advancing to Berlin itself, with the Third Reich capitulating in May 1945.

In the aftermath of the war and Germany’s failed invasion attempt, the Soviet Union installed puppet governments in a number of nations of eastern Europe, in an effort to establish a buffer between itself and the West.  Stalin finally died in 1953, after which the Communist state reverted to its earlier system of collective leadership, with Nikita Khrushchev emerging as “first among equals”.  Further, a program of de-Stalinization was commenced, with the former leader’s crimes, failings, and “cult of personality” being officially denounced, various of his victims gaining “rehabilitation” of their reputations, and many thousands of prisoners of the Gulag labor camps being released.  However, though the Soviet Union had come to possess a modern and formidable military establishment, it still fell far short of the West in the economic sphere, and over the years increasingly suffered from sclerotic leadership, stagnation, and mounting internal contradictions.  Attempts at reform only revealed fractures in the state, which began to collapse in 1988, and ended in complete dissolution by 1991.

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The Russian Revolution might be regarded as an experiment in a system of belief – belief that an ideal society could be achieved, in an effort directed by a small but dedicated “vanguard” that possessed ultimate power.  This resulted in the strange paradox of a socialist state that was supposed to eventually wither away in favor of a classless society, but was also profoundly undemocratic, with the masses overseen by a minority comprised of party members, among whom a far tinier minority actually held the reins of power.  Less than 10 percent of adult citizens were members of the Communist party in the later years of the Soviet Union – which actually represented a dramatic increase since the mid 1920s, when less than 1 percent of the population held party membership.  The “party line” was that its leaders, acting as the vanguard of Marxism, would guide the people until they were properly prepared for a classless and stateless existence; but in the meantime, the original “soviets” of the Soviet Union, which had been declared by the party to represent the will of the people, became essentially meaningless for national affairs soon after the revolution.

The founding leaders of the Bolsheviks were, for the most part, university educated elites, Lenin himself being a classic example of such.  (One of the few members of the Bolshevik inner circle who originated from the lower classes was, ironically, Joseph Stalin.)  Though typically well versed in Marxist theory, they had no experience in the practicalities of governing a nation, or even mass politics, and in fact had often been exiled from Russia for extended periods.  Further, their party was only one of a host of revolutionary groups, some of which were considerably larger and enjoyed more popular support.  Thus they might seem to have been unlikely victors in a contest for power; but, in actuality, possessed a number of advantages.

First, and foremost, there was the advantage of a widespread sympathy among Russian elites for the cause of revolution, the result of their decades long struggle with the czarist regime, stoked to the boiling point by the reverses of the First World War – a sympathy which far exceeded that present in any other major nation.  This unusual state of affairs led the Bolsheviks to the mistaken conclusion that a Russian revolution would immediately ignite a more general European revolution, which would end the war.  Yet this mistake, on which was founded the Bolshevik call for peace on any terms that could be had, also yielded considerable support for the party among the war weary, particularly the common soldiery, and differentiated it from other revolutionary parties that supported a continuation of the war on a “defencist” basis.  And in the end, Germany and it allies were defeated anyway, rendering the issue of defense against them meaningless.

The support from soldiers and armed workers, combined with a high degree of organization and discipline among the Bolsheviks, proved to be a crucial advantage for the party, in spite of its limited size (which necessarily resulted from its requirement of total dedication to the cause).  Kornilov’s attempted coup in August 1917 had forced Kerensky to reverse course and seek Bolshevik help to save the Provisional Government – but this, of course, only revealed the government’s weakness (and the weakness of the revolutionary parties that supported it).  The coup attempt made clear that someone would shortly seize power, and the Bolsheviks possessed the wherewithal and ideological motivation to ensure that the “someone” would be them. That “the Bolsheviks found power lying in the streets and simply picked it up” is a quote often attributed to Lenin; but whether he actually said it or not, it would seem to contain a certain amount of truth.

The Bolshevik call for immediate redistribution of land, with the liquidated estates of the gentry to be taken over by the peasantry, also generated considerable popular support for the party.  In contrast, the Provisional Government, as the face of the established order, had refused to officially sanction such measures; but, taking matters into their own hands, the peasants began seizing estates on their own and distributing the land among themselves, which again demonstrated the ineffectuality of the government.  The eventual goal of the Bolsheviks was the collectivization of farmland into large operations, but little progress toward this end was made under the NEP, with full collectivization only being imposed by the brutal policies of the Stalin regime.

Finally, in spite of their lack of experience in government, the leaders of the Bolsheviks often proved to be quite adept at improvisation.  The creation of the Red Army by Leon Trotsky was an outstanding example of such; and perhaps even more so, the institution of the New Economic Policy under Lenin.  In fact, to the degree that crucial events in history can be influenced by personalities, the person of Lenin must rank as one of the most commanding.  After the commencement of the February Revolution, when most of the other Bolsheviks (including Stalin) were ready to cooperate with a coalition of Russia’s other revolutionary parties, Lenin refused to compromise, insisting on absolute opposition to the war and the Provisional Government.  He quickly brought the rest of the party’s leadership into agreement with him; and then, in spite of various amounts of internal opposition, called for the seizure of power during the October Revolution, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to end Russia’s involvement in the war, and, of course, the commencement of the NEP.

Yet the insistence by Lenin – and the rest of the Bolshevik leadership – on the sole possession of power by the party (which in effect meant the top echelon of the party alone), coupled with a lack of practical experience in administration (and the labyrinthine politics thereof), eventually led to self-annihilation under the Stalin regime.  An absolute devotion to unity forestalled any public denunciation of Stalin, who ruthlessly pursued a policy of divide-and-conquer among the upper ranks of the party, and relentlessly promoted the rise of his own allies and minions within the party apparatus.  The result was a totalitarian autocracy which exterminated the remainder of the original Bolshevik leadership, and brought about the end of Lenin’s own NEP.  There was no effective opposition to any of this, because no organized opposition (loyal or otherwise) existed within the state at all.

