ga and the left

The "Gulag Archipelago" and the LeftAuthor(s): Boris FrankelSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Winter, 1974), pp. 477-495Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656913 .

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477

Review Article

THE "GULAG ARCHIPELAGO" AND THE LEFT

BORIS FRANKEL

1

One can wholeheartedly sympathize with Roy Medvedev's prefatory comment that this is a "provisional opinion" on the Gulag Archipelago. "No one will," Medvedev believes, "rise from his chair after reading this book the same as he sat down to open it at page 1. In this sense there is quite simply nothing in either Russian literature or the literature of the world with which I can compare Solzhenitsyn's book."' While Medvedev is undoubtedly correct in his estimation of the traumatic consequences which a reading of the Gulag will induce for Soviet readers, he over-estimates the sensitivity of most Western readers who have either not experienced Soviet conditions or who do not care about the meaning of the October Revolution because they have always opposed it, or because they grew to oppose it. Solzhenitsyn's books have been evaluated by non-Soviet critics largely in terms of literary style and quality, and not enough in terms of what social repercussions would follow from the publication within the U.S.S.R. of works such as The First Circle. With the Gulag it is different. Everywhere during the last year, governments, the media, critics, all have been endorsing or condemning the book. There is no doubt about the massive anti-communist propaganda campaign which has been associated with Western publication, just as there is no doubt about the political capital which Soviet authorities have manipulated by pointing to the Gulag's promotion in the capitalist world.

But the aftermath of Solzhenitsyn's expulsion, the rocking of detente, etc., witnessed the absorption of the Gulag into the accumulated repertoire of anti-communist "totalitarian" literature much to the smug satisfaction of the political Right. After being momentarily sickened by the horrendous details, Western liberals too will not be greatly touched by the political implications of the Gulag; most have long ago disassociated themselves from the repressive quality of Soviet practice, even if they are still sympathetic to the Soviet

Monash University, Melbourne, Australia



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Union's great material achievements. Moreover, liberals have increasingly revealed their affinity with conservative views of "human nature." Whereas many pre-war liberals could still believe in the ideal of the Enlightenment because the U.S.S.R. was implementing scientific planning for the improvement of humanity (as opposed to Nazi Germany), Solzhenitsyn's revelations about Soviet history have only compounded the post-war disillusionment with technology and the possibility of moving towards the "perfectibility" of man. While one can endorse their rejection of the Enlightenment's scientism, liberals have unfortunately replaced one ontology-progress-with another: the conviction that man will always be inherently "defective." The Gulag will thus enforce all those who seek evidence of "man's eternal depravity," and comfort those who knew all along what could happen if people subscribed to holistic and messianic doctrines.2

But even if various conservatives and liberals dispute the theses presented in th Gulag, it is my belief that they are already too favourably disposed to Solzhenitsyn's arguments to derive the benefit of critical self-reflection which the book should hopefully instigate. The only audience which can have a critically meaningful relationship to Solzhenitsyn's document is the Marxist Left. However, it is clear that not all the various Marxist groups, parties and individuals are disposed to examine critically Solzhenitsyn's book, let alone acknowledge his theses. By concentrating on Solzhenitsyn's historiographical method I hope to compare the Gulag with various Marxist interpretations of Soviet history, and, at the same time, show the interrelationship between historiography and political practice.

2

It is important to keep in mind the fact that Solzhenitsyn's work belongs to the first generation of non-Western (including Russian emigre), and non- Party, post-1953 historiography. In contrast to the work of exiled Trots- kyists, Mensheviks and other Russian participants of the Russian Revolution, Solzhenitsyn's generation is not interested in merely cleansing the grossly distorted account given by Party history books. Although there are certainly enough differences between the Solzhenitsyns, Medvedevs and Sakharovs, this new generation of Party critics is no longer defined by their respective beliefs and practices in 1917. Solzhenitsyn did not have the luxury of being in contact with alternative socio-cultural sources and material life as did other Russian emigres or Western academics. His dialectic with Soviet authorities is the dialectic of one who was socialized and educated within the sphere of dominant Soviet norms: and while Solzhenitsyn attempts to transcend the norms of Soviet culture and legality, his very criticisms are often in them-



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selves perverted reflections of the very logic and practice which he abhors. Insofar as Solzhenitsyn is a total victim (and product) of the Soviet "experience," the strengths and weaknesses of his appraisal are in proportion to his empathy with contemporary Soviet "populist" perceptions of, and relations with, Soviet institutions.

The Gulag is written as half documentary and half autobiography. By using his own experiences as focal points for the elucidation of the collective experience, Solzhenitsyn's very sensitivity leaves him open to attack. Writting in the Guardian Irwin Silber expresses "methodological" disbelief: "I was prepared to defend 'The Gulag Archipelago' (he states), if it offered us reasonable documentation, let alone punctilious proof, of the gross violations of socialist legality of the Stalin era. For there can be little question, it seems to me, that grave distortions of proletarian norms and widespread miscarriages of socialist justice took place in those years. But both 'The Gulag Archipel- ago' and the incredible publicity campaign supporting it are, to put it bluntly, frauds."3 In his preoccupation with exposing the political ramifications of the book's reception in the West, Silber becomes blind and insensitive to what Solzhenitsyn is exposing. It is relatively easy to point to Solzhenitsyn's partial reliance on rumours and exaggerated statistics (e.g., his account of the Leningrad purges) as a means of substantiating his failure to produce "punctilious proof." The Gulag is not lacking in numerous weaknesses (as I will discuss later on), but it is hardly a fraud. Unfortunately, the Silbers of this world can only comprehend the dehumanizing atrocities depicted by Solzhenitsyn as "grave distortions of proletarian norms." Silber is so caught up in the use of reified euphemisms such as "proletarian norms" and the "widespread miscarriages of socialist justice" that he fails to see that he is directly affirming Solzhenitsyn's worst accusations against the Party. "Is Solzhenitsyn a deliberate liar?" Silber asks with incredible opaqueness, "Probably not. He seems to be of that breed of self-pitying petty bourgeois intellectual who is constantly reproducing the entire universe in his own image." At last we have the Maoist prognosis of Solzhenitsyn and his 227 "informants," they are suffering from severe petty bougeois subjectivism, and have thus misconstrued the objective world of "socialist construction" by creating "images" of mass suffering and brutality.

