The Russian Revolution by Shelia Fitzpatrick PDF

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The Russian Revolution by Shelia Fitzpatrick History 524 Book Review 1 In 1986, Sheila Fitzpatrick was described as “one of the foremost young historians of the Soviet Union…”[1] Her works beyond this title include: The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts Under Lunacharsky, 1917-1921 (1970); Education and Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921-1932 (1979); The Russian Revolution (1986, 1994); The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (1992) to name a few. She began her studies at the University of Melbourne in 1961 and received her Ph.D. from Oxford in 1969. Fitzpatrick was also named Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor in History in 1994 and Oliver H. Radkey Regents professor in history at the University of Texas-Austin from 1987 to 1989. She currently holds her professorship at the University of Chicago.[2] In the book Russian Revolution, Fitzpatrick attempts to present a concise study of the Russian Revolution from 1917 until 1934. The book was originally written before the fall of the Soviet Union (written in 1981), but in this second edition, Fitzpatrick was lead to reassess the legacy of the Revolution. “The Russian Revolution belonged to the category of ‘birth of a nation’ revolutions— those, like the America Revolution, that left behind them an enduring national and institutional structure and were the focus of a national myth. Now the Soviet nation that was born in the Russian Revolution appears to be dead, and the Revolution has to be reclassified as an episode in the long sweep of Russian History.”[3] In addressing this new edition, Fitzpatrick kept the same format with the only changes being to the introduction and reassessing the Great Purges (due to newly available information made available after the Fall of the Soviet Union). The themes of this book work around the arguments of when did the revolution start and end, the dynamics of the party during the NEP, and finally “Stalin’s Revolution.”[4] Working with the history of the French Revolution as a historical comparison, Fitzpatrick attempts to describe Russia’s Revolution in a similar fashion. She frames the Revolution from February 1917 to the end of the Great Purges of 1937-38 and

describes each period as an “episode.” She groups them as follows: the February and October Revolutions, The Civil War, the interlude of the NEP, Stalin’s ‘Revolution from above and the Great Purges. The second theme of this book addresses the evolution of the Bolshevik party during the NEP. As Diane Koenker points out, rather than focus solely on Stalin’s elimination of opponents or industrialization, Fitzpatrick points out how the Party was able to come to the realization it may not have had the needed expertise.[5] She highlights this argument with the opinion that Lenin viewed a party member who could not appreciate the new understanding they had reached about the party’s needs as “Communist conceit” which she interprets as an “ignorant and childish belief that Communist could solve all the problems for themselves.”[6] In addition to issues of bureaucracy, there was the obvious looming economic collapse that the Party faced which characterizes the NEP which Lenin viewed as necessary for recovery. Bukharin would even come out to support a longer period of time for the NEP in order to continue the recovery process.[7] Stalin and his supporters viewed this retreat with contempt and felt they were slipping into a “Thermidorian degeneration” [8] which leads directly into “Stalin’s Revolution from above.” The third theme of this book revolves around Stalin’s Revolution. Fitzpatrick describes this as Stalin’s “war against Russia’s backwardness, and at the same time a war against the proletariat’s class enemies insides and outside the country.” [9] Stalin vehemently opposed the NEP and desired to return to ‘war communism’ and deal with those who had encouraged the prolonging of the NEP which he felt abandoned what the Revolution had accomplished, therefore making them traitors. In addition to dealing with traitors to the party, he also wanted to purge the party of the bourgeois experts that had been brought on during the NEP period to fill the gaps in Communist expertise. Stalin would apply the label of “rightism” to anyone who exhibited “ideological deviations and bureaucratic deadwood—that is, officials who were judged too incompetent, apathetic, or corrupt to rise to the challenge of implementing Stalin’s aggressive policies of revolution from above. “[10] Of course his aggressive polices included the pursuit of heavy industrialization and collectivization, which amounted to a complete abandonment of the NEP and the

