*A Red Partisan- John Reed's Bird's Eye View Of The Russian Revolution of 1917

Click on title to link to the fourth part of a four-part series by John Reed, up close and personal on the Russian revolution of 1917, originally published in "The Liberator" in 1918.

*A Very Different Look At May Day On May Day- A Personal View

Click on the headline to link to a May Day website that links to the various May Day traditions in history.

Markin comment:

For those of a certain age, who came of age during the Cold War, the images of May Day evokes pictures of the latest display of Soviet weaponry and of elite military units marching in step in Red Square in Moscow before some glowering delegation from the Communist Party Politburo. Such pictures gave the usually information-starved and speculation-crazy Western Sovietologists plenty of ammunition for figuring out who was “in” and who was “out” in the internal party regime. At least until the next public display on the November 7th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution when the search for the elusive “musical chairs” would start all over again. For others, more historically- oriented, perhaps, May Day evokes the struggle for the eight hour work day and the Chicago Haymarket martyrs. Those with a more recent interest may evoke the continuing struggle for the recognition of immigrant rights. Now all of these are worthy, if highly political, views of May Day and I certainly have no quarrel with those evocations. However, just for the few minutes that it takes to write this entry I wish to evoke another, more ancient, more pagan, vision of May Day that, strangely, may dovetail with the motives behind those more political expressions put forth on this day.

I, of course, refer to the ancient roots of the holiday or rather the pre-Christian religious significance of the day as a day of renewal and of homage to the virtues of spring. Especially for those whose heritage stems from the British Isles. Under normal circumstances I would not necessarily be in a mood to reflect on this aspect of the day but a couple of things have set me to thinking about it. The first, as a result of having recently read a number of 19th century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan-etched short stories, including “The May Pole Of Merry Mount” got me thinking about that May Day pagan scenario and also about how deeply, even now, the formal Puritan ethic that frowned on such celebrations is embedded in our common cultural experiences. The second had to do with childhood reflections of our kid's version of May basket, May Day.

As to the first, whatever the “official” line is on the Puritan history here in America and in England as laid down by the likes of Professors Perry Miller and Hugh Trevor-Roper, to name a couple that come mind, I am privy to a “secret” history of the doings of the old Puritan stock. While Hawthorne’s Puritans, as he sternly portrayed them, are no friends to the fun-loving that is rather more his hang up and his way to make a quick dollar on that saga from punishment fetishists. The real “skinny” on the Puritans here and back in the old country is that they were not adverse to a little “good times”, just not in excess.

How is one to otherwise make sense of that little ménage of Pricilla and John Alden and Myles Standish? Or the real story about Tommy Wollaston’s wood fetish? Or Governor’ Winthrop’s private dope stash that he tried to pass off as tobacco (and which in any case he did not inhale). And to complete the story on the other side of the ocean, how about arch-Puritan poet and revolutionary John Milton’s open endorsement of concubinage, including, and I “reveal” this here for the first time, his own bevy of "ladies". “A Paradise within Thee, Happier Far”, indeed. For a long time the poem "Paradise Lost" was a book with seven seals. Now it all fits. And I should not fail to mention the other well-known arch-Puritan Oliver Cromwell whose well-hidden drinking problem ( he called his "tea", wink-wink) goes a long way to explaining those rash outbursts when Parliament was in session. Rump, indeed.

Okay, I am sure that the reader has had enough of my 'insight' into the rough stuff of the seamy edges of history. I will reprieve you with a final few thoughts about my own childhood relationship to this other May Day. Of course, I am something of a “homer” on this one, at least on the pre and post-Puritan English traditions since I grew up frequently passing the site of the Merry Mount May Pole (now on land used as a cemetery) at Mount Wollaston, which is a part of Quincy the town where I grew up. I knew this story as part of the Quincy town history from very early on. I am not sure whether it was through a teacher or by the local city historian, Edward Rowe Snow, but I knew all about old Tommy Wollaston and his crowd of "wild boys and girls". Sounded like fun, and it was.