But then Solzhenitsyn understands why the Silbers are impervious to the "unbelievable" events he depicts. "From childhood on," he notes, "we are educated and trained-for our own profession; for our civil duties, for military service; to take care of our bodily needs; to behave well; even to appreciate beauty (well, this last not really all that much! ). But neither our education, nor our upbringing, nor our experience prepares us in the slightest



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for the greatest trial of our lives: being arrested for nothing and interrogated about nothing."4 The truth of the Gulag lies in Solzhenitsyn's accumulation of personal and mass experiences of arrest, interrogation, torture and incarceration. In the first four chapters of "The Prison Industry" Solzhe- nitsyn vividly depicts all those formerly cold and lifeless sociological categories such as atomization which theorists of totalitarianism mainly used for model building. One identifies with Solzhenitsyn's description of arrest as "an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another."5 Just as "both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience, can gasp out only: "Me? What for?,"6 so too, the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton of readers is dragged by Solzhenitsyn in a dazed state through the "Sewage Disposal Sys- tem." Even the reader who is most familiar with the Soviet terror cannot help but still be shaken by the numerous incidents which Solzhenitsyn relates. The countless petty frame-ups, irrationalities associated with the cult of personality, the imagination and deviousness of the Bluecaps in staging arrests and then providing the appropriate tortures, and accommodation. "Arrests rolled through the streets and apartment houses like an epidemic. Just as people transmit an epidemic infection from one to another without knowing it, by such innocent means as a handshake, a breath, handing someone something, so too, they passed on the infection of inevitable arrest by a handshake, by a breath, by a chance meeting on the street."7 Page after page is full of endless lists of victims of every conceivable variety. But just as the long-seasoned prisoner probably ceased to be surprised about the scope or nature of Soviet repression, so too, the reader becomes hardened by the middle of the book. Solzhenitsyn has stripped bare whatever innocence we initially possessed and now proceeds to document the institutionalization of various norms of Soviet legality. However, at that point when our attention has flagged through sheer exhaustion, Solzhenitsyn unveils all the horrors of the transportation system and the ports of the Archipelago. "The prisoners considered April and September the best months for transports. But even the best of seasons was too short if the train was en route for three months."8 Will geography teachers ever be able to analyse the one-sixth of the world's land surface in the same way again? And what about Solzhenitsyn's effective method of dispelling conventional images of prison life. "In literature the latrine bucket has become the symbol of prison, a symbol of humiliation, of stink. Oh, how frivolous can you be? Now was the latrine bucket really an evil for the prisoner? On the contrary, it was the most merciful device of the prison administration. The actual horror began the moment there was no latrine bucket in the cell."9

Because Solzhenitsyn is totally preoccupied in the task of guaranteeing that



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none of us forget all the atrocities which Soviet authorities do not want us to remember-let alone discover-the historical truths of barbaric repression cannot be denied. As Barrington Moore Jr. put it, "sympathy with the victims of historical processes and skepticism about the victors' claims provide essential safeguards against being taken in by the dominant mythology."'10 While Solzhenitsyn has been fighting the "dominant mythology" for years, this very struggle has blinded him in his analysis of "historical processes." If the Gulag was simply an answer to Khrushchev's distortion that "from approximately 1934, violations of Leninist norms of legality began,"' 1 then one could readily identify with the book. But then Solzhenitsyn is not merely interested in showing that "violations of Leninist norms of legality" began as early as 1918. The truth of Solzhenitsyn's documentation of pre-and post 1934 terror emerges despite all his own distortions of history. How paradoxical (yet understandable) that Solzhenitsyn should unwittingly resort to the use of Stalinist historiographical methods as a means of exposing the dehumanized base of "socialist construction." Thus it is necessary to identify Solzhe- nitsyn's weaknesses before comparing his truths with other analysts of Soviet history; only then can the myths attached to "Leninism" and "Stalinism" be confronted.

3

Just as Soviet authorities have largely obliterated historical accounts of groups or individuals who held opposite views to the Party, so too, has Solzhenitsyn totally ignored the views and actions of the Bolsheviks by ap- plying in reverse the Party's "control over the past." Because he is so intent on cataloguing all the victims of the "Sewage Disposal System," Solzhenitsyn is almost totally oblivious of the historically specific conditions in which mass suffering occurred. I will not repeat all the glaring inadequacies of the Gulag which have been covered by various reviewers (especially Ernest Mandel)' 2 in connection with the thoroughly one-sided account offered by Solzhenitsyn. But it is important that readers refer to Solzhenitsyn's Letter to Soviet Leaders in order to comprehend more fully his brief but disturbingly confused Weltanschauung. One could not say that Solzhenitsyn is simply an anti-Soviet reactionary in the classical sense of the word; there is too much of the Stalinist heritage left in his thought. The statistical documentation of the Gulag is related to Solzhenitsyn's concern for "suffering Russia." Sixty-six to ninety million deaths are somehow all layed at the door of Soviet ideology. Although he mentions two world wars, Solzhenitsyn ultimately blames Marxism for bearing "the entire responsibility for all the blood that has been shed."' 3 Amidst the revelation of the most obnoxious chauvinistic, xeno- phobic and racist ideas, Solzhenitsyn champions a perverted form of "social-