The termination of the NEP might be regarded as particularly tragic, given that China has followed a remarkably similar program, combining government control of key sectors with private enterprise to produce tremendous economic growth.  But of course China has also had certain advantages: the armies of the Third Reich did not appear on its doorstep twenty years after commencing its development effort, and magnates of the West have actually striven (for their own benefit) to export whole industries to China.  The Five Year Plans of Stalin did industrialize Russia with unprecedented rapidity, producing the military equipment with which the Reich’s eventual invasion was defeated; but in opposition to this must be set Stalin’s own diplomatic and military ineptitude, especially in the leadup to the war and its opening phases.  Whether Russia would have survived and prospered under the NEP therefore remains an interesting but unanswered question.

In parallel to industrialization under Stalin, the collectivization of agriculture brought its own tragedies.  The great famine that initially resulted is well known, but less appreciated is the destruction of the peasant commune, or “mir”, under which agriculture had been conducted in European Russia for centuries.  In each mir, arable land was held in common, every household having the right to work its own portion of it, with said portion being distributed in narrow strips throughout the mir’s open fields, rather than in a compact holding, in order equalize the quality of the soil and diffuse risk in the face of nature’s vagaries.  The land allotted to the households was then typically redistributed every 10 to 20 years, in accordance with each household’s size.  Ironically, this communistic system of agriculture was ended by the Communist state under Stalin, with peasants ending up as laborers on large collective farms.  Of course, the old system was not immediately favorable to increasing production through mechanization; but it is interesting to note that the final result – the industrialization of agriculture and its workers, accompanied by the consolidation of small holdings into large farm operations – was similar in both the Soviet collectives and the West’s agribusiness enterprises.

In any case, the political result of the Russian Revolution, which was the Soviet Union itself, collapsed after little more than seven decades of existence.  Many reasons have been advanced for this, including the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the decline of oil prices due to Saudi Arabia flooding the market, and the drain of military spending in competition with the United States.  But perhaps, more than anything else, the collapse of the state was the result of a collapse of belief – belief that an ideal society, classless and stateless, would eventually come about under the Communist regime.

The ideal of a stateless condition began to be abandoned early on, after proletarian revolutions failed to sweep Europe in the years following the First World War.  Statelessness cannot exist in a world that persists in being organized into states; and tribal identification with the state, then and now, would appear to exert a greater influence over human behavior than class identity (and the “class struggle”).  The internationalism of Marxist doctrine and the original Bolsheviks was soon transmuted into the nationalism of “socialism in one country”, with the Soviet Union behaving much like any other nation (or empire), albeit one that one supposed to serve as a “beacon” to revolutionaries worldwide.

As for the organization of security forces within the state, that, too, fell into old patterns before long.  The idea of a militia of armed workers perished immediately in the face of opposition that was more formidable than had been expected, the result being a Red Army that was much like the czar’s – initially, in fact, often staffed by former officers of the czar’s army, who led peasant conscripts like those of the czar’s army – with the addition of political commissars, intended to ensure loyalty to the party.  And the hated Ohkrana, the czar’s secret police, was instantly replaced by an even more sinister and repressive Cheka.

Economic disparities within the Soviet Union were indeed reduced in comparison to the old regime, as a result of socialism; but disparities of power may have been as great, or even greater.  Certainly, Joseph Stalin had more power over the state than Nicholas II.  And members of the Communist party, never more than a small fraction of the population, constituted an elite class of their own in terms of power, thus contradicting the very principle of a classless society.  In the early years, members of the party were expected to be completely dedicated to it, as essentially their sole occupation, which of course excluded the mass of the people.  But such “dedication” eventually became, in many cases, simply a credential for personal advancement. 

A determined attempt to reform the Soviet system was made by its final leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, under policies of “perestroika” (a restructuring of the economy and government) and “glasnost” (greater political openness).  However, a loosening of the force of central authority that bound the state together only caused it to sag and ultimately disintegrate, as it had no inner strength, due to entrenched interests, corruption, and its own inherent contradictions; there was too little that could actually be salvaged by reform.  The Soviet system had transformed a peasant society into an industrial one, but could advance no further, for belief in the goal of an ideal society, on which the system itself had been founded, and served as its ultimate justification, had died years before.  The new state that emerged from the wreckage simply obeyed the reality of Russia’s situation: a land between Asia and Europe with few natural barriers, vulnerable to cataclysmic invasions from East or West, and thus obliged to maintain a considerable military establishment under decisive authority.

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Sources

Study of the Russian Revolution has been highly charged with partisanship from its outset, with assorted partisans on every side.  This is partly due to conflicts of ideology (e.g. Marxism versus capitalism), but such disputes over political and economic theory have often concealed the influence of underlying realities, roiling beneath the surface: the great power struggle between the West and Russia (a conflict which was at its height during the Cold War, but still continues today), as well as various nationalistic antagonisms, and of course questions of elite position and the established order.  Such partisanship has abated somewhat in the scholarly world since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but nevertheless must always be kept in mind.  A few sources on the Russian Revolution that may prove particularly useful are as follows:

Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-1921, edited by Edward Acton, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, and William G. Rosenberg, published by the Indiana University Press and copyright 1997.  This collection features essays by 46 historians of the Russian Revolution from across the world, on a wide range of subjects and from various viewpoints.

Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, a Political Biography 1888-1938, by Stephen F. Cohen, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1973.  An informative biography of one of the founding Bolsheviks, providing insight into his own thinking and positions, and those of other leaders such as Lenin, as well as presenting useful background on the revolution itself.

Russia in the Nineteenth Century: Autocracy, Reform, and Social Change, 1814-1914, by Alexander Polunov, edited by Thomas C. Owen and Larissa G. Zakharova, translated by Marshall S. Shatz; a volume in the New Russian History series edited by Donald J. Raleigh of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, published by M.E. Sharpe, Inc., and copyright 2005.  A wide-ranging treatment of the political, economic, and social forces that ultimately produced the Russian Revolution in 1917.