On kid time May Day , as I recall, we were given little May crepe paper-lined baskets with a chocolate treat in it from one or another source, and in at least one year we danced around the Puritan-forbidden May Pole. I guess, even then, I had a secret desire that old Tommy should have won. Call me a pagan but that is the truth. But also note this, to kind of put this little “fluff” piece in perspective. Isn’t, in the final analysis, either the old pagan ritual or the newer May Pole festivity emblematic of the kind of thing that those of us who are trying to create “a newer world” aiming for. To make the world and its pleasures a common thing, for everyone. I think that I am on to something here. May Day greetings from this space.

*Once Again, On Ukrainian Anarchist Nestor Makhno- A "Workers Vanguard" Guest Commentary

Click on the title ot link to the Nestor Makhno Internet Archive copy of his "The Anarchist Revolution".

Anarchist Idol Nestor Makhno and Peasant Counterrevolution

Letter

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 839, 7 January 2005.

19 August 2004

Dear Workers Vanguard,

The leaflet protesting an anarchist attempt to exclude Spartacists from a radical event at the Democratic National Convention, reprinted in the August 6, 2004 issue of Workers Vanguard, contains a historical inaccuracy.

It refers to the "counterrevolutionary exploits of Makhno and others who sided with the imperialist-allied White Guards against the Soviet workers state."

Petrichenko, the leader of the semi-anarchist 1921 mutiny of the Kronstadt sailors, did indeed have connections with White Guards and foreign imperialists, as is documented in anarchist historian Paul Avrich's book, "Kronstadt 1921."

Nestor Makhno certainly perpetrated numerous counter-revolutionary exploits. His secret police tortured and murdered many communists. His Ukrainian peasant followers committed frequent pogroms against Jewish petty shopkeepers and merchants. But his guerilla bands did side with Soviet forces against the landlord-backed White Guards.

Trotsky describes in his "Military Writings" how Makhno's mutiny in the spring of 1919, which reflected Ukrainian peasant antagonism to the overwhelmingly Russian and Jewish working class of the Ukrainian cities, played a major role in the collapse of the Southern front, and led to White Guard commander Denikin's seizure of the Ukraine that summer. But Makhno never sided with Denikin. To the contrary. The Makhnovite insurgency played a major role in the collapse of White rule in the Ukraine that fall. And when Denikin's successor, White Guard commander Wrangel, invaded the Ukraine in 1920, a Bolshevik-Makhnovite alliance was reconstituted, which lasted until Wrangel was driven out.

Makhno did attempt to ally with other anti-Bolshevik forces in the Ukraine. Notably, there was Makhno's attempt to ally with the forces of fellow former Red Army commander Grigorev. Grigorev had the worst record of murder, rape, torture and other atrocities committed against Jews of all the peasant bandit leaders ravaging the Ukrainian country-side during the Russian Civil War.

This alliance ended badly for Grigorev. Makhno murdered him, and Grigorev's peasant followers joined Makhno's rebel army—but continued to commit pogroms.

Makhno himself was not personally anti-Semitic, indeed there were Jews in his "collective." In a sense, it could be said that Makhno was simply following anarchist principle. If his secret policemen were torturing prisoners, and if his peasant followers were committing pogroms, what right did Makhno, as just one member of the "collective," have to object?

Fraternally, John H.

YSp Replies: While it is true that there was no formal military alliance or documented connection between Makhno and the White armies in the Ukraine, these facts do not change the substance of the de facto bloc in action between the two. The formulation on Makhno in the Boston Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth Club leaflet is a part of a polemic against the "anti-authoritarian" Bl(A)ck Tea Society (BTS), for whom "democracy" is a cudgel to wield against communists:

"The BTS follows in the worst of the anarchist tradition, from Prince Kropotkin who preferred the hapless bourgeois politician Kerensky to the Bolsheviks, to the counterrevolutionary exploits of Makhno and others who sided with the imperialist-allied White Guards against the Soviet workers state. At bottom, there isn't much to distinguish the BTS from social democrats and liberals who have and will resort to any means to smear communists as ‘authoritarian,' denouncing the ‘extremism' of right and left, giving oh-so-‘democratic' aid and comfort to the forces of bourgeois repression."