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ism in one country." "Throw away the dead ideology that threatens to destroy us militarily and economically," he appeals, "throw away all its fantastic alien global missions and concentrate on opening up (on the principles of a stable, non-progressive economy) the Russian North-East." ' 4 His sexism also shines through his isolationist recommendation of the abandon- ment of financing South American revolutionaries so that Russian women can be relieved of doing heavy roadwork: "internal growth" requires that women confine their "slavery" to the domestic sphere so that good Russian families will flourish.'5

To help understand Solzhenitsyn's position we can profit from Max Weber's 1905 analysis of the capacity of Russia to develop bourgeois liberal institutions. One of the reasons he doubted the ability of Russian society to produce liberalism was the crucial difference between Roman Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Weber, the Russian Church "has no Archimedian point outside the sphere of the state, in the form of a pope, and will never get one."' 6 Because of this dependence upon the state, Weber argued that "the history and form of organization of the Orthodox Church makes it quite improbable that, however transformed, it could ever set itself up as a representative of civil liberties against the power of the police state."' 7 This authoritarian quality of Russian orthodoxy is amply mani- fested in Solzhenitsyn's praise of a thousand years of strong moral authoritarianism. Thus it is not authoritarianism which is intolerable, but only authoritarian regimes who lie to the people. Solzhenitsyn craves so much for a return to the spiritual dependence of the past, that his embarrassing naivete leads him to believe that a morally upright authoritarianism will protect freedom and cultivate "love of your fellow men" instead of "class hatred."' 8

It is important to recognize Solzhenitsyn's confused beliefs in order to com-

prehend his historiographical method in the Gulag. There are numerous entries scattered throughout the book which do considerable injustice to the historical record and confirm Solzhenitsyn's intense chauvinism, religious authoritarianism, sexist perspective and compromised attitude to the struggle for freedom. By comparing the barbarity of Soviet repression with Tsarist Russia, Hitler's Germany, South African racists, etc., Solzhenitsyn's method results in the depiction of the latter in a favourable light-even though a relative one. Moreover, Solzhenitsyn's justifiable anguish over the suffering of Soviet citizens has resulted in his support of a whole range of anti-Communist policies and beliefs simply because he detests the Soviet Government. Endorsement of Western Cold War theories about international events, and the U.S. position in Indo-China, as well as mockery of Bertrand Russell's War Crimes investigation are just some of the more glaring examples.' 9 In general,



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Solzhenitsyn (for all his moral rhetoric), is incredibly insensitive and incon- sistent when it comes to opposing repression in countries outside the Soviet Bloc.

But not only does Solzhenitsyn adopt the Party's attitude of evaluating events in terms of "who is not wholly with us must be against us," his analysis of historical processes also suffers from lack of rigour (not due to lack of sources), and more importantly, a fundamentally ahistorical vision of the world. Let me illustrate this with a few excerpts.

Revealing his ascetic prescriptions and reliance on "populist" wisdom, Solzhenitsyn states that "there is a simple truth which one can learn only through suffering: in war not victories are blessed but defeats. Governments need victories and the people need defeats. Victory gives rise to the desire for more victories. But after a defeat it is freedom that men desire-and usually attain. A people needs defeat just as an individual needs suffering and mis- fortune: they compel the deepening of the inner life and generate a spiritual upsurge."20 Apart from the fact that Solzhenitsyn does not distinguish historically between battles fought for the glory of kings and those fought for the mass protection or improvement of human life (e.g., the victory of Poltava compared with the victory over Hitler or the victory over Chiang Kai Shek-the latter being an event which Solzhenitsyn laments! ), his endorsement of the necessity of suffering for the generation of "a spiritual upsurge" leads to a curiously contradictory position. As "defeats" are more "benefi- cial" than victories, Solzhenitsyn argues that "the Crimean War, and the Japanese War, and our war with Germany in the First World War-all these defeats brought us freedom and revolution."2 1

If 1917 ushered in "freedom and revolution," how does Solzhenitsyn recon- cile this favourable statement with his accusation concerning the responsibility for over sixty-six million deaths? In the Gulag he begins to document the "Sewage System" from November 1917 with the outlawing of the Cadets (whom he tries to convince us were "the most dangerous ranks of revolution" under the Tsar! ). But in Letter to Soviet Leaders Solzhenitsyn declares that "the Soviets, which gave their name to our system and existed until 6 July 1918, were in no way dependent upon ideology: ideology or no ideology, they always envisaged the widest possible consultation with all working people."2 2 Leaving aside the question of ideology until later, it is clear that Solzhenitsyn cannot have it both ways. If the "Gulag Archipelago" was in- stituted in November 1917, then Solzhenitsyn cannot ignore all the Bolshevik Party activities within the Soviets before November 1917 and up until July 1918. It was many of these same Soviets which endorsed the Bolsheviks' early



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policies creating the "Sewage System"-the Soviets which also partially sup- ported an ideology that Solzhenitsyn simultaneously condemns but depicts as part of the "spiritual regeneration! " It also appears that Solzhenitsyn op- poses the "defeat" at the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty because Russia was obliged to provide Germany with many carloads of food supplies-from a Russia he says "which had been deprived of a protesting voice, from the very provinces where famine would strike-so that Germany could fight to the end in the West."23 Solzhenitsyn is so historically confused with his analogies, that his attempt to imply similarity between Brest Litovsk and Stalin's and Khrushchev's support of external anti-Western forces (at the expense of Russian consumers), even goes against his own moral evaluation of "victories" and "defeats." Or would Solzhenitsyn have preferred no peace treaty and a return to mass slaughter and suffering which German armies had earlier inflicted upon the Tsar who was in quest of "Government victory?" Which provinces "deprived of a protesting voice" would have rushed to man the armies (in 1918) following so soon after the mass desertions from the anti- German front lines! There is little doubt that the food requisitioned by Germany contributed to the overall scale of the famine. But Solzhenitsyn is characteristically oblivious of the historical context of Brest-Litovsk and many other events.