strides made by Party during the 1920’s. Stalin would also launch a program to eliminate any remains “backwardness” including the Church, reforming the education system, and the family unit. Originally written in 1981, Fitzpatrick’s previous works focused on social upheaval during the revolution and Stalin’s creation of new elite in the form of the “cadre.”[11] Yet even with the fall of the Soviet Union and the second edition of this book, Fitzpatrick holds to her original thesis for the book that it “is essentially a history of the Russian Revolution as experienced in Russia, not in the non-Russian territories that were part of the old Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.”[12] In fact, Ronald Grigor Suny writes in his review of her original edition that she took a “morally neutral stance and looks at the actual achievements of the whole revolutionary processes from 1917 through the First Five-Year Plan.” [13] Fitzpatrick only major change to the book would be the introduction and Chapter 6 regarding the Great Purge once Soviet archives had been opened up for research.[14] The origin of the Revolution is with out repudiation the February Revolution of 1917. As for its conclusion, that is still disputed. Some question whether or not the Revolution ended with the rise of Stalinism, the Completion of the First Five-Year Plan, or the completion of the Great Purges. Fitzpatrick very neatly divides the Revolution into her afore mentioned “episodes:” the February and October Revolutions (Chapter 2), the Civil War (Chapter 3), the NEP and the future of the Revolution (Chapter 4), and Stalin’s Revolution (Chapters 5-6). As for Treadgold/Ellison, they do not put the Revolution in such “episodes.” Where Fitzpatrick writes her history as that of the Russian people, Treadgold/Ellison actually spend considerable time addressing the Revolution in the borderlands and its spreading to the outside world (Chapter 16), effectively blurring a “clear” ending to the Revolution before the Second World War. In the period that directly followed the Russian Civil War, the economy was on the verge of collapse after surviving ensuing collapse after the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, War-Communism during the Civil War had brought the Soviet Union to its knees. The easing of previous economic policies Fitzpatrick described as an “improvised response to desperate economic circumstances, undertaken initially with very little discussion and debate… in the party and the leadership.” [15] Both Treadgold/Ellison and Fitzpatrick agree that Lenin’s motivation for such a “retreat” was an appeasement of the peasantry.[16] The intended purpose was to consolidate victories

already won.[17] In her history of this period, Fitzpatrick takes the time to address the concern of the growing needs of the bureaucracy. While most Communist resisted the idea of the old cumbersome bureaucracy, Lenin realized some of its elements were necessary. Where the Party members had zeal, they lacked experience, and the experience was often only found in the old bourgeois.[18] Even inside the Party itself, Stalin was organizing a “cadre” of appointed party officials to maintain the daily business. Treadgold/Ellison does not directly address the first concern of bureaucracy, but both spend considerable time addressing struggle over the future of leadership and the Rise of Stalin. At the same time debates on bureaucracy were developing as Fitzpatrick argues, so was Stalin’s move to consolidate power, despite Trotsky’s protest.[19] The party had detested the idea of having an elite element in the party to the point there was not even a formal party leader, although Lenin was recognized as such. It was at the time of Lenin’s illness that competition for that position began in earnest. On one side you had the opposition lead by Trotsky who opposed the “bureaucratization” of the party that had occurred under Stalin.[20]Although both men held generally the same principles on industrialization and the peasants, it would be this party machine that had developed and replaced the “democracy” of the party that would be their strongest division. Yet, Trotsky’s resistance to the machine would be in vain and remaining support would dry up in the spring of 1924.[21] On the other hand, there was Bukharin who supported a continuation of the existing NEP policies for the foreseeable future,[22]which Stalin had detested from its inception. To eliminate Bukharin would be to eliminate the many supporters for continuation of the NEP. Although Fitzpatrick mentions Bukharin as a source of opposition, Treadgold/Ellison gives the idea of opposition much more attention and definition. Despite the lack of inclusion, both Fitzpatrick and Treadgold/Ellison come to the same conclusion that Stalin, though he did not completely eliminate Bukharin till 1930, still managed to gain its control through securing the party machine. Though both author’s follow much of the same argument on the Revolution till this point, they differ on whether Stalin’s come to power and subsequent Terror were still part of the same Revolution. Fitzpatrick argues that Stalin saw the NEP and relaxing of policies toward the peasants and kulaks as a Themidorian degeneration of the Revolution and of course his response was to reinitiate the Revolution by purging the Party.[23] Collectivization and heavy industrialization needed to be enforced. This

