The following is a series of reflections on Stephen F. Cohen’s book, “Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution,” pages 3-12.
The topic of social or political revolution and how it comes about has received a steady rate of interest over the past five years. Perhaps surprisingly, the term has had a higher rate of sustained interest over that time period than searches containing “Britney Spears,” although the spikes of interest in Britney have certainly been much higher. Perhaps less surprisingly, the internet’s interest in Plato has been lower than either one (see the google trends chart here: plato, revolution, Britney Spears – Explore – Google Trends). Stephen Cohen’s book hardly registers any interest on the same chart, but has much to say about the topic of revolution that is worth reflection.
Contents
- The Elements of a Successful Revolution
- The Force of History and Historical Actors
- External Resources
- Works Cited
The Elements of a Successful Revolution
We might take the Russian Revolution as an example of a successful revolution to the extent that it represented the culmination of years of work toward the overthrow of a well-established regime. The aftermath of the revolution and the extent to which it ever really represented the ideals of the revolutionaries themselves is, of course, a far more problematic question, with the figure of Joseph Stalin being the most problematic of all. But a successful revolution whose outcome was by no means certain. Cohen’s narrative allows us a historical glimpse into the basic elements that made for a successful overthrow of the Czarist regime.
It was by no means an easy or a simple affair. One tends to hear that the regime of Czar Nicholas II was already tattered by economic difficulties and social unrest, making the outcome of the years following the 1905 Revolution seem like it was simply part of the natural flow of history. Such a view underestimates the power of unusual individual initiative and dedication to a cause in the case of many of the primary actors behind the unfolding of the 1917 revolution and lays too much value upon broader historical forces in shaping history itself.
Bukharin is a case in point. Like other young revolutionaries among the radical Bolshevik intelligentsia, Bukharin was the son of prosperous parents. In Bukharin’s case, his parents were both teachers. His father studied mathematics at Moscow University and after a period of economic hardship after 1897, eventually became a middle-ranking, prosperous member of the czarist civil service (Cohen 6). Despite Bukharin’s commitment to revolutionary activities, which began at age 17, he wrote with “love and admiration” of his father’s influence for fostering his intellectual curiosity (7). Nevertheless, his revolutionary activities, which eventually led to his twice being sent to a czarist prison, represent a very radical break from the life his parents established for themselves.
A generational split between parents and children does seem to have played a motivating role for the Bolsheviks as an oppositional group, giving them a sense of solidarity against the politics of an older generation. Cohen cites Ilya Ehrenberg, a friend of Bukharin from his youth, as a potentially representative example. The moderate Mensheviks, rivals of the Bolsheviks, she wrote, were “more like my father.” It is not at all hard to imagine that parents such as Bukharin’s would have held conservative views that clashed considerably with those their son held. Lenin’s case was similar: his father eventually became a civil servant under the czarist regime and rose to the rank of hereditary nobility (6). In Bukharin’s case, his fortunes were anything but the outcome of following a straight and narrow path. Before the age of 23 he was twice sent to prison and then into exile; yet, his devotion to the revolutionary cause endured.
The Bolshevik revolution was led by young men and women who developed their ideas at a young age, especially during or in the aftermath of the failed 1905 revolution. Their readiness to test the waters of revolution and social unrest as well as their idealism and devotion to Marx may well have been a product of their youth, but their willingness to engage in revolutionary activities and subsequently find an enduring source of their own identity in them speaks to the quality of their idealism–or else to the depths they might have fallen without it. In this sense they were both shaped by history as well as its moving force.
It can be said that historical forces are either of a progressive or conservative nature. There is nothing new in this reflection, but the division is commonly applied more narrowly to political movements, and given this form of oppositionality as a background, it is possible to clarify the essential opposition between progressive and conservative politics. Social change, then, might be understood as the result of either progressive of conservative stances taken relative to a progressive or conservative political formations in society as a whole. Solidarity with the ideological basis of a current regime can therefore be understood as the basis for “conservative” values advocated in the face of revolutionary ones. Revolutionary ones, by the same token, can be understood as an opposition to the continuity of institutionalized social norms and their influence upon the lives of the citizens who live and work according to them. Pericles’ funeral oration represents one example of conservative politics; the Communist Manifesto a manifestation of revolutionary politics. As can be seen, the burden to develop a new vision more compelling than one offered by the prevailing set of social norms always lies with the revolutionary or progressive social forces, which explains a necessary part of their idealistic character. The success of a revolutionary movement might then be taken to involve the success of the competing set of ideals they take themselves to represent and even less radical political disputes might be seen in this light as moving forces in history.
But as Marxists have emphasized, the economic conditions in a society might be taken to be the fundamental motivating factor underlying social change rather then ideas. The difference in emphasis between Hegelians and Marxists might be said to come down to one between ideology and economics as the underpinning of social change. Marxists emphasize the material conditions of daily life and the need to address them as a priority in enacting social change; and yet, truly revolutionary ideas must involve the capacity to imagine a social order that represents a break with the continuity of the established social norms. Marx’s view of communism as the end of social change certainly imagines this, but does so with an element of determinism, so that the ideological side of social change appears as more of an effect of socio-economic conditions rather than its driving force. It is certainly possible to understand the French Revolution in this light, but it is equally possible to contest a Marxist reading and see it as driven by the ideals of the the Enlightenment era. Ironically, recent research has confirmed that behind the scenes the Communists of the Stalinist era were really communists–true believers as it were–and ideology appears to have been the driving force behind the decisions taken during that time. Stephen Kotkin has discussed this in his online interviews available on Youtube (click here for a relevant part of this discussion).