It is important to emphasize Solzhenitsyn's ahistorical methodology because it is vital when one is forced to confront his frequent comparisons of the "Sewage System" with Tsarist Russia and Hitler's Germany. If one were to merely compute the number of victims, tortures, general suffering, etc., then historical meaning would be an unnecessary burden: computers could easily show that the number of deaths and suffering within the Soviet State was quantitatively as great or greater than within Nazi Germany. At one level of analysis Solzhenitsyn's comparative approach is valid; there is enough evidence to show that Soviet methods of terror were of sufficient variety and scope to rival the Nazis. But the "technique" of terror only tells us something about the material and intellectual capacities at the disposal of a particular historical epoch. Documenting the systematic and random nature of particular manifestations of social and individual irrationality does not, in itself, tell us enough about the rationale (or lack of it) behind the irrational. Terror is not ahistorical. Only those who ignore the objectives of the terrorists as well as the specific historical conditions which allow terror to be inflicted, and passively received, will arrive at something more than a mere comprehension of the quantitative. Insofar as Solzhenitsyn is quite explicit in his evaluation of who is guilty, there is no pretence of being a dispassionate computer. But to the extent that Solzhenitsyn has almost no time or space for historicity, his analysis barely surmounts the positivism of "totalitarian" models which



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evaluate pure technique. It is only his literaty synthesis of personal and collective experiences that preserves the truth of events depicted. Thus the old conflict between literary and scientific truths emerges once more. With Solzhenitsyn the problem is associated with the very concept of an "Archipel- ago." From actual geographical locations, Solzhenitsyn extends the reality of Siberian camps to a "national Archipelago"-"'in the psychological sense, fused onto a continent-an almost invisible, almost imperceptible country inhabited by the zek people."24 This symbol of the Soviet terror system only compounds Solzhenitsyn's historical distortions. While a literary metaphor can encapsulate the accumulated feelings and events of a generation, closer examination also reveals the major shortcomings which generalized extrapola- tions such as the "Gulag Archipelago" create. By using the concept of an "Archipelago" Solzhenitsyn argues for the continuity of a system of terror from 1918 to the present day. But neither the victims of the "Sewage Sys- tem" nor the extent (or very systematic nature) of its operations was the same in 1918, 1938, or 1958. Solzhenitsyn attributes a certain homogeneity of objectives and logic to the "Gulag" even though he clearly recognizes the differences between victims such as kulaks, party chiefs, church leaders or Crimean Tartars. Only detailed historical analysis can adequately differentiate the victims and methods of Soviet repression from one another and from pre-Soviet and non-Soviet terror. In short, Solzhenitsyn's methodology makes it impossible to distinguish between that historical form of violence waged out of social necessity (no matter how far it got out of control of explicit instructions from the Party or its opponents, e.g., the Civil War), and that terror which was used indiscriminately in the 1930's, or is being used for selective repression of dissidents at the moment.

4

Up to this point I have been quite critical of Solzhenitsyn's methodological approach to Soviet history. But despite his glaring inconsistencies, Solzhe- nitsyn provides a great deal of material which can be fruitfully compared with Marxist historical accounts. Generally, Solzhenitsyn is not interested in depicting Stalin as a super-monster. If anything, there is an obvious under- statement of Stalin's importance or responsibility compared with accounts given by Roy Medvedev or a whole range of Western Marxists and non- Marxists. According to Solzhenitsyn, the Bolshevik Party was a necessary accomplice: "the majority of those in power, up to the very moment of their own arrest, were pitiless in arresting others, obediently destroyed their peers in accordance with those same instructions and handed over to retribution any friend or comrade-in-arms of yesterday. And all the big Bolsheviks, who now wear martyrs' halos, managed to be the executioners of other Bolsheviks



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(not even taking into account how all of them in the first place had been the executioners of non-Communists)."25 This thesis is also concisely phrased in his now famous comment that Stalin "followed the beaten path exactly as it had been signposted, step by step."2 6

Insofar as Solzhenitsyn overlooks the many differences between Stalin's predecessors, successors and contemporaries, his interpretation is not accept- able either as a credible account of the many Party personalities involved, or

as an analysis of the possibilities of Soviet development, which is only con- ceded a rigid predetermined path. This is not the place to engage in a detailed discussion of the perennial question-"was Stalin necessary? ". But insofar as Solzhenitsyn exaggerates the homogeneity of Soviet Party terror, his thesis instigates the need for a brief, but critical reassessment of Marxist accounts of post-1917 history.