“When Lenin Returned”, by Edward Crankshaw, an article in the October 1954 issue of The Atlantic magazine.  A fascinating portrait of Lenin, his ideas, and his profound influence on the Russian Revolution, with emphasis on his return to Russia in April 1917.

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An Anatomy of Ideology

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not.”

– David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Book III: Of Morals, Part 1, Section 1 (emphasis added)

As employed herein, an “ideology” will be defined as a system of political ideas, with a central ideal to which it is ultimately devoted.  That is, political in the sense of ideas which concern social organization and power in their secular aspect (and thus opposed, for example, to purely religious ideas, though for the theocratically inclined there may be an identity of relationship); and a central ideal in the sense of a fundamental principle that states what should be, and organizes the entire structure of the ideology (as opposed to a disorganized collection of opinions).

Ideas which are held to be true may be of two kinds, as previously considered: beliefs, which do not have substantial support from reliable evidence; and knowledge, which does have support from such evidence.  An ideology, as a system of ideas, may thus consist of both.  However, belief comes first, most particularly as the central ideal, which is the essential point of any ideology – the ultimate principle which it holds should be followed.  Yet such a principle is not itself a fact, or an observation that can be supported with evidence; it states what should be, rather than what is, was, or will be, and as such is not falsifiable, for a statement of “should” cannot be contradicted by evidence.  The proposition that “the sky should be green” does not hold that it is actually green, or ever has been, or necessarily will be – it is a statement of pure opinion concerning a desired end, and as such cannot be disproven.

Of course, assertions may be made that an ideal will produce results that are testable by evidence; for example, the ideal that “the people should rule” might lead to the assertion that less economic inequality and a more harmonious society would thereby be produced, which would be, to some degree, a testable proposition.  Nevertheless, the ideal itself, as a statement of “should”, remains unfalsifiable.

Further, proof of a desirable result is not necessarily essential to ideology, as will occasionally be seen when an ideal continues to be espoused even after its purported results fail to materialize.  That is, the ideal may constitute an end in itself, a “should be” of ultimate importance, against which its actual effects possess only secondary significance; and whatever those results might actually be, they may, as a practical matter, simply be rationalized away, should they prove to be contrary to the ideal they are supposed to support.  In any case, it must be concluded that since their central ideals are principles that cannot rely on evidence, ideologies are, in the first instance, systems of belief – involving knowledge in a supporting role, to be sure, but one that is not absolutely essential.

In actual fact, the prominence of belief among the various ideologies will become obvious from even the most cursory observation of them, for although they contradict one another on many points, these contradictions are never actually resolved – given that their ideals are not falsifiable, resolution is in fact impossible.  Instead, ideologies persist in endless opposition, any degree of ascendancy attained by one or another proving to be no more than temporary.  No ideology has ever been able to establish the truth of its position beyond reasonable question, or achieve universal acceptance.

All of which, of course, leads to an interesting question: why are the beliefs of ideology so tenaciously held?  Why do they exist at all?  Any answers must lie in the worldview of the believer, which produces the beliefs themselves, either consciously or unconsciously; a state of mind that might be called the essence of an ideology, the underlying source from which its central ideal arises.  This essence, as the driving force of ideology, is thus of fundamental importance, even if, as an impulse of desire, it may finally prove to have no rational basis – just as life itself might be said to constitute its own importance, without any requirement of rational purpose.  Ultimately, it exists. 

Thus, just as the states of mind of two individuals will never be exactly alike, so neither will be the details of any ideologies that they hold to be true; in this sense ideologies are as varied as those who follow them.  Nevertheless, for purposes of their examination, it would appear to be possible to organize ideologies into a limited number of primary types, in which agreement exists on major points.  These points include a broad statement of the ideology’s essence, and the central ideal which arises from it – the objective of the ideology in the abstract – as well as the matter of how the elites of society are to be determined – its purpose in the concrete, for the distribution of power.  (It should be remembered, however, that “pure” ideologies are rarely, if ever, seen among existing political movements, which may mix tenets of more than one ideology, or even admit certain contradictions within an ideology.)

It might also be worthwhile to describe ideologies on the basis of their faults, which would seem inevitable, inasmuch as their ideals cannot actually be proved, and so may inspire conclusions that conflict with observable reality.  Thus, just as each ideology has a different central ideal, so will each have a different defining fault that becomes especially prominent because of that very ideal.  Tolstoy famously observed that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and so might it also be said that each ideology has its own unhappy defining fault (by no means exclusive to it, but nevertheless of unusual salience).  Such a fault in turn implies a tragic destiny, which would be the result achieved if the central ideal of an ideology is carried to its logical conclusion.

And so a scheme of organization for ideologies (which, in the naming of their types, largely follows established convention) is proposed as follows:

Conservatism 

The essence of conservatism is preservation, from which arises its central ideal: that tradition should be preserved in the social organization and power structure of  society, whatever such might be.  Or, to put it simply, conservatism involves a belief in the “tried and true”, which is assumed to have demonstrated its superiority by the fact of its original prevalence (real or imagined).

Thus elitism by descent becomes the chief mechanism for the distribution of power under conservatism – that is, elites are to be determined by inheritance, inasmuch as inheritance (the transmittal of social position and assets to one’s own heirs) is a universal tradition (perhaps even a fundamental biological instinct) of humanity.  The result is an hereditary aristocracy, which may culminate in a monarchy with a carefully defined line of succession, such being justified by an assertion of the inherited characteristics of superior “blood”, or even of divine favor.

However, the lower orders also have a part to play in conservative society, namely to support the aristocracy with their “economic surplus”, in return for which the aristocracy will, in theory, guide and protect them, and maintain civil peace, all in accordance with “natural law” (in its conservative definition) or “divine right”.  Thus the message of conservatism for the masses becomes “a place for everyone, and everyone in his place.”

It might be observed that the aforementioned definition of conservatism does not always conform very well with current popular notions of that ideology; indeed, such notions often confuse it with certain aspects of libertarianism, know-nothingism, or even liberalism.  This can be accounted for by the fact that a fully conservative outlook is quite rare in our present society – today, hardly anyone supports the idea of a formally recognized hereditary aristocracy (at least overtly).  However, conservatism has served as the organizing principle for many earlier societies, and even in the present Western instance seemed prevalent at first.  Thus, even though it is relatively rare now in its fully developed form, the conservative ideology has had an extremely important place in the past, and might have one again in the future.

