The Bolshevik Great Experiment: One Hundred Years Later

Lenin speaking in Red Square, 1920

Since the beginning of the centennial of World War I, I have been writing a series of essays about the war as the memory of events passes us by--a hundred years later. But as we approach the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution, I find it nearly impossible to delimit my thoughts on this profound event in the history of the human race as if it were only a passage of the war, like the Somme, or American intervention, or the internment of enemy aliens.

There are so many narrations of the "event" itself. There are so many answers to the question "why." There are so many clashing depictions of tectonic shifts in Russia and the world at that time, of Lenin, Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky and the rest as actors, heroes, villains, and (to some modern day sycophants) secular saints.

Buzuluk in the Volga Region: Victims of the famine
created by Bolshevik food confiscations, 1920-21

The inhuman cruelty, the killing capacity of this Marxist-Leninist movement which styled itself occasionally as the champion of the "people" (though much more often and much more truthfully as the vanguard of the proletariat on the march toward a revolutionary conflagration that would produce the new man) truly tests the bounds of human comprehension. Even if we take into account a group of recent historians who minimize standard historical estimates of total non-combat, democidal totals of deaths (based in part on recently found archival materials, but in part on soft hearts still loyal to the Great Experiment), the median calculation of Communist mortality by historians and demographers credits the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin with somewhere between eighteen and sixty-two million deaths beyond technically military losses. If we add up the democidal killings of spin-off Communist regimes across the globe, the totals are astronomical, with the estimates by historians, sociologists, demographers, and other serious analysts hovering around a hundred million human beings.

Comrade Lenin sweeps away the kings,
capitalists, priests

These deaths were, in the view of Communist elites from Lenin to Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot, necessary. The grist of History's mill, so to speak.

Still, many persist in wearing Che Guevara t-shirts and longing for the Great Experiment. In 2011, Rasmussen pollsters found that eleven percent of Americans thought that a Communist regime would be better than the current "system" of politics and economics in the United States.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/march_2011/11_say_communism_better_than_u_s_system_of_politics_and_economics

Such attitudes come in part from the lack of much serious study of history at any level in the schools in the United States and in other parts of the world. My own history students read Solzhenitsyn, or Yevgenia Ginzburg, or The Blackbook of Communism and express surprise at the enormity of Communist mass murders and persecution they have hardly  been aware of previously. But this phenomenon is by no means recent. In my own education, which took place, from first grade to Ph.D., during the Cold War, only one or two teachers dealt with Soviet and Communist mass murder in any way, and that was not until I was well into university historical studies. And of course Hollywood, that great shaper of popular historical awareness, has assiduously avoided all of this murder and misery. No doubt because it offers so little in the way of human drama.

In any case, the answer is not the schools, whose bureaucracy and whose ideological and even pedagogical limitations will never add to the curriculum a special chapter studying the bloody history of the Great Experiment. Rather, the solution will come through individual reading and learning among a growing subset of educated, and especially self-educated, persons committed to the exploration of the total state and its origins--outside and typically after the completion of formal schooling. The materials of this kind of guerrilla education takes the form these days of books, online seminars, special courses on economics and society, and myriad other forms of information that somehow escape from and flow around the historical narratives that avoid mentioning these profound crimes which took place in the name of the Marxist historical dialectic.

So as we come to this particular grim centennial, we do well to pay even more attention to the influence of the even through the whole hundred years. By any measure, World War I shaped the century after it by institutionalizing and to some extent normalizing mass violence, by unleashing the state in its aggressiveness, acquisitiveness, and power. But the "contributions" of the Bolshevik Revolution hold pride of place. As yet, the legacy of the Bolshevik takeover of the Russian Empire beginning in October/November 1917 represents the single historical fact from the Great War--of dreadfully many possible choices--that must be viewed as having visited the most misery and death on the human race in its time and over the century to come.

Deeper Forces and the Great War from January to June, 1917

A hundred years ago, the First World War was reaching its crisis. Though we tend to think of the war in terms of stalemate and attrition, the war was a complex web of human activities and human choices that seemed anything but static to most of the millions of participants. An illustration of this idea, in the broadest sense, can be seen in trends and events during the first half of 1917, just one hundred years ago. Taken as as a whole, the first six months of 1917 represents a startling shift in the shape of the war. As the fine historian René Albrecht-Carrié put it, the deeper forces emerged. The huge battles of 1916 and the resulting alterations in the size and scope of the state in all belligerent societies combined with profound events in international affairs--above all, American entry--to create an entirely new dynamic of a war that is still not done with shaping the future. As evidence, we might contemplate briefly just some of the changing components.

