The human characters in the story are either "Whites" or "Reds." These terms are neither racial nor chess-related but political. In this context, "White" means "libertarian" and "Red" means "pro-Soviet." However, both "White" and "Soviet" have changed their meanings, historically.
"White" originally meant "Tsarist." If the White general, Kornilov, had succeeded in his attempted military coup in 1917, then he would not have liberalized Russia.
"Soviet" means "council." The Russian soviets of 1905 and 1917 were elected from mass meetings in large factories whose work forces were resisting Tsarism. Thus, these councils democratically represented a socially progressive class, industrial workers with modern ideas, but not the Russian population which was overwhelmingly peasant. Against both workers and peasants were Tsarist aristocrats and a small, weak bourgeoisie dependent on foreign capital and afraid to press for parliamentary reforms in case these incited more radical demands from below.
Bypassing ineffective bourgeois leadership, the soviets overthrew first the Tsar, then the duma (parliament). Some workers' leaders wanted to democratize, modernize and emancipate Russia with material support from similar workers' organizations elsewhere in Europe but, instead, several years of isolation, blockades, military interventions and civil wars physically destroyed industry and either killed workers or drew them into the growing, besieged bureaucracy.
What began as a workers' democracy became, first, an unwilling dictatorship industrializing in order to restore workers' democracy, then a willing dictatorship industrializing in order to increase exploitation for the purpose of military competition, therefore needing to crush any workers' resistance despite still calling itself "Soviet"...
Thus, it is a coherent (minority) position to say: "I would have supported workers' councils in 1917 but would have regarded them as defeated, strangled, crushed, transformed into their opposite, by about 1927."
I think it is necessary to discuss how terms have changed their meanings because the changes are historically significant. "Social democracy" changed from "revolutionary socialism" to "parliamentary socialism" and "communism" changed from "common ownership" to "bureaucratic dictatorship." The next post or two will have more to do with the content of the story!
5 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Compared to Lenin and Stalin, General Kornilov WAS a liberal, in the older, libertarian sense of the word. Almost anyone would have been a better leader for Russia than those two evil men.
My view is that while many factors led to the collapse of the Tsarist regime in 1917, the weakness and indecisiveness of Nicholas II was a big reason for its fall. A more determined and strong willed Tsar is not likely to have been so easily swept aside as was Nicholas II. In fact, such a Tsar would have, I hope, kept Russia out of WW I. Russia had nothing to gain and everything to lose from entering the war.
Here I had in mind the reforms in state and society Russia had made since 1905, beginning with the October Manifesto setting up the State Duma. Relatively weak tho it was, it was still a huge development, meaning power would no longer be concentrated solely in the hands of the Tsar and the Civil Service. Even more importantly, the reforms of Peter Stolypin virtually revolutionized Russian society, laying down more efficient and modern forms of economic organization, land ownership, etc.
ALL of this was reversed and destroyed by the Revolution and dictatorship of Lenin and Stalin.
Sean
Thank you, Sean. Well-informed and reasoned as ever.
Hi, Paul!
Many thanks! And I should have added that if either of the two Prime Ministers of the Provisional Government, Prince George Lvov and Alexander Kerensky, had been more decisive leaders, Russia might have escaped most of the horrors of the 20th century. Because either of them SHOULD have crushed the Bolsheviks with no mercy after Lenin's first attempt at seizing power failed in the summer of 1917.
Prince George and Kerensky were also too loyal to the Russian alliance with France and the UK. From the POV of considering only RUSSIAN interests, ending the war with Germany and Austria Hungary on tolerable terms should have been among their top priorities. That alone would have taken a good deal of the wind out of Bolshevik propaganda about "peace and land." Continuing the war was a gift from heaven for Lenin!
Sean
Sean,
First attempt at seizing power in the summer? I have read the history but I don't remember that part? In Russia that year, the masses were on the move. They had come from the background to the foreground of history. That meant that an individual could move an organization which could move a class which could move a country and, beyond that, theoretically, the world. "Give me a point on which to stand and I can move the world." A prime example was Lenin getting back into Russia when and how he did - and that is in Anderson's story, "Details." The personalities of other leaders must also be significant. I can imagine the Time Patrol in the background.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
I am not a Marxist of any kind, as you know. So I, along with Poul Anderson, simply don't believe in Marx's theories of classes. Putting that aside, the Provisional Government discovered and published in July of 1917 how Lenin was taking money from the German government in order to undermine the Russian war effort thru political agitation. Lenin being revealed as a paid agent of the Germans was in itself, as you can imagine, very nearly a fatal blow to him!
Yes, I can imagine the Time Patrol and Manse Everard sadly and reluctantly, squelching any attempts by people from the future to preventing the Bolsheviks from seizing power. Because to do so would have nullified "real" history and prevent the line of development which led to the Danellians.
Sean
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