Though never publicly lauded by Lenin, Pyotr Tkachev is seen as the philosophical bridge between the Chernyshevksy-inspired Populists and the Bolsheviks. 

Tkachev was a radical journalist and agitator who served more than one stint in prison for his activities. He described himself as a Jacobin and briefly collaborated with Nachaev from 1868-1869. Although he’s one of the few colleagues who apparently didn’t fall under Nachaev’s sinister spell, he also never repudiated Nachaev even after he fell out of favor when his killing of I.I. Ivanov was exposed.    

Tkachev was one of the early Russian Marxists.  He believed in historical determinism with economics as the prime factor, but strikingly he departed from Marxism regarding how revolution in Russia could realistically be achieved.  He advocated the need for a secret “conspiratorial organization that would seize power by means of a coup d’etat” (Szamuely 1974).   

Unlike Bakhunin and other anarchists, Tkachev didn’t believe that a spontaneous peasant rebellion would happen.  Nor did he believe – like some other Populists – that “an isolated coup” was plausible. 

Tkachev laid out three central ideas necessary for achieving a revolution in Russia:  1) it would have to be established through an intellectually and morally developed revolutionary minority since the masses didn’t understand their own interests and wouldn’t be able to advance them – if they could, he argued, it would represent gradual evolution and would preclude the need for revolution, 2) the revolution was to be carried out as soon as possible as conditions would become less favorable the more entrenched the capitalist system became in Russia, and 3) a revolutionary party was needed to execute the revolution.

That party would engage in organizing a unified and disciplined entity to carry out the revolution, the dissemination of propaganda using its own journal as the primary means, and incitement of the revolution itself (Szamuely 1974). 

Tkachev spelled out his blueprint for revolution in a pamphlet called “The Tasks of Revolutionary Propaganda in Russia.”  He engaged in a lengthy public and hostile debate with Pyotr Lavrov who argued that revolution could only legitimately come from the masses themselves and emphasis must therefore be placed on educating the masses toward this goal.  Lavrov’s approach would be largely discredited after his Going to the People campaign fizzled in the mid-1870’s. 

Tkachev reiterated to Lavrov and other critics, including Europeans such as Friedrich Engels, that since Russia had no well-developed industrial proletariat or representative bodies and no consistently free press, there was no way to win over the masses to a revolution in the foreseeable future.  In Russia’s conditions, in which all the power was vested in the state with no meaningful independent classes or institutions, the state was also vulnerable in terms of the universal resentment it elicited by its oppression and control of all.  This, Tkachev argued, made the Russian state ripe for a “tight-knit, highly disciplined conspiratorial organization” to facilitate its overthrow (Szamuely 1974).

Once power was seized by the revolutionary minority, it would rule as a dictatorship over the course of time needed to implement economic, social and legal changes required by a socialist system (Szamuely 1974).  Some of Lenin’s writings would echo and build upon Tkachev’s ideas and tactics, even using titles for his pieces that were strikingly similar to Tkachev’s (Szamuely 1974).

To be continued

U.S. Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, the top military commander for the U.S. in Europe and an officer of NATO, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week that Washington was considering sending another batch of lethal aid to the Kiev government in the near future, citing the need to deter Russia.

According to U.S. News and World Report, Scaparotti was responding to Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) who pressed him about why Washington wasn’t taking bigger advantage of congressional authorization to provide such weaponry. The delivery of anti-tank Javelin missiles wasn’t enough apparently to placate the hawkish committee member:

Scaparrotti…said the U.S. is considering bolstering the Ukrainian military’s sniper capabilities. But he added of any potential aid shipments, “it has to go through the policy deliberations.” He also expressed concern to the committee about Russia’s modernization of its navy.

“I’m not comfortable yet with the deterrent posture we have in Europe,” Scaparrotti said, when asked about U.S. forces and resources to deter Russia. He later said specifically of Ukraine,

“We need to study their maritime component, their navy.”

Scaparrotti also took the opportunity to reiterate that western powers would continue to flaunt their naval wares in the area, referring to the U.S.S. Donald Cook’s maneuvers in the Black Sea:

“They, frankly, don’t like us in the Black Sea. It’s international waters — and we should sail and fly there.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg has reported that during the Munich Security Conference last month, Washington attempted to pressure Germany to also send warships to the Kerch Strait to prove a point to Putin about western access in the narrow waterway between mainland Russia and Crimea. Merkel refused but offered a more modest action:

Merkel had indicated she was willing, in coordination with the French, to send a convoy through the waterway as a one-time maneuver but Poroshenko said that wasn’t enough to solve his problem — he wants to ensure the strait is open permanently, the people said. France also refused to take part, judging the idea as an unnecessary provocation, according to another official who declined to be identified.