Given that its overriding purpose is to preserve whatever is traditional in its society, the defining fault of conservatism becomes cowardice.  That is, behavior governed by fear of what is new, or different, or alien, simply for having such characteristics, in spite of the fact that it might actually be of material benefit.  The tragic destiny of such an attitude is fossilization – an extreme rigidity of thought and social relations, which may so paralyze conservative society that it, and its traditions, become vulnerable to attack by external forces.  An interesting example of fossilization might be seen in the caste system that developed in India, in which an individual’s position in society is determined, to an overwhelming extent, by the social class entered at birth.

Liberalism

The essence of liberalism is innovation, which produces its central ideal: that novel developments of merit, in matters of social position and the organization of society, should be accepted on the basis of their supposed superiority.  Since new developments of any type must necessarily conflict with tradition, the innate opposition of liberalism to conservatism becomes apparent.

Given the importance that is attached to the idea of merit, the primary mechanism for the distribution of power under liberalism becomes elitism by ascent.  That is, positions of privilege and authority are to go to whoever can best achieve them, due to the superior characteristics and abilities of such persons (real or imagined).  Thus liberalism might be regarded as essentially synonymous with “meritocracy”.

Considering the above, it might be observed that Western society has always had a distinct bias toward liberalism.  True, in its earlier phases the West was governed by hereditary power, but this was undoubtedly the result of its violent birth in the aftermath of the collapse of Classical society, which initially resulted in the decentralized aristocracy of the feudal system.  Over time, however, a growing and ascending middle class collaborated with nascent monarchs to replace feudalism with centralized governments, then replaced the monarchs themselves with elected officials who had ascended in the political realm.  Thus evolutionary innovations in the power structure of Western society took place, impelled by its inherent bias toward the ideals of liberalism.

“Democracy” has a place in liberal ideology, but its true function is to provide an orderly method for the ascent of elites in the political sphere, in place of the disorder that would result from unrestrained competition.  Therefore, under liberalism, democracy is not primarily “rule by the people” (though an attenuated element of that might well exist); rather, it prescribes that contention for power should take place through persuasion of the electorate (as directed by established institutions of the elite, such as political parties and the press), rather than by outright warfare.

In similar fashion, the “market” (or better yet, “free market”) is an important element of liberalism, as a mechanism for the ascent of elites in the sphere of the economy.  That is, the distribution of material wealth (and elite position in the economy) is again to be governed by merit, by means of contributions to the market and supposedly free exchanges within it.  Indeed, under liberalism, the market may, under certain circumstances, be considered a replacement for democracy, or rather may be redefined as a version of democracy itself: “one dollar, one vote”. Thus, what has been called “neoliberalism” is, in fact, simply a version of liberalism itself, one that places a particular emphasis on the market, rather than a distinct ideology of its own.

It might also be noted that the West has always exhibited a marked aptitude for technical innovation, in parallel with developments in the economic and political spheres.  This has produced the technological superiority which has propelled Western society into its present hegemonic position in the scheme of world power.  Incidentally, this is not to imply that other societies have not been inventive – famously, many of the technical innovations that proved to be so important for the West were developed first in China.  However, Western society has proved to be vastly more adept at exploiting the full potential of these innovations.

As a result of the crucial importance of merit in liberal ideology, its defining fault becomes hypocrisy.  This is due to the fact that “merit” often has no effective definition, in terms other than itself: elites are said to ascend because they have merit, and proof of that merit is said to be in their ascent – a perfectly circular exercise in pseudo-logic.  In fact, a talent for ascent may actually be composed of varying degrees of ruthlessness, greed, social charm, guile, prehensile adaptability, and/or an obsession with advancement, rather than any qualities that might, in themselves, encourage a positive contribution to human society.  It is also true that merit is sometimes said to be based on particular accomplishments or possession of certain credentials, but except in fields of expertise directly based on knowledge (including, for example, science, engineering, and mathematics; sometimes history and medicine; and, perhaps, a few others), the meaning of such credentials or accomplishments may be arbitrary, ambiguous, or even deceptive.

Further, as a consequence of its unreserved devotion to supposed merit, the tragic destiny of liberalism becomes social disintegration.  This may be due, in part, to its abandonment of traditional modes of social organization, but perhaps even more to its embrace of elitism by ascent, which, in spite of attempts to regulate it, may finally end in flagrantly unprincipled competition and gross inequality in the material circumstances of the population – with the most extreme and unscrupulous varieties of behavior becoming pervasive, thus threatening the very fabric of human society.

Libertarianism 

The essence of libertarian ideology is individualism, which immediately produces its central ideal: that the individual should be sovereign, unbound by any strictures of society at large, except, perhaps, to be restrained from inflicting “harm” on any other individual (however such might be defined).  In fact, carrying this idea to an extreme, Margaret Thatcher famously declared that “there is no such thing as society”, only individuals with their own purposes and actions (though it might actually be unfair to foist Thatcher upon libertarianism, given her warm embrace of a united social purpose – indeed, militant patriotism – during the Falklands affair, when such suited her).

A crucial element of the concept of individual sovereignty is private ownership of property, which leads to elitism by property becoming the mechanism for the distribution of power under libertarianism.  In other words, the market (and its presumptively voluntary transactions) is to be the arena in which an individual’s material position in the world is ultimately decided, a superiority in the ability to acquire property resulting in a superior position.  This obviously has certain similarities to the tenets of liberalism in the economic sphere, though under libertarianism government has no legitimate function, except perhaps for the protection of life and property; whereas under liberalism, government provides a perfectly valid (in fact, the most effective) avenue for ascent.

Also, just as Western society has also always had a marked bias for the innovations of liberalism, so too has it had a partiality for individualism, and the concept of individual rights, which has developed steadily over time.  Thus libertarianism might be seen, in its most positive aspect, as the ultimate development of that partiality.

