Adam Ciołkosz

50 years of the Comintern. A False Perspective and Uncompleted Plans

Fifty years.... How many good and bad things happened fifty years ago, after the fifty years of the shaky equilibrium and relative peace. The equilibrium was shaky, because it rested on the double alliance between France and Russia and on the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria, and Italy, and every such system sooner or later ends in disaster. That system lasted exceptionally long. The peace was relative, because it was interrupted time and time again by outbreaks in the Balkans and finally by the Russo-Japanese War, which portended the nearing of a certain great storm. Two of its elements were certain: the military defeat of Russia, followed by the revolution in Russia, the overthrow of tsarism, and the fall of that prison of nations.

The Communists are now writing the history of events as if the Russian troops had not been defeated at all and as if the 1917 coup d’état had been born from the underground activity of the revolutionaries, and, last but not least, as if the revolution had occurred as late as in November (or October, O.S.). But the historical truth is different. The Russian revolutionaries’ courage and sacrifice were unparalleled and they also fertilized the ground and prepared it for the overthrow of tsarism. The Decembrists, the Zemlya i volya, the Narodnaya Volya, and the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries and social-democrats deserve an honorable place in history. But after the fall of the revolution of 1905, a long and dark night fell in Russia.

The perpetrators of the 1917 coup were not Russian revolutionaries. Its midwives were German generals, Hindenburg1 and Ludendorff.2 If it had not been for them and their victories, Lenin and Stalin would have lived until the end of his life in Switzerland and Siberia respectively, and no one would even know that individuals by those surnames (or rather pseudonyms) have ever existed. By provoking the First World War and crushing the tsarist armies, Wilhelm II3 and his Generals gave Russia and the world a revolution on the banks of Neva and Moscow. The list of Russian actors of the events of the first revolution of 1917 is long. It is opens with the recently deceased Prince Yusupov,4 an organizer of the palace conspiracy and the assassination of Rasputin.5 Many names can be included on this list, but it is certain that neither Lenin, nor Trotsky, nor Stalin, nor any other leader of the Bolshevik Party were on it.

The Bolshevik party had been crushed. Its leaders had dispersed. It was only after the March (or February, O.S.) Revolution that they began to flock back to Russia. Lenin arrived in Saint Petersburg in April 1917 and immediately proceeded to carry out the “changeover,” that is a thorough revision of the Bolshevik Party’s theory and practice. Over the next fifty years, there were many changeovers in Russia, as a result of which black became white and vice versa. The April 1917 changeover was the most significant. Without it, the whole series of events that led to the subjugation of a third of the world population to communist dictatorships would not have taken place.

The difficulty in carrying out that change of arms consisted in overcoming the resistance within the Bolshevik Party. The participants of the 7th party congress were astonished when they heard the presentation of the party’s new doctrine which Lenin had brought them from the Swiss city of Bern. Until then, the dispute between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks had been about who would be the hegemon of the Russian revolution: the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, but the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution was not questioned by either of them. In April 1917, Lenin revealed at the party congress that the bourgeois revolution would then “shift” into a socialist revolution (Lenin used the German term Umschlag).

The Congress accepted the revelation made to it by Lenin — and that was when it became a Bolshevik rule that the political diagnoses and the political will came from the top down. Like in an army: whoever has more stars is automatically right and wiser. In the Bolshevik parties, wiser are the Political Bureau and the First Secretary. Back then, there was no Political Bureau or First Secretary, but there was Lenin and he was the wisest. In the Bolshevik milieu, his genius was not questioned in any way.

 

THE THREE MISTAKES OF DEMOCRACY

 

The Bolsheviks’ victory over Russian democracy came about in the same way as the victory of the German troops over the tsarist armies. The mistakes and weaknesses of the victors’ opponents were the victors’ strength. Russian democracy should have done three things: sign a peace treaty, declare a republic, and give land to the peasants. It should have done that in a revolutionary mode, namely without paying attention to any legal subtleties. But the Russian democracy was determined to establish a republican system and carry out an agrarian reform, namely, to give the pomeshchyks’ land to the peasants, but do so solemnly, by acts of the constituent assembly, and that required time. The delay was beneficial to the defenders of the old order on the one hand and to the Bolsheviks on the other hand.

