What is failure of 1917 and 1991?

10

В чем неудача 1917 и 1991 годов?

If Russia ever move in the direction of the West, she will have to rethink the history of their revolutions, says writer and philosopher Mikhail Ryklin.

In the centenary year of the Great October revolution many are trying to understand why the desire for freedom, the great liberation impulse of 1917 eventually led to a much greater than before, the lack of freedom in the Stalin years, mass repression, and then to a gradual degradation in 1960-80 years, Stalin created the system, and another bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1991.

A quarter of a century after the creation of the new Russia, which took place already before our eyes and with the direct participation of some of us, we are trying to understand why the great breakthrough only came to an end concentration of ownership in the hands of a very narrow range close to the power of the people, and irremovable man rule, lasting for almost twenty years. This browser “Rosbalt” talked with writer and philosopher Mikhail Ryklin, whose book “the Doomed Icarus. Red October family in the future,” was published in the publishing house UFO.

— In your book you write: “With the advent of the new Millennium, what had seemed a scrap of history, suddenly, like a vampire, alive, filled with life, received the support of millions…”. What do you mean? After all, approaching formally, in Russia today there is almost nothing that represented the Union — not exclusive state property, nor the one-party system, with the exception of a new formed and legitimising regime of personal power? That “alive” today?

— In Soviet period was, in fact, two very difficult connected power. One of them is ideological, engaged in the justification of the alternative to capitalism project and the second operational. The second in the form of the Cheka occurred almost simultaneously with the October revolution, but the ideological power to control it. The head of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky was directed by Lenin. However, in the twenties and especially the thirties of the last century of operational power by the person with the unique abilities of the political police, as was Stalin, extremely developed.

In the 1930s it became clear that even the ideologues of Bolshevism, including Nicholas Chaplin, about which I write in his book and which in the years 1924-28 was the first Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Komsomol, and then a candidate member of the orgburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), do not know the mechanisms of functioning of operational power. They got to her paws and was destroyed. 1937 — a triumph of operational power. The only person who ran this relay — switching ideological power in the operational and back — was Stalin. The mechanism and mystery of this shift was, it seems, known only to him.

In the late 1980s and by 1991, the ideology collapsed together with the Soviet Union. And then suddenly it became clear that the operational power is fully associated with the Soviet times, can run the country without ideological justification. Formally, this is expressed today in a very large number of people from the security services (70% plus some part of the generals), which are included in its composition. This means that today it can be controlled with the same methods already and without any ideological justification. This power showed itself in the 2000s, especially obviously it was in the fall of 1999.

Still, in your opinion, is the case in some of the initial conceptual errors of the projects themselves — the Bolshevik in 1917 and liberal in 1991 or maybe, the problem lies in something else, for example, in the socio-economic system of Russia in the early twentieth century and later the Soviet Union?

— You take very different periods, separated from each other by three generations. Speaking of October 1917, those who did then, was the idea of the world revolution. It was the government of immigrants, most of whom were commoners or nobility, like Lenin, or even aristocrats, as Georgy Chicherin. There was only one proletariat — Aleksandr Shlyapnikov. They hoped for a world revolution, were convinced that the torch of the October revolution will be picked up in Europe where they have long lived primarily in Germany. They seized power in a peasant country, it did not understand and did not like the peasantry. They were waiting for the world revolution, because according to Marx, the socialist revolution would occur not in this agrarian absolutist country like Russia, while in developed European countries.

Meanwhile, there is a letter of Marx to the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich, where he advised the use of the Russian community in the building of socialism, not destroy it. He justified it by the fact that among the reaction, there are socialist elements, and in this form it survived until the era of industrial society. Unfortunately, this letter and the materials it was published only in 1924, after Lenin’s death. Not sure how Lenin would have reacted to the texts of Marx, if it would read them.

— Later in the same spirit wrote to Vera Zasulich and Engels…

— Yes, but in the end, in 1917, a small group of radicals committed the coup in the hope that it will be supported in developed countries. Then, in March, 1921, X Congress of the RCP (b) Lenin took three very important and conflicting decisions (what was that in his spirit) is the beginning of a new economic policy (NEP), the banning of factions within the party, and the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion, which the party young people went straight from the Congress.

The NEP has led to the fact that Russia’s economy recovered quickly after the World war and the Civil war. Nicholas Chaplin in this sense, was very lucky — he managed the young Communist League in NEP period. The fact that it was a “Golden” time of the revolution, all its achievements in culture, art, pedagogics just occurred in this short period of time — from 1921 to 1929. The peasants at this time were mostly left behind in the village, they are no longer tormented by the requisition.

Collectivisation and industrialisation in Stalinist version, conducted in the 1930-ies, caused the rejection of the greater part of the Leninist guard. Recently I read a letter from Nicholas Chaplin’s Commissar of internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov. In it he wrote that collectivization is the funeral of the world revolution. Including because in the attack on the village, a huge mass of peasants moved to the cities. And revolutionary culture that prevailed at that time in the cities, was just drowned in this peasant masses.

Lenin’s guard (Trotskyites, Bukharinites) by this time was weakened, fragmented splits of the 1920-ies. But these people didn’t want to admit Stalin in a new guise, as “Lenin today,” and announced the creation of the “Union of Marxists-Leninists”. In this the leaders of all three opposition “factions” supported the Komsomol leaders Sackin, Lominadze, Zeitlin, Chaplin. In 1932 they United.