This formulation does not pretend to characterize the nature, extent or evolution of Makhno's relationship with the White forces or the Red Army. We have previously addressed at some length the history of the Makhnoite movement when replying to an anarchist recycling numerous lies and distortions in its defense (see "An Exchange on Nestor Makhno: Peasant ‘Anarchism,' Pogroms and the Russian Revolution," WV No. 656, 22 November 1996).

Especially since the late 1930s—when Trotsky devastatingly exposed the treachery of the Spanish anarchists, who joined in a capitalist government which suppressed workers revolution—anarchists have raised a hue and cry about the fate of the Makhnoite movement (and the Kronstadt mutiny). Today, a popular Anarchist FAQ (3 October 2004) purports to show among other things why the Makhnoite movement was an "alternative" to Bolshevism.

In the section of the FAQ titled "Did the Makhnovists support the Whites?", the authors quote from one of Leon Trotsky's writings on Makhno: "Undoubtedly Makhno actually cooperated with Wrangel, and also with the Polish szlachta, as he fought with them against the Red Army." This translation from the Russian text, taken from Michael Palij's book on the Makhnoite movement, makes it appear that Trotsky—the head of the Red Army—had claimed that Makhno fought directly together with Wrangel and the Polish gentry. In this same piece, Trotsky disavows all rumors of a formal alliance between Makhno and Wrangel. By so rendering Trotsky, the anarchists paint him as purposefully deceitful or woefully ignorant about the relationship between Makhno and the White generals and they dodge the substance of Trotsky's polemic against Makhno. Here is what Trotsky actually wrote: "Without a doubt, Makhno provided de facto aid to Wrangel, as well as to the Polish gentry, since he fought at the same time as they did against the Red Army" (translated from "Makhno and Wrangel," 14 October 1920, Kak vooruzhalas' revolyutsiya [How the Revolution Armed], Vol. 2, Book 2 [1924]).

What was posed in Russia during the Civil War was whether the fledgling workers state would survive or succumb to the organized might of the bosses and landlords. To claim Makhno did not in effect side with the imperialist-allied White Guards against the Soviet workers state for extended periods of time because there was no formal alliance is to accept the alibi for Makhno's counterrevolutionary exploits. The Makhnoite movement showed on the battlefield how there is no "third camp" between the army of the workers state and the military organization of the bourgeoisie.

John H. lists a number of those counterrevolutionary exploits committed by the Makhnoites. The authors of the Anarchist FAQ charge the Bolsheviks with having "engineered" Makhno's outlawing and expulsion from the Red Army. But even when he was a commander in the Red Army, Makhno sabotaged defense of the social revolution, from commandeering supply trains to refusing to collect surplus grain for the Soviet government, while engaging in an anti-Bolshevik ideological campaign. This campaign directed at the Bolsheviks, the lone group in the revolutionary crisis of 1917 to fight for a regime based on soviet power and spearheading its defense, could only serve White Guardism. For example, in May 1919, while still allied with the Red Army, Makhno adopted a neutral position toward Grigorev who was calling for an alliance of all anti-Bolshevik forces, including the White armies.

In writing about the Makhnoite movement, Trotsky recognized that the conflict between the Red Army and Makhno was not one primarily between the ideas of Marxism versus anarchism but rather involved defense of the Soviet workers state against peasant-centered counterrevolution. Many anarchists, e.g., Bill Shatov, a veteran of the American Industrial Workers of the World, actively collaborated with and supported the Bolshevik forces throughout the Civil War. Trotsky later recounted how in 1918 he and Lenin had thought of recognizing an autonomous region for the anarchist peasants of the Ukraine. But this idea was scrapped partially because Makhno's Insurgent Army showed its true loyalties in battle.

In the first instance, these loyalties were dictated not by ideological but by class conflicts. German and Austrian occupation delayed the development of the Russian Revolution in the Ukraine so that the drawing together of the working people and poor peasants against the exploiters and kulaks was incomplete. Makhno's army was drawn from all layers of the peasantry. The fundamental desire of the peasants was not the creation of an anarchist utopia but to possess the land and then to be left alone by gentry, officials, tax collectors, recruiting sergeants and all external agents of authority. The wealthier kulaks in particular did not want the landlords to return but feared above all the rule of the working class and poor peasants.