The most pressing matter was to make peace. The Russian armies were crushed, demoralized, poorly armed, and badly commanded. The moment they stopped fighting after the outbreak of the March Revolution, no force in heaven or on earth could have forced them to continue shedding their blood on the front line, especially after hearing the news that the state “would give land.” Lenin’s peculiar greatness boils down to the fact that he understood that for the revolution to persist and not fail like that of 1905 it was absolutely necessary to end the war.

Lenin not only understood that necessity, but did everything necessary to end the war. Neither Kerensky nor Trotsky understood that.6 In the name of the indivisibility of the Russian lands and fidelity to the Entente, Kerensky tried to continue waging the war and launched an offensive in Galicia, thus violating the principle of “no annexations or contributions.” He broke his neck politically by doing that, and the democratic revolution broke its neck along with him. Trotsky refused to sign the peace treaty in Brest-Litovsk and came up with the witty formula “neither war nor peace,” but the Germans refused to accept it. The German troops were close to occupying Petrograd. Lenin saved the day. He pushed the signing of the peace treaty with Germany in the Central Committee and then led to the passing of a secret resolution at the 7th Bolshevik Party Congress, which automatically declared null and void every treaty concluded with the bourgeois government (that resolution has never been repelled and remains in force today).

Lenin needed the April Theses to convince his own comrades that their task, first and foremost, was to overthrow democracy in Russia. He achieved that goal and after the failed July attempt, he seized power in November. Officially, all power belonged to the “soviets of delegates of workers, soldiers, and peasants” (in this order), but in the soviets of delegates all power belonged to the Bolshevik party, and in the Bolshevik party — to Lenin. Lenin’s power was not institutional, but actual. The man who had led the Party to victory had extraordinary authority in it. Lenin did not give orders, argue, propose or advise. We know from published documents that the party addressee usually added a few words to Lenin’s conclusion: “I agree with Comrade Lenin’s opinion,” and that was it.

Lenin gave power to the Bolshevik Party. What did he give Russia?

 

LENIN’S PROGNOSIS

 

He promised to give her peace and land. Peace he gave, but for a very short time — the Bolshevik coup led to a civil war that lasted four years, cost 4,500,000 lives, and inflicted indescribable destruction on Russia. He gave land, but only for a while — the distribution of the land to the peasants was followed by agricultural communes, and then kolkhozes and sovkhozes. All land became “social” property. A new landowner was born, an oppressor unlike any other seen in agriculture anywhere in the world.

Closing the session of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Deputies, Lenin promised to build socialism in Russia. He calculated that that would take several months, but it was only in 1934, at the “Congress of Winners,” that he announced that the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union had been completed. By socialism both Lenin and Stalin understood abolition of private ownership of means of production, distribution, and exchange, paired with a planned economy. Both of those things had been done, but that was not socialism.

The Soviet Union created a system of intensive industrialization of the country, which was backward in every respect, basing almost exclusively on Russia’s own natural resources and its own labor force. An eminent theorist of socialism, the late English Marxist John Strachey7 argues that the same degree of economic development could have been achieved in Russia in the same amount of time without using the inhuman methods utilized by Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Of course, there can be no counter-experiment in history, so Strachey’s thesis cannot be tested on Russian soil. But it is certain that the cost of “building socialism” in the Soviet Union was terribly high.

When on 7 November 1917 Lenin said: “We are now starting to build socialism,” did he realize what path he started Russia on? According to his vision of the future, it was certainly necessary to start with Russia as the “weakest link” in the chain of the capitalist system. With equal certainty, his vision predicted the breaking of the entire chain, link by link, and with lightning speed at that. Initially, Lenin assumed that the revolution would spread onto Germany, and then — after the Russian and German revolution had merged — onto other highly industrialized countries of the West. In November 1918, it seemed to him that history would take precisely that course. He did not see his mistake until the end of 1923, at the very end of his life. That mistake cost Russia dearly.