But in any case, as a result of its absolute preoccupation with the individual, the defining fault of libertarian ideology becomes narcissism.  Upon gazing into its own navel, it produces the idea that individuals unconstrained by any social considerations, other than the requirement to avoid “harm” to one another, must ultimately result in a desirable state of affairs.  However, the definition of harm that is employed would seem, most often, to remain ambiguous, and in fact may fail to deal with troublesome externalities (such as environmental pollution), except perhaps to declare that they are unimportant, or do not even exist.

Similarly, the fact that large concentrations of private property may result in dangerous concentrations of private power is either denied or ignored; the lone individual is considered to operate on the same “level playing field” as the largest corporation or wealthiest oligarch (as incredible as such might seem).  And regarding power itself, the question of how the requirement to avoid harm is to be enforced in a libertarian environment never seems to be dealt with adequately, perhaps because it cannot be.  If enforcement is to be carried out by institutions of the military or police – even in a government rigorously limited to no more than such – then those very institutions become an inescapable threat to individual liberty, and in fact may come under the control of power resulting from concentration of property.  (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, indeed.)  

Finally, we have the spectacular political failure of libertarianism in its own right; “Libertarian Party”, it has often been pointed out, is essentially a contradiction in terms, given the ideology’s ideal of the atomized individual.  Yet, despite its lack of success as a political faction, certain tenets of libertarianism have been slyly appropriated by rival ideologies, particularly (neo)liberalism, for use toward their own ends – and to great effect. 

Thus it might be observed that libertarianism is, in general, the least realistic of all the ideologies, in that it possesses the least ability to deal with the realities of human behavior, or even to assert a genuine role for itself in political life.  And such lack of realism is, of course, a prime characteristic of narcissism.

It is this lack of realism that underlies the tragic destiny of libertarianism, which would produce precisely the opposite of its ideal of personal liberty: namely, serfdom.  For private power that is unconstrained by institutions of government will inevitably establish its own government de facto – and eventually, de jure – government on its own terms, and purely for its own ends, under which the common people function merely as servants, their individual sovereignties extinguished.  It might also be observed that, given libertarianism’s obsession with property, the very individuality of the libertarian may become bound to that property, just as the medieval serf was bound to the land.

Progressivism

The essence of progressive ideology is communalism, from which proceeds its central ideal: that society should be egalitarian, in the sense of constituting a community of persons of equal worth, organized for the purpose of the “common good” (however such might be defined).  In other words, it is to be a project of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”; words made famous by A. Lincoln, but which earlier appeared in the prologue to Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible in 1384.  Given the contradiction that communalism offers to individualism, the inherent opposition of libertarianism to progressivism becomes evident.

Inasmuch as the ideal of popular government is essential to progressivism, its mechanism for the distribution of power becomes elitism by democracy.  This would seem a contradiction in terms; but of course, aside from an occasional plebiscite or referendum, direct rule by the people is impossible for a social group of any substantial size (such as a nation), especially in its day-to-day affairs, thus requiring the election of representatives, who necessarily become, in terms of the power they wield, an established elite.  Thus every national democracy is, in actuality, a representative democracy, or republic (which, however, remains a “democracy”, at least in principle, according to any reasonable definition, despite occasional dissenting claims by pedantry).

Under progressivism, the operation of the economy is to be governed by socialism, or communal sharing of effort and product – “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” was the phrase popularized by Karl Marx.  However, he was by no means the first to state such sentiments, which have a long and even ancient history; “distribution was made unto every man according as he had need” according to the Acts of the Apostles (4:35).  In fact, it may well be that there is, to some degree, an instinctive inclination toward a communal economy, as well as a basic democracy of consensus, dating back to the origins of human society.

But whatever the history of its antecedents, progressivism’s insistence on rule by the people, in the setting of a social group of national size, produces its defining fault of dementia.  For it presumes that a social order in which elites must necessarily exist, and of such size that most of its members will forever remain strangers, can operate in the same manner as a small group in which decisions are made by consensus.  It also takes for granted that the mass of the populace has the real desire, knowledge, and ability to govern a nation, or at least to elect worthy representatives to govern, in spite of a notable shortage of evidence for such characteristics.  One need only glance at the dubious membership of the Congress of the United States and their many self-dealings, panderings, feats of ineptitude, and displays of crass ignorance – or, indeed, those of the legislature of any major nation – to arrive at such a conclusion.

To extend the point with a particular case, the national election of 2016 in the United States might well be described as a tragedy of democracy.  Of the two leading presidential candidates (the only ones with any hope of being elected), one was the representative of a previous administration which had presided over an ultimately disastrous project of financial deregulation, furthered the export of domestic industry abroad, oversaw a substantial shredding of the “social safety net” (including an attempt to reach a “grand bargain” to privatize the Social Security system), as well as completely botching economic and political policies toward Russia after the Soviet Union’s fall; and, as Secretary of State in her own right, had not only backed military action that left Libyan society in a wreckage of violent chaos, but had granted legitimacy to the rise of illegitimate and repressive regimes in Honduras and Haiti.  Meanwhile, the opposing candidate was a television showman and oft-bankrupt would-be tycoon of tycoons, whose initial base of support rested on nativist know-nothings, and whose scattershot pronouncements, interspersed with outright lies, demonstrated a complete lack of any real principles (save one, that principle being himself).  In other words, no matter which candidate won, the result was certain to be bad.  Which, of course, constitutes a genuine tragedy in the original sense of the word: a monstrous result that is inevitable.  

Of course, the problems of the aforementioned election were compounded by the vagaries of an antique electoral system, but in the end the popular vote was fairly close anyway (as it almost always is in the U.S.), with both candidates receiving millions of votes – votes for either being votes for a highly questionable quantity.  And the candidate who was ultimately elected proved to be unprecedented in the sheer obviousness of his brazen imprudence and dishonesty, even attempting, after his bid for re-election failed, to hold on to power by extreme means that were also unprecedented – heralding not just an isolated failure, but a degradation of the entire democratic system.