The Force of History and Historical Actors
We return to the opposition between a structure/context driven view of history and the concept of historical change as driven by individual actors. On the side of the structural view, one might marshal the socio-economic factors that could be said to be the necessary, basic conditions for historical change to occur or, in fact, to have any meaning. On the other, Bukharin’s own personal history provides a counterpoint. His personal history is far from typical. As was mentioned, he was twice sent to prison for conspiring against the czarist regime. But there is the further fact that, as Cohen writes, the party itself was riddled with informants and began to fall apart in the years before his exile in 1911, a situation that could hardly have encouraged idealism. Bukharin believed he was betrayed into prison by a member of his own party and yet returned to Russia in 1917 after the revolution (12-13).
His story is indicative of an individual who was willing to sacrifice his future and endure much in the name of an ideal without any certain outcome–something few individuals carry out in practice, however idealistic their motivations may have been. Indeed, Cohen writes that a woman who encountered Bukharin in exile in Vienna in 1913 described him as having more the appearance of a saint than a rebel or a thinker (13). It is not my intention to canonize Bukharin, but to point out that the quality of his commitment as a revolutionary seems better characterized by an uncommon dedication to a purpose than to a life lived in the flow of the continuity of deterministic historical forces. In this case as in others, actors making decisions in the moment, writing (as in Bukharin’s case) what they did with success or failure, and chancing to encounter others with the influence necessary to make their contributions significant are all factors that incline to a view of history as much driven by chance as by necessity, if not more. But the degree to which chance can lead to various outcomes is always conditioned by larger historical forces. The very possibility of a revolution in 1917, for example, could very well be said to have depended on the occurrence of World War I, itself an improbable event in the eyes of some historians.
A compromise between the two seems the inevitable next step and yet, as the history of structuralist thought shows, the will to discover universal, governing principles behind social forces has exerted a very strong pull in the direction of deterministic thinking. Once Saussure developed a way to think about language as a fixed system, a way to think systematically about society as a structure determined by its linguistic elements was not far behind. Certainly, there is some validity to this viewpoint, yet its theoretical limitations must be kept in mind. Its notion of a fixed system of language is a creation of theory and is applied far more easily to linguistics than to history. The structure of a language with its grammatical rules is far easier to evaluate than the notion of a hidden structure that truly makes a particular social order systematic.
One of the most significant contributions to economics in recent years has been behavioristic economics, for example, which undermines the determinism inherent in classical economics while presenting a more reliable picture of how people actually make decisions. In the case of Freudianism, Marxism, and Levi-Strauss’s brand of structuralism, an appeal is made to an unconscious that structures the reality we are consciously aware of. But the basic difficulty inherent in all three highly influential schools of thought is the lack of any way to make their conclusions false. They all fall into the trap, in other words of confirmation bias: their hidden explanation explains everything because anything can be attributed to it while it itself cannot be evaluated except as a necessary presupposition whether true or false.
Perhaps it is simply best to do what Giddens has advocated in the aftermath of structuralist thought and simply opt for a view of society shaped by individual actions shaped by their social context (Giddens 9-48). But such an approach calls for a new way of thinking about society that is aware of and can advance beyond that the contributions of structuralist thought. Giddens’ notion of structuration is an example. In his own words, it begins with the central notion of the duality of structure: “the essential recursiveness of social life, as constituted in social practices” so that “structure is both medium and outcome of the reproduction of practices.” He goes on to say that “Structure enters simultaneously into the constitution of the agent and social practices, and ‘exists’ in the generating moments of this constitution” (5). These theoretical moves toward a merging of theory and practice, structure and agency, move theory in the direction of Foucault’s later thinking about society and power: power becomes more and more a localized phenomenon, something highly centralized yet contextualized more narrowly as we enter into modernity. At the same time, individual freedom is something that has to be exercised by individuals acting in an awareness of the nature of “truth”: as something understood and accepted as underpinning the functionality of social order and and its attempts to maintain its structure (Foucault 131-133).
External Resources
The text of Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: a political biography, 1888-1938 can be viewed here: Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: a political biography, 1888-1938 : Cohen, Stephen F : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Read more about behavioral economics and listen to interviews with its foundational thinkers here: What is behavioral economics? | University of Chicago News (uchicago.edu)
Stephen Kotkin discusses the rise of Stalin in an interview here: Why Does Joseph Stalin Matter? – YouTube
Giddens’ Central problems in social theory : action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis can be accessed here: Central problems in social theory : action, structure, and contradiction in social analysis : Giddens, Anthony : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Foucault’s Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977: Power/knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 : Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Works Cited
Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography. Oxford, 1980.
“Why Does Joseph Stalin Matter?” YouTube, uploaded by the Hoover Institution, 7 June, 2018, recorded on 25 January, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhi2icRXbHo.
Giddens, Anthony. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. University of California Press, 1979.
Foucault, Michel. “Truth and Power.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and other Writings, 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon. Pantheon, 1980.