Since 1914, the war had been fought on many fronts besides the vast Eastern and Western Fronts. To add to these, in August 1916, Romania's entry into the war opened a new war

Romanian 105mm howitzers at the Battle of Mărăști, 1917

front involving forces from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Russia, as well Romania. As the commander of Germany's army, Paul von Hindenburg, sized things up just before Romania joined the war, "It is certain that so relatively small a state as Romania had never before been given a role so important, and, indeed, so decisive for the history of the world at so favorable a moment." Romania came in on the side of Entente shortly thereafter but faced disaster. Combined Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and German forces handed the Romanian army defeat after defeat until the front stabilized in January 1917. But much of Romania was now in the hands of the Central Powers, and the Romanian army had lost a large part of its army, certainly the majority of the 300,000 military deaths (and an equal number of civilian deaths) the country would suffer before the end of the war. Still, Romania's contribution no doubt helped substantially in delaying Entente collapse on many other fronts.

In Russia, the strains of the vast 1916 Brusilov Offensive had depleted Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and other armies in numbers that prefigured the Eastern Front battles of the Second World War. The 1916 Russian offensive was counted as a victory, but it was a Phyrric one. The half a million Russian casualties it cost brought the Russian wartime total to almost six million killed, wounded, or missing soldiers by early 1917. Russian industry still produced shells, but the economy was increasingly a shambles. Corruption was rife. The famous and sordid dynamic of Nicholas, Alexandra, and Rasputin had weakened the war effort both in perception and in reality. The murder of Rasputin on December 30, 1917, did little to reverse this weakening. The relationship between the parliament (the Duma) and the High Command (headed by the Tsar) worsened. Famine threatened in many areas. Mutinies and desertions were increasing drastically by early 1917. It was in this context and at this moment that crowds poured into the streets of Petrograd, starting a chain of events which ended with the February Revolution and the abdication of the Tsar in March. The new

Students and soldiers firing on police in Petrograd
during the February Revolution

Provisional Government pledged itself to continue the war effort, but observers in all countries had doubts--especially since the Russian Caucasus army facing the Turks had disintegrated the moment the news of the February Revolution reached it. On the other hand, strategists of the Central Powers began to revive their early visions of a victory in Russia followed by a concentration of forces in the West. To many German leaders it now seemed possible to achieve a delayed and attenuated version of the failed Schlieffen Plan at long last.

It was on the heels of these events that the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Of course, the United States had been neutral in the official sense before April 6. But in fact, American loans, goods, and shipping had been a major component of Allied war-making since 1915. Equally important, the United States as a "neutral" had impacted the shape of German naval policy and the maintenance of the British Blockade of Germany by means of Woodrow Wilson's pressure on the Germans to curtail their policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.  

From April to June 1918, the exact nature of the American contribution was yet to be worked out, but it was immediately evident that without the hindrances of official neutrality, the efforts the Americans would be crucial, if they materialized in time.

Robert Nivelle in 1916

And even the promise of American intervention came none too soon for the Entente powers. The French launched the murderous "Nivelle Offensive" in the center of the Western Front three days after American entry. Nivelle had managed to sell to Allied leaders an updated theory of offensive-mindedness with the promise of a total victory against the Germans in France within a few days. The method--throwing away Henri Petain's proven system, "artillery conquers, infantry holds"--was, simply, one furious attack after another. The result was the "French Mutinies." Beginning in early May, frontline soldiers in many, perhaps half, of French divisions simply refused to go over the top in these suicidal attacks. Desertions grew, but for the most part, French poilus disobeyed orders and held their positions instead of charging across No Man's Land to attack impregnable German positions. Self-preservation by means of "informal truces" had meant survival throughout the war for many soldiers in all armies, but this widespread mutiny represented something far more serious. Further, in Italy, a Nivelle-like offensive on the Isonzo Front produced a similar plunge in morale, with desertions and mutinies beginning in June 1917. Likewise, the failure of the Russian Kerensky Offensive of

The ruined village of Soupir, one of many such in the wake of
the Nivelle Offensive

June 1917 reignited the wave of mutinies in the Russian army, rendering it incapable of further offensive operations. As for Britain, a sizeable mutiny at the brutal British training base at Etaples would break out in September 1917, with much less effect on the front itself. Still, Allied leaders were faced with the irony of an enormous diplomatic victory in the form of American entry--but potential Entente military collapse before the United States could mobilize.

Artillery preparation for the Canadian attack at Vimy Ridge

It is true that the Entente had some important successes during the first half of 1917, almost all of them by British and Empire units. The Arras Campaign (in particular the Canadian assault at Vimy Ridge and the Messines battle in the Ypres sector) made gains that were large by Western Front standards. But these victories were local, and in their primary mission (to divert Germans from the larger Nivelle offensive) unsuccessful. They never came close to any breakthrough, and the Germans would recapture much of the gained territory in 1918.

