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The Mystery of the ABC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Lars T. Lih
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Extract

Bukharin in 1917-1920 was one of those who suggested an extremely radical line of instant socialism… a Utopian and optimistic set of ideas concerning a leap into socialism, which would seem to have little to do with the reality of hunger and cold.

Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1969

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 50 - 72
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1997

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References

This essay is part of a larger study that I plan to publish with the title What Was Bolshevism?Research for the early stages of this project was supported by a grant from the National Council for Soviet and East European Research; the council is not responsible for my findings. My own detailed acquaintance with the ABC of Communismcame about because I was asked by George Rhyne to write an entry on the ABCthat was published in the Supplement to the Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 1:5-9. I would like to thank Professor Rhyne for his imaginative assignment.

1 Heitman’s comment comes from his unpaginated introduction to the 1966 Ann Arbor paperback reprint of the 1922 English translation of the ABCby Eden and Cedar Paul. (Heitman’s introduction is one of the best available discussions of the ABC, although he does not take up any of the issues addressed in this essay). The original publication was Azbuka kommunizma(Moscow, 1919); Terra Publishers have recently reprinted part 2 (somewhat abridged) in Zvezda i svastika: Bolshevizm i russkii fashizm(Moscow, 1994). Because of the variety of editions, I have identified passages by section number (note that sections 127-38 are misnumbered [down by one] in the Terra edition). Since Bukharin and Preobrazhenskii wrote separate chapters, I have noted the author of a particular passage where convenient. The Russian edition remains rare and difficult to obtain, and none of the scholars cited in this essay seems to have consulted it. My admiration for the vigorous translation by Eden and Cedar Paul has grown as I have worked with the text, and I have used it as the basis for my own translations presented here. Nonetheless, serious comment on the ABCrequires consulting the original. For example, the Pauls translate the passage cited in the epigraph as follows: “Unfortunately, however, we cannot reach communism in one stride. We are only taking the first steps towards it” (sec. 101). There is nothing wrong with this translation, but Bukharin’s anti-leap imagery has been obscured.

2 By identifying these hypotheses, I hope to sidestep the unproductive debate on “war communism” and focus on more specific and manageable issues concerning the Bolshevik outlook prior to 1921. A point of method: I do not make the claim that any text “speaks for itself” or that the surface meaning is the only significant one. My objection is to interpretations that present themselves as unproblematic yet ignore crucial and abundant textual evidence.

3 Carr, E. H., “The Bolshevik Utopia,” in his October Revolution: Before and After(New York, 1969), 56–86 Google Scholar(a slightly different version can be found in Bukharin and Preobrazhenskii, ABC of Communism[Harmondsworth, Eng., 1969]). Carr had little to say about the ABCin his general history; I have found only three passing references to it in The Bolshevik Revolution, 3 vols. (New York, 1950-55), 2:152, 208, 262. On the influence of Carr’s essay, see Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1932(Oxford, 1982), 171,Google Scholarand Malle’s, Silvanapositive citation in Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918-1921(Cambridge, Eng., 1985), 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Carr, “The Bolshevik Utopia,” 83-85. Carr’s contrast between the Utopian outlook of “war communism” and the realist outlook of NEP leaves mysterious why (as he himself points out) “for ten years [the ABC] was constantly reprinted and translated, circulating widely in many countries as an authoritative exposition of the ‘aims and tasks’ of communism” (62).

5 The flourishing of Utopian thinking during the 1920s is copiously documented by Stites, Richard, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Visions and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution(Oxford, 1989).Google ScholarCompare also Trotskii’s genuine Utopian fervor at the end of Literature and Revolution(1924) with his Terrorism and Communism(1920).