Fortunately, it appears that western European leaders are keeping cooler heads for now. Let’s hope they continue to do so.

Another excerpt from my forthcoming book, this one from the chapter covering the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Narodnaya Volya (from a previous post) would play another pivotal role in the fate of Russia and its revolutionary future.  A young student named Alexander Ulyanov soon fell under the group’s sway and in 1887 was arrested for involvement in a plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander III.  Refusing to ask for clemency, Alexander was hanged (Salisbury 1977; Krausz 2015).

Alexander Ulyanov was the older brother of Vladimir Ulyanov – later known as Vladimir Lenin.  Vladimir and the rest of the family did not know of Alexander’s revolutionary activities until his arrest.  The death of Alexander deeply affected Vladimir who up to that point had shown little interest in politics, much less revolution.  As one chronicler of Lenin’s path as a revolutionary stated:

Some critics have tried to find cruelty, single-mindedness, egocentricity, or ultraism in the record of Vladimir’s early years.  It does not stand up in the objective evidence of those who knew him.  This was no rebel, no iconoclast, no youthful messiah.  Vladimir was by all accounts as normal and pleasant a youngster as any parents could have desired (Salisbury 1977). 

In fact, those who knew him later in life said that Lenin was not motivated by power but by genuine conviction. Combined with his boundless energy and “iron will,” this gave him tremendous charisma.  Compared to Trotsky and Stalin, he was considered to have the least dictatorial personality, taking the time to try to educate and persuade (Krausz 2015).   

The Ulyanov boys had grown up in a middle class rural environment.  Their father was educated in math and physics and enjoyed a career as a local school inspector.  He was a liberal reformer who had supported Alexander II.  He and his wife provided an intellectually stimulating environment for their children, encouraging reading and games, and instilling reformist values (Salisbury 1977). 

By all objective measures, the boys enjoyed a relatively stable and happy home life.  Vladimir was known as a smart, rambunctious and playful youngster who liked music and chess.  His brother, on the other hand, was solemn, studious and compassionate but Vladimir idolized him, often seeking to emulate him.

Alexander eventually left home to go to university in St. Petersburg.  His journey to radicalization was not uncommon for idealistic youths of the time.  Having grown up rather insulated in the provinces, upon arriving in the big city, Alexander witnessed the deplorable conditions of workers as well as brutal crackdowns by the police on demonstrations.  In fact, he had participated in a demonstration just weeks before his arrest that had been handled particularly violently by the authorities (Salisbury 1977). 

Vladimir was devastated by his brother’s death and the sudden shunning of the family by others in their community (Krausz 2015).  Witnesses describe a young man having trouble expressing his grief:  “It was notable that in all the accounts no member of Vladimir’s family, none of his friends, offers any remark or expression made by Vladimir in those days in Simbirsk.  Change there was.  Everyone noticed that.  The gay, laughing boy, full of tease and jokes and high spirits, overnight became serious, thoughtful, gloomy.” (Salisbury 1977)

The effects were still visible four years later in 1891 when Vladimir went to St. Petersburg to take his law exams.  While there, he looked up one of his brother’s close friends, S.F. Oldenburg: 

[Vladimir] asked many questions about his brother, especially his scientific work.  Oldenburg remembered Vladimir as ‘gloomy and silent,’ and said he obviously suffered deeply over his brother’s death.  (Salisbury 1977).

The lingering effects of Alexander’s demise would be seen in Vladimir’s now single-minded focus on revolutionary politics.  By 1893, after practicing law successfully for around 18 months, he began immersing himself in revolutionary studies.  He was already under surveillance and barred from government employment (Krausz 2015; Salisbury 1977). His mother disapproved and wanted him to become a farmer, but she would help to support him financially throughout his career, including during his stints of exile and emigration (Krausz 2015). 

As part of his revolutionary education, he repeatedly read What is to Be Done? (Salisbury 1977) and later acknowledged Chernyshevsky to be second only to Marx in influence (Szamuely 1974). 

Lenin, however, rejected the use of terrorism and instead advocated a strong centrally controlled movement of dedicated and professional revolutionaries who acted as secret conspirators.