Another sort of democratic shortcoming may be seen in recent elections involving the issue of abortion rights.  In 2022, Kansas voters defeated, by a sizable margin, a measure which would have eliminated provisions in the state constitution which protected abortion rights; while the state legislature, elected by the same people, would undoubtedly have approved draconian abortion restrictions, given the chance (going by precedent and the actions of similar legislatures).  Since then, referendums in a number of other states, in which the people themselves voted directly on the issue of abortion rights, have so far, without exception, supported such rights, usually by substantial majorities, the latest such instance (as of this writing) being in Ohio.  In other words, these are examples of a large divergence between the aims of a majority of the people and the aims of their supposed representatives – a divergence that has also been seen in polling for issues such as gun control, Medicare expansion, and many other important issues.  The inescapable implication is that many voters are ignorant of what their representatives actually stand for (when they know who they are at all).  However, there also exist voters who definitely know their representative’s position on a particular issue (one of special importance to them), and so may constitute a voting bloc on that issue – a united bloc which can easily tip elections for representatives in its favor, even if it only constitutes a minority (versus a disunited majority voting in self-cancelling ignorance).  Thus, instead of reflecting the will of the majority, democratic processes may very often produce minority rule.  Of course, over the years, greater recognition of the importance of a particular issue may eventually influence voting, which in the case of abortion rights may have prevented a Republican sweep of the Congress in the mid-term elections of 2022, and derailed the presidential ambitions of the governor of Virginia in 2023.  However, such recognition may in fact take a long time, during which highly unfortunate situations might develop.

Democracy can, under certain circumstances, deliver a more favorable kind of result than those discussed above, as seen in the reforms and alterations in the social structure produced by “New Deal” in the United States.  However, it must be pointed out that the circumstances in that instance were quite particular: first and foremost, a conspicuous failure by the old established order to deal with the sudden and devastating economic downturn of the Great Depression, failure that was very clear to a distraught populace; second, widely accepted institutions of democracy that could bring change to the established order in an orderly fashion; third, a progressive movement of earlier decades that provided a template for change; and fourth, newly installed national leadership that realized change was necessary.  Without all those circumstances, the democratic system might well have been destroyed by insurrection.  But even with them, such change as occurred was greatly magnified and accelerated by yet another circumstance, namely the wartime emergency which ensued, for it was only massive government spending for the Second World War which finally restored the economy to full vigor.

Thus, under unusually favorable conditions, it may be possible for a system of democracy to function as progressive theory demands – but of course conditions will not always be favorable.  If the ruling order can prevent a sudden and immediately obvious decline in the circumstances of the mass of the population (while preserving its own position), but instead extend such a decline over a long period (all the while insisting that “there is no alternative”), then democracy may fail to provide an adequate response.  The fault of progressivism lies not in what democracy can reasonably be expected to do – that is, to restrain the worst excesses of concentration of power, and ensure at least a minimal response of the rulers to the ruled – but in unreasonably expecting much more than that.

Likewise, socialism, as progressivism’s economic component, can prove useful, to an extent, in reducing great inequalities of wealth (and thus effective power) in society, and in guaranteeing a minimum standard of existence for the populace.  Control or close supervision by the state of certain key sectors (particularly banks, foreign exchange, and natural monopolies) can be of practical benefit (or even crucial) for economic health, as the rise of China under its NEP-like system has demonstrated.  However, central planning can be carried too far, resulting in gross inefficiency, as witnessed by the eventual failure of the Soviet economy (though the military establishment that it produced ensured national survival during the Second World War).

It must also be said that not all of the difficulties afflicting progressivism are of its own doing, particularly in the case of a revolution avowing progressive principles, for its very nature will incite extreme hostility from elements of the established order, both foreign and domestic.  Such was the pattern in the French and Russian revolutions, in which initial aspirations for democracy (whether genuinely realistic or not) perished in the struggle against the violent opposition of elite interests.  Foreign intervention was defeated at Valmy in 1792, and forced to withdraw by the Bolsheviks in 1920, but such results, and the achievement of victory in vicious civil wars, could only be effected by increasingly authoritarian measures, which were soon enshrined in the new order of things.  Thus revolution eventually produced Bonaparte in France, an emperor in place of a king; as well as Stalin in Russia, an unrestrained totalitarian in place of a czar.

And in the end, there is an inherent contradiction that is present in every revolution – for true revolutions (as opposed to peasant uprisings) are always organized and led by elites (albeit disaffected ones), who consider themselves to be acting in “the name of the people”, whether the “people” have much of anything to say about the revolution or not.  Which, as a phenomenon, is merely an aspect of the common spectacle of governments of the elite masquerading as governments “of the people”.  For it would seem that elites, in the aggregate, inevitably come to pursue their own interest; which can currently be seen, for example, in the gradual chipping away of the “welfare state” in the West – said welfare state having arisen after the spectacular failure of the established order in the Great Depression and onset of world war, but now attacked by the successor to that order, which seeks to reassert its former privileges and position.

Thus it is that we arrive at the tragic destiny of progressive ideology, when carried to its ultimate conclusion: which is despotism.  Unable to recognize that “the people”, in their collective ignorance, are largely incapable of ruling in their own right – or insistent that at some vague point in the future, after proper “education” or guidance, they will gain such ability; oblivious to minority rule by voting blocs, which produces government dominated by special interests and dysfunction; paralyzed in the face of increasing concentrations of power and wealth among the elite; thereafter granting legitimacy, in such dangerous situations as might result, to those who would wield power in “the name of the people” (but for their own ends); perhaps even beset by hostile forces, within or without, which are to be resisted by any means at hand, including establishment of a “temporary” authoritarian order; all this finally ending in autocracy, or oligarchy (conceivably with the approval of the masses), under which stability is established once more – on starkly undemocratic terms.

