The Russian Revolution полностью

Until mid-1919, the party retained the informal structure of underground years, but as its ranks expanded, undemocratic practices became institutionalized. The Central Committee remained the center of authority, but in practice, because its members dashed around the country on special assignments, decisions usually were made by the few members who happened to be on hand. Lenin, who was so afraid of assassination that he almost never traveled, served as permanent chairman. Although as the country’s dictator he relied heavily on coercion and terror, within his own cohort he preferred persuasion. He never forced anyone out of the party because of disagreement: if he failed to obtain a majority on some important issue, he only had to threaten resignation to bring his followers into line. Once or twice he was on the verge of a humiliating defeat from which only Trotsky’s intervention saved him. On a few occasions he had to acquiesce to policies of which he disapproved. By the end of 1918, however, his authority had grown to the point where no one would oppose him. Kamenev, who had often taken issue with Lenin in the past, spoke for many Bolsheviks when he told Sukhanov in the autumn of 1918:

I become ever more convinced that Lenin never makes a mistake. In the end, he is always right. How many times it seemed that he had blundered, in his prognosis or political line—and always, in the end, his prognosis and his line turned out to have been correct.¹²

Lenin had little patience for discussions, even in the circle of his most intimate associates: typically, during cabinet meetings, he would thumb through a book and rejoin the debate to lay down policy. From October 1917 until the spring of 1919 he made many decisions for the party as well as the government in collaboration with his indispensable assistant, Iakov Sverdlov. Possessed of a filing-cabinet sort of mind, Sverdlov could supply Lenin with names, facts, and such other kinds of information as was required. After he had fallen ill and died in March 1919, the Central Committee had to be restructured: at this time a Politburo was created to guide policy, an Orgburo to take care of administration, and a Secretariat to manage party personnel.

The cabinet, or Sovnarkom, was made up of high party officials serving in a double capacity. Lenin, who directed the Central Committee, served also as chairman of the Sovnarkom, the equivalent of a Prime Minister. As a rule, important decisions were first taken up in the Central Committee or Politburo and then submitted to the cabinet for discussion and implementation, often with the participation of non-Bolshevik experts.

In a country of over one hundred million inhabitants, it was, of course, impossible, relying exclusively on the party membership, to “smash” thoroughly a social, economic, and political order built over centuries. One had to harness the “masses”: but since the multitude of workers and peasants knew nothing of socialism or the proletarian dictatorship, they had to be prodded into action with appeals to self-interest most narrowly defined.

In the Satyricon of Petronius, that unique picture of daily life in ancient Rome, there occurs a passage very relevant to the politics which the Bolsheviks pursued during the initial months in power:

How would a confidence man or a pickpocket survive if he did not drop little boxes of clinking bags into the crowd to hook his victims? Dumb animals are snared with food and men can’t be caught unless they are nibbling at something.

It was a principle that Lenin instinctively understood. On taking office he turned Russia over to the populace to divide its wealth under the slogan “Grabi nagrablennoe” (“Loot the loot”). While the people were busy “nibbling,” he disposed of his political rivals.

The Russian language has a term, duvan, borrowed from Turkish by way of the Cossack dialect. It means a division of spoils, such as the Cossack bands in southern Russia used to carry out after raids on Turkish and Persian settlements. In the fall and winter of 1917–18, all of Russia became the object of duvan. The main commodity to be divided was agricultural land, which the Land Decree of October 26 had turned over to communal peasants. Distributing this loot among households, according to criteria which each commune set for itself, kept the peasants occupied well into the spring of 1918. During this period, they lost such little interest in politics as they had.