To be continued.

References:

1. Salisbury, Harrison E.  Black Night, White Snow:  Russia’s Revolutions 1905 – 1917.  De Capo Press. New York, NY. 1977;
2. Krausz, Tamas. Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography. Monthly Review Press. New York, NY. 2015;
3. Szamuely, Tibor. The Russian Tradition. Fontana Press. 1974.

Geopolitical analyst Gilbert Doctorow has done an important write-up on Putin’s February 20th speech to the Federal Assembly in which the Russian president provided more details on Russia’s military posture in response to Washington’s abrogation of the INF Treaty and implementation of missile shields in Eastern Europe. An excerpt and link to the complete article are below – Natylie

To the vast majority of Americans, including the foreign policy establishment, the question posed in the title may seem something of a joke. After all, absolute military superiority over Russia and other potential rivals for global influence has been the objective of US military policy for the last twenty-five years or more, at vast budgetary expense. One instrument for its achievement has been the roll-out of a system known as the global missile defense, which in effect encircles Russia and China, posing the threat of massive simultaneous missile strikes that could overwhelm any defenses. To intelligence specialists at the Pentagon, who likely have been watching, as I have done, what the Kremlin disseminated earlier today in Russian only versions so far, the question of Moscow turning the tables is entirely serious and shocking.

When Vladimir Putin first publicly described Russia’s latest state-of-the-art weapons systems in development and deployment one year ago, during his 1 March 2018 Address to the bicameral legislature, he said these systems would ensure the re-establishment of full strategic parity with the United States. Western media sniggered. US politicians, with a very few exceptions, chose to ignore what they considered to be just domestic electioneering during a presidential campaign that Putin was expected to win handily. It was all a bluff, they said.

In his annual Address [on] Wednesday, 20 February, President Putin expanded on those developments in armaments, reported which systems were now entering active service. He made it clear one of them is the planned Russian response to a likely consequence of US withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty: the stationing by the U.S. of nuclear armed cruise missiles like the Tomahawk on land and directed against Russia, all of which would reduce the warning time of incoming attack in Moscow to just 10–12 minutes and constitute an existential risk.

Putin, being Putin, did not spell out the threats implicit in the prospective deployment of the new Russian weapons systems. He remained always polite and open to discussion in his speech. But as we saw earlier today, he entrusted the task of dotting i’s to a member of his close entourage, Dmitry Kiselyov who is the chief administrator of all news programs on Russian state television while also serving as the anchor of the widely watched News of the Week, a summary newscast shown on two federal channels on Sunday evenings. To expand the circulation still more, the segment dealing with Putin’s Address and the new arms systems was released as a separate 10 minute video on YouTube.com early in the afternoon.

Continue reading Doctorow’s article here

Read Putin’s full speech to the Federal Assembly here

Professor Stephen F. Cohen and his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor of The Nation) spoke at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley on the evening of February 25th as part of his book tour for the newly released War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate, Around 200 people were in the audience for this event, co-sponsored by the local Pacifica radio outlet (KPFA).

Cohen spoke first and much of what he said will be familiar to those who have followed his weekly interviews with John Batchelor and his columns in The Nation over the past five years. The thrust of his remarks involved the delineation of how Washington squandered the possibilities that came with the end of the 40-year cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union by choosing to take a triumphalist attitude. The decision to take that path has largely been responsible for the dangerous mess we now find ourselves in with the world’s other nuclear superpower.

Cohen helpfully defined what a cold war is: a relationship between two nations with more conflict than cooperation and no direct “hot” war. Historically, the cold war(s) between the U.S. and Russia have been the most important due to their military capabilities, mainly nuclear. He also pointed out that the U.S. and Russia have experienced 3 cold wars:

1. 1918 – 1933 – During this period, the U.S. refused to recognize the Soviet Union and no dialogue occurred between the two powers; however, this cold war was not very dangerous due to the fact that there was no arms race. It ended when president Franklin Roosevelt pursued detente by officially recognizing the Soviet government.
2. 1948 – 1989 – After the WWII alliance, relations broke down and an arms race emerged after the Soviet Union attained nuclear capability. There were periods of detente, the first was between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, followed by Kennedy and Khrushchev, Nixon and Brezhnev, and Reagan and Gorbachev.
3. 2014 on – Cohen stated that he suspected a new cold war was in the making as early as the Clinton administration when Washington a) reneged on its promise to Gorbachev not to expand NATO eastward if he agreed to allow a reunified Germany into the military alliance, and b) attacked Serbia (a close ally of Russia with cultural and ethnic ties). But any doubts were swept away after the Ukraine crisis of 2013-14.