6 In Carr’s discussion of specific issues, the practical aspect seems uppermost. For example, he writes about national self-determination: “In this question, as in others, The ABC of Communismcombines a Utopian vision of the future… with concessions to the expediencies of current policy” (“The Bolshevik Utopia,” 82; see also 63, 66, 80 for comments on other issues). Carr’s discussion of the nationality issue is rather peculiar. He writes that “Bukharin’s personal standpoint on the national question adds a special interest” to this chapter, even though, as Carr notes, the chapter was written by Preobrazhenskii. Carr goes on to discuss the issue as if Preobrazhenskii did not exist. But Preobrazhenskii was not Bukharin’s amanuensis, and the chapter in question defends a position that Bukharin strongly attacked at the Eighth Party Congress. (The tendency to regard Bukharin as the sole author of the ABCis symbolized by the Ann Arbor paperback reprint, which simply leaves Preobrazhenskii off both front and back covers.)

7 In its construction, the ABCappears to be based on Grundsätze und Forderungen, one of the basic propaganda works of the German Social Democratic party. The first half of this work is Karl Kautsky’s summary of his programmatic commentary, while the second half consists of Bruno Schoenlank’s discussion of immediate party demands (Kautsky and Schoenlank, , Grundsdtze und Forderungen der Sozialdemokratie: Erlduterungen zum Erfurter Programm, 2d ed. [Berlin, 1899]).Google ScholarThe importance of this work is shown by publication figures given by Steenson, Garyin “Not One Man! Not One Penny!”: German Social Democracy, 1863-1914(Pittsburgh, 1981), 139.Google Scholar

8 According to Carr, part 1 is more “utopian” than part 2. This should have made part 1 less popular during NEP, but in fact part 1 dated less rapidly than the second half of the book. In 1923, it was issued in a separate edition (see the Bukharin bibliography in Bukharin, Put1 k sotsializmu[Novosibirsk, 1990], 270, item 513).

9 In the Pauls’ translation, we find the words “when the social order is like a well-oiled machine“; these appear to be an expansion of Bukharin’s phrase kak po maslu. Stites cites the phrase added by the translators; possibly this has led him to overemphasize the theme of “order and mechanics” in the ABC (Revolutionary Dreams, 47-48). Bukharin did compare production to a machine during his discussion of labor discipline in his 1918 manifesto Program of the Communists:see Bukharin, , Izbrannye proizvedeniia(Moscow, 1990), 74.Google ScholarIn both 1918 and later, however, the dominant metaphor in Bukharin’s discussion of labor discipline is “the army of labor“; see the ABC, sec. 100.

10 Fitzpatrick continues: “The Civil War was a time when intellectual and cultural experimentation flourished” (Russian Revolution, 77). In his discussion of the ABC’s vision of full communism, Stites ties it not.only to “the appalling uncertainty and hardship” of war and revolution, but also to a “deep Russian tradition of phobia toward anarchy, chaos, disorder, and panic” (Revolutionary Dreams, 47-48).

11 Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 47.1 have used the translation made by “The Group of English Speaking Communists in Russia” and published in 1919 (no other publication data).

12 Bogdanov, Alexander, Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia, ed. Graham, Loren R., Rougle, Charles, and Stites, Richard(Bloomington, 1984), 65–68.Google Scholar(In Revolutionary Dreams, 47-48, Stites notes the relevance of Red Star.)

13 Bebel, August, Die Frau und der Sozialismus, 10th ed. (Stuttgart, 1891), 266–68.Google ScholarOn the unique importance of Bebel’s book in Germany, see for its influence in Russia, see Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 31, 261.

14 David Joravsky has recently stressed the importance of the war and the protest against it for understanding Bolshevism; see his insightful article “Communism in Historical Perspective,” American Historical Review99 (June 1994), 837-57.

15 In the debates over the party program at the Eighth Party Congress, Bukharin wanted to drop the part of the older program that examined the preimperialist age; these sections were kept only at Lenin’s insistence.

