Under the Sign of the Troika

[p066] Under the sign of the Troika Socialism in One Country 1924-1926 By FE. H. Carr. Volume Three, Parts I and II. Macmillan 1964. £6 the set. THE two years after Lenin’s death have been shown by history to have an importance for the USSR and for the world communist movement far greater than anyone could have imagined at the time. On the sur- face this could be seen as a period of relative tranquillity in Europe following the abortive revolutionary attempt in Germany in 1923. In Asia the second Chinese revolution had begun its tragic course and the events preliminary to the British General Strike of 1926 were under way. The key events in these years took place in committee rooms and congress halls or ‘behind the scenes’ in discussions between politicians. The presence of the masses as a historical force is hardly felt in this section of Carr’s history dealing with the foreign relations of the USSR and covering both diplomacy and the development of the Comintern and its main constituent parties. The space occupied by the latter in a History of Soviet Russia and in a volume subtitled ‘Socialism in One Country’ might even have surprised its author some years ago. Carr has, in fact, found, contrary perhaps to his original intentions, that the history of the Soviet Union, product of a revolution of inter- national significance, cannot be separated from the history of the communist movement as part of the history of the international working class. If he does not say so in so many words that is the obvious implication of the space which he allocates not only to the Comintern —which is sometimes hastily dis- missed as nothing more than an agency of Soviet foreign policy—but also to the internal history even of Communist Parties such as the British and the American which in numbers and influence at this time would not appear, at first sight, to justify much attention in this con- text. In short, to achieve his purpose Carr has to provide us not only with a record of events in Russia but also with an account of the ccm- munist movement internationally which is generally much fuller than that to be found in other histories. Carr does not write as a sympathiser with any of the trends in the world communist movement — though one discerns a certain antipathy towards Trotsky—but rather as a_ serious bourgeois historian who has learned something from Marxism and stands far above most of his colleagues in his ability to meet the problems in historiography raised by the history of Soviet Russia. He retains unmis- takable traces of prejudice, but they pass almost unnoticed, at least in this volume, amid serried ranks of carefully arranged facts and re- strained, but generally fair, com- ment. With the failure of the last revolu- tionary spasm in Germany in 1923 the USSR was left as a pariah in a hostile world. At the same time this event signalised the inability of any Communist Party but that of Russia to carry out a_ successful revolution against capitalism. In the capitalist world the disorganisation and social ferment which had followed the war had given way to renewed economic expansion and relative stability. The post-war revolutionary tide had ebbed away throughout Europe. In the Soviet Union itself Stalin was carefully and inconspicuously consolidating his position and playing on the mocds in the party and the state yearning for some secure resting place after the breath-taking storms of revolu- tion, civil war and the battle to breathe some life back into the economy. With great skill he made use of Zinoviev and Kamenev until they, belatedly, came to recognise the dangers of Stalin’s course. Enouncing the new theory of ‘socialism in one country’, which was closely attuned to the condi- tions now appearing, he was able to use the prestige of the Soviet party to impose it on the Comintern through bringing the apparatus of both under his direction. Carr’s book is largely concerned with one or another aspect of this process. He considers what it meant in terms of relations with the capitalist world, both the advanced countries of the West and the colonial or semi-colonial countries of the East. A final section des- cribes in some detail the actual organisation of the Comintern and its dependent agencies: the clearest picture yet available of this aspect. For purpose of this review the main emphasis will be on the first part, since the problems of the colonial revolution will be dealt with at a later stage. Russia’s relations with the West fall into two main divisions: those at the level of state relations which came within the province of diplo- macy and _ those’ between the Comintern and _ its constituent parties. A first priority of Soviet diplomacy at this time was to break out of the dangerous isolation which no longer seemed likely in the near future to disappear as the result of the spread of the revolution to the advanced countries of Western Europe. This meant, as far as possible, a normalisation of relation- ships with the capitalist govern- ments and even the search for political or commercial agreements with them. Of course, already in FOURTH INTERNATIONAL AUTUMN-WINTER 1964