The anti-state prejudices of the Makhnoite leadership, shared by its peasant base, led them into the camp of enemies of the Soviet state power. But this anti-authoritarian "principle" was one of the few that the Makhnoites respected when confronted by the practical realities of the Civil War. Achieving military success meant forced conscription, summary executions and recruiting anti-Semitic pogromists into their ranks; hostility toward the Bolsheviks meant establishing an alternative government hostile to the central Soviet workers state. As anarchist historian Paul Avrich wrote in his sympathetic account of Makhno (Anarchist Portraits [1988]):

"The Second [Makhnoite Regional] Congress, meeting on February 12, 1919, voted in favor of ‘voluntary mobilization,' which in reality meant outright conscription, as all able-bodied men were required to serve when called up. The delegates also elected a Regional Military Revolutionary Council of Peasants, Workers, and Insurgents to carry out the decisions of the periodic congresses. The new councils encouraged the election of ‘free' soviets in the towns and villages—that is, soviets from which members of political parties were excluded. Although Makhno's aim in setting up these bodies was to do away with political authority, the Military Revolutionary Council, acting in conjunction with the Regional Congresses and the local soviets, in effect formed a loose-knit government in the territory surrounding Gulyai-Polye.

"Like the Military Revolutionary Council, the Insurgent Army of the Ukraine, as the Makhnovist forces were called, was in theory subject to the supervision of the Regional Congresses. In practice, however, the reins of authority rested with Makhno and his staff. Despite his efforts to avoid anything that smacked of regimentation, Makhno appointed his key officers (the rest were elected by the men themselves) and subjected his troops to the stern military discipline traditional among the Cossack legions of the nearby Zaporozhian region."

Since the majority of anarchists in Russia and the Ukraine at the time were generally familiar with the class character and practices of the Makhnoite forces, they did not support the Makhnoites. For this, Voline and Arshinov, the two leading anarchist intellectuals who joined with Makhno, both strongly condemned the anarchist majority. Today, however, almost every anarchist in the world has embraced the Makhnoites as their own. We pointed to this contradiction in concluding our 1996 exchange: "Why is that? Because in their hostility to Leninism, they have bought into the anti-Communist prejudices which pervade the bourgeois society in which they live and which have shaped their political consciousness."

*In Honor Of The Chinese Revolution Of 1949- From The Archives- The Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's "Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China".

Honor The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution, October 1, 1949

*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- In Memory Of The "Old Man"- Photos Of The Bolshevik Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The 70th Anniversary Of His Assassination

Click on title to link to a photograph of Leon Trotsky taken in 1940 (the year of his death) from the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives.

*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- In Memory Of The "Old Man"- Photos Of The Bolshevik Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The 68th Anniversary Of His Assassination

Click on title to link to a photograph of Leon Trotsky taken in 1921 at the Thrid World Congress Of The Communist International from the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- *In Memory Of The "Old Man"- Photos Of The Bolshevik Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The 67th Anniversary Of His Assassination

Click on title to link to a photograph of Leon Trotsky taken in 1917 on his arrival in Petersburg from the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives.

*Leon Trotsky Is In The House!!-The Revolutionary Tradition Lives

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives.



There is no question that without the work of the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky this blog would not exist, or at least would be greatly diminished in its attempt to struggle for the socialist solutions and goals we so desperately need in today’s world. One only has to use the search engine on this site to find that I have done many reviews of his work and that of his followers. I will give a more detailed account of how I came across Trotsky’s work this summer when I do an anniversary commentary on the number of years I have been influenced by his work. For now, however, I have added a direct link to the huge Trotsky site in the Marxist Internet Archives. Look there to find and enjoy serious political analysis.

The Heroic Days Of The Chinese Revolution

BOOK REVIEW

Red Star Over China, First Revised and Enlarged Edition, Edgar Snow, Bantam Books, New York, 1994

I am using the the then current spelling of names and places as they are used in this edition of the book.