16 The Pauls were aware of the importance of this passage: they put the last two sentences in capitals, even though they are not so distinguished in the Russian text. In 1918, Bukharin wrote: “He who defers [the decisive and final victory of the workers] and calls the struggle for this victory an ‘adventure’ when it is the sole exit from the bloody impasse—that person goes against socialism” (Kommunist, 1918, no. 3, reprint edited by Ronald Kowalski [New York, 1990], 174).

17 If we look at the ABCreading lists for titles issued prior to 1910, we find that Kautsky is cited more often than any other author, far outstripping Marx, Engels, and the prewar Lenin. On Kautsky’s influence, see the pathbreaking book by Donald, Moira, Marxism and Revolution: Karl Kautsky and the Russian Marxists, 1900-1924(London, 1993).Google Scholar Hilferding’s, Das Finanzkapital(Vienna, 1910)Google Scholaris also mentioned as a difficult but basic work.

18 Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution(New York, 1971), 100.Google Scholar

19 Preobrazhenskii, Evgenii, Trekhletie Oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii(Moscow, 1921), 15–16.Google Scholar

20 Deutscher, Isaac, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921(New York, 1965), 489.Google Scholar

21 Walicki, Andrzej, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia(Stanford, 1995), 376;Google Scholar Malia, Martin, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991(New York, 1994), 130.Google ScholarMalia’s misreading of the ABCdoes heavy (in my personal view, irreparable) damage to a central thesis of his book, namely, that the “deep structure” of Marxism permitted or even mandated a leap into socialism, even in the beggarly, devastated Russia of 1920. As far as I know, however, Malia’s critics have not challenged the accuracy of his portrait of “war communism.“

22 Kolakowski, Leszek, Main Currents of Marxism, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1978), 3:29.Google Scholar

23 Fitzpatrick, Russian Revolution, 71, 77. Even though the ABCwas written in 1919 and the climax of Bolshevik foolishness is located in 1920, Fitzpatrick supports her remarks with a reference to Carr’s “Bolshevik Utopia” essay that is exclusively devoted to the ABC(the Carr reference has been dropped from the second edition of The Russian Revolution).

24 Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, 87, 84.

25 See sec. 41. In the Pauls’ translation of this section, we read “our party has made the prompt establishment of communism its definite aim.” “Prompt establishment“ translates nemedlennoe stroitel’stvo;as the argument of the section and of the chapter shows, the sentence is better translated as “our party sees its task as getting down to the job of building socialism right away.“

26 In the ABCand other writings of this period, the term soviet power (sovetskaia vlast’)wavers between designating a type of political system, (as opposed, for example, to a parliamentary republic) and designating a specific state or country (as in “Soviet Russia“). In order to keep alive the more unfamiliar nuance of “a sovereign authority based on the Soviets,” I will refrain from capitalizing “soviet.” For the record, Bukharin and Preobrazhenskii usually write Sovetskaia vlast1;the Pauls translate this as “Soviet Power.“

27 For example, Moshe Lewin writes that “there was even a stronger sedative for whoever might have had qualms about this or other harsh practices: the belief that something more than the war economy justified them. The term ‘war communism’ implied that the most progressive system on earth was just installed dens ex machinaby the most expedient, unexpected but irreversible leap to freedom” (Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates[Princeton, 1974], 79). In the reprint edition of 1991, Lewin adds that “it is worth reminding the reader that the term war-communism was not used during the events but was applied by Lenin after the civil war. But other similar terms, expressing this same content, were current” (Stalinism and the Seeds of Soviet Reform[London, 1991], xxvii). Unfortunately, Lewin still does not inform us what these “similar terms” were.

