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College notes The Other Europe
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The other Europe lecturesLecture 1 8/11/2022
Marxism: basic doctrines
- Ideology: A classless future where all people are equal
- We do not need a state, justification of a one party state
- Philosophy: historical materialism
- Revolutions in the economy lead to political revolutions
- History= history of class struggles
→ Putin in favour of old communism because it retained the aggressive west who tried to take
control over other countries (cold war battle now)
In Marxism: you can use the concept of historical materialism →
This was simplified to the 5-stage model:
1. Primitive society
2. Slave-holding society
3. Feudal society (mediaeval)
4. Bourgeois (capitalist) society: money transferred into power, see colonial exploitation and slave
labour
5. Socialism (leading to communism)
See: Communist Manifesto 1848 - Marx and Engels
- Communism and marxism come from class struggles, very deep frustration of
industrialisation (bourgeois vs. proletarians)
- Russia was not considered as a country where communism would take over because it had
mainly peasants
→Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great
classes directly facing each other - Bourgeoisie and Proletariat
- Socialist revolutions: mostly peasants and hardly bourgeoisie with social disruptions (such
as industrialization), bad working conditions etc. → because they have nothing to lose
they start to fight (class struggles)
“The social question”
- Early 19th century Europe; negative effects of industrialisation/capitalism:
- Urbanisation, poverty & uprooting of large groups within society
- New social inequality (classes) replace old hierarchies (estates; nobility)
→ Critique of private control over means of production, will lead to nationalisation of production
Marxism ‘scientific’ socialism
Karl Marx (1818-83)
- Critique of early socialist thinking as naïve and unsystematic
- Marx studied the textile industry in Lancashire in the 1840s
- Unites empirical studies (deprivation) + hegel's concept of dialectical stages of developments:
class struggle as the moving force in history
,Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
- Scientific prognosis: proletariat will seize power and realise socialism in the short term and
communism in the long run
German Social Democrats
- Ferdinand Lasalle, Allgemeine Deutscher Arbeiterverein (1863)
- August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei (1869) (a
workers movement, in sportclubs)
- Fusion 1875 to Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands
- Banned by (anti)Socialist laws in 1878. Readmitted in 1890s as SPD: strongest parliamentary
party (20-35%)
SPD Erfurt Program 1891:
- ‘Evolutionary path to socialism’ → Violent upheaval to remove the ruling class or a long-
term solution to outvote other party’s to succeed (improving lives, working conditions,
gain power through elections)
Tsar: Reform of Revolution?
- Peasants became the property of sovereignty
- Autocratic regime built on exploitation of peasantry (mid-19th century: 90% of the
population, majority of them serfs) proliferating the serfs from their serfdom
- After defeat Crimean War 1853-1856: latecomer in industrialisation and modernisation
- Liberation serfs 1861 (23 million people) [Comp USA: 3.5 million]
- Revolution moment initially geared at topping tsarist regime and liberation of peasantry
March 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II by Polish-Russian populist (Narodnaya Volya
‘People’s Will’)
- End of naïve populism, believed if they cut off the top (tsar) all other peasants will rise up
against their sovereign
→ but different outcome, sons of tsar Alexander II and Nikolay II: reactionary
conservatism, continued the exploitation
- Expanding industrialization for war to defend the country
Marxism in Russia
- Industrialisation; working class, poverty, exploitation
- 1883 Marxist ‘Group for the Emancipation of Labour’ (Georgii Plekhanov)
- Russian Social-Democratic Party 1898 composed of those wings
- Split 1903 over question whether mass or revolutionary cadre party
Two ways: Mensheviki (social democracy by a gradual build-up of industry and democratisation)
versus Bolsheviki (a small party of devoted members who do nothing than political work who
carry on the revolution in a violent coup) → bolsheviki: we know what is good for the nation and
therefore can include violence
1917 October Revolution in Russia (came from frustration of the people that Russia lost the war)
, - The government of 1917 wanted to remain aligned with France with the promise of
parts of Turkey (wanting to get a foothold at the other side of the Black Sea) → but the