Finally, the specter of a collapse of Entente fighting morale in 1917 took shape as all the home fronts (Entente and Central Powers alike) developed fissures, above all in the vital area of war production. The sheer pressure of manpower shortages in the face of accelerating munitions needs had led to increasing hours, dangerous working conditions, food shortages, and government repression of many kinds in the munitions factories of all the countries involved. Strikes had occurred in the workforces of all belligerent societies since 1915, but now strikes skyrocketed everywhere in extent, intensity, and violence. Again, these social fractures affected all belligerents, but since the Entente governments were simultaneously facing exhaustion and mutiny on so many fronts, the situation was indeed dire. 

Under these conditions the entry and war mobilization of the United States, the fourth most populous country on the globe and the world's strongest economy, could hardly be anything but pivotal after June 1917.

"These Deeply Momentous Things": United States Intervention into World War I (No. 6)

The United States Declares War: April 6, 1917

On this day--April 6--a hundred years ago, the United States declared war on Germany.

The history of America's entry into the Great War is complex and profound. It has intrinsic drama, no matter what one's attitude about the rights and wrongs of U.S. participation in the war--and there have been many.  

     Wartime Allied propaganda had Americans believing the Germans were solely guilty, and that the conflict was a war for democracy, when the most autocratic country in Europe, Russia, was on the Allied said. American entry, of course, was a necessity.

     Revisionist history in the twenties and thirties written by Barnes, Peterson, Borchard, Millis, and other American historians seemed ironclad in making the case that the United States was not "forced" to war, that American intervention led to higher death totals and a settlement that in many ways unhinged the world. In these works, Wilson's decisions often looked misguided or plain wrong.

     Yet from the late thirties, and with more momentum after World War II, American historians fell back on a positive interpretation of Wilson, the Man of Peace who was forced to War, with all the ancillary propositions that followed.

     Again, from the early sixties, the New Left historians--William A. Williams, Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperovitz, and others--resurrected much of the old revisionist critique but with a more socialist and often Marxist spin.

     And a number of historians and others, especially psychologists.... and Juliette George, wrote more critical works about Wilson's state of mind and his motives.

     But the picture of the upright and moral Man of Peace struggling with the necessity of war never disappeared in a long list of biographies, above all the Wilson studies by Arthur Link.  

     Still, to tell the truth, the old sort of diplomatic history was abandoned a while back by academic historians, and direct issues like intervention have long since lost "relevance" within the halls of academe. It is true enough that in the many recent diplomatic studies that critique the "world systems" from a Marxist or other determinist direction, there has been some interest in the role of "capitalism" in the direction of state foreign policies. And, too, outside of the guild of academic historians, some economists, sociologists, and political scientists have been interested in detailed studies of specific episodes of international relation, and in specific questions of the of the kind suggested by Leopold von Ranke in the nineteenth century--all related to "what actually happened." (A notable exception here is Justus Doenecke's 2011 full-length study of Intervention.) 

     But the war is still relevant for a broader public. It was, after all, the primal event in the history of a terrible century. And in almost any telling of the history of World War I,  American entry intensified the war and reshaped the world in ways that made it anything but safe for democracy.

     In the current series of short essays, I have thrown out some general considerations and discussed some specific events. It is now time to recount briefly the dramatic last few weeks.

     The forty days before American entry were tempestuous. Once the Germans announced resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, on February 1, 1917, Wilson became increasingly bellicose, preparing bill after bill that aimed at military expenditures and "preparedness" and carrying measures of war security, even war hysteria, that anticipated wartime repression, spying, and information control.

     The news of these measures found a public almost, but not quite, ready for war. The Midwest and West were largely opposed to American entry. Many of the populist remnants, and indeed the agrarian and anarchist socialists rejected participation in the war since it was a war of the kind of "interests" Wilson had long railed against. The war was extremely unpopular among Irish immigrants and their children (few of whom seemed to have love to spare for the English) and among immigrants whose national origin was in the lands of the Central Powers. Then, too, a large number of women's associations rejected the war for a variety of reasons, as did Christian pacifists. Though many Progressives were in fact much more openly bellicose than Wilson himself, a number of Progressive intellectuals and activists opposed American intervention vehemently, including public intellectual Randolph Bourne and social theorist and activist Jane Addams.

     Yet as H. C. Peterson pointed out in his massive 1930s study of the propaganda against neutrality, the national press had already begun to lay the groundwork for intervention after the British cut the transatlantic cable from Germany to the United States in August 1914. The Entente essentially controlled the bulk of war news from the beginning.