Bolshevism

The Soviet state was instituted on a highly ideological foundation, as a result of the October Revolution (the importance of which was judged to be so great as to justify the extended examination of its historical background provided above).  The ideology in question, which might best be termed “bolshevism”, was not “pure” in the sense of corresponding precisely to any of the four principle types defined above; it certainly advocated a form of state socialism, but called for the establishment of true democracy only at some vague point in the future, after society had been sufficiently prepared for it by a dedicated “vanguard” (and thus might be regarded as a particular instance of a more general phenomenon termed “vanguardism”, in which certain elites assume ultimate power on the basis of their supposed merit or even inborn superiority – tenets which bear a certain resemblance to those of liberalism or conservatism).  In any case, the historical example of bolshevism illustrates how political movements, as encountered in the real world, are often not based on any pure strain of ideology.

Anarchism

Anarchism might best be defined as a doctrine that denies the legitimacy, and even the necessity, of the state.  As such, it does not constitute an ideology in its own right; rather, it serves to modify true ideologies by disallowing a role for the state in their structures.  Thus one might speak of anarchist libertarianism or anarchist progressivism, for example (though perhaps not of anarchist conservatism or liberalism, given the importance of formal elite power, gained through descent or ascent, in those ideologies, which would appear to imply the necessary existence of the state).

Incidentally, it should be noted that the term “anarchist” would seem an example of unfortunate terminology, as it as has often been used to describe supposed advocates of disorder and social chaos (which might better be termed “nihilist”) or even instigators of the “propaganda of the deed” (i.e. terrorists).  That is not the sense in which anarchism is discussed here – rather, a doctrine which would substitute voluntary association for the compulsion of the state.

However, the possibility for anarchism to have any sort of meaningful existence at the national level would appear to be nil.  States are the result of large populations that have been organized into national tribes, their survival being subject to the principle of “victory favors the big battalions” – with said battalions requiring organization by the state itself.  Thus the state becomes inevitable.  Any sizable anarchist society that might come into existence would eventually be compelled to come under the authority of a state, or be destroyed, or be transformed into a state itself.  In any case, even the most casual glance at our present world reveals that it is entirely organized into states, with no discernable possibility that this situation will be altered.

“Left” and “Right”

The terms “left” and “right” are very commonly employed in political debate, while at the same time being so imprecise and variable in meaning that they are practically useless – which may suggest the value of such debate.  At the very least they imply a purely dualistic opposition, which the preceding examination of ideology does not support.

Know-Nothingism

More of a mentality than an actual ideology, know-nothingism is primarily an emphatic expression of tribal identity, predicated on an instinctive hostility toward the “other”.  Thus it seeks an unassailable (and thereby dominant) position for the tribe of the know-nothing, and by implication its customs and traditions, uncontaminated by the alien element of the “other”, who must be restricted, surveilled, and segregated at the very least, but preferably expelled, if present as a neighbor, or perhaps even attacked or eliminated.  The “other” in question is always something that the know-nothing is not: someone of a different race, a different religion, a different ethnicity, a different national origin – in short, of a different “tribe”, and therefore naturally an “inferior” or potential or active “enemy”.  Know-nothingism can be viewed, then, as a phenomenon of prejudicial belief, in fact true belief, uncontaminated by any taint of reliable evidence; in contrast to a genuine ideology, for which an effort will be made to support its central ideal with some sort of knowledge and logic (however incomplete or faulty).  The term “know-nothing” therefore becomes literally descriptive.

The organized political expression of the know-nothing mentality might best be described as fascism.  This would constitute a useful description of the fascist phenomenon, which has otherwise become hopelessly muddled, and in fact has often been confused with conservatism.  Such confusion may be understandable, for conservatism insists on tradition in the makeup and nature of relations within its own society, which implicitly involves a rejection of  the “alien”.  However, where conservatism seeks stability, fascism instead aims for supremacy, dominating or even eliminating other tribal groups, a project in which certain elements of “tradition” may actually be abandoned.  Then too, conservatism will often seek alliance with know-nothing elements, thereby becoming associated with them, particularly if the authority and privileges of the conservative order should come under threat.

The most striking manifestation of know-nothingism in Western society (quite likely, in fact, in all of history) was Hitler’s regime of the Third Reich, in which fascist principles reached their furthest development.  “Alien” peoples such as Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs were to be enslaved or exterminated, with their land and resources (Lebensraum) made available to the “Aryan” race through a highly aggressive program of violence and conquest.  The fascism of Mussolini’s government in Italy was by no means so extreme, indeed in many respects it was no more than a typical authoritarian regime, in spite of the fact that the term “fascism” itself had originated in Italy.  Much the same was true of Franco’s rule in Spain, which has often been described as fascist, but in actuality was highly conservative – despite some prevarication, Franco eventually declined to join Hitler’s project of conquest during the Second World War, thus rejecting the most aggressive characteristics of fascism.

A wholly fascist national government, under the definition given above, is therefore a rare phenomenon.  The know-nothing mentality may well be fairly common among the general populace, but also tends to be politically self-defeating, given its marked paranoia, obtuseness, surly fractiousness, and general rejection of rationality.  (This was true of an anti-immigrant party of the antebellum United States which ultimately failed, popularly called “Know-Nothings”, said name being adopted here as appropriate for the mentality in general.)  An unusually powerful unifying force must be present to organize know-nothingism into an effective fascist party, and this was supplied in Germany by two factors: first, the great hardships and instability which resulted from the First World War and its aftermath, followed by the calamity of the Great Depression, in a nation which had firmly believed in its “exceptional” destiny in Europe, thus creating the perception of a tribe under threat; and secondly, the fuhrerprinzip under which Adolf Hitler assumed ultimate authority to “save” the tribe, and to which all citizens of the state were to subordinate themselves without question (though very often willingly).  Hitler became, in a sense, the supreme know-nothing, one great will in which all other know-nothings could submerge their individual wills: this was, in fact, the essence of the fascist “triumph of will”.

Given its absolute commitment to instinctive tribal belief, and inherent rejection of most knowledge (other than, perhaps, technological), the defining fault of know-nothingism becomes its profound and abysmal stupidity – a self-destructive stupidity which must, in the end, produce a tragic destiny of catastrophe, the very destiny which had become the German nation’s own by May, 1945.