Except for the various defenders of Stalin, there appears to be substantial unanimity among liberals, Marxists and conservatives in condemning the period of Stalin's power as being characterized by mass slaughter, directed at both the old Bolsheviks and the great variety of ever increasing "enemies of the people." Solzhenitsyn reinforces this interpretation of the Stalin years with numerous revelations of how irrational, paranoic witch-hunts for "wreckers" and all forms of scapegoats, severely retarded industrial and agrarian developments and a whole range of social and military goals and

capacities. The new "feudal" laws of punishment for absenteeism, failure to work a set number of days for the new industrial overlord, etc., were felt by countless numbers. Stalin's terror is still excused by apologists who argue that Hitler would never have been defeated if "forced" industrialization had not been carried out. According to Silber, Chairman Mao's precept that Party controversies should be settled in a democratic manner "did not consistently prevail during the period of Stalin's leadership. But at the same time, one must not fall into the trap of seeing such errors as the principal aspect of

Stalin's leadership. To do so is to deny the realities of socialist reconstruction and the heroic achievements of the anti-Nazi war. "27 Despite Silber's con- tinued belief in the Stalinist propaganda machine, substantial historical evidence has been accumulated to show that not only "socialist reconstruction" but also the "heroic achievements" of the anti-Nazi war were won despite Stalin's government. The purges of military ranks, the costly blunders of unpreparedness and incompetence during the crucial early years of the war are only one side of Stalin's tarnished image. The myths of his "leadership" qualities were accentuated by a combination of the patriotism ignited by Hitler's brutal treatment of the Soviet population, the ruthless commands of

generals such as Zhukov who absolutely forbade retreat in key battles, and of



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course the large punishment battalions which were used as cannon fodder against superior German technology. While one should never discount the importance of the build-up of industry before 1941, it would be a complete whitewash of Stalin's policies to let the myth of "socialist construction" be doubly vindicated by the non-socialist conduct of the anti-Nazi war.

Given the growing (but not unanimous) consensus over Stalin's role in Soviet history, the dispute between Solzhenitsyn and Marxists is over Stalin's predecessors and contemporaries. If Solzhenitsyn wants to establish complete continuity of government from 1917 on, Marxists are anxious to show a clear discontinuity of development. Depending on whether you follow Lenin or Trotsky, discontinuity will be established with Stalin in the period between 1921 and 1929; if one follows Luxemburg, the Council Communists, anarchists, etc., the discontinuity of 1917 with Stalin (and Lenin) will begin in the period between 1918 and 1921. Each group subscribes to different reasons for the betrayal of the revolution, but yet also ignores (to a lesser or greater degree) the historical context and capacities of the actors involved.

Because of their interest in apologizing for Stalin, people like Silber link Solzhenitsyn to the bourgeoisie and Trotskyists. As the largest anti-Stalinist Marxist groups in the West, the various Trotskyist organizations are vitally interested in refuting Solzhenitsyn and yet defending "Leninism." But the Trotskyists are unable to surmount all of Solzhenitsyn's accusations against the Bolshevik Party because of their involvement in the defence of the Lenin and Trotsky cults of personality. Too much emphasis is placed upon the "bureaucratic counterrevolution" after Lenin's death, and thus the pre-1924 actions of the Party are defended on inadequate or dubious grounds. Ernest Mandel (in an otherwise reasonable critique of Solzhenitsyn), claims that "our epoch is the epoch of the death agony of the capitalist system. The longer this death agony is prolonged, the more features of barbarism, bloody repression, and contempt for human life will proliferate. In this historic sense, Stalin is a product of capitalism, just as much as Hitler, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and the bombing and defoliation of Vietnam. He is not the pro-. duct of Soviet society or the October Revolution."28 This projection of internal atrocities onto the shoulders of capitalism is an historical distortion equal to Solzhenitsyn's accusation against Marxist ideology. For too long Marxists have lived off the myth associated with the failure of world revolution to break out. In 1922 Trotsky stated that "if our October Revolution had taken place a few months, or even a few weeks, after the establishment of the rule of the proletariat in Germany, France, and England, there can be no doubt that our revolution would have been the most "peaceful," the most "bloodless" of all possible revolutions on this sinful earth."29 One can cer-



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tainly agree that foreign intervention, etc. would have been substantially less or non-existent, but to think that socialist revolution would have been accepted or implemented smoothly without mass internal resistance, is being historically naive or blind.

In their anxiety to distinguish the "truth" of Leninism from the "perver- sions" of Stalinism, contemporary Marxists give too much ammunition to the Solzhenitsyns, because of the reluctance to acknowledge the far from admira- ble role which the Party played in pre-1924 events, While Solzhenitsyn is grossly unjust in depicting the Party as having basically the same policies and attitudes throughout its entire existence, the truth of complicity by Party members in their own and national repression is beyond doubt. Just as one needs to emphasize Solzhenitsyn's failure to consider the historical context of civil war violence compared to the purges of the 1930's, etc., so too, one must avoid the pitfall of historically locating terror, and thereby using this historical context as a means of excusing its excesses away. The reason why defenders of "Leninism" cannot totally surmount Solzhenitsyn's critique of the Party, is because their defence of the Party is based on a defence of only the smallest part of it-the leadership and Central Committee. Solzhenitsyn may be totally unjust when it comes to evaluating the responsibility of ideology, or his quantitative comparison of victims, but his sensitivity to the injustices carried out by the "faceless" lower ranks of the government is convincing. Discussing the Revtribunals of the early years, Solzhenitsyn observes that "every time a city was captured during the Civil War the event was marked not only by gunsmoke in the courtyards of the Cheka, but also by sleepless sessions of the tribunal. And you did not have to be a White officer, a senator, a landowner, a monk, a Cadet, an SR, or an Anarchist in order to get your bullet."30 During the Stalin years the Bluecaps were even more ruthless in their enforcement of policy. The Civil War tribunals lacked the systematic quality of the 1930's Bluecap divisions-there were no quotas and planned allocations of arrests according to cities and districts. But Solzhe- nitsyn's description of the security service as not being populated by "educated people of broad culture and broad views . . ." and that "Their branch of service requires only that they carry out orders exactly and be impervious to suffering . . .,3 is an historical fact which has to be confronted. The division between broadly educated men of culture and a semi-illiterate population, is the reality of the Party history which Marxists are strangely slow to acknowledge. Arthur Rosenberg ignores the "many wild tales" told about the Cheka because "the Cheka is only an executive organ of the Government, i.e. of the Bolshevik Party. On no single occasion has the Cheka pursued a different political policy from that of the Government, and at no time has it been in possession of a political authority different from that of the Party leaders."3 2