[p067] BOOK REVIEWS 1920, at Rapallo, the diplomats of the USSR had come to terms with those of the Weimar republic, also made a pariah by the Versailles treaty. Indeed, throughout this period secret military, as well as economic, co-operation between the two countries took place. At the same time Western diplomacy recognised the danger of driving Germany into the arms of Russia and began, from its side, to court Germany. The main result of these efforts, and by far the biggest diplomatic event in these years, was the Locarno pact which, by guaran- teeing Germany’s Western frontiers and strengthening those elements in German governing circles which stood for a Western orientation, opened up the danger of German expansion towards the East. To say the least, it brought into question the co-operation between Russia and Germany which had been going on since Rapallo. The result of Locarno was to cause apprehension and a feeling of insecurity in Moscow which could not fail to have its repercussions on Comintern policy. But what was the relation between Soviet state interests and the Com- munist International? As Carr puts it, the recession of the revolutionary wave imposed the necessity of ‘peaceful co-existence’—the normali- sation of state relations—without the abandonment of the premise that a permanent reconciliation with capitalism was unthinkable: the capitalist countries, by their nature, were bound to seek the isolation and destruction of the USSR. On the other hand, their own internal contradictions, which could be exploited by diplomatic means, provided a barrier to their combined action against the USSR. The task of Soviet diplomacy therefore appeared relatively straight-forward and unexceptionable from a Marxist standpoint. It was reasonable to seek an understanding with the weakest capitalist power and to turn to advantage the mutual jealousies of the imperialist powers. But the situation was not without its para- doxes——-and its dangers. It meant, for example, that the closest state relations were established with the very country which had the most FOURTH INTERNATIONAL important Communist Party and which, until 1923, had stood nearest to revolution. One result, for example, had been to encourage trends in the German party willing to work with nationalists of the right against the Entente powers. On the~ebb-tide of revolution, moreover, the Communist Parties became proponents of the more cautious policies which were decided in Moscow in order to safeguard Soviet security. How much nation- alism and how much concern for world revolution was there in the efforts of Soviet diplomacy in this period? That a conflict between the two later became apparent is evident, but when did it begin? In this period Carr’s opinion is clear. He takes it as evident—and shows from an examination of the facts— that the Soviet Government could, and did, control the words and deeds of the Comintern. But he sees no evidence of waning confidence in world revolution; ‘the agents of Soviet diplomacy and of world revolution, of Narkomindel and Comintern, met on the common ground of an unbounded confidence in the eventual outcome of their efforts’. In practice, however, the pursuit of the former made world communist policy a handmaiden of Soviet interests. The slogan under which this was being done was calculated to appeal to the revolutionaries of all coun- tries who were attracted by the Russian revolution and concerned by their own failure to follow the Russian example. That revolution had been made by the Bolshevik party. The new-born Communist Parties, formed of break-aways from the mass social-democratic. parties or from small Marxist and syndical- ist groups, were still far from being in practice parties of the Bolshevik type, nor did lip-service to the Twenty-one Conditions make them so. For many would-be revolution- aries the shortest way to Bolshevism seemed to be to copy the Russian model as it then was. Russian influence in the Comintern, which had worried Lenin, was deliberately strengthened in the years after his death by the Troika. The divisions AUTUMN-WINTER 1964 153 within the Russian party were carried into the foreign parties. In addition, leaders and policies were changed at the bidding of the Comintern until the parties became its servile instruments. Part of this story is told by Carr in this volume. Its context, all the time, is the in- evitable drift of policy once ‘social- ism in one country’ became the touchstone of orthodoxy. What was called ‘bolshevisation’ amounted, ‘in practice, to making the national sections of Comintern docile instru- ments for the operation of this policy in the context of the given country. This end was perhaps not con- sciously sought, it was certainly not achieved all at once or without resistance. In the period 1924-26 covered by this volume it was still in a preparatory stage. There were bitter struggles within the individual parties and in Comintern itself but the great confrontation between the Left Opposition and Stalinism was only to come after 1926 when ‘socialism in one country’ yielded its first bitter fruits in China and Britain. The crucial struggles, in any case, were fought out inside the Russian party and do not figure in this part of Carr’s narrative. As far as the implications of ‘socialism in one country’ are concerned he seems to be perfectly right in his judge- ment: ‘It was of the essence of that doctrine to give precedence to the construction of a socialist regime in the Soviet Union over the conquest of power elsewhere, to treat this as the first essential condition of pro- gress towards world revolution, and to make resistance to intervention by the capitalist Powers against the new Soviet order the prime duty for foreign communist parties.’ Objective conditions in this period favoured the acceptance of this conception in the foreign communist parties. Dissidents were crushed and driven out and a new type of leadership was emerging whose loyalty to Moscow was unquestion- ed. Even recruitment to the parties took place on different lines and they changed their character until it is difficult to find many points of similarity between Lenin’s Bolshevik party and a ‘bolshevised’ communist