Lenin introduced many changes in the course of the “changeover.” His party, which until then had been called the Russian Social Democratic Party (Bolsheviks), was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Lenin believed that that name would be much more attractive to all workers in the world than the name which he regarded as discredited and which included the words “socialist” or “social-democratic.” Lenin’s party also got a new platform, the axis of which was the following thesis: “The era of the international proletarian communist revolution has begun.”

Lenin’s prediction was wrong. Nevertheless, on that erroneous prediction built were Leninism and the Communist International (abbreviated the Comintern) in terms of the doctrine and organization respectively. The Comintern was conceived as a unified and highly centralized communist organization of the whole world, or actually as a single and unified communist party for the whole world, with national sections.

 

THE CONGRESS IN MOSCOW

 

The Comintern’s founding congress was held in Moscow during 2‒6 March 1919. If it were not for its consequences, it should be called a farce. Invitations to the Congress were signed and publicized on the radio by Commissar for Foreign Affairs Chicherin, who thus confirmed that the state and party apparatuses were one and the same. Fifty-two delegates represented thirty countries, but only five delegates actually arrived from abroad. Those were: Hugo Eberlein8 from Germany, Steinhardt9 from Austria, Grimlund10 from Sweden, Stange11 from Norway, and Rutgers12 from the United States of America. Plus perhaps Captain Jacques Sadoul,13 who had been in Russia for a long time as a member of the French military mission. The rest of the delegates were either Russians or émigrés or refugees driven by war into the interior of Russia. The Communist Workers’ Party of Poland was represented by Józef Unszlicht14 (pseudonym Jurowski), who had been a prisoner or exile in Russia for several years (he died in 1937 in the NKVD dungeons).

Following instructions received in Berlin, a delegate of the Spartacus Union from Germany argued against establishing the new International so as to avoid an ultimate split in the working class. Lenin ignored his advice. He had always believed in the power of facts accomplished. Hence, that time too he was certain that the very news of the founding of the Communist International would rouse millions of workers in Western Europe and North America, and that those millions would drive away old leaders, break away from the “reformist” socialist parties and trade unions, set up new communist parties and fill their ranks — in short, that the events of the Russian October would repeat on a global scale.

Lenin proved to be an astute player when it came to Russia, but a complete ignorant when it came to the non-Russian world. He had spent many years outside Russia, but in the milieu of Russian émigrés. Hence, he was clueless about the countries and nations in which he lived. It seemed to him that all workers in the world were the same as the Russian ones and that the modus operandi suitable for the backward and autocratic Russia would be equally good for economically developed countries, which provided their inhabitants with some civil liberties and political rights. Above all, however, Lenin failed to appreciate the power of the patriotic feelings that animated the working masses.

 

THE LEADERS AND THE MASSES

 

In the later polemics, Lenin and his confidants reduced the whole issue to the attitude of the governing bodies of socialist parties, particularly the attitude of parliamentary clubs at the outbreak of the First World War and their voting in favor of the war credits. Indeed, on 4 August 1914 in the Reichstag all German social democrats (including Karl Liebknecht)15 voted in favor of war credits, while both the Menshevik and Bolshevik deputies to the Duma did not dare do anything more than abstain from voting. Across Europe, only two socialist MPs in the Serbian skupština voted against the war credits.

But it was not about how the parliamentary clubs voted, for their attitude could not have significantly affected the later course of events because the war machine was already in full swing on both sides. The thing was that the working masses on either side of the front did not start the revolution to which they had been obliged by a resolution of the 1907 International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart. That resolution, or rather an appendix to the indisputable resolution that condemned the war, called on the workers to respond to the outbreak of the war with a revolution and overthrowing the capitalist rule. The authors of that appendix were: Lenin (a Bolshevik) and Rosa Luxemburg (a social democrat).

That resolution, or rather the appendix to it, was typical of Lenin’s methods. He set others tasks which they had to carry out. As for him, he was staying in Cracow and Poronin and he did not go to the session of the International Socialist Office in Brussels held during 29‒30 July 1914 even though war was already in the air and the session focused on the war threat. Instead, he sent to it a fairly unimportant man, a certain Popov.16 After the outbreak of the war, Lenin spent 12 days in prison in Nowy Targ and then settled in Switzerland, and from where he criticized the French, Belgian, English, German, Polish and all other socialists for failing to comply with the Stuttgart resolution.