For militant leftists the defense of October 1917 Russian Revolution was the touchstone issue of international politics for most of the 20th century. In the end the demise of the Soviet Union and the other non-capitalists states of East Europe in the early 1990’s formally, at least, put an end to that question in those areas. However, the issue of the fate of China in the first half of the 21st century is in an important sense the touchstone Russian question of international politics today. The question, forward to socialism or back to some neo-capitalist formation like those in Russia and East Europe to this reviewer is an open question today. With that perspective in mind, and not unmindful of the publicity given China recently as the host of the 2008 Olympics, it is high time that this reviewer spent more time on this issue than he has thus far in this space. As preparation, it is always best to get some historical background, especially so for that new generation of militants who are unfamiliar with the last hundred years of leftist history.

As I have recently mentioned in another China review in this space, The History of The Chinese Communist Party 1921-1949, the Communist International and Russian Communist Party fights over strategy for the Chinese revolution between the Stalinists and the Trotsky-led Left Opposition in the mid-1920’s are must reading. As is the history of the defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution in the cities in 1927 and a little later. However, for a view of the Chinese Revolution in the period after its defeat no better place to start for a quick early overview of the heroic days of the Chinese revolution and the besieged Chinese Communist Party before the seizure of power, is journalist Edgar Snow’s reportage on the military fight to shape China’s future between the Maoist-led Red Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army in the mid-1930s.

Snow’s journalistic endeavors have come in for more than their fair share of criticism, especially in the post-1949 period when the debate over who ‘lost’ China raged in the West, especially the United States. That criticism is somewhat irrelevant (and antiqued) now. The value of his work for us is that he was the first Western journalist to actually go to the outer regions of China where the Red Army was holed up in Yenan after the heroic and historic Long March. The Long March itself represented an understanding that the pro-Communist forces which held so much promise of seizing power in the 1920’s were fighting a rearguard action in the mid-1930s. Snow’s first-hand interviews with Mao, Chu Teh, Lin Piao, Ho Lung or, in their absence, those close to them provided that critical “first draft of history” that is always being touted by newspaper people. Moreover, his analysis and description of life in the Chinese soviet areas, the kind of issues that were on the top of people’s minds and the critical 1930s issue of the struggle against the furiously encroaching Japanese holds up fairly well.

The first question that any working class militant today has to ask, at least one who has imbibed the Russian Revolution as the touchstone event of the 20th century, is how a communist party assumed to represent the historic interests of the urban working class came out of the boondocks building a peasant army which at its height was fighting for land distribution and a national independence struggle against the Japanese. Part of that answer is the afore-mentioned defeat in the cities in the 1920s due to disastrous strategic problems concerning the nature of the “third-word” national bourgeoisie in the age of imperialism (a question that still stymies the international working class movement). Part was the overwhelming peasant nature of early 20th century Chinese society and the practical difficulties of creating any military force not centered on the peasantry. However, the biggest part is a conception on the part of the Chinese Communist leadership that guerrilla warfare was the only practical way to defeat the Japanese, Chiang Kai-shek, American imperialism or who ever decided to take aim at China.

This distortion led to serious problems later, not only in practical matter of organizing a rural society for the tasks of industrialization but by making a virtue out of, perhaps, necessity. The so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) that convulsed China for a decade from the mid-1960s emblazoned on its banner the notion of the countryside (on a world scale) defeating the cities (on a world scale). That is the Chinese struggle writ large. But so much for that now.

The true value of Snow’s book lies for its detailing of the following accounts. First, a rather vivid description of the various hardships of his getting to Yenan as an individual that reflected the Communists' difficulties in trying to bring a whole army north. Secondly, a vivid description of the set up of the soviets and the social, political and cultural arrangements of life in the soviet areas. Thirdly, in Snow’s random interviews of the rank and file soldiers of the Red Army, the peasants whose co-operation was critical to the defense of the soviet areas and of the cultural/educational/administrative workers who kept the apparatus working through thick and thin. Lastly, Snow has painstakingly provided a plethora of end notes and biographical sketches concerning the fates of the various characters from all factions that people his journals, a wealth of data about various events up until 1937 and, perhaps, most importantly, much updated information including material on the GPCR from subsequent trips to China. This later material gathered at a time when very little was known about what was going on in China, especially around the intra-bureaucratic struggle behind the scenes of the GPCR. Retroactive kudos to Edgar Snow.