28 Neil Harding has used the ABCto strengthen the contrast he sees between Bukharin’s political outlook in 1917-18 and his outlook in 1919-20 (“Bukharin and the State,” in Kemp-Welch, A., ed., The Ideas of Nikolai Bukharin[Oxford, 1992], 85–112,CrossRefGoogle Scholarparticularly 102-3): In the earlier period Bukharin wanted to “smash the state” and leap immediately into a realm of freedom, but by 1919 Bukharin had reverted to defending the repressive “dictatorship of the proletariat” that copied the imperialist state. Much of what Harding says is accurate and insightful, but the contrast he is trying to establish founders on material he does not take into account. First, there is much evidence from 1917-18 that Bukharin wanted a repressive dictatorship of the proletariat that would use the imperialist state machine for the benefit of the people (besides the Programalready cited, see the articles from 1917 reprinted in Napodstupakh k oktiabriu[Moscow, 1925] and, in particular, Bukharin’s speech to the Constituent Assembly, pp. 177-85). Second, there is much evidence in the ABCitself that Bukharin still saw “soviet power” as a state form distinguished by high and growing mass participation. (Harding also erroneously attributes some passages written by Preobrazhenskii to Bukharin.) It should be noted that Bukharin’s discussion of bureaucratism was not his individual warning to the party. It is a reflection of the official party program that was adopted in spring 1919: the program recommends combating the menace of bureaucratism by going further down the path opened up by the Paris Commune. The Bolshevik conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be grasped unless we see that it was meant to be bothrepressive and participatory.

29 Walicki, Marxism, 596. Alec Nove remarks: “Of course Bukharin and his friends were well aware of the appalling shortage of goods of every kind, and did emphasize the necessity of increasing production” (An Economic History of the USSR[Harmondsworth, Eng., 1969], 66). It is unclear how Nove reconciled this observation with the views cited in the epigraph to the present article.

30 See, for example, Patenaude, Bertrand, “Peasants into Russians: The Utopian Essence of War Communism,” Russian Review 54, no. 4(October 1995): 552–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarIn what is by far the best documented defense of the “socialism now” thesis, Patenaude explicitly limits his case to the latter part of 1920. Patenaude argues that at this time a Bolshevik consensus had emerged that the peasants had already attained socialist consciousness even though agricultural production was still untransformed. I find the existence of this consensus highly implausible because (among other reasons) it blatantly contradicts the party program of 1919 and the ABC.

31 Malia, Soviet Tragedy, 132.

32 Fitzpatrick, Russian Revolution, 71. If the Bolsheviks wanted to hush up the ideological underpinnings of earlier policies, and these underpinnings were revealed by the ABC, it is something of a puzzle why the ABCwas widely reprinted and hugely popular during the 1920s.

33 Preobrazhenskii, Evgenii, Bumazhnye den'gi v epokhu proletarskoi diktatury(Moscow, 1920)Google Scholar(hereafter cited as Paper Money).

34 Carr, Bolshevik Revolution, 2:261; I have used Carr’s translation of Preobrazhenskii’s dedication (Paper Money, 4). In reality, Preobrazhenskii did not say “in order to destroy” but “as a means of destroying” (v sredstvo unichtozheniia). The dedication itself explains how the printing press was used: it was a “source of financing for the revolution” that saved soviet power “in the most difficult period of its existence, when no possibility existed of using direct taxes to pay for the costs of the civil war.” It will be seen that Carr’s criticism of Preobrazhenskii depends entirely on his incorrect translation.

35 Lincoln’s comment comes from a letter written to A. G. Hodges on 4 April 1864.

36 Paper Money, 69.

37 Paper Money, 56-57.

38 Paper Money, 60.

39 Preobrazhenskii uses for the first time in this discussion the term for which he later became famous—primitive socialist accumulation—although he confines it to undoing the damage done by war and revolution. Ironically, he took the term from Bukharin’s Economy of the Transition Period. The assumption that Russia was confined to its own resources represents a change of emphasis from the ABCor perhaps simply a difference between Preobrazhenskii and Bukharin. In September 1920, even after the defeat in Poland, Bukharin, was still prepared to assert that “the [international] revolutionary wave has never been so high as it is now.” Deviataia konferentsiia RKP(b)(Moscow, 1972), 59;Google Scholarsee also the ABC, sees. 41-42.

