The charge of genocide in the Soviet context can be difficult to place. Soviet mass killings took place against a variety of social classes and ethnic groups, but were never designed to completely exterminate them (Hollander 2006: xx, Naimark 2010: 24). The Soviet state, particularly under Stalin, but by no means limited to his tenure of power, was willing to repress “a wide variety of groups; no particular ethnic, religious, social, or political affiliation and no particular background conferred immunity” (Hollander 2006: xx). In order to understand Soviet mass killings, it is necessary to review the ideological development of Leninism, which this essay argues represented a departure from the socialist principle of worker’s self-management to the embrace of a doctrine that insisted on all power being concentrated in Bolshevik hands. This resulted first in the suppression of organs of working class power and political rivals and later in the highly bureaucratised and centralised Stalinist state and the mass killings that ensued.

Though the means by which socialism is to be attained is contested by a variety of intellectual traditions, socialism aims to “convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom” (Chomsky 1986: 3). In short, socialism refers to the “(m)astery over production by the producers” (ibid). Bakunin, Kropotkin and their contemporaries believed that socialist consciousness could only arise from the experience and growth of the working class itself. In stark contrast to this, Lenin criminally argued that “(c)lass political consciousness can be brought to the worker only from outside” (1902: 48). If workers are unable to develop socialist conclusions independently they must therefore be guided to them by a party of committed revolutionaries. To Leninists, the working class must be disciplined, subjected, as Trotsky put it, to “vigilant control from above” (cited in Chomsky 1986: 3). This entailed a necessary departure from socialist orthodoxy. For Stalin, Leninism switched “the centre of gravity of the problem from the outward recognition of Marxism to its implementation” (cited in Utechin 1958: 114). The Bolshevik’s ideological approach consisted of only a “small number of basic propositions of Marxian social philosophy in a dogmatic and slogan-like form, and a large body of Lenin’s ideas on organization and tactics for the conquest and maintenance of power by the party” (ibid.).

Bolshevik ideology in practice was not so much an expression of socialism but an assessment of “current political problems … analysed in terms of Lenin’s organizational and tactical principles and of past experience in their application” (ibid.). All spheres of life were related back to the exercise of power. Lenin identified morality, for example, as “what serves the destruction of the old society of exploiters, and the uniting of all toilers around the proletariat” (cited in Utechin 1958: 115). It has been argued that the Bolsheviks simply used socialism as a legitimising façade for what was really a program of one-party dictatorship (Ree 2001: 290). This is not to say that the Bolsheviks discarded socialism altogether. The party’s commitment to the destruction of the capitalist and landowning classes and private ownership of the means of production was a very real element of its project (ibid: 291). It can be seen, however, that it believed that this program was only achievable under the aegis of a one-party state. Indeed, it was in justifying state coercion as “necessary for the transition from capitalism to socialism” that Lenin made the assertion that there was “absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals” (1918: 268). Later in his life, Trotsky appraised this contempt for working class self-organisation as being particular to the conditions under which the Bolsheviks were until 1917 forced to work underneath Tsarism:

“The habits peculiar … to a political machine were already forming in the underground. The young revolutionary bureaucrat was already emerging as a type. The conditions of conspiracy, true enough, offered rather meager scope for such formalities of democracy as elections, accountability and control. Yet undoubtedly the Committee men narrowed these limitations considerably more than necessity demanded. They were far more intransigent and severe with the revolutionary working men that with themselves, preferring to domineer, even on occasions that called imperatively for lending an attentive ear to the voice of the masses” (cited in Brinton 1972: x).

Trotsky noted the unwillingness of the Bolsheviks to accept organisation outside their control as early as 1905, recalling, for example, how the “Petersburgh Committee of Bolsheviks was frightened at first by such an innovation as a non-partisan representation of the embattled masses” and approached the soviets “with an ultimatum: immediately adopt a Social-Democratic programme or disband” (cited in Brinton 1972: xi). This did not alter the position that Lenin had taken in 1902, that “the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness” (1902: 17). Even after the revolution, in 1918, he casually dismissed worker’s agency with the supposition that they could not be “enlightened socialists … because they have to slave in the factories and they have neither the time nor the opportunity to become socialists” (1918: 466). Lenin argued that any “worker-agitator who shows any talent and is at all promising should not work in the factory” (cited in Brinton 1972: xii). It becomes apparent that though the Bolsheviks had not abandoned socialism entirely, they had become declassed, neither belonging to the middle class from where it had drawn much of its leadership, nor the working class from where it based its support. As early 1905, the Bolshevik Party had contained the seeds of a new class (Wolfe 1965: 85).

It is with this in mind that the destruction of working class and peasant formations can be understood (Brinton 1972: 22, Lincoln 1989: 513). Lenin essentially saw Bolshevik and working class power as the same thing: “the power of the Bolsheviks-that is, the power of the proletariat” (1922: 40). Elaborating on this theme, he asserts that “(a)fter the 1905 Revolution, Russia was ruled by 130,000 landowners. They ruled by means of constant force over 150,000,000 people, by pouring unlimited scorn on them, by subjecting the vast majority to hard labour and semi-starvation”, before then arguing, “(a)nd yet we are told that Russia will not be able to be governed by the 240,000 members of the Bolshevik Party- governing in the interests of the poor and against the rich” (ibid: 25). The Bolsheviks never had any intention of allowing the people to rule themselves through their own organs, or to allow rival organisations representation.