*In Honor Of The Chinese Revolution Of 1949- From The Archives- The Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's "Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China".

Honor The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution, October 1, 1949

*In Honor Of The Chinese Revolution Of 1949- From The Archives- The Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's "Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China".

Honor The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution, October 1, 1949

*In Honor Of The Chinese Revolution Of 1949- From The Archives- The Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's "Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China".

Honor The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution, October 1, 1949

*In Honor Of The "Old Man"- A Photo Gallery Of Bolshevik Revolutionary Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for photographs of the heroic Bolshevik revolutionary on the anniversary of his murder by a Stalinist agent.

*In Honor Of The "Old Man"- A Photo Gallery Of Bolshevik Revolutionary Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for photographs of the heroic Bolshevik revolutionary on the anniversary of his murder by a Stalinist agent.

*In Memory Of The "Old Man"- Photos Of The Bolshevik Revolutionary Leon Trotsky On The 76th Anniversary Of His Assassination

Click on title to link to a photograph of Leon Trotsky taken in 1905 after his arrest as President of the Saint Petersburg Soviet from the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives.

*In Honor of The Chinese Workers and Students of 1989

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia Tiananmen 1989 entry. I will not vouch for the acurracy of the factual or political information found there but the entry can be used as a starting point in finding out more about this important event in Chinese, and world, history.

Commentary

Twenty years ago in 1989 in China there was an incipient political revolution a-brewing against the Stalinist Chinese Communist Party's stranglehold on the reins of power. That was only a beginning, and something of an open-ended question about which way the Chinese revolution would go- forward to socialism or back to imperialist subjugation through a capitalist counter-revolution similar to what occurred in the Soviet Union and East Europe. That question is still open today. Below is a segment from a recent article in "Workers Vanguard" (No. 933, March 27, 2009) that articulates those tasks for the present century. All honor to the pro-socialist fighters in Tianamen Square in 1989!

"For Proletarian Political Revolution!

In The Revolution Betrayed, his classic analysis of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy, Trotsky emphasized: “Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative—conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.” The CCP regime’s policies and practices create a climate in which some of the proponents of “democratic” counterrevolution could gain a hearing, at least among a layer of intellectuals, peasants and even some workers. At the same time, the increasing antagonism between the bureaucracy and China’s toiling masses is also preparing the ground for a proletarian political revolution to oust the parasitic ruling Stalinists.

The potential for a pro-socialist workers uprising was shown in the May-June 1989 Tiananmen upheaval. In its article on Charter 08, the PSL endorses the line of the Chinese Stalinists on these events, calling them “a counterrevolutionary effort painted in the West as a ‘struggle for democracy’.” In reality, protests that began among students opposing corruption and seeking political liberalization were joined by masses of Chinese workers, driven into action by their own grievances against the impact of the regime’s market measures, especially high inflation.

Workers assemblies and motorized flying squads were thrown up, pointing to the potential for the emergence of authentic worker, soldier and peasant councils. The entry into struggle of the working class terrified the CCP rulers, who eventually unleashed fierce repression. But the bureaucracy, including the officer corps of the military, began to fracture under the impact of the proletarian upsurge. The first army units that were mobilized refused to act in the face of enormous popular support for the protests among Beijing’s working people. Other more regime-loyal army units had to be brought in to carry out the massacre of June 1989, which was overwhelmingly targeted at workers rather than students. This was an incipient proletarian political revolution, drowned in blood by the Stalinist bureaucracy (see “The Spectre of Tiananmen and Working-Class Struggle in China Today,” WV Nos. 836 and 837, 12 and 26 November 2004).

The crucial missing element, during the Tiananmen events as well as today, is an authentic Bolshevik—i.e., Leninist-Trotskyist—party to rally the working masses around the banner of workers democracy and communist internationalism. Such a party would be forged in political combat not only with currents emerging out of the decomposing Stalinist bureaucracy but also with the anti-Communist purveyors of Western-type “democracy,” including some who will doubtless posture far to the left of the Charter 08 group.

