Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!lll-crg!seismo!harvard!bbnccv!inmet!janw From: janw@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Communism as historical tragedy Message-ID: <28200354@inmet.UUCP> Date: Sun, 1-Dec-85 22:15:00 EST Article-I.D.: inmet.28200354 Posted: Sun Dec 1 22:15:00 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 7-Dec-85 15:22:22 EST References: <364@ubvax.UUCP> Lines: 56 Nf-ID: #R:ubvax:-36400:inmet:28200354:000:2837 Nf-From: inmet!janw Dec 1 22:15:00 1985 >>So I sat between two chairs in my reply, which is always a mistake. Oops, wrong idiom. Two stools is what I meant, but I was sitting between two languages... [Tom Tedrick] >The Tsar was able to mobilize enormous armies and it took several >years of enormous slaughter (millions of Russian troops killed) >before morale collapsed. Maybe a revolution would have taken >place anyway, but my bet would be that the Tsarist regime would >have been able to stay in power if no war had taken place. True about the armies and the slaughter. But the regime was almost completely alienated from the educated classes. After the 1905-07 revolution they were demoralized, but recuperated by 1912, and the cauldron was slowly but steadily heating. The regime proved incapable to do anything to prevent the end, except create a kind of proto-fascist (Black Hundred) movement. But it couldn't rely on them, either. It was an incred- ible kleptocracy; the palace clique was out-of touch with *all* classes; it would make Marie Antoinette's little circle look like sage and benevolent statesmen. The war caused a surge of patriotism; society decided to postpone its quarrel with the regime and cooperate. But gradually, what with the incompetence of the leadership and military setbacks, and one rifle per several soldiers, and spy rumors, and the Em- press being German, and Rasputin, and cabinet positions sold to dozens of adventurers, sometimes for a month or so, and advice of the most moderate or even rightwing parliamentarians arrogantly spurned - it took a lot of these and other things, but finally *no one* wanted the regime to survive. It was far worse than with the late Shah. >So if you are going to flame at me, flame at me for claiming that >communism would never have been victorious in Russia without some >kind of war playing a role. I hope I have made my self clearer >this time. You have, and I *agree* ! Sorry about misunderstanding you. Lenin got his one and only chance between March and November 1917, and *only* because of the war. It took that *and* Lenin's political genius to use this chance. I believe no once else then on the scene could have done that. So my bet is that - without the war - the Empire would have fallen, but the Bolsheviks wouldn't have come to power. They were a tiny group by March 1917. My bet in the center would be on the Socialist-Revolutionaries, on the periphery - various nationalist groups mostly with some Socialist flavor: the way it happened in Poland. I don't think pure liberal democracy would be very likely (except in Finland and the Baltic states). But it did have a chance, because of the brief (since 1905) parliamentarian and a longer (since the eighteen-sixties) local self-government experience. Jan Wasilewsky