There is no need to defend the German socialists and their attitude during the war of 1914‒1918. It must be said, however, that Lenin’s Stuttgart resolution was unrealizable. Yes, it was carried out by all kinds of Russian socialists but not at the outbreak of the war, but three years later, and only after the Russian war machine had been crushed and tsarism had suffered both a military and political defeat. That was when Lenin arrived in Russia, getting everything without lifting a finger. The method of drafting revolutionary resolutions and appeals, regardless of whether the situation was conducive to a revolution or not, was introduced by Lenin to the Communist International and passed on to his successors. That method evolved into a custom of assigning tasks and giving instructions to workers around the world based on the assessment of the situation as seen from Moscow. As the perspective was erroneous, the tasks remained unresolved and the orders — unexecuted.

 

THE STAFF WAS THERE. THE REVOLUTION WAS NOT

 

The most fundamental error in the reasoning of Lenin and his successors was the purely voluntaristic thinking, which completely negated dialectical and historical materialism, and therefore also the official Bolshevik philosophy. Lenin never understood or recognized that leaders of the working class had to take into account the degree of maturity, the consciousness, the political will and the material conditions of the masses they were leading. In other words, there were boundaries which they could not cross, even if they wished to. The fierce and hateful struggle waged by Lenin and Leninists against the socialist democratic parties stemmed from the fact that those parties had a sense of responsibility for their words and that they were aware of the difference between a resolution and a revolution. Lenin and his disciples had always thought that for a revolution to break out it was enough to issue an appropriate resolution.

 

“HISTORIC REGULARITY”

 

Lenin believed that the working class masses were like army battalions, which had to be given orders and which not only had to but also wanted to obey them — in the name of the triumph of the revolution. If the workers in Western Europe did not go out to the barricades and start a revolution, it was apparently because their leaders did not want that. Change the leaders — and the workers of the world would take the right path. When the revolution did not start despite the change of the leaders and the new communist parties being led by unsuspected revolutionaries, Moscow reacted by liquidating some of the communist leaders and replacing them with others, who after some time fell victim to a new purge. But in Lenin’s opinion that was the key to the future and the key to history.

Until the end of his life, Lenin, and after his death, his successors devised “historical regularities,” that is regularities which made it possible to infallibly predict the future course of events. In their opinion, such regularities included: the inevitability of the proletarian revolution, the system of the soviets of delegates and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the Communist Party, the top-down and centralized building of socialism — all of that according to the model created in Russia. That was the meaning and the purpose of the Comintern; it was to serve as the general staff of the international communist revolution. The staff was there, but the revolution was not. Save for two apparent exceptions, the Russian pattern did not repeat itself in any country in Western or Central Europe.

The first exception was Hungary, but the Hungarian Soviet Republic survived for a very short time, only a few months; it was not protected by the immense steppes like in Russia. But it still managed to stifle the infant Hungarian democracy and pave the way for a reactionary dictatorship. The other exception was Bavaria, where the Soviet republic was proclaimed not by communists, but by anarchists and independent socialists. Overthrown by the army, it was even more short-lived. The communist revolution across Europe, which according to Grigory Zinoviev, the first chairman of the Comintern and Lenin’s right hand, was to take place in the course of one year, did not break out either during Lenin’s or Stalin’s lifetime, and it shall never occur.

But during the interwar period, the Comintern undoubtedly strengthened the reactionary forces in the West, especially in Germany. The Bolsheviks rewarded Hindenburg for overthrowing tsarism by bringing the Field Marshal to the position of the President of the Weimar Republic in 1925. They put up the candidacy of “transport worker” Thälmann17 and thus weakened the democratic Weimer coalition’s common candidate. Doing that, they paved the way for Hitler. And then came another Umschlag, one of many, but that time of exceptional significance: Stalin’s alliance with Hitler and the treaty of friendship between the Soviet Union and the fascist German Reich.