     The German submarine policy resulted almost immediately in a string of torpedoed American carriers of war goods. At the same time, the famous--or infamous--Zimmermann Note chiefly served to crank up the steam for "preparedness" and war with the public and with the government itself. The note was an instruction from the Foreign Office in Berlin for the Ambassador in Mexico to approach the Mexican government about entering the war in alliance with Germany. The whole scheme was conditional on American entrance into the war. The quid pro quo for Mexico allying itself with Germany would agree to Mexico's reconquest of "the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona." (View a copy of the original German Foreign Office draft of theZimmermann Note, in German--for a full translation, see the World War I Document Archive.)

     The British had intercepted the message somewhat earlier, saving it as a trump card. They handed it to Ambassador Page in London February 23. Wilson released the text to the press five days later. Though the United States was already threatening Germany with war, the German note was largely seen as unfair, underhanded, and evil. Since the United States had invaded Mexico twice in the previous three years, the Mexicans didn't dismiss the Note out of hand. But after careful assessment, rejected the offer. As with other political decisions related to the war (including the reinstitution of the unrestricted submarine policy), the German record in the was not stellar. Ironically, Arthur Zimmermann, whose name we associate with the note and who was the top permanent official in the German Office, was one of the first contacts Colonel Edward House had made in Europe back in 1914, as Wilson's personal envoy. In any case, with American ships being sunk by U-Boats, the Zimmermann note was the most important straw that broke the camel's back in the USA.

     Politically, a small remnant of anti-intervention congressmen fought a desperate battle in the last weeks before intervention. Among them, Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, a Progressive himself, was foremost. "Fighting Bob" was the leader of Senate opposition to President Wilson's nearly complete departure from neutrality after the 1916 election. In particular, La Follette organized a coalition of Senators who opposed Wilson's Armed Ship Bill, sent to the Senate in late February 1917. The bill proposed arming American ships carrying war goods to Europe, asserting the rights of the neutrals to sail into war zones with full rights of the sea, including the right to engage hostile ships. To La Follette and his colleagues, "The Armed Ship Bill Meant War," and La Follette used this phrase in a position pamphlet published in late March 1917. La Follette charged that the administration tactic was to flood Congress with very large appropriations bills so close to the end of the session that Congress would never have time to deal with all of them with sufficient attention. As La Follette described it, "In the last hours of the 64th Congress, all of these bills [arrived], including finally the Armed Ship Bill, which reached Congress 63 hours before its recess and claimed sweeping discretionary power involving warlike acts."

     This small band of Senators organized a filibuster that defeated the passage of the Armed Ship Bill in early March 1917. The President, who rarely took opposition well, branded the Senators as a "little group of willful men" who, "representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible." If Wilson was wrong in assessing motive and wisdom, he was right in that they were certainly in the minority. Both parties had now become war parties. Henry Cabot Lodge and other prominent Republicans demanded an immediate declaration.

     From London, Ambassador Page informed Wilson that British gold reserves were nearly exhausted: "Perhaps our going to war is the only way in which our present preeminent trade position can be maintained and a panic averted."

     In the last days of March, Wilson weighed his options. His closest advisors had long since advised war. Wilson spoke with Colonel House on March 27 and asked if House thought he should address Congress and ask for a declaration or simply declare a state of war and request "the means to conduct the conflict." House, of course, advised the non-Constitutional route. On March 29, Wilson put the whole proposition of war to the Cabinet, which unanimously supported intervention. Some of the cabinet officers hoped to limit intervention to naval and supply assistance, and some even to financial aid. Wilson departed the meeting thoughtfully, telling his Cabinet officials "I think that there is no doubt as to what your advice is. Thank you."

     In the following days, Wilson made his decision and called a joint special session of Congress for April 2. The New Jersey governor had originally been chosen by House and others in part because he was a fine orator. In the biggest speech of his life, , he pulled out the stops.

     America, Wilson said, had been forced to war by the German submarine campaign on civilian ships, whether armed or not. During the course of this, Germans had killed Americans. He did not mention that these American ships were sailing through a designated war zone, or that many of them were carrying supplies and armament for the Entente powers.

     Wilson outlined a series of war measures to be taken immediately, including the introduction of conscription to enlarge the army to 500,000, at the same time increasing loans and subsidies to the Allies while reorganizing society for war. And he added,

"While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are.... We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states."

In the end, he said, the United States was forced to fight:

"The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them."

     No doubt by the time Wilson began his speech, most national representatives had already made up their minds. The Senate voted for the declaration on April 4. Only six voted against: La Follette, Harry Lane, George Norris, William J. Stone, Asle J. Gronna, and James K. Vardaman. Eight senators abstained. The war resolution passed in the House at three in the morning on April 6. The vote was 373 to 50.

     The United States was at war.