[p068] - leaders. 154 party obedient to Stalin’s domesti- cated Comintern of the late 1920s. Before this process could be carried through to completion, however, the Left Opposition had to be defeated and the decline had probably not become irremediable until several years later. By 1926, however, Carr can already justly comment that ‘what was most significant of all was the change in the character, com- position and leadership of the parties to which the process of Bolshevisa- tion was applied’. The new leaders were obedient, mostly had a working- class background and support and less interest in theory than in im- pressing Comintern with some suc- cesses in ‘mass struggles’, The interest of Comintern in the parties turned from interventions on matters of policy—still vital in the early twenties—to questions of choosing His diagnosis here seems to be correct. The Communist Parties ceased to have a vigorous theoretical life and only had to apply to the conditions of their own country principles which were laid down in Moscow, eventually by Stalin himself. Of some Communist Parties it was true to say they had never had much concern with theory. The CPGB was a classic case; in fact, despite its small size it was, in the 1920s, a favourite of the Comintern. It never had splits and its leadership kept together over long periods. As Carr puts it: ‘The maintenance of solidarity in the leadership of the CPGB, which distinguished it so markedly from other communist parties, reflected the traditional empiricism of British politics. The leading British communists were indifferent to the issues of doctrine and theory which divided the leaders of the German, French, Italian and other parties, and had little or no understanding of what these issues involved. ...’ It is just as true of the CPGB in the face of the Sino- Soviet dispute today. The successful operation of the policy of ‘socialism in one country’ required not parties preparing for power but parties able to win the largest number of supporters and sympathisers on broad campaign programmes organised around sup- port for the Soviet Union or issues affecting its security. This produced travesties of the ‘united front’ and finished up in the quagmire of ‘popular fronts’ in the 1930s. Tight Comintern control over the parties went hand-in-hand, not with a revolutionary policy but with what- ever policy, be it to the right or to the left, the Soviet leaders considered best served their needs. Such control had largely been made effective in this interim period. Though there was still more possi- bility of discussion and opposition than was the case later, already ‘Loyalty to the line laid down by Comintern was the test of a good party member’. Thus, in the struggle which was to come between Stalin and the Left Opposition there was relatively little support for the latter in the ranks of the foreign parties. Many of those ready to support Trotsky, or, at least to give him a hearing, had been driven out of their parties before 1926: a period in which, unfortunately, Zinoviev, as head of Comintern, had been doing Stalin’s work for him to his own later regret and ultimate un- doing. Undoubtedly Carr’s book provides incomparable material for a study of these processes in the interna- tional communist movement. He is extremely sparing of comment and is content, in the main, to let the record speak for itself. It speaks inevitably against Stalin if examined from a Marxist standpoint, which is not, of course, Carr’s own position. His major weakness lies in a ten- dency to see Stalinism as in some way a legitimate offspring of Lenin- ism and, consequently, to see Trot- skyism with a jaundiced eye. For- tunately, it is not a very perceptible tendency and it does not detract from the value of his book, but a historian of Professor Carr’s calibre should try to rise above such pre- judices. For instance, he says of Bolshevisation in 1924 that ‘it would have been difficult to attach any other meaning to it, or to distinguish it from the policy, first embodied in the 21 conditions of 1920, of welding together all communist parties, on the well-tried and _ disciplined BOOK REVIEWS Russian model, into a single fighting organisation schooled for the revolu- tionary offensive’ (pp. 293-4). But he has already described it as ‘primarily an off-shoot of the Trotsky controversy’ and ‘the hallmark of opposition to Trotsky’. Taken in this context ‘bolshevisation’ cannot be cleared of the association with the bureaucratic degeneration taking place in the Soviet Union and in Comintern. The 21 Conditions were framed to deal with all manner of opportunist and conciliationist trends in order to build principled parties. Stalin ostensibly sought the same object, but Carr shows frequently that this meant in — practice finding docile leaders, left enough to ensure mass support, but in other respects remarkably similar to the ‘opportunist’ type leaders of the old Second International: these were the Pollitts, Thorezes, Thael- manns, Neumanns, Togliattis, etc., products of ‘bolshevisation’ and anti- Trotskyist to a man, of course, though with the name of Lenin ever on their lips. Right from the be-— ginning the ‘bolshevisation’ cam- paign must be seen with a scep- ticism which Carr unfortunately. does not show, although he is dis- cerning enough to underline its close connection with the struggle against Trotskyism. This was, however, not only a matter of ‘the more rigid insistence on doctrinal orthodoxy and on party discipline’. It is true that is the form in which it shows itself in the record. It is the task of the historian to go beyond the formal words of speeches and re- solutions and to examine in depth the structures of power from which they sprang and their social bases. Carr does not do this. Therefore, however carefully he has examined the records and however skilled his eye in extracting from masses of material the main lines of develop- ment it seems that he has missed the essential significance of the pro- cess he has depicted. The great value of Carr’s work should not blind the reader to the limitations of his assumptions and the defects of his method. It is a most valuable addition to the increasing number of works dealing with the inter- national communist movement. T.K. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL AUTUMN-WINTER 1964