Revolutions, Left and Right

I. War Produces Revolution (I): The Russian Revolution
i. The Setting: The Russian Empire
ii. The 1917 Revolutions and Lenin
iii. Civil War and the Emergence of the Soviet Union (USSR)

Intermission: The Revolutionary Wave, 1917-1923

II. War Produces Revolution (II): The Rise of Italian Fascism
i. What was/is fascism?
ii. The failure of parliamentary democracy in Italy
iii. Mussolini's "Doctrine of Fascism"

I. War Produces Revolution (I): The Russian Revolution

The Russian Empire, pre-WWI
1. autocratic rule (Tsars--Romanov dynasty)
2. inefficient bureaucracy
3. forced modernization (“Westernization”)
4. peasant unrest (emancipation of serfs, 1861)
5. militant workers (form “soviets,” or councils) in industrial districts
6. a politicized intelligentsia

map: The Russian Revolution and the Civil War

the original of this map can be found at:
http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/262/268312/art/figures/KISH_26_604.gifal (control of Communist parties abroad)

 

Why this outcome? (a USSR that was authoritarian, centralized, eventually despotic and destructive--“Stalinism”)
Three views:
1. Ideology: inherent in Marxism and/or Lenin’s version of Marxism
2. Circumstances: collapse due to war; civil war; isolation and international hostility; underdevelopment
3. Russian political culture: authoritarian political culture under the tsars, weak institutions of self-government (long-term continuities)

a bare-bones chronology of the Russian Revolution:
1. 1917 March: March Revolution (n.b. Lenin’s “April Theses”)
2. 1917 March-November: “Dual Power”--power shared by a “Provisional Government” and Soviets (councils)
3. 1917 November: Bolshevik Revolution
4. 1917-1922: Civil War - Red vs. White
5. 1922: USSR created (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)

Bolsheviks / Mensheviks / Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party

March revolution
abdication of the Tsar (Nicholas II)

dual power:
Provisional Government
1. coalition of parliamentary liberals and moderate socialists (Mensheviks)
2. remain in war
Soviets (workers’ councils) | Petrograd soviet | “Peace, Land, Bread” | "All Power to the Soviets"

“Leninism” (Lenin's interpretation of Marxism)
Bolsheviks (vs. Mensheviks, evolutionary socialists)
1. revolution to seize the state necessary
2. vanguard party of professional revolutionaries
3. theory of imperialism: conflicts on the periphery then spread back to the core
4. later: Communist International directed by Soviet Communist party

Lenin's "April Theses" = click to view a version that highlights six key points:
1. the Great War is a “predatory imperialist war”
2. but most workers and peasants have been deceived by the bourgeoisie into thinking that it’s a defensive war. so have most other socialists!
3. the present moment in the revolution: moving from stage one (control by bourgeoisie, parliamentary republic) to stage two (control by proletariat, peasants, revolutionary soviets)
4. the Bolsheviks (who get things right) are still a small minority within the soviets
5. what the coming revolution will do:
--nationalize all land, banks, industry, distribution
--put them under control of the soviets of workers’ deputies
6. need to create a new Communist International (to challenge the old, deluded "Second International" of Social Democratic parties)

November Revolution (October on Julian calendar--usually referred to as the October Revolution)
Red Guards (militias attached to Soviets)
January 1918: expulsion of non-Bolshevik delegates; move toward one-party rule
1917-1922 Civil War: Whites (“counterrevolutionaries”) vs. Reds
Red Army led by Trotsky
War Communism (centralized control of agriculture)
outside intervention on behalf of Whites

one important outcome of the Russian Revolution: a deep, bitter split in the European Socialist parties
Social Democratic Parties | Communist Parties

Intermission: The Revolutionary Wave, 1917-1923

strikes, factory occupations (esp. in Italy), peasants' land seizures

local "councils" after the war: direct democracy? an alternative form of socialism? pragmatism: managing a chaotic demobilization after the war

