The Individual Study

The common perception of the ‘great historical figures’ as shapers of a supposed national destiny, or as an elemental dynamic behind it, remains a persistent defect in Whig historiography.

The ‘cult of personality’ surrounding the leaders of the Bolshevik coup d’état of October 1917, however, shows that this approach conveniently fits Marxist notions of historical inevitability. I saw it a challenge to assess the true nature and extent of Lenin’s role in the transformations which shook the former Tsarist Empire between the workers’ protests of February 1917 and Kronstadt naval rebellion in 1921.

Information abounds on all aspects of the Russian revolutions of 1917, the embryonic Soviet state, the Russian Civil War and the Allied interventions. Often the mountain of scholarship on the period seemed overwhelming but it is only by weighing up contrasting accounts and conflicting opinions that a greater perspective was gained. Two collections of primary documents by Martin McCauley, Octobrists to Bolsheviks and The Russian Revolution and the Soviet State 1917-21 proved invaluable while the CD-Rom, Changing Times, gave access to newspaper reports of the Allied interventions.

The history student is confronted by a wide range of perspectives and judgements upon Lenin as a politician and revolutionary. A substantial segment of the biographical genre casting Lenin in a favourable light seemed overfocused on the individual and his achievements rather than seeking to measure them through the yardstick of comparing both his feats and failings with those of his Russian contemporaries, especially the other leading lights of the Bolshevik party and cadre.

Equally problematic in this respect was the wide range of available revisionist analysis. Whilst works such as Peasant Russia, Civil War by Orlando Figes (OUP, 1989), The CHEKA. Lenin’s political police by Peter Legget (OUP, 1981) and Red Victory by W. Bruce Lincoln (Simon and Schuster, 1989) shed much light upon the weaknesses and costs of Lenin’s fledging and besieged state, few were helpful in differentiating the successes and failures of Lenin as an individual from those of Leninism as a creed in action or those of Lenin’s comrades. Revisionism also suffers from the benefit of hindsight provided by a post-communist historical perspective. Ultimately, whilst I found myself in broad agreement with the conclusions of this school of thought, such an approach runs the risk of failing to judge Lenin in his own terms. Lenin, after all, had taken a small, marginalised party and given it government over the largiest nation on earth, emerging triumphant over the forces of Denikin, Wrangle, Yudenich, Kolchak, the Machnovites, the numerous peasant uprisings and the foreign powers who sent forces to Russia and its vassal states at some time or another between 1918 and 1920.

As I researched the topic, it became apparent that the causation of events is far more complex than has often been suggested. The triumph of Bolshevism by 1921 was less of a triumph of Leninism and more a triumph of circumstances and the efforts of a broad spectrum of people within the Leninist party-state structure. My original preconception of unity was quickly shattered as the full extent of Bolshevik division became apparent. Zinoviev and Kamenev opposed the radicalism of the April Thesis in Pravda and the severing of links with the Mensheviks since November 1913 through Trotsky’s Mezhraionstsy; Zinoviev continued to oppose armed revolution until 16 October; Bukharin and Trotsky initially voted against the Brest-Litovsk peace proposals on 18 February 1918 and Stalin invariably worked against Trotsky on the party’s Central Executive Committee.

I was as surprised to discover the passive and incomplete nature of Lenin’s supposed success. All too often the State was on the verge of collapse, both from within as well as without. Early experiments with an ‘All Russian Soviet of Workers Control’ failed dismally and the consolidation of ‘the controlling heights of the economy’ under Sovnarkom, Rabkrin and Gosplan from December 1917 resulted in massive losses of industrial production and waves of emigration from the cities. Only the half-heartedness of the Allies, together with divisions between Ukraine’s nationalist Rada parliament and Denikin, and between General Pilsudski in Poland and Yudenich, saved Bolshevism in Western Russia. So weak was the regime, in fact, that even internal disorder, such as the Social Revolutionary uprising in Moscow and the Tambov revolt, threatened to bring down local Bolshevik control.

Overall, I found the study stimulating and eye-opening and I would heartily recommend that U6th students examine a period as surrounded by controversy and debate, if only to sharpen their skills of sceptical analysis in dissecting elements of truth from the maelstrom of opinion.