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Writing in 1932, Rosenberg was eager to defend the Cheka against charges of being an autonomous secret body, and thus inadvertently lends support to Solzhenitsyn's thesis of the "impervious to suffering" personalities. Moreover, his adherence to the principle of Party discipline results in Rosenberg naively overlooking the quality of many rank and file Party members who did not share the ideals of the Bolshevik leadership. With Isaac Deutscher, the Party's history is not so clear cut. On the one hand Deutscher gives much support to those aspects of the Gulag which document the mass suffering of innocents. Trotsky is criticized by Deutscher for his militarization of labour, his con- tribution to the growth of strong bureaucratic centralist organs and attack on intra-Party democracy before 1921. "No body politic can be nine-tenths mute and one-tenth vocal. Having imposed silence on non-Bolshevik Russia, Lenin's party had in the end to impose silence on itself as well."33 Deutscher also recognized that between 1917 and 1922 the membership of the Party had risen from about 23,000 to 700,000. Most of this growth, he says, "was already spurious. By now the rush to the victor's bandwagon was in full progress. The party had to fill innumerable posts in the government, in industry, in trade unions, and so on; and it was an advantage to fill them with people who accepted party discipline. In this mass of new-comers the authentic Bolsheviks were reduced to a small minority."3 4

Although Deutscher's account of the rise of "non-authentic" Bolsheviks makes Solzhenitsyn's depiction of the early "Gulag" comprehensible in terms of the wide abuse of power (in the form of unwarranted slaughter, scapegoat arrests, etc.) applied by an opportunistic, revengeful and intolerant rank and file, Deutscher is not consistent when he claims that the "authentic Bolshe- viks" were less subject to accepting Party discipline (because they comprehen- ded the goals of the revolution) compared to these new "inauthentic" Party members. The abuse of power among 23 to 250,000 members must have been sufficiently high given the extraordinary crisis of the civil war which often demanded an on-the-spot interpretation of what "discipline" meant and how imperative it was that it be maintained at all costs.

Closer examination of the Party under Lenin and Trotsky raises the fundamental question about what aspect of the Bolshevik record needs no apology without compromising one's adherence to "Leninism." With the current call of "return to Lenin" by various Left groups, "Leninism" is usually contrasted with "Stalinism" by pointing to all those quotes in Lenin's or Trotsky's works, etc., which advocate anti-bureaucratic party democracy, yet enough discipline for an organized but flexible struggle. Perhaps the problem is that it is too easy to find passages in Lenin's works which condenm abuse of power by bureaucrats. After all, the early years of the new Soviet state were full of



490

mistakes and anti-democratic practices which concerned leaders such as Lenin

or Trotsky would have noticed. But Deutscher says that by 1921 the

Bolshevik Party represented only itself; it "maintained itself in power by usurpation. Not only its enemies saw it as a usurper-the party appeared as a

usurper even in the light of its own standards and its own conception of the

revolutionary state."3-' As a result, all the "temporary" measures brought

down by the Party leaders in order to maintain power, became "permanent"

as both precedents for the future, and records of the past. This is not to argue

that democratic centralism leads inevitably to the type of terror present during Stalin's government.

There are numerous applications of "Bolshevik" organizational structures in twentieth-century history which did not result in similar developments as the

Soviet Union experienced. Critics who establish the continuity of terror be-

tween Lenin and Stalin eliminate the subjective will and praxis of particular historical party members, and attribute an inexorable life to the objective structures of the organization. On the other hand, many Marxists defend "Leninism by actually defending only the praxis of Lenin as an individual.

The often-coupled banner of "Marxism-Leninism" overlooks the vital fact

that "Leninism" cannot be reduced to the praxis of a single man in the same

way that historical materialism can be accepted as Marx's analysis of capital-

ism. "Leninism," as the thought and action of Lenin, is not separable from

party activity and organization; it is not simply an interpretation of society,

but the sum total of many other peoples' activity.

Yet, Marxists fall into two basic errors of elitist analysis when they evaluate

the Second and Third Internationals. On the one hand, there is the theoretical analysis which mainly concentrates on debates between Lenin, Kautski, Luxemburg, etc., and reduces problems of organization and strategy to

philosophical problems posed by Kant, Hegel, and others. This "history of

ideas" approach is based on a partial comprehension of "Leninism" similar to

that which the non-theoretical activists hold. Just as earlier historians wrote

about the history of a nation or empire in terms of the history of its kings, emperors and princes, so too, do many Marxists conceive of their Inter- nationals in terms of "kings" and "princes" of theory and organizations. Somehow the hundreds of thousands of party members are given token

acknowledgement, but the party's role is really conceived as the role of

Bernstein, Lenin or Trotsky and their central committees. While the domi-

nance of these men is not disputed, the identification with leader's policies can only be complete if one need not constantly rescue their praxis from the

actual praxis of the rank and file. Lenin and Trotsky may have genuinely desired to educate the rank and file against bureaucratic degeneration; but



491

there is also enough evidence to show that both men valued discipline and efficiency more than they valued mass democratic participation in decision- making. If "Leninism" embodies the notion of power to the Soviets, then this was crushed by the Party long before any bureaucratic degeneration set in. This is why the call by Medvedev, Mandel, etc. of a return to "Leninism" is so ambivalent. Just which aspect of pre-1921 or pre-1924 Bolshevism do they want to return to?

