The real Bolsheviks?

"The Other Bolsheviks. Lenin and His Critics" by Robert Williams is a study of the political, philosophical and pecuniary conflicts *within* Bolshevism during the period 1904-1914. The author is a Harvard-educated professor of history. The main characters in his story, apart from Lenin, are A A Bogdanov, A V Lunacharsky and Maxim Gorky. Stalin and Leonid Krasin stars supporting roles.

I procured this book in the belief that it contained a detailed analysis of Bogdanov's and Lunacharsky's respective philosophies, known as Tectonics and God-building. It didn't, although it touches on the issue. Still, "The Other Bolsheviks" is interesting reading. An "alternative" history of early Bolshevism, it contains a number of startling claims, most of them previously unknown to the present reviewer.

It turns out that Lenin's Bolshevik faction was financed by wealthy middle class donors, including Russian industrialists (i.e. capitalists). The Moscow HQ of the Bolsheviks during the abortive 1905 revolution, from which they attempted to stage an armed uprising, turns out to have been an industrial plant the owner of which secretely supported the revolutionary movement. Even more curiously, some of the pro-Bolshevik industrialists were Old Believers, i.e. supporters of a conservative, dissident group of Orthodox Christians! Lenin's go-between with "the religious sects" was a certain Bonch-Bruevich, a kind of ethnographer who wrote scholarly articles on Russian dissenters, while simultaneously attempting to woo them to the Bolshevik side.

Two other important financial contributors to the Bolshevik cause were the author Maxim Gorky and his companion, the actress Maria Andreeva. Some Bolshevik conferences were held at Gorky's residence at the Italian resort of Capri. More well known are the Bolshevik bank robberies and train robberies (some of them organized by Stalin), which contributed substantial sums of money to the faction's treasury, but also led to severe problems with the police in several European nations. The Mensheviks weren't amused either, and threatened to officially expel the Bolsheviki from the Russian Social Democratic Party due to these illegal activities. More sensational were the attempts by Bolshevik operative Krasin to divert a Japanese-funded arms shipment, intended for anti-Czarist activist Father Gapon, into Bolshevik hands. (Japan and Russia were hostile nations.) The shipment was organized by a Finnish socialist, but he and Gapon were persuaded by Krasin to let the Bolsheviks get the weapons instead. "The Other Bolsheviks" also mentions that Lenin threatened to sue the German Social Democrats over money they held in trust for the Russian Social Democrats (pending the unification of their party).

Bolshevism was never a monolithic movement before the late 1920's (when former bank robber Stalin made it such). During the period under discussion, Lenin was often in sharp conflict with Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, who represented a kind of "left" Bolshevism, more sectarian than Lenin's version, but also more syndicalist-sounding. Gorky tended towards the "lefts", probably attracted by their curious philosophy, but eventually threw his weight (and money) behind Lenin, apparently after a purely personal fall-out with Bogdanov (Andreeva didn't like him either). The author dubs Bogdanov and Lunacharsky "collectivists", in the sense that they emphasized the importance of the working class collective over and above the hierarchic vanguard party envisioned by Lenin. Lunacharsky attempted to create a new religion of Man, based on the idea of collective immortality. The (heroic?) individual lives on in the memory of the collective. Bogdanov developed "Tectonics", a precursor of modern systems theory, and communicated his political ideas through a work of science fiction, "Red Star" (yes, it's about a socialist revolution on Mars, the red planet). Both Bogdanov and Gorky speculated about the literal abolition of death through advanced technology, a notion similar in some ways to those of Nikolai Fyodorov and the Cosmists (see my review of "The Russian Cosmists" by George Young).

It's interesting to note that Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and many other Marxists at the time were fascinated by the relativist and positivist philosophy of Ernst Mach, a renowned Austrian physicist. On the basis of Mach and Richard Avenarius (a Swiss philosopher with similar ideas), Bogdanov argued that all truth was relative. Statements of "truth" were simply useful tools. Bold action for socialism is "true" from the viewpoint of the revolutionary working class. Technological mastery of Nature by humanity is also "true" in this sense. Dualist metaphysics should be rejected, since mind and matter are really the same thing. From this, Bogdanov reached the conclusion that ideas and consciousness can change the world, even without a hardened vanguard party. What matters is to spread revolutionary consciousness in the working class as a whole. The syndicalist tendency is obvious here, but note the technocratic tendency (which points in a different direction) in Bogdanov's emphasis on science, technology, the intelligentsia, etc. Note also the potentially voluntarist-adventurist consequences of a strong belief that revolutionary "ideas" can change reality. The author points out the similarities between the Bogdanovites and George Sorel in France. It's not entirely clear what Mach himself thought of the controversy, but as a moderate reform socialist and respectable scientist, he can't have been amused! The position of the "left" Bolsheviks seems to have been that collective will-power and bold action can topple the system and usher in a Communist utopia. The similarity with anarchism, but also with fascism, is striking. Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and other collectivists had a strong aversion to individualism, viewed as a typical "bourgeois" idea. The "I" must be extinguished and individuals should make self-sacrifices for the common good of the collective: the working class, the Russian people, etc. Here, too, Mach was seen as an inspirator, due to his "Buddhist" ideas about the destruction of individuality. Or so he was interpreted.

Lenin wasn't amused. Needing followers and funds, he originally agreed to make a philosophical truce with Bogdanov, since they seemed to agree on politics. Later, the conflict became inevitable, as the "lefts" demanded a Bolshevik boycott of the Russian state duma, a move hotly opposed by Lenin. (The duma - an elected parliament - was a token concession by the Czar made after 1905, but one that the revolutionary parties could nevertheless exploit as an arena for propaganda). Lenin dashed off "Materialism and Empiro-Criticism", a turgid criticism of Mach and Avenarius, but also a (mostly veiled) broad-side against Bogdanov and Lunacharsky. That being said, Vladimir Illich was probably right that Machism was a new form of idealism, having little or nothing to do with Marxism as usually concieved.

I don't always agree with the author's take on things. Thus, he often claims that squabbling over party funds was an independent variable explaining many factional conflicts within Russian Social Democracy. This is hardly likely on Lenin's part. After all, the author admits that Lenin took every disagreement (including philosophical ones) very seriously indeed. Still, Robert Williams' book is intriguing, despite its super-boring, scholarly style. It's even amusing, in a wry kind of way, for those familiar with the antics of the sectarian far left. It seems Lenin did everything wrong by modern Trotskyist-Stalinist standards! Let's see: he threatened to sue another socialist group in a "bourgeois" court, he declared a philosophical truce with an enemy of dialectical materialism (Schachtman and Burnham later used this against Trotsky), he took money from capitalists and Orthodox Christians (popular front, anyone?), his followers robbed banks (petty bourgeois adventurism, anyone?) and he was even willing to lay his hands on an arms shipment financed by an enemy nation (imperialist Japan, remember?).

Somehow, I found this book more revealing than Richard Pipes' ridiculous tome "The Unknown Lenin"!

It's also fascinating to speculate about what would have happened if Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and Gorky had gotten the upper hand within Bolshevism. Probably nothing: Sorel, Labriola, Bellamy or Mach didn't make any revolution, so why should we expect the Russian empiriomonists to do so? Still, I can't help wonder if their techno-utopianism, anti-individualism, emphasis on ideas and will-power, and quasi-religious attitude has more in common with the true Communist ethos than Lenin's turgid writings...

In a strange kind of way, perhaps Bogdanov and Lunacharsky really were the true Bolsheviks.