40 Paper Money, 83-84. Malle seems to have overlooked this passage (Economic Organization, 194). See also Preobrazhenskii’s words in the ABC, sec. 116: “Precisely in view of the high degree of centralization, this [socialist apparatus of distribution] can easily degenerate into a cumbrous and dilatory machine in which a great many articles rot before they reach the consumer.“

41 Paper Money, 82-83. Despite Preobrazhenskii’s polemic with Larin, despite his advocacy of a silver-backed currency, despite his skepticism about the results of the razverstkain the near future, despite his warning that a premature abolition of money would be “catastrophic,” Malle writes on the basis of this text and without qualification that Preobrazhenskii “affirmed that the time for abolishing paper money was near“ (Economic Organization, 184).

42 I argue that contrary to our general picture of increasing Bolshevik radicalism in 1920, Preobrazhenskii seemed to have sobered up somewhat between the ABCand Paper Money. After writing the above, I came across a contemporary review of Paper Moneythat confirms this general picture. Mikhail Ol'minskii’s review (clearly written before the end of 1920) argued that Preobrazhenskii had arrived at a more reasonable position during the process of writing the book itself. Ol'minskii therefore recommended it strongly as an antidote to the “popular stupidities” current in the party about the quick disappearance of money. Ol'minskii’s endorsement of Preobrazhenskii is in striking contrast to his harsh 1921 review of Bukharin’s Economy of the Transition Period, in which he argues (in my view, erroneously) that Bukharin seemed to think that the transition period was coming to a close. (Ol'minskii’s review of Paper Moneywas originally published in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1921, no. 1:181-85. I came across Ol'minskii’s review of Paper Moneyon the CD-ROM “Soviet History, series 2, volume 1,” created by the SovLit Project. Researchers may wish to note this innovative resource; further information can be obtained at e-mail address 73357.2175@compuserve.com. Ol'minskii’s review of Bukharin’s Economy of the Transition Periodwas originally published in Krasnaia nov', 1921, no. 1, and is reprinted in Bukharin, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 208-15.)

43 In the words of László Szamuely: “This thesis [that the main tool of building and controlling the socialist economy is state coercion] can perhaps not be found expressis verbisin contemporary literature, but we can draw well-founded conclusions from the measures and methods that were discussed by the contemporary ideologues and from the methods that were notmentioned,” that is, material incentives. See First Models of the Socialist Economic Systems: Principles and Theories(Budapest, 1974), 38-39, 44.

44 Kolakowski, Main Currents, 3:28-29; Walicki, Marxism, 404-11. Kolakowski’s remarks are based not only on the ABCbut also on Bukharin’s Economy of the Transition Period(1920). I agree that the two works express essentially the same outlook.

45 The orthodox Social Democratic scenario insisted that a gradual transformation of society was possible only aftera forcible revolution gave state power to the proletariat. The classic account of the reasoning behind this scenario is Kautsky, Karl, Die soziale Revolution(Berlin, 1902)Google Scholar, a work that is cited in the ABC’sreading lists. Even in State and Revolution, Lenin says that this book contains “very much that is exceedingly valuable” and makes no objection to its overall argument (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., 33:107).

46 Preobrazhenskii writes: “As far as the revolutionary tribunals are concerned, this form of proletarian justice also has no future, just like the Red Army after its victory over the White Guards, or the extraordinary commissions, or all the organs created by the proletariat during the period of the not-yet-completed civil war. With the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeois counterrevolution, these organs will fall away as unneeded [za nenadobnost'iu]”(sec. 75). According to Walicki, “The authors insisted that under a proletarian dictatorship the resistance of the bourgeoisie would intensify” (Marxism, 377). In his effort to forge links between the ABCand Stalin, Walicki has forced the text: the authors offer no opinion on whether bourgeois resistance will intensify (sec. 23). As noted below, the ABCassumes permanent hostility from the kulaks; in other passages, the projected scenario seems to be the opposite (for example, sec. 101 on “bourgeois specialists“).