could only be obtained by a “top down” revolution and those who were in the way had to be removed. Russia could not be beaten again as she had in the past and as Stalin saw it, he was simply reviving and purifying the existing Revolution. [24]Treadgold/Ellison describe Stalin’s rise as a second revolution due to the completeness of Stalin’s take over of the Soviet Union,[25] although there evidence is very similar to Fitzpatrick’s in arguing for a continuation. Much of the details about the Great Purges (referred to as also the Terror, continuing the metaphor of the French Revolution) and Stalin’s policies are far beyond the scope of this paper. Fitzpatrick articulately argues that this was not a separate Revolution, but merely a relapse of the previous fever after the convalescence of the NEP. [26] Stalin by the end of the Great Purges had managed to effectively change the way of life and make great strides at changing the backwardness of Russia. The Soviets were at least making claims of progress. Cultural, social, and educational reforms had brought once defeated Russians to their place in history, or so they thought. The usage of the French Revolution is a very relevant analogy that Treadgold/Ellison abandons. As a continuation of the argument the Revolution and Stalin’s coming to power and subsequent Purge, she pointed out that in classical Revolutionary ideology, Terror always follows the Themidorian period and thus acts as a finale to the Revolution.[27] When this book was originally written, the Revolution still served as the proof of a Russian Triumph in the face of defeat. With the Fall, she ponders the legacy of the Revolution and lists the obvious: the Communist party, collectivization, Five- and Seven- Year plans, chronic shortages, cultural isolation, and division of the world into “socialist” and “capitalist” camps. Yet the most significant legacy of the Revolution before the Fall was it gave the Russian people precedent in History; the Russians were establishing the example for the future. But Fitzpatrick wonderfully surmises that with the Fall it “did not sink gracefully into history. It was flung there—‘on to the dust-heap of history,’ to borrow Trotsky’s phrase—in a spirit of vehement national rejection.”[28] Bibliography Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Treadgold, Donald & Herbert J. Ellison. Twentieth Century Russia. 9th Ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. Wildman, Allan. “The Russian Revolution.” Slavic Review, Vol. 43, No 2, (Summer, 1984), pp 309-311. www.jstor.org Huch, Ronald K.. “The Russian Revolution.” The History Teacher, Vol. 17, No. 1. (Nov, 1983), pp. 137-138. www.jstor.org Suny, Ronald Grigor. ”The Russian Revolution.” Russian Review, Vol. 42, No. 4. (Oct, 1983), pp. 417-418. www.jstor.org. The University of Chicago Chronicle. September 23, 1999, Vol. 19, No. 1. http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/990923/named.shtml [1] Koenker, Diane. “The Russian Revolutions,” pp. 1000 [2] See http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/990923/named.shtml [3] Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution, 1 [4] Ibid, 4 [5] Keonker, 1000 [6] Fitzpatrick, 103. [7] Ibid, 117 [8] Ibid, 118 [9] Ibid, 120 [10] Fitzpatrick, 128 [11] Koener, 1000 [12] Fitzpatrick, 14 [13] Suny, 417 [14] Fitzpatrick, 13 [15] Fitzpatrick, 95 [16] Treadgold/Ellison, 143; Fitzpatrick, 94 [17] Fitzpatrick, 96 [18] ibid, 103 [19] ibid 104 [20] Fitzpatrick 110, Treadgold/Ellison, 155

[21] Fitzpatrick, 109 [22] Ibid, 117 [23] Fitzpatrick, 118 [24] Ibid, 120 [25] Treadgold/Ellison, 198 [26] Fitzpatrick, 148 [27] Fitzpatrick, 170 [28] Ibid, 170-171...