Cohen reminded the audience that the 40-year cold war between the U.S. and Russia (Soviet Union) was a negotiated settlement agreed to be in the interests of both parties and that there were no losers. All western leaders at the time acknowledged this fact. But during his re-election campaign, George H.W. Bush claimed that the U.S. had won the cold war and the conflation of the end of the cold war and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union began.

Cohen pointed out that it was now “axiomatic” and accepted as fact that the U.S. “won” the cold war. He cited the history books that his grandchildren now read in school as perpetuating this falsehood and the dangerous triumphalist attitude that goes along with it. Furthermore, most academic literature apportions blame for the current cold war on Russia, particularly on Putin. By contrast, most serious academic literature apportions blame in a more balanced way for the previous cold war.

He also discussed, of course, the media’s dangerous propagating of this misinformation and the blackout on alternative voices in the NYT/WaPo/MSNBC/CNN and, to a lesser degree, The Wall Street Journal and Fox which are both conflicted about Trump.

He reiterated that this was one of the things that made this cold war more dangerous than the last one: back then, some debate was allowed in the media and advocates of detente were organized and had a voice.

Other conditions that make this cold war more dangerous include the fact that the military divide is now on Russia’s borders instead of Berlin, providing no buffer zone. The proxy wars, such as Ukraine and Syria, are much closer to Russia’s borders rather than somewhere like Africa. Of course, they are very far away from the U.S.

Moreover, the zealous political and media project of characterizing Trump as a Russian asset or agent compromises his ability to effectively negotiate a deescalation of any possible military confrontation that may arise from the above mentioned proxy wars or an accident.

Cohen believes that in order to end this new cold war, Washington must accept that Russia has major power interests. This translates into no U.S./NATO military bases on Russia’s borders. He also believes that existential cooperation needs to happen, such as a partnership against terrorism.

My own thought on this last point is that Washington is not likely to be genuinely interested in going after terrorism when it has such a history of using terrorists to indirectly attack its perceived opponents’ interests. Examples include the use of terrorists in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s and Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria in recent years. But the more general point of actively cooperating on major areas of real interest is well taken.

Vanden Heuvel spoke after Cohen. She had a different emphasis with her remarks. One of the first points she made was the toxic effects that “cold wars” have on progressive interests domestically. They narrow the space for dissent, adversely affecting civil liberties and stifling debate on critical issues. They also serve as a self-perpetuating excuse to funnel disproportionate amounts of the budget into “defense,” thereby hobbling the funding of much-needed domestic programs that most Americans want, such as Medicare for All and infrastructure projects.

Another point vanden Heuvel made, which was touched on by Cohen, was the very disturbing trend of criminalizing diplomacy. Anyone who has had contacts with Russia is now being cast under suspicion of traitorous intent. First, it was individuals associated with Trump – many of whom are admittedly shady and corrupt in their financial dealings – but the net seems to have been cast so broadly by investigators that actions that were previously considered a normal part of possible diplomacy have been characterized as disloyal.

Then it spread to those of Russian nationality who have been studying in the U.S. and networking with like-minded Americans to expand civics projects in Russia.

Now Vanden Heuvel recounted the recent experience of a respected independent scholar she knows who specializes in arms control issues who has been asked by the Senate Intelligence Committee to provide all documentation involving his contacts with Russians and travel to Russia.

Cohen has made reference to the fact that he and his wife don’t always agree with respect to their analysis of the domestic Russian political scene or the value (or lack thereof) of the Mueller investigation. This became evident in the Q&A portion of the event, with vanden Heuvel a couple of times interjecting probing questions as Cohen was finishing his answer – a sign that she didn’t entirely agree with what he was saying.

One of these questions had to do with whether they thought Trump could possibly be a vehicle for peace with Russia. Cohen said that even if we disagree with other things that Trump does, we should support his intent and any actions he may take to deescalate with Russia. Vanden Heuvel made it clear that she didn’t think Trump’s actions indicated he was capable of being a vehicle for peace. She asked Cohen whether he agreed that peace wasn’t just the absence of conflict or the aversion of crisis.

A man in the audience behind me shouted out, “But that would be a great start right now, wouldn’t it?”

I couldn’t disagree with him.