47 On the tsarist origins of the razverstkasystem, see Lih, Lars T., Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921(Berkeley, 1990),Google Scholarchap. 2. An alternative explanation is that the razverstkahad only become official policy at the beginning of 1919, and the authors of the ABCdid not foresee that it would become ideologically central in 1920. This seems unlikely to me.

48 The image of the war between Narkomprod (the government food-supply agency) and Sukharevka (the Moscow bazaar that was a symbol of the underground market) as a war between socialism and capitalism was a commonplace. Preobrazhenskii’s understanding of “petty trade” obviously does not include the grain trade. For more on the need to provide goods for the countryside, see Bukharin in section 42.

49 A full discussion of Preobrazhenskii’s views would place them in the context of his other writings on the peasantry from this period, particularly his remarkable Pravdaarticles of 1918 and 1919. If these writings were better known, there would be a fundamental modification in the stereotypical view of Preobrazhenskii as antipeasant.

50 Unfortunately, the Pauls’ translation drops the key word immediately (nemedlenno). The term wobblingis taken from the Pauls’ translation of mechetsiain section 25, which contains Bukharin’s account of relations with the peasantry.

51 Preobrazhenskii continued to sneer at the kombedyin 1922, for which he was rebuked by Lenin (see Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3d ed., 27:440-46). Unfortunately, the main secondary description of this revealing and symptomatic exchange is E. H. Carr’s unreliable account (The Bolshevik Revolution, 2:291-93; see also 152).

52 Bukharin, , Ekonomika perekhodnogo perioda(Moscow, 1920), 83–84.Google ScholarOn pages 132-33, it is stated in abstract but unambiguous language that obtaining goods from the countryside by noneconomic methods is an emergency measure that cannot be continued for any length of time. In the notorious chapter on “extra-economic coercion,“ Bukharin notes that peasant resistance is understandable “insofar as the exhausted towns are unable at first [v pervikh porakh]to give an equivalent for grain and for [labor] obligations” (146). Nowhere does Bukharin suggest any modification of the ABC’sprohibition against coercive enlistment into communes and the like. It should be noted that there is no contradiction between Bukharin’s pre-NEP justification of coercion applied to the peasantry and his later views during NEP. In any event, Bukharin himself saw none: he consistently affirmed the basic argument of Economy of the Transition Periodabout the costs of revolution; he consistently defined “war communism“ as a policy that would always be justified under similar circumstances of class struggle and external intervention; he consistently described the Russian civil war as a time of worker-peasant alliance—in contradistinction, for example, to the Hungarian revolution of 1919. He stated these views with great explicitness during the program debates at the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928: see Bukharin, , Problemy teorii ipraktiki sotsializma(Moscow, 1989), 213–14, 244-46, 248-50.Google Scholar(For similar remarks made by Preobrazhenskii in late 1920 on the emergency nature of the razverstkaburdens, see Trekhletie, 13-16.)

53 The extent to which the Bolshevik tradition forced Stalin to deny (perhaps even to himself) the real nature of what he was doing is revealed in a hitherto unpublished circular sent out from the Central Committee to party organizations on 2 April 1930, which condemns in no uncertain terms the violation of “the most important principle of collectivization—the voluntary principle” (Danilov, V. P.and Ivnitskii, N. A., eds., Dokumenty svidetel’stvuiut[Moscow, 1989], 387–94).Google Scholar

In section 141 of the ABC, Preobrazhenskii argues that the socialist road out of peasant backwardness will be much more peaceful than the capitalist road. Walicki takes a phrase from the very sentence in which Preobrazhenskii makes this point (as the Russian text shows) and connects it by means of an ellipsis to Preobrazhenskii’s earlier remark about the kulaks. This procedure enables Walicki to present the ABCas an advocate of violent collectivization (Marxism, 409).