Initially, Lenin dreamed of an international Bolshevik revolution, with the Comintern as its general staff. Later (shortly after Lenin’s death), Stalin proclaimed a “relative stabilization of capitalism” and the building of socialism in one country. The Comintern was reduced to the role of an appendage to the Narkomindel (People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs). In that capacity, it ordered all communist parties in the world to adapt their policy to the demands of the foreign policy of the Russian state. Pursuing the policy of friendship with Nazi Germany became the Comintern’s moral grave, a defeat incomparably more severe than that which that voting in favor of the war credits had been for social democracy. After all, the 1914 voting in favor of the war credits was consistent with the outbreak of patriotism in the working masses, while the support for Hitler was an abomination in the eyes of the working masses.

 

HISTORY’S REVENGE

 

In 1943, the Comintern was dissolved. In any case, at that time it was just a hindrance to the Soviet Union’s foreign policy. That was after the victory at Stalingrad. The Comintern should have called for a communist revolution [to establish?] a German communist republic the moment when the Nazis suffered a defeat in the war. But by then the course of history had already taken an 180-degree turn. Lenin hoped for the German revolution but he did not live to it, while Stalin did not want the communist German revolution. He feared two things at the same time: that it would be a feigned revolution and that it would be a real revolution. The feigned revolution would have been dangerous, while the real revolution did not fit Stalin’s plans. Nor did he wish for a conflict with the Anglo-Saxon Allies over West Germany. He preferred to crush Germany and overpower it, including the part of Germany which he got.

The brief existence of the International Information Bureau of Communist and Workers’ Parties (abbreviated the Cominform) during 1947‒1956, which was an attempt to transfer the communist revolution to Italy and France based on the Eastern European countries controlled by the communist parties, proved one thing only: that in the history of the international communist movement, the era whose slogan was “ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer” had ultimately ended. In the fall of 1948, Broz-Tito, the communist leader of a small Balkan state, dared disobey Stalin and got away with it. At that moment, after thirty years, in communism ended the epoch of the universal “historical regularity,” according to which the leading role in the “socialist camp” belonged to the Soviet Union. By the force of events, the Soviet Union ceased to be the sole “homeland of the world proletariat.”

During the 1957 and 1960 councils in Moscow and then in the 1961 platform of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, attempts were made to construct a new universal “historical regularity” that would give Moscow the leading role, but — as we know — those attempts failed. The new attempt to be made in May 1969 at another Moscow council is bound to fail too, not because Moscow theorists Boris Ponomarev18 and Mikhail Suslov19 lack talent. Both of them have already “proven” so many mutually contradictory theses and they have done so many salti mortale that they can make yet another turn. The difficulty will consist in the “empty seat” of the representative of the Communist Party of China, nowadays the largest communist party in the world.

Exactly on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the First Congress of the Communist International, brutal fighting took place on the Sino-Russian border. In Beijing, crowds took to the streets, chanting: “Hang Kosygin.”20 History’s revenge consists in the translation of Lenin’s teachings into Chinese, that is, their translation into Chinese mentality and interests. After losing the bet on a revolution in Germany, Lenin claimed that communism would overthrow the imperialist powers of England and France, dealing them a blow indirectly through the Asian and African colonial states. Mao Zedong claimed that he would overthrow the imperialist powers of the United States and the Soviet Union using the power of peoples of Asia, Africa, and South America. Fifty years ago Lenin claimed that the center of the world revolution had shifted to Russia. Mao Zedong argues that the center of the revolution has now shifted to China — and this is Mao Zedong’s historical Umschlag.

We have no need or reason to declare our support for either side. Instead, it seems fitting to repeat after Heine:21 “it is unfortunate to feel them both.” However, it is not about sentiments, but about the international situation. The fact of the split in the international communist movement is one of the most important events of the 20th century. Here, too, quantity turns into quality. For Moscow, Tito’s heresy was an unpleasant bodily ulcer, but Yugoslavia could have never threatened Russia’s security. Things are different with China.

By the way, it is noteworthy that history has disproved Lenin’s theory that imperialism is the final stage in the development of capitalism (this theory has always been a foundation of Leninism). The great Latin American socialist Victor Alba22 developed a contradictory theory namely that imperialism is the first stage in the development of capitalism. As we can see, it was not Lenin but Alba who was right.