A Novel Dimension

The organization of ideology into conservative, liberal, libertarian, and progressive domains is hardly new, of course.  Such a scheme can be viewed as a two dimensional construct, with conservatism and liberalism at opposite ends of an axis that stretches from preservation to innovation, and libertarianism and progressivism on another, perpendicular axis that proceeds from individualism to communalism.  What know-nothingism suggests, however, is the existence of a third dimension, its axis orthogonal to the “plane” of ideology; in other words, a sort of height dimension, with know-nothingism – a variety of instinctive belief – in its lower depths.  And in the opposite direction, proceeding upward?  The direct opposite of belief: knowledge itself.

Thus its own plane, in which belief and knowledge are mixed, is the realm in which ideology arrives at its greatest development.  Beneath that plane, descending into unadulterated belief, ideology itself dissipates, finally vanishing altogether in mindless instinct.  But in the realm that lies above its own, ideology again fades away, this time in favor of knowledge.

The introduction of a new dimension of knowledge and belief to the domain of ideology thereby suggests the possibility of two methods of transcending it, and all of its inherent shortcomings: in an apocalypse of folly through know-nothingism; and the achievement, perhaps, of wisdom, by means of knowledge.  Knowledge, that is, of self; knowledge of the universe; and knowledge of one’s place in the universe.

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A Personal Afterword

It must be pointed out that I have been a follower of one ideology or another at various times, though my tendency to follow – to believe in – any given ideology has, like belief in general, steadily declined over the years, perhaps in accompaniment to increasing maturity.  

In my youth I think I would best have been described as a liberal, with every confidence in the “democratic capitalism” of the liberal order (as promoted by the liberal order itself), and was particularly inspired by the ideals of the civil rights movement.  However, the disaster of U.S. intervention in Vietnam brought about a change of opinion; how could such a grotesque and destructive episode have been produced by the “liberalism” (as it was commonly described) of the Johnson administration, I wondered?  This great contradiction, supplemented by the economic reverses and malaise of the 1970s, prompted a growing distrust of government itself, which in turn engendered a great deal of sympathy for libertarian ideals.  Yet the growing wave of deregulation and privatization instituted in accordance with such ideals in the 1980s and 90s, coupled with an effective acceptance of the notion that “greed is good”, clearly came to produce much more prosperity for those at the top of the social order than those at the bottom, along with a favorable environment for financial malfeasance that resulted in a crash of the stock market at the turn of the millennium, followed by an even more general economic crash in 2008.  As a result, many of the economic principles of progressivism have lately come to seem more sensible.

These alterations in personal opinion mirror, to a certain degree, a more general evolution of public opinion in the United States, and in the West as a whole.  But at what end will such evolution of public opinion arrive … if any end at all?  Shifts from one ideology – from one belief system – to another will not provide any enduring benefit, or even stability, as the faults inherent in any ideology must eventually undermine it.  

Nevertheless, it would seem that every ideology possesses virtues, as well as faults, and the best practice may be to adopt such virtues, wherever they lie, to the degree that they remain virtuous.  (Which, incidentally, is by no means an endorsement of “centrism”, if only because centrism, as an independent doctrine, scarcely exists, merely being an assertion that the centrist’s own ideology is somehow at the “center”.)  In other words, it could be said that preservation, innovation, individualism, and communalism each have their virtues, to a certain extent.  Which would simply be a recognition of the principle that “the poison is in the dose”; just as any substance, even one as vital as water or oxygen, can prove toxic if taken in excess, so may it be that any particular objective can become toxic if pursued to excess.  But more importantly, it is possible that an even greater, unifying principle lies behind the various virtues of the disparate ideologies – a principle of knowledge.

Of course, as always, the devil is in the details.  How is the “virtue” of an objective to be identified?  It could be defined as whatever material benefit might be produced by it, but what shall the benefit be – wealth? health? security?  Then too, what of intangibles such as psychological well-being, artistry, or sheer beauty?  And finally, as well as most fundamentally, benefit for whom?

These are all thorny questions, the answers to which might best be found, again, through whatever useful knowledge about them can be discovered.  Knowledge, that is, gained by honest observation of the world around us, and its history, and indeed ourselves, as untainted as possible by presumption and prejudice.  It may also be necessary to accept that Utopia will never be attained, for human beings are too fallible for such an enterprise; it is in the very nature of humans to be fallible.  Thus the best course would surely be to work with grain of human fallibility, rather than against it.

And concerning fallibility, it may well be that the most controversial points made in the preceding discussion of  ideology are those dealing with democracy, and what are described as its failures.  But I would hold that today’s general belief in democracy is just that, and not knowledge; that just as it was once commonly believed that monarchy was the only legitimate (or even conceivable) form of government, so now only democracy is believed to have any legitimacy, the divine right of kings having been superseded by the divine right of the masses: Vox populi, vox Dei.  And I must point out that my own skepticism regarding democracy does not, in any way, constitute an endorsement of (much less belief in) aristocracy, oligarchy, autocracy, or any other form of rulership by the few – only a conclusion that all human institutions, and human society itself, may be tragically flawed.

I would also add that it has become increasingly apparent that what is called by the name “democracy” is not actually rule by the people (even through representatives), but only limited influence by the people, in a system closely managed by elites (for their own ends) through institutions of press and party and the government itself.  But even that may ultimately prove to be of limited duration, for after all democracy rose to a position of dominance only in the last couple of centuries, and lately has been confronted with increasingly severe challenges.  Such challenges have been faced before, and defeated, in the form of economic failures and extremist regimes that appeared in the aftermath of the First World War; but now new challenges arise in the centers of democracy themselves, seemingly accompanied by a failure of will (or even desire) to deal with them – challenges of endemic corruption, rising inequality, and environmental degradation, along with a sinister return of economic instability and partisan extremism.  In fact, rather than the “end of history”, the end of democracy, and of the West itself, may even now be on the horizon.