Apology for October

...This book reeks with pontification...

...Let us turn to the essence of the problem: Was October simply a continuation of February??a "social" revolution which supplemented the "national" one, as Mr...

...In the Workshop of the Revolution contains a great many minor errors: Admiral Kolchak is three times described as a general...

...On November 19, 1924, at a congress of trade-union leaders, Stalin described "one original feature of the tactics of the [October] Revolution...

...We really lived in a world of exalted ideas" is Mr...

...Lenin called the Left SRs "fools...

...As a Left Socialist Revolutionary, however, he was Commissar of Justice in Lenin's first government...

...they proved, at any rate, to be simpletons...

...October is depicted by Mr...

...It is true, of course, that if there had been no February Revolution, there would have been no October Revolution, just as there would have been no February Revolution if there had been no Tsarist autocracy...

...the woman who made an attempt on Lenin's life is referred to as Dora Kaplan, when her name was Fanya...

...in the years between 1918 and 1920...

...In this book, Mr...

...Peter and St...

...He also quotes himself thirty or more years ago on a great many other things...

...Just as the February democratic revolution was a repudiation of the autocracy, so Lenin's October coup was a repudiation of February...

...But the latter tell a far different story...

...But the book's chief shortcoming is its prejudiced and tendentious distortion of historical truth...

...The chief authors of October themselves admitted afterward that they had made preparations for civil war while professing to be peace-lovers and accusing others of hatching plots??accusing, by the way, not only the "bourgeois" parties but the Mensheviks and SRs as well...

...Steinberg attempts to prove that "there is neither logical nor historical reason to divide the living stream of the Russian Revolution...

...In a new account by the outstanding Russian artist...

...6, p. 342...

...Annenkov writes: "The cruelty accompanying the upheaval shook him deeply...

...But let us put aside the psychology of Mr...

...Mr...

...Paul, etc...

...Among those "drawn into the orbit" of October were Mr...

...Indeed, the leaders of the democratic revolution are reproached by their enemies on the Right and mocked by those on the Left precisely for renouncing such methods...

...Steinberg and his Left SR colleagues...

...He makes this distinction even as he admits that "Lenin's secret political purpose had never been a united front, but always the Bolshevik party dictatorship...

...In order to justify his own past (and that of those few Left Socialist Revolutionaries like him who did not finally become Bolsheviks), he disregards both logic and incontestable fact about the October coup...

...The bombardment of the Kremlin and the damage done to the Church of St...

...This fundamental distinction should not now escape Mr...

...Steinberg, who regarded the Left SRs' participation in Lenin's Government as a beneficent "Dantonist" beginning, as distinct from the evil "Robespierrist" terror which followed...

...Thirty-seven years later, he continues to extol the Communist coup with his old enthusiasm, even now that he is an emigre and "counterrevolutionary...

...Steinberg and his comrades entered it...

...But chronological sequence hardly determines the political significance of an event...

...We covered up vital questions of revolutionary ethics and higher utility with the sophistry of 'revolutionary interests.' . . . We had among us some people who were Bolshevik sympathizers...

...Even the most biased critics of the February Revolution do not attribute to it any inclination to defend its power by civil war and mass terror, the methods conscionably employed by the men of October...

...Steinberg defended Lenin's seizure of power, of course, during the three months when he was a member of the government which organized the "bloodily famous" Cheka (as his book now describes it), dissolved the freely-elected All-Russian Constituent Assembly of 1918, and so on...

...Every day and every act of the February period??consciously or unconsciously??prepared the path of October...

...But he refrains for some reason from reiterating the confessions he made in an earlier book published in Russian, The Moral Aspect of the Revolution: "It must be bluntly stated: We did not do everything that we should have...

...Steinberg's comment...

...October [was] inherent in the first days of the earlier overturn in February...

...This was shortly before Mr...

...At the same time, he attempts to make a sharp fundamental distinction between the first few months after Lenin's coup, when his party was allied with the Bosheviks, and the period that followed, when the Communist-Left SR alliance broke down...

...Thus, the non-Russian reader receives a distorted idea not only of the October Revolution, but even of the way the book's author felt about his participation in it at a date thirty years closer to the events...

...None of this appears in Steinberg's new book...

...We failed to react to the senseless baiting of . . . the Kadets [Constitutional Democrats], against anyone who thought differently, against 'counterrevolutionaries.' . . . We failed to react to the systematic preaching of civil war...

...There was a vast qualitative difference between the ideology and methods of the Bolshevik seizure of power and pre-October ideology and methods...

...Steinberg, who was in rapture at a time when even many Bolsheviks were outraged...

...the attempt on the life of Tsarist Minister Plehve is attributed to Gershuni, though the latter was then imprisoned in the Fortress of St...

...The Revolution, as it were, concealed its offensive actions under a cloak of defense in order the more easily to draw irresolute, wavering elements into its orbit" (Stalin's Works, 1947 edition, vol...

...Basil upset not only Gorki but [Anatole] Lunacharsky, [Leo] Kamenev and others...

...So do persons close to the Bolshevik high command...

...But I. N. Steinberg is unique in attempting to distinguish between the first "humanitarian, universal and Maximalist" months of the October Revolution and the diabolical months which followed...

...The Revolution sought to take every, or almost every, step of its offensive in the guise of defense...

...In 1918, the former People's Commissar of Justice might justify himself on grounds of his youth, his exhilarated state at the time, and plain ignorance...

...But now, made wiser by years, experience and the Bolsheviks' direct admissions . . . ? Even now, many non-Communists condemn Stalinism but sigh over the heroic Leninist era, as if Stalin had not built on Lenin's foundations...

...Steinberg as an elemental national movement, which arose and developed spontaneously, as February did...

...And, contrary to the publisher's assertion, it contains not the slightest suggestion of a "constructive policy for the Western world...

...Together with Alexei Rykov and others, he resigned from the Lenin Government in protest...

...What he did in October 1917, and what, as an anti-Communist, he has continued to do to this day, coincide in part with Bolshevik interests...

...Too often, in the name of political or revolutionary tasks, we remained silent, did nothing...

...This is a myth...

...With complete satisfaction, Mr...

...In direct contrast to the Communists, the Russian democrats of February preferred to be guillotined rather than guillotine others...

...We were too often satisfied with mere official criticism, instead of going on to instill our ideas on violence and terror into the consciousness of the masses...

...Yuri Annenkov, the author recalls the feelings of his friend Maxim Gorki in the October days...

...He further believes that the Red terror "was instituted and became entrenched...

...Steinberg