Book Notes: "Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism" by Karl Radek

Karl Radek (c. 1920) via Wikimedia.

Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism by Karl Radek

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Radek raises the proverbial "one man's nourishment is another man's poison" by comparing Stalin's purging to the treatment of Irish revolutionaries by the British in the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1921. This brochure was written by Radek in about 1920 (the English translations came later) and was endorsed by Leon Trotsky as a suitable response to Karl Kautsky, a German social-democrat, and his critique of Trotsky's Dictatorship vs. Democracy, among other works. It is interesting that the title of which Trotsky was most fond was "Terrorism or Communism", but this was toned down for an American audience. And here I discover a whole can of historical worms. Communists in America, communists in the UK, critiques and critics of Bolshevism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and so on. And then much later Trotsky in exile and a major critic of Stalin and the self-serving bureaucracy that was to become the antithesis of socialism, as the lowest level of communism. The great communist experiment was of global interest, despite the Western Allies' support of the anti-Bolshevik White Russians in the Russian Civil War of 1919-1923. Even a small contingent of Australian soldiers fought against the Bolsheviks. Yet there remained support from socialists in the West through various trade union and communist movements. This "support" seemed an ideal rather than a plausible solution to humanity's problems. I recall reading that Lionel Murphy's parents (according to Jenny Hocking in Lionel Murphy: A Political Biography) visited Russia after the Second World War but never spoke of the great socialist experiment ever again after lifting the veil on the propaganda. Reading this has provided me with several historical insights, aside from the Soviet Union, into the Irish War of Independence and the French Revolution, and for these alone it was worth the discovery, if not for the intellectual debating that went on between the Soviet intelligentsia and their detractors in the 1920s.

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Essay Notes: "Is the Russian Revolution a Bourgeois Revolution? A Keen Analysis of the Situation in Soviet Russia" by Karl Radek

Members of the bourgeois in Petrograd in 1919 in the line to compulsory labour services (1919) via Wikimedia.

Is the Russian Revolution a Bourgeois Revolution? A Keen Analysis of the Situation in Soviet Russia by Karl Radek

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Karl Radek photographed in Berlin, 1919. Radek travelled
in the sealed train across Germany with Lenin in 1917, but
remained in Stockholm. He was an Austrian citizen
and would not have been allowed entry to Russia.

This photograph of Karl Radek from 1919 depicts the quintessential communist intellectual (see right). I am convinced he set the fashion for left-wing university students through the ages! This pamphlet is an attempt to counter critics of the Bolsheviki. Trotsky says it best, in effect, that Russia was not ready for "socialism, the lowest form of communism", and it could only set up a level somewhat lower than that. The Internationale was meant to break out in France, be advanced by Germany, and then be established by England. But instead, it all began in Russia. By 1921, it was clear that there was no real dictatorship of the proletariat, and the Bolsheviki were becoming the new ruling elite. I was hoping for more from Radek, but it would seem that Trotsky was the real intellectual of the Soviet Union. That Radek was part of the bureaucracy while Trotsky was not speaks volumes. Yet even Radek would succumb to Stalin's tyranny. It really is a tragic story but as I delve more into the original documents, I am pleased to see that my education is holding up. It is a mere facsimile of the primary documents, but it would seem to be helpful to grasp the basic story before diving into Bolshevik ephemera!

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Lenin on the Train

Lenin carpet, In the National Museum (formerly Lenin Museum) in Bishkek (2007) via Wikimedia.

Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an interesting history of the Russian Revolution and Lenin's trip from exile in Switzerland via train through Germany and on to Petrograd. The work covers (loosely) the time period from February (Julian Calendar) 1917 and the overthrow of the Tsar, and culminating in the Bolshevik's overthrow of the Provisional Government, led by Lenin, in October (Julian) 1917. This is quite a scholarly work with excellent referencing and suggestions for further reading. The level of detail filled in so many blanks in my historical knowledge by focusing rather narrowly. I was grateful for this focus, but I was also left with no clear end-point for the historiography. No sooner had Lenin's train arrived and he suddenly appeared in the mausoleum in the present day having his suit tailored (after killing millions of people). This sets the work up nicely for a historical sequel, but given the level of detail up until Lenin's arrival, the subsequent lack of detail was somewhat disappointing. Nevertheless, I found it hard to put this book down, and I learnt many new things. In particular, whenever I have read inside cover biographies of W. Somerset Maugham, I discovered he worked in propaganda during the Great War. But I did not know how involved he (or Hugh Walpole for that matter) was involved in Britain's spying on the Russians at the time. I also discovered that much of Maugham's backstory is sitting on my bookshelf in the as-yet unread Ashenden. Walpole's book, The Dark Forest, is about this time period and was mentioned in Hemingway's short story The Three-Day Blow, which I read just before this book. I discovered Merridale's work as a result of an interesting Twitter project where Lenin's revolution, one hundred years later, is being covered day-by-day via tweets. See: "Relive the Revolution". Now, I really do not like Twitter but if it could be more often like this I would be hooked! I recall discovering this book after I had discovered Russia Today, a Russian English-language news service. RT's animation of Lenin's journey provides a helpful recap of the book's chronology, see: #Lenintracker, it is a blast! So an interesting journey comes to a close, 100 years ago for Lenin, and just today for me. My next steps will be to read Maugham and then some Hugh Walpole. Moreover, I shall dig up some G.K. Chesterton, who, incidentally, was not only mentioned by Hemingway in The Three-Day Blow, but was also connected with Maxim Gorky and wrote the foreword to Creatures That Once Were Men. A fruitful experience overall, even if a review of this book in The Spectator reckons that the twentieth century would have turned out better if Lenin was left, cranky, and without a train, in the Swiss Alps.

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