1916: Easter Rebellion in Ireland
1917: two revolutions in Russia; French army mutinies; German war aims debate
1918-19: German Revolution, Hungarian Soviet Republic in Budapest, dock workers in Scotland (Clydeside)

anti-revolutionary violence:
paramilitary groups (demobilized soldiers)
fascist militias in Italy (fasci)

context for early formation of Italian Fascism
1. nationalist demands: paramilitary occupation of Fiume/Rijeka
2. landowners' and factory owners' fears - attracted to Mussolini's squads to help suppress strikes and uprisings

anti-Bolshevik forces in eastern Europe
"Whites" in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1921
Polish-Soviet War

the revolutionary wave: outcomes
1. lasting success only in Russia (see Paxton's analysis of why)
2. stabilization of Europe after 1923

and a question: was the councils movement a viable, alternative vision of democracy and/or socialism?

II. War Produces Revolution (II): The Rise of Italian Fascism

Italy in 1914:
a parliamentary democracy, but:
•multiple political parties, unstable governments
•dramatic social and political tensions:
1. rising socialist opposition, peasant unrest
2. “north-south” divide (industrial class conflict, rural poverty)

Italy in 1926:
Mussolini’s Fascist State
•parliamentary democracy replaced with dictatorship
•“corporatism” (actually gives power to business and large landowners)
•political opposition, trade unions, peasant groups violently suppressed
•an alternative vision: the fascist version of modernity (aggressive nationalism, visions of empire, aggressive modernization, authority and hierarchy, leader cult, collectivism, public spectacles)

Mussolini's "Doctrine of Fascism" (1932)

ask yourself: what kinds of experiences might have made people receptive to ideas like these?

1. Fascism is “totalitarian”: the State as a higher reality, which will remake the individual completely
2. Fascism’s “antis”: anti-liberal (corrosive individualism); anti-socialist (divisive class struggle), anti-democratic (divides nation into parties)--unless it’s “authoritarian democracy” in which the leader expresses the Italian people's real will
3. pseudo-religious rhetoric: “higher” values, “sacred” ties
4. virility gone berserk (recall the Futurists' rhetoric)
5. “History is on our side”: the twentieth century as the century of authority; liberalism is old and exhausted

FFMussascism is “totalitarian”: the State as a higher reality, which will remake the individual
Fascism’s “antis”: anti-liberal (corrosive individualism); anti-socialist (divisive class struggle), anti-democratic (divides nation into parties)--unless it’s “authoritarian democracy”
pseudo-religious rhetoric: “higher” values, “sacred” ties
virility (recall Futurists)
“History is on our side”: the twentieth century as the century of authority; liberalism is old and exhaustedFascism is “totalitarian”: the State as a higher reality, which will remake the individual
Fascism’s “antis”: anti-liberal (corrosive individualism); anti-socialist (divisive class struggle), anti-democratic (divides nation into parties)--unless it’s “authoritarian democracy”
pseudo-religious rhetoric: “higher” values, “sacred” ties
virility (recall Futurists)

pseudo-religious rhetoric: “higher” values, “sacred” ties
virility (recall Futurists)
“History is on our side”: the twentieth century as the century of authority; liberalism is old and exhaustedFascism is “totalitarian”: the State as a higher reality, which will remake the individual
Fascism’s “antis”: anti-liberal (corrosive individualism); anti-socialist (divisive class struggle), anti-democratic (divides nation into parties)--unless it’s “authoritarian democracy”
pseudo-religious rhetoric: “higher” values, “sacred” ties
virility (recall Futurists)
“History is on our side”: the twentieth century as the century of authority; liberalism is old and exhausted. “Antis” (what is he against?): anti-liberal (individualism); anti-socialist (class struggle), anti-democratic (unless it’s “authoritarian democracy”)
3. Quasi-religious rhetoric: reverence for the State
4. An obsession with virility (recall futurists, World War I)
5. History is on our side: the twentieth century as the century of authority