5

Trotsky said that Lenin thought "in terms of continents and epochs," but Solzhenitsyn writes about the everyday life of experience under Party rule. The problem associated with reading the Gulag is to be able to acknowledge its truths, and yet defend the Russian Revolution without accepting the vested interests of either Solzhenitsyn or his "Leninist" critics. To Solzhe- nitsyn, Russia, even before the civil war, "was obviously not suited for any sort of socialism whatsoever."36 As Mandel replies,

But what was it ripe for? For Tsarist barbarism? For eternal famine, poverty, and illiteracy? By challenging the legitimacy of the October Revolution-and the legitimacy of revolution in all relatively undeveloped countries as well-Solzhenitsyn reveals yet another contradiction in moralistic politics. Should we weep only for the dead assassinated by terror? What about the deaths caused by inhuman socioeconomic regimes, the tens of millions who died of hunger during the great famines in India and prerevolutionary China? 37

Max Weber also argued that the Russian revolution was doomed to failure because the Bolsheviks had been forced to preserve or reintroduce absolutely all the Tsarist and bourgeois things which they fought against.38 But this observation ignores substantial differences and over-emphasizes the similari- ties. Even Solzhenitsyn recognizes that Soviet Russia totally uprooted and destroyed most of the institutions and practices of Tsarist Russia. It is precisely the thoroughness, the completely new application of terror, discipline, etc., which Solzhenitsyn contrasts with Tsarism and rejects as a mere Ther- midorian reaction. Weber's projection of technical rationality prevented him from recognizing that the partial Soviet application of bourgeois technique did not mean that Soviet Russia was simply destined to continue the rationality of the past.

This ahistorical eternalization of Western categories overlooks the historical nature of rationality-even formal rationality. Unfortunately, Marxists also



492

extend categories applicable to Western capitalist society, and thus blur the differences between the Soviet Union and the West. In trying to account for the failure of socialism to emerge in the Soviet Bloc, Bettelheim and Sweezy situate the Soviet Union in that ahistorical position of "a society in transition." Soviet history is not conceived as something developing from its own logic, material resources, and interaction with the external world. Rather, Marx's categories, which he used to analyse capitalism (and not "the general path along which all mankind develops"), are artificially affixed onto Soviet reality. Therefore, the difference between Lenin and Stalin and their successors is linked to the notion of the emergence of a "state bourgeoisie" and the restoration of a capitalist market economy. Space does not permit me to elaborate why the use of notions such as "bougeoisie" (to describe the Soviet administration) are fundamental distortions of Marx's conception of the objective role of the bourgeoisie in the accumulation process of capital, especially foreign expansion.3 9

It is difficult for Marxists to confront the reality of the Soviet Union, because they are only in recent years discovering the meaning of historical materialism which the Soviet Party repressed and distorted. Solzhenitsyn's understanding of Marx is a product of all the mechanistic and reductionist qualities with which Soviet Marxism is permeated. It is little wonder, then, that his diatribe against Marxist ideology is misdirected and confused.4 0 But it is precisely this understanding of Marxism which makes it important to rescue the Gulag from the charge made by Silber that it is a fraud. All the gross historical distortions made by Solzhenitsyn are genuine products drawn from the experience of Soviet society, and are unfortunately shared by many people living within the Soviet Bloc. The reduction of Marx's theory to an instrument which justifies social control and repression, is the Marxism which millions of people grow up with daily. Solzhenitsyn forces us to confront the fact that the Soviet Union will not turn socialist in the event of revolution breaking out in the West. This mechanistic illusion is perpetrated by many groups (especially Western Communist Parties), and flows from a failure to appraise critically the historically specific non-socialist and non-capitalist development of the Soviet Union.

Together with the Chinese, Bettelheim and Sweezy see Eastern Europe as having taken the "capitalist road," by claiming that the Soviet Bloc maintains a non-socialist "base" of commodity production, the "new economism" is forced into conceiving class relations as being objectively similar to those in the West. But the rise of the proletariat in the West will not have similar repercussions in Soviet countries because the "proletariat" and the "state bourgeoisie" are not interrelated in any sense with their Western counter-



493

part-either objectively or subjectively-their relations are virtually a law unto their own. Bettelheim and Sweezy are arguing against those people who see the Soviet Bloc as having an essentially socialist base with a parasitic State bureaucracy oppressing the workers. Both conceptions of the Soviet Union are fundamentally wrong. If Bettelheim and Sweezy fail to. see the basic differences between the capitalist bourgeois order and the Soviet society, other Marxists ignore the non-socialist quality of all aspects of Soviet life. Just as the continuity of capitalist production can no longer be accepted as the material base for socialism, so too, the Soviet mode of production cannot simply be taken over and democratized.

When Stalin characterized Leninism as "the combination of the Russian revolutionary sweep with American efficiency,"4 1 he was not far off the mark. It was these qualities which enabled him to lead the revolution forward, but also to hold it back. The truth of the matter is that Lenin was not revolutionary enough for the Russia of post-1917, let alone for the changes needed today. Therefore, the ambiguity of "Leninism" justifies mass non-participation, conformism and bureaucratic discipline in Western parties, trade unions, etc.