Sami leaders were so intimidated by the exclusion from the party, links, and humiliating penances that the initiative of writing platform took the old Bolsheviks of proletarian origin — Martemyan Ryutin, Vasily Kayurov, Mikhail Ivanov and Pavel Galkin. But actually behind this platform has disappeared, the leaders of the party at that time, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov, Uglanov. On behalf of Trotsky (1929 exiled from the Soviet Union, — “Rosbalt“) this was attended by Ivan Smirnov. They hoped that the incipient peasant revolt against collectivization lead to a serious crisis and then they are overthrown by a group of Stalin.

But it happened otherwise. There was a great famine in which the country died or seven, or nine million people, the people came out of it absolutely subordinate. The opposition agreed too late — if it happened in the middle of 1920-ies, the removal of Stalin was possible.

Millions of peasants moved to the city, received education and the opportunity to make a career. However, the idea of world revolution was absolutely incomprehensible, and instead it was replaced with another powerful state, the new world Empire, revived in another, the “Soviet” form. And Stalin became its Emperor. This especially became apparent after the Second world war. In particular, it can now be seen in the monumental propaganda, for example, in the shape of the metro station at the time — flags, weapons, mighty warriors…

— A then told, and now believe that if it were Stalin, Trotsky, would be the same…

I’m not sure. It is unlikely that Lenin or Trotsky would become the supporters of the Imperial discourse, which they hated, who have struggled all my life.

— To sum up what you have said, it turns out that we are still talking about the fallacy of the Leninist concept of socialism?

— Lenin died in early 1924, in 1923, he was virtually unemployable, in 1922 — partly capable. In fact, Lenin was a political figure active only until the end of 1921. After that he, in fact, sat in the Hills under the supervision of, Stalin controlled all of his actions, sometimes he could do something to dictate to the stenographer for five minutes, sometimes he forbade it. Actually, I don’t know what there is reason to believe that Lenin was a supporter of building socialism in one country….

— Yes, we do not find in his writings anything like that. On the contrary, he wrote that the success of the socialist revolution in Russia is possible only if it is supported socialist revolutions in the most advanced countries of that time.

The concept of building socialism in one country arose after the death of Lenin in 1925, was first announced by Stalin and were considered completely heretical. Of course, it did not share Trotsky, and in General, the concept of world socialist revolution, it was generally assumed. And Stalin prior to the beginning of 1924, it did not dispute.

— What is the year of the centenary of the October revolution we can present to the world as its result, in addition to the one-party dictatorship and Stalin’s terror?

— The achievements of Russian revolutionary culture recognized worldwide. This fragment of our history are also European and world.

When I’m in the early 1990-ies came to Paris and spoke there with French philosophers, they are of little interest to the pre-revolutionary events in Russia. But when it came to the October revolution, their eyes would light up. It became quite clear that this part of our history in their eyes became the part of European, a sequel, including great French revolution. So if Russia ever (which is inevitable) will move in the direction of the West, she in any case will have to rethink the period 1917-1930 years.

— A controversial question… We now go to the West just with the right ideas, there is always the support of extreme nationalists and they begin as bubbles from nothing to develop into something real, taking second and third places in their parliaments…

Now the period of reaction, which, however, develops in some grotesque form. Implanted imperstvo embroil Russia with most of the rest of the world and little that gave the Russians themselves.

— In your book is an excerpt from an interview with a famous Soviet actor George Zhzhenov, which was in the same camp with your grandfather Sergei Chaplin. In this passage, burning, speaking of the Stalinist system, and compares it with the Nazi regime in Hitler’s Germany and fascist Italy the time of Benito Mussolini. I think this is a very accurate observation, because if you compare these systems, we do see a lot in common. And not only in the same rigidity of the repressive machinery, but also in their ideology. As you know, the principles of total fascist state developed it was Mussolini, and one of them was total statism. That is, all in the name of the state, nothing outside the state. For Stalin’s Soviet Union is also very typical — the state, loyalty to him, there was put above all else. As sung in one of the Soviet songs: “think about your Motherland, then about yourself”…

— Now we have it, too, is preached. Another thing is that it works poorly…

Still, going back to the basic question. Why are we now once again have sole power, ideas imperstva, the cult of the war? Why, in your opinion, after all the failed democratic revolution of 1991?

— Who made this revolution? It was done by Boris Yeltsin, a member of the Politburo.

But it did hundreds of thousands of Muscovites, who then went to the rallies in defense of democracy?

— Yes, it was and is. But the Soviet people more than half a century lived behind the “iron curtain”.

Utopian idea in 1991 consisted in connecting the advantages of socialism with the advantages of capitalism. The Soviet people have seen (mostly in movies) full show-cases and counters the capitalist supermarkets wanted the same thing for the Soviet Union and the advantages of socialism — free medicine, education, flat, job security is perceived as a matter of course given to them from century.

When this connection in the early 1990-ies had happened, they were terribly disappointed. As a result of privatization has enriched a small group of people, the state had sold and were in private hands, and the advantages of socialism, which they have recently enjoyed, disappeared into nothingness. That’s all that caused most of the great irritation, which resulted in the need for a “strong hand”.

 

 

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here