Germans, Jews, Russians, , Georgians, Hungarians, Italians, French, etc...
Немци,Евреи , Россяне, Грузини, Венгри, Италянци, Французи, и.т.п.
Tedeschi, Ebrei, Russi, Georgiani, Ungheresi, Italiani, Francesi, ecc...Des Allemands, des Juifs, des Russes, des Géorgiens, des Hongrois, des Italiens, des Francais, etc..Deutsche, Juden, Russen,Georgianer, Hungaren, Italiener, Franzosen u.s.w.
Thousands and thousands of books have been devoted to the reasons, to the origins, to the nature, to the history, and to the fall, of Soviet Union. It goes without saying that we are not purporting, within the limited scope of this work, to draw any conclusions about such themes, which do not constitute the core of our blog.
It goes also without saying that the role of the communist era in Russia cannot simply be ignored, because it had influenced the whole world for about one century, and, above that, it still exerts its influence in present-days perception of Russia, by itself and by the rest of the World.
First of all, it has not to be forgotten that marxism, and communism, have developed in Europe, and they are still strong in several parts of the world, but, especially, in Asia and in Latin America, not in Russia. The period, during which Russia has been the center of a worldwide marxist movement have been 70 years, from 1918 to 1989. Before and after that period, Marxism has not been a relevant force in Russia. So, any kind of wholesale identification of Russia with Communism is misleading.
On the contrary, we have had, all over Europe, so relevant Marxist leaders and/or thinkers, as Engels, Lassalle, Kautski, Bernstein, Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Gramsci, Lukacs, Tito, Togliatti, Althusser, a.s.o.. Under certain points of view, popular consensus for the Communist Party could be considered as more astonishing in Italy, where it was an opposition party, than in Russia itself.
1. European Marxism and Russia: a controversial endyad
It is well-known that Karl Marx was a German philosopher and economist of Jewish descent, who wrote most of his books in German and in English, and that, after him, Marxism developed mainly in Germany.
A widespread opinion purports that Marx was prejudicially hostile to Russia, and pretended, as a good German, that socialist revolution should have started in Germany. According to a more attentive reading, albeit it is confirmed that he did not love very much Russia and Russians, it is not true, on the contrary, that he thought that a socialist revolution would not have been possible in Russia. A letter to Viera Zaslavskaja opens up an interesting view about his idea of a possible Russian Revolution. Whilst it has been generally considered that, according to Marxism, the socialist revolution could not have taken place in Russia because the latter had not yet underwent a “bourgeois revolution”, in reality, in the above mentioned letter, Marx affirmed that a socialist revolution could indeed have taken place in Russia, if capitalistic forces could have not been in a position to eliminate, before, the traditional Slavonic forms of land administration, the Mir and the Obščina (which the conservative German aristocrat Haxthausen had constructed as directly deriving from “primitive communism”). In such case, a socialist revolution in the Country could really have taken place. This letter is highly interesting because it shows that Marx was less dogmatic than many of his followers, and even admitted the possibility of an evolution, in the sense of socialism, starting from “feudal realities” - thus, not necessarily connected to the “Western” view of Russia-.
This problematic was not unknown, either to the Russian social thinkers of the XIX Century, nor to Lenin himself. However, the latter thought that, in reality, Russia had already evolved, at his times, toward a form of bourgeois hegemony. Lenin, fundamentally an Occidentalist, thought also, in conformity with “mainstream” marxistic teaching, that such “bourgeois” phase would have really been necessary for the Russian Revolution. This was the motive which brought about the creation of the NEP (“Novaja Ekonomičeskaja Politika) in 1923, a short reformistic phase necessary for increase the material bases of Russian economy, so also for conforming to the theoretical need, according to Marxist orthodoxy, of a “capitalist phase” of development before socialism.
It is interesting to note that Lenin preferred, among the different possible forms of evolution of “bourgeois” society in Russia, the American one. In fact, Lenin was always (like Gramsci, and even Stalin), an admirer of America, which, according to him, at best personified the technocratic trend towards modernization, that also socialism should have showed at a certain moment. It has also to be noted that, during the whole Leninist period, a huge quantity of features of American society were imitated in Russia: from the “Tresty” (trusts), to industrial design, from skyscrapers, to modernistic fashion.
Also Trockij admired the high level of economic development of the US. However, since he, contrary to Lenin, thought that the revolution, either was successful in the whole world, or could never had thrived, considered Europe with much more attention as a suitable basis for it. The “United Socialist Republics of Europe” would have constituted, for him, an appropriate basis for world revolution. Lenin, on the contrary, was persuaded that the European Union would have been an unavoidavbly capitalistic project.
Among Russian Revolutionaries, there was also somebody, like the German Jew Radek, and the “Rjurikovič” aristocrat Čičerin, who admired in a special way Germany, as the true place for German Revolution, and also, for this reason, would have even had been ready to cooperate with a “burgeois” Germany, as imagined by Marx. Radek tried to organize in Germany a form of national-communism, being ready even to cooperate with National-Socialists for creating a united revolutionary front. As to Čičerin, he strongly influenced the negotiations between Bolsheviks and Germans for the signature of the Treaty of Rapallo.
No comments:
Post a Comment