New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 12

[p022] New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 12. ‘The Era of Violence’. Cambridge University Press 1960, 37s. 6d. This is a history book dealing with You can’t stop that by the first half of this century. Each of its twenty chapters, written by an expert historian, is full of facts, figures and dates. Some of the chapters’ cover large quantities of material in twenty or thirty pages, and the effect is of a catalogue of separate ‘facts’. For apart from some tentative generalizations in the initial and- final surveys’ by the editor, David Thomson, the different subjects dealt with remain uncon- nected. The events described in this book involve upheaval, catastrophe and bloodshed. ‘Indeed ’, says the editor, ‘crisis is the most over-used yet unavoidable term in all historical studies of the period. But the scholar must preserve that deadpan acceptance of everything that happens which is the essence of academic objectivity. Take for example the international gangsterism of the period preceding the First World War. ‘On 14th December 1900 a secret agreement followed, whereby France promised Italy a free hand in Tripoli in return for recognition of France’s interests in Morocco.’ And the following year: ‘By the terms of the treaty, which was to last for five years, Japan appeared to gain more than England. By the first article each power recog- nized the other’s special interests in China, but England also recognized those of Japan in Korea, whereas the Japanese had refused to extend their obligations to cover India, Siam and the Straits Settlements.’ Not a hint of distaste, not a trace of irony disturbs the academic countenance as the diplomats and generals prepare the way for global slaughter. Isaac Deutscher’s excellent account of the Russian revolution is the out- standingly exceptional chapter. Unlike the other authors, Deutscher sees the events he deals with not just as things that happened at particular times and places, but as part of world history. Taking many ideas from Trotsky’s ‘History of the Russian Revolution ’, he shows how the war ‘ accelerated a process which had for decades been sapping the old order’. Based on an economy of agricultural poverty and -industrial backwardness, Tsarism was pulled into the world war. It was smashed by a mass move- ment of tremendous power which initially took even the revolutionaries

[p023] sss ESE — 7 BOOK REVIEWS by surprise. From the start, the industrial working class was the core of this movement of workers, peasants and soldiers. Deutscher describes the events of February-October 1917, which show the interrelation between the spontaneous energy of -the masses and the scientifically prepared actions of the Bolshevik leadership. The Bolsheviks ‘were the only party which in 1917 knew what they wanted and were capable of acting. They had a masterly understanding of all the factors of the upheaval and they represented a profound historic urge of the Russian people’. At the end of his essay, Deutscher assesses the extent to which the. Bolsheviks could not know the results of their actions. Here he provides for Marxists some interestingly controversial ideas, Was the assumption of Lenin and Trotsky that proletarian revolution in the West would be sparked off by the Russian revolution merely a semi- illusion? Was Stalin’s theory of ‘Socialism in One Country’, with all its consequences, a piece of ‘realism’? _Or, despite all their errors of tempo were Lenin and Trotsky not correct in seeing the Russian revolution as the beginning of the coming to power of the working class internationally? Were they not right in seeing this historical process as the only way in which the era of imperialist violence would be ended, and in recognizing the need to prepare the political instrument which would complete this process—the World Bolshevik Party? In any case, Deutscher’s final sentence will not be opposed by Marxists: ‘The day of 25 October/7 November 1917 stands like a huge and indes- tructible landmark in the annals of mankind; and although by no means all the implications of the upheaval then initiated have come to light by the middle of the century, the October Revolution can already be seen to have initiated Russia’s extraordinary ascendancy as a world power and also to have found a gigantic sequel in the Chinese revolution.’ This volume is a useful source of information, but as a_ historical analysis of this ‘era of violence’, it is inevitably unsuccessful. For this epoch can only be understood when viewed, not from the professorial chair, but from the standpoint of working-class struggle. CS. Depth Image