At the time of the February Revolution, the Bolsheviks were only one group jockeying for influence among the people. Among these movements were the anarchists, Mensheviks, the Left Social Revolutionaries and Maximalists, to name some of the larger formations (Utechin 1958: 114). Following the coup, the Bolsheviks continued for some time to tolerate the presence of these groups and individuals. This was not only because they were frequently important to administrative functions throughout the country but because many were also capable of wielding significant levels force when necessary, as was the case with the anarchist Makhnovists in Ukraine and Left SR Green Army in the Tambov region (Lincoln 1989: 325, 470).

Lenin made swift moves to consolidate the Bolshevik position against these movements. Recognising that a multi-party system could eventually put the Bolsheviks in opposition, he successfully managed to reverse the Bolshevik Central Committee resolution to support a multi-party Central Executive Committee (CEC), the highest decision making body of Soviet state Internal divisions within rival parties allowed the Bolsheviks to consolidate their control over the CEC and disband the Constituent Assembly, despite the Bolsheviks holding a minority position within that body (Brovkin 1984: 378). This was not to mean that opposition parties had been removed from the equation. The Mensheviks, anarchists, SRs and others continued to wield considerable influence, winning local soviet elections throughout European Russia in the course of 1918, including the vitally important Kronstadt Soviet (ibid., Getzler 1983: 134). By 1918, however, the Bolsheviks determined to remove these obstacles.

On April 11-12, the Cheka assaulted 26 anarchist centres in Moscow, killing forty Black Guardsmen and arresting another 500, crippling the influential anarchist movement (Brinton 1972: 38). Soon thereafter in June, the Bolsheviks began disbanding newly elected soviets and arresting their delegates, primarily Mensheviks and SRs, prompting a strike wave in June largely called by non-Bolshevik worker’s assemblies of authorised representatives (upolnomocennye). The upolnomocennye were soon accused by the Bolsheviks of ‘sowing counter-revolution’, who proceeded to authorise the Cheka to carry out more arrests (Brovkin 1984: 380). The Bolsheviks proceeded to evict all Mensheviks and SRs from the CEC, followed by the Left SRs. Menshevik-led general strikes in Tula and Obuchov were put down by force and the physical elimination of the Mensheviks began in earnest. The upolnomocennye, despairing, declared in June,

“We are strangled by hunger. We are mangled by unemployment. Our children are dropping from lack of food. Our press has been crushed. Our organizations have been destroyed. The freedom to strike has been abolished. And when we raise our voice in protest they shoot us or throw us out as they did with the Obuchov comrades. Russia has again been turned into a Tsarist dungeon. We can’t keep on living like this” (cited in Brovkin 1984: 386).

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Fanny Kaplan, Socialist-Revolutionary hero of the revolution. Shot Lenin three times in 1918, severely injuring him. Subsequently murdered by the Cheka.

In July, upolnomocennye delegates from several cities met in Moscow, only to be arrested by the Cheka as party to a Menshevik plot. Though other groups continued to be present on regional soviets for some time after, they were effectively removed as threat to Bolshevik single-party rule (ibid: 382-84). The last serious threat to Bolshevik power came from the Kronstadt naval garrison, which ironically had formed close to 40% of the Bolshevik’s most loyal forces during the October coup (Getzler 1983: 154). In 1921 these sailors, frustrated with the harsh conditions they had been forced to endure, despite their full support of the revolution, and infuriated by the Bolshevik’s treatment of the Ukrainian peasantry, took up arms in solidarity with Petrograd workers striking against food shortages and wage decreases (Lincoln 1989: 492-93). The Kronstadt sailors made it clear that they intended to inspire a popular revolt against Bolshevik rule, declaring that they had “raised the banner of rebellion and are confident that tens of millions of workers and peasants will answer their call” (ibid: 507). This was not to be the case: the Bolsheviks reacted swiftly, launching a full-scale assault on the island. Despite taking heavy losses, the Bolshevik Red Army seized control and proceeded to carry out several hundred executions and the deportation of many more to labour camps. The elimination of all oppositional force to the Bolsheviks was now complete.

Having consolidated their power in the wake of the devastating civil war, the Bolsheviks now turned their attention to rebuilding the former empire according to their agenda. In 1923 the Bolsheviks introduced an indigenisation policy, korenizatsiia, intended as a reversal of imperial Russification policy, demanding that “the organs of the national republics and regions should be staffed mainly with people from among the local inhabitants who know the language, manner of life, habits and customs of the peoples concerned” (Stalin 1923: 6). A secondary, less acknowledged role of korenizatsiia was to “recruit members of the local nationality, and to socialize and train them” (Hammer 1997: 14) as loyal Bolshevik cadre. Despite this, the policy was especially successful among the Ukrainians, the second largest ethnic group in the former empire, to the extent that a strong element within the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine began to envision a new trajectory for Ukraine away from Russia. In 1927, the CP(b)U came under the influence of Mykola Skrpnyk, who, as Commissar of Education, pushed it even further away from Moscow. The CP(b)U was able to utilise the NEP and korenizatsiia to strength its presence in rural areas, reinforcing both local peasant associations and village soviets.