interim government was toppled, the Soviets seized power and Russia later on terminated
the Triple Entente military alliance with France and Britain
- Lenin's success came from the fight against class against capitalism
- First successful socialist revolution → in a backward state
- Bolsheviks as revolutionary cadre party
- No collaboration with democratic institutions 1917
- After revolution: violent transformation of backward Russia ‘from above’
Lenin’s (1870-1924) April theses, 1917: a series of ten directives issued by the Bolshevik leader upon
his return from is exile
1) End of the predatory war for the capitalist government→ no more fighting over countries
but fighting against internal class and capitalism
2) Place power in the hands of the proletariat (‘All power to the Soviets!’), not a parliamentary
republic ‘claimed to be speaking for the proletariat, disobedience was not allowed’
(hypocritical)
3) Nationalisation of agricultural land…
‘We do not work anymore unless you…’ (councils organised by parties in order to take control
of the means of production by the workers) → relinquishing power to the people who were
working, no longer working for the factory boss but for the state
- All means of productions in the hand of the state
1917 February Revolution:
- three years of war causes starvation and costs
→Strikes → abdication of Tsar → provisional government (interim government)
Summer 1917: stalemate b/w Provisional Government and Soviets → provisional government
integrates socialist ministers, remains in war because: still no agreement between workers and
government
1917 october revolution: Bolsheviks take power
What is the 1917 October Revolution?
A socialist Coup d’Etat (of Lenin’s bolsheviks) against a socialist Government (the provisional
government) to prevent other socialist parties (especially the Mensheviks) from participation
- Underground affair taking control
Spring 1918: Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviki (majority of social democratic party) call for
democratic procedures > constituent assembly > dissolved by Lenin and his Bolsheviks
Lenin’s Party now ‘communist party’or KPR
- Civil war 1918-1921: bolsjevik’s won because they got all the parts of the old tsar russia
in their pocket → red army under Lenin vs. white army (opposition) for capitalism
, - Counterrevolutionary (white army) and moderate socialist forces against Bolsheviki leads to
invention of the powers (England, USA, Japan, France and others) helping the white army
- War communism: reckless mobilisation of all resources for bolshevik victory in Russian civil
war, attained 1920
→ Bol won because of their nationality policy, and wanted to invest in the minorities, the whites
didn't do that, they just wanted power over the Russians.
The evolution of Dictatorship
1. Exclusion of the propertied classes from political activity
2. Establishment of a one-party-government (mensheviks gone by 1920s)
3. Elimination of rival (Socialist) parties
4. Suppression of dissent and factions within the Communist party
5. Rise of one single faction and Stalin
Conservative estimates: between 1929 and 1956
More than 11 million killed by Stalinism;
- Collectivisation (1929-1931): circa 300.000 executed
- Famines 1932-1933: around 6 million deaths (especially ukraine [Holodomor: starvation],
Volga region and Kazakhstan)
- Years of terror (1937-1938): 681.000 shot, ‘peak of stalins paranoia’: ‘kill the remaining
enemies’
- Labour camps (Gulag): around 3 million died (of 15 million sent to the camps)
- People who were sent into administrative exile, or exiled after trial
→ enormous killing of your own nation, leading to enormous totalitarianism (some people
needed to be eliminated in order to ‘make space’ for others, for socialism)
Leninism (invented by Stalin)
- Lenin’s preeminence until 1921 (died in 1924): ‘who would be the next leader?’
- Secretary of the communist party: Stalin
- Succession struggle: one ‘correct’ interpretation of Lenin’s legacy by Stalin > end of limited
discussion within party
- “Leninism” legitimises distribution of powers & role of party
- Party leads and is legitimised through progress on road to socialism
- Stalin later eliminates all of lenin's comrades
The ‘great leap forward’ 1928-1933
The leader knows best: all other rules of church were not favoured but the leaders rule only mattered
- Forced modernisation as ‘class war’
- ‘Collectivisation’
Control and transformation of the resilient peasantry
Transfer of capital for industrialisation
- Industrialization
Five year plan: state controlled/ organised economy
Full mobilisation (:of the nation)
Coercion (GULAG): government agency in charge of Soviet labour camps
Lecture 2 11/11/2022
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