The survival and advancement of China’s revolutionary gains hinges on the fight for socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries of Japan, North America and West Europe, the only road toward the all-round modernization of China as part of an international planned economy. A proletarian political revolution producing a China of worker and peasant councils would be a beacon for the oppressed working masses of Asia and the entire world, dealing a deathblow to the bourgeoisie’s “death of communism” propaganda, lifting up the downtrodden masses of the former Soviet Union and East Europe and inspiring the workers in the imperialist heartlands. This, ultimately, is the only perspective that can defeat the siren call of “democracy” pushed by imperialist-backed outfits as well as fake “socialists” who are enemies of the gains of the Chinese Revolution."

In Honor Of The Chinese Revolution Of 1949- From The Archives- The Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive for online copies of his Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China.

Honor The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution, October 1, 1949

*In Honor Of The Chinese Revolution Of 1949- From The Archives- The Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's "Collected Writings Of Leon Trotsky On China".

Honor The Anniversary Of The Chinese Revolution, October 1, 1949

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor The Memory Of Soviet Red Army Marshal Tuchachevsky

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Soviet Red Army leader and victim of Stalin's Red Army purges in the 1930s, Marshal Mikhail Tuchachevsky.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

************

The mere mention of the name of the great Soviet General, Marshal Mikhail Tuchachevsky, evokes the heroic age of the seizure of power in the Russian October Revolution of 1917, and its aftermath in the destructive civil wars to defend the new proletarian state against the against the White Guards. Nothing will ever chance that view, except maybe new Octobers that will produce new military heroes to defend those states. That said, beyond those early exploits I always associate Tuchachevsky’s name with two things. The first, his adherence during the early Trotsky-led Soviet War Commissariat, to the military doctrine of the proletarian offensive, and secondly, his heroic, although wasted, military leadership of the struggle against Polish counter-revolution in 1920.

The doctrine of the proletarian offensive need not detain us for any length of time, as life itself determined the incorrect one-sidedness of such a doctrine in pursuit of working class military victories. Such doctrines, in many spheres of early Soviet life, were in any case pervasive and spoke to the pride that those who fought for the creation of the Soviet state had in its creation. If in the relatively benign fields of literature and culture one could reasonably, if again incorrectly, argue for merits of a distinct proletarian culture during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat that argument falls flat in military affairs.

As we have learned from bitter experience, especially in the last few decades, the vicissitudes of the class struggle produce many ebbs and flows politically and militarily requiring many different responses. As a history of the Soviet state, especially in the early days indicates that same condition held on the military front. Thus, an inflexible doctrine based on some supposed preferred proletarian military doctrine was doomed from the start. Street fighting, offensive positional action, defensive positional action, insurrection, export of revolution, guerrilla fighting and the whole range of previously known military strategies and tactics that humankind has accumulated in these arts are necessary in the doctrinal military arsenal of the proletarian state. .

The Russian-Polish War of 1920, and its negative outcome for the Soviet side, is a more serious matter, although Marshal Tuchachevsky can hardly be held responsible for the Soviet defeat before Warsaw. A stronger argument can and has been made, that Stalin’s actions, as chief political commissar of one of the fronts, precluded victory in that struggle. I tend to agree with that argument but whatever its merits Tuchachevsky was thwarted in his ability to win a frontal assault against the French-advised and supplied Polish forces.

There can be no question by serious revolutionaries that this example of “export of revolution” by force of arms by the Soviet state, not only to break the back of the Polish nationalists and defend Soviet borders but to try to link up through the Polish “corridor” with the then restless and ready for action German proletariat, or at least its vanguard, was entirely consistent with Marxist doctrine. That is the real import of the defeat. Imagine, if you will, the possible difference outcome to the flow of the 20th century a Red Army victory would have posited. The “what if’s” of history are always problematic but here it was a near thing. The defeat, or rather non-start of the German revolution of 1923, is often, mainly correctly, cited as a defining moment in the ebb of 20th century working class revolutionary prospects. I, along with others, would suggest that the 1920 defeat also was a decisive act in creating that ebb. All Honor To The Memory Of Marshal Tuchachevsky!

*A Red Partisan- John Reed's Bird's Eye View Of The Russian Revolution of 1917

Click on title to link to the third part of a four-part series by John Reed, up close and personal on the Russian revolution of 1917, originally published in "The Liberator" in 1918.