The CP(b)U apparently (and tragically) missed the point of Lenin and Stalin’s korenizatsiia policies. Rather than allowing increased autonomy from Moscow, the campaign was aimed primarily at restricting “Great-Russian Chauvinism”, which Stalin wrote provoked in subordinate nationalities a “defensive nationalism (that) often becomes converted into aggressive nationalism” (1923: 5). For the Bolsheviks, korenizatsiia was supposed to facilitate the formation of a new type of culture, “proletarian in content, national in form” (Stalin cited in Hammer 1997: 14). It was not, however, intended to provide a platform for dissonance opposed to Lenin and Stalin’s “preference for a politically and economically centralised state” (Raffass 2012: 64). Conscious that Bolshevik support was primarily drawn from ethnically Russian areas, Stalin had come to the conclusion that “the peasant question is the basis, the quintessence, of the national question … (T)here is no powerful national movement without the peasant army, nor can there be” (cited in Klid & Motyl 2012: xxxviii). In other words, the peasants as a class represented a potential base of support for national movements. The growth of peasant associations in Ukraine therefore posed an intolerable threat, especially in light of the recent defeat of nationalist and Makhnovist forces there that had had strong peasant foundations (Mace 1983: 132, Lincoln 1989: 327).

In 1926, Stalin began to adapt korenizatsiia in the Ukraine to his interests with a twofold strategy. First, he supported korenizatsiia within the party apparatus itself, encouraging Ukrainians to take key positions within the CP(b)U. This was designed to establish a reliable cadre loyal to the central government. Secondly, he opposed the indigenisation of the Ukrainian people, stating that it essentially represented the “forced assimilation” of non-Ukrainians within Ukrainian territory and, worse still, a possible rejection of “Russian culture and its highest achievement—Leninism” (cited in Hammer 1997: 15). By 1929, Stalin had decided to pursue a policy of collectivisation, partly to begin a process of rapid industrialisation and, significantly, to eliminate the peasantry as a potential political base. An integral part of this policy was the cessation of korenizatsiia. The first salvo in 1929 was levelled against the leading Ukrainian historian Matvyi Yavorsky, who was accused of “treating the history of Ukraine as a distinctive process”, implying that Ukraine “did not have its own history” and was therefore “not a distinctive country and ought not to be considered as such” (Mace 1983: 133). Charged with ‘wrecking’, the Ukrainian communist leadership was brought to trial and executed. The Bolsheviks now proceeded with a policy of collectivisation, with some 60 million peasants throughout the USSR forced onto collective farms with the goal of breaking “the back of the independent peasantry” (Naimark 2010: 54).

Core to the project of collectivisation was the liquidation of the wealthier layer of the peasantry, the ‘kulaks’. In reality, this category was largely imaginary, the kulaks often being merely peasants who happened to own a few more than the average number of cattle. The creation of this category was designed so that the “(r)est of the peasantry would at best take up cudgels against them in class hatred and, at worst, silently and obediently join the world of the collective farm” (ibid: 47). Between 1929 and 1932, some ten million people categorised as such were evicted from their lands, with many others executed: in 1930 alone some 20,201 death sentences were issued. In 1937, the NKVD (formerly the Cheka) were ordered to simply fulfil quotas of executions in an effort to crush any remaining resistance. That year some 386,798 were executed to fulfil those quotas. The collectivisation policy had still more wide-reaching consequences. Collectivisation and the elimination of the kulaks had caused such disruption that the country faced famine. The Bolsheviks responded by carrying out forced grain requisitions. In Ukraine, peasant uprisings against the policy were frequent, prompting Stalin to declare that “(n)o manner of deviation—regarding either amounts or deadlines set for grain deliveries—can be permitted” (cited in Naimark 2010: 72). The country was sealed, and peasants who attempted to leave in search of food were rounded up by the NKVD and returned, essentially condemning them to death. It is believed that some 1.45 million starved over the course of the famine, succeeding, as far as the Bolsheviks were concerned, in “breaking the Ukrainian peasantry as a political force” and completing the “destruction of the entire social structure of the Ukrainian nation” (Mace 1983: 133, Naimark 2010: 76).

Though the episodes described in this essay only provide a partial image of the extent of Soviet mass killings, they demonstrate that Bolshevik ideology and practice was designed not to empower the people of the former Russian Empire, but to simply subject them to a new authoritarian order. The gap between socialist theory and the reality of Bolshevik power reveals that the “term was redefined for their purposes by Lenin and Trotsky, who proceeded to create the basic proto-fascist structures converted by Stalin into one of the horrors of the modern age” (Chomsky 1986: 4).

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