Solzhenitsyn's Gulag inevitably raises the question of whether the Revolution was worth all the slaughter and repression. This question is an irrelevant academic point. It is only scholars who sit around contemplating in the midst of social crises; regardless of whether they support or oppose the status quo, events are usually pushed along by social groups with less complex, and more immediate needs on their mind. The Max Webers of this world will never make or support a revolution, because they are at the same time too pes- simistic and lofty in their evaluation of the capacities and needs of the man in the street. But, while Georg Lukacs took the opposite path from his friend Max Weber and ended up creating a revolution, his optimistic activism was based on a similar paternalist and elitist attitude to the masses.

Whereas Rosa Luxemburg attacked Lenin and the Bolsheviks for crushing the mass participation of workers and peasants in the Soviets, Lukaics branded Luxemburg as a utopian who was becoming more and more remote from an understanding of the real structure of events.42 According to Lukacs,

during the period of the dictatorship (of the proletariat) the nature and the extent of freedom will be determined by the state of the class struggle, the power of the enemy, the importance of the threat to the dictatorship, the demands of the classes to be won over, and by the maturity of the classes allied to and influenced by the proletariat. Freedom cannot repre-



494

sent a value in itself (any more than socialisation). Freedom must serve the rule of the proletariat, not the other way round. Only a revolutionary party like that of the Bolsheviks is able to carry out these often very sudden changes of front.4 3

Here lies the crux of the matter. The masses could not be left to judge the nature and power of the enemy; they lacked the "maturity" and the efficiency of the Party-they must be led to freedom in spite of themselves.

Marx analyzed capitalist society both in terms of its dehumanizing qualities as well as the contributions it made to material improvements and the universali- zation of ideas and knowledge. One need not identify with the Party in order to acknowledge similar positive and negative aspects of Soviet history. Solzhenitsyn amd his "Leninist" critics are all too involved with attacking or defending the Party's record to be in a position to provide a consistent guide to contemporary problems. But the situation of the Russian Revolution is not relevant to non-Soviet countries, because historical conditions are so different. The Gulag Archipelago is an important work in spite of its gross distortions. For, in order to honestly reject Solzhenitsyn's theses, one must also be able to reject those dubious "Leninist" principles which many of the Left are not prepared to reflect upon. Rather than going back to the "golden and virtuous" days of pre-Stalinism, Soviet and Western citizens would profit more by reviving, not the "Leninist" Party, but the mass participatory control and decision-making (outside the Party), which also existed in the early years of the Revolution.

NOTES

1 See R. Medvedev, "On Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago'," in Index, No. 1974, p. 65.

2 During the last thirty years there have been numerous attempts to debunk Marxism by over-emphasizing it as simply another messianic religion. Michael Barkun's "Millenarianism in the Modern World," in Theory and Society, Summer, 1974, is one of the most recent attempts in this polemical school, and is riddled with numerous fallacious assumptions about the nature and role of Bolshevism in Russian society, to mention only one of the movements he covers.

3 See Guardian, January 30, 1974. 4 The GulagArchipelago (Collins/Fontana, 1974) p. 121.



495

5 Ibid., p. 4. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 75. 8 Ibid., p. 574. 9 Ibid., p. 540. 10 The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, (Beacon Press, Boston, 1966),

p. 523. 11 The Gulag, p. 408. 12 See E. Mandel, "Solzhenitsyn's Assault on Stalinism ... And the October Revolu-

tion," reprinted in the Australian Militant, 22 July 1974. 13 Letter to Soviet Leaders (London, 1974), p. 47. 14 Ibid., p. 28. 15 Ibid., p. 40. 16 Quoted in D. Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics, (London:

George Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 186. 17 Ibid. 18 See Letter to Soviet Leaders, p. 55. 19 e.g., See The Gulag, pp. 259-260, 537, and Letter to Soviet Leaders, pp. 11-15. 20 Ibid., p. 272. 21 Ibid. 22 Letter to Soviet Leaders, p. 53. 23 The Gulag, p. 343. 24 Ibid., Preface p. X. 25 Ibid., p. 129. 26 Ibid., p. 613. 27 See Guardian, January 30, 1974. 28 E. MandeL "Solzhenitsyn's Assault on Stalinism." 29 L. Trotsky, "Terrorism and Communism," in I. Howe, (ed.) The Basic Writings of

Trotsky (London, 1964), p. 145. 30 The Gulag, p. 302. 31 Ibid., p. 145. 32 See A. Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism (New York, 1965), p. 120. 33 See The Prophet Unarmed Trotsky: 1921-1929 (London, 1970), p. 16. 34 Ibid., p. 17. 35 Ibid., pp. 9-10. 36 The Gulag, p. 26. 37 Mandel, op. cit. 38 See "Politics As a Vocation," in Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in

Sociology (New York, 1958), p. 100. 39 See P. Sweezy and Charles Bettelheim, On The Transition to Socialism (Monthly

Review Press: 1971). The authors have yet to show that Soviet production of surplus value could return to a similar form of monopoly capitalism with all the problems associated with consumption, markets, imperialist policies, etc. Moreover, the relations to production have only superficially resembled bourgeois and proletarian relations to the capitalist mode of production. Non-control by the Soviet people does not make their rulers bourgeoisie!

40 See Letter to Soviet Leaders, pp. 42-49. 41 See Foundations of Leninism (International Publishers, New York, 1939) p. 127. 42 See "Critical Observations on Rosa Luxemburg's 'Critique of the Russian Revolu-

tion'," in History and Class Consciousness (London, 1971), p. 291. 43 Ibid., pp. 292-293.

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