 

DEFEAT AT THE VISTULA

 

History is not written in a conditional mode, but it sometimes makes sense to consider all possible variants. Today, it is a historical certainty that if in 1918 the Polish working class had listened to the communist party, if it had joined Poland to Soviet Russia (for back then everything depended on the attitude of the working class), the fate of Europe would have been different and Zinoviev’s prophecy would have indeed come true in a year. But things were different. The attitude of the Polish worker and the courage of the Polish soldier saved entire Central and Western Europe in the critical years of 1918 and 1920.

I shall not argue that back then the Polish worker, peasant, and soldier were motivated by the thought of France, Italy, Sweden, and other distant countries, because that was not the case. They were thinking about Poland, working for Poland, fighting for Poland, and dying for Poland. From their point of view, the salvation of Central and Western Europe was an unintended by-product of the struggle for Poland. But statesmen and then historians should be aware of how the cause of Poland’s freedom is connected with the cause of the freedom of Europe. These connections have been repeatedly proven over the past two hundred years. But I shall not write here about the duties of gratitude, because such a concept does not exist in international relations. We must make do with recalling what it was like at the time when Lenin wanted to melt entire mankind into one world Soviet republic and when he failed because of the defeat on the Vistula River.

Of course, one could say that 25 years later Poland fell into in the hands of the Soviet army and was at Moscow’s disposal. But it was a different historical era. It was no longer possible to subjugate Poland to Moscow in the same form as e.g. Ukraine had been subjugated. Moreover, conquering Poland during 1918‒1920 would have opened the way for Soviet Russia to the Atlantic, while in 1945 that was already impossible.

 

FEAR IS ENOUGH

 

The 50th anniversary of the founding congress of the Comintern was celebrated very solemnly in Moscow and, at Moscow’s inspiration, also by all the communist parties obedient to it. Of course, the Presidium in the Kremlin is well aware of the impossibility of restoring the unity of the communist movement. What is done cannot be undone. The goal is to reassure those who have lost their faith, attract the young generation, and direct the thoughts and feelings toward the Kremlin once again, like during the heroic, pioneering, and youthful times of Bolshevism throughout the six years of Lenin’s rule. But history is not a movie that can be projected onto a screen as many times as we want. Instead of the face of Lenin the fanatic, on the screen of history we see the faces of dumb bureaucrats like Brezhnev and Kosygin.

Likewise, the doctrine of Leninism is no longer surrounded with the glory of a revolutionary legend. The 40 volumes of Lenin’s writings — the Koran of communism, today available in full also in Polish, allows us to state the boorishness of this supposedly great man, who thought he could encapsulate all possibilities of the development of entire mankind in a few brutalized formulas. The magic of Lenin and Leninism as the key to understanding and shaping the future of the world has proved an unreliable and useless tool. It is characteristic that communism seems to be denying its own past. Once a reason for pride and glory, the name “Bolshevism” has come out of use and its traces are being carefully erased. All that remains is the science of how to gain and maintain power through deception and trickery, through force and violence. In history there remain the rivers and seas of the spilled human blood and the gulags and purges as the only real “historical regularity” associated with communist dictatorships.

The timid Czech attempt to “give communism a human face” was run over with tanks. Leninism does not need a human face. All it needs is fear.

 

A CORPSE WITHOUT A SOUL

 

Fifty years is a lot in the life of man, almost an entire life, while in the history of mankind — it is just a glimpse. The last fifty years have brought mankind two great experiences, both painful and horrible. I am talking about the experiences of Russian communism and German fascism. These experiences are usually associated with Stalin and Hitler, but this association is historically wrong. They should be associated with Lenin and Hitler.

The Nazi experiment lasted twelve years or twenty-three if we add the Italian rule of Mussolini, who was John the Baptist23 of fascism as an international current. The Leninist experiment has continued for fifty. I shall not prophesy here how long it might last, for its powerful arsenal of nuclear bombs is its ultima ratio. Hence, let me just say that it has lost its soul and what is left is a mummy waiting for the events to bury it in the graveyard of history.

 

“50 lat Kominternu,” in: Tydzień Polski (London), no. 11 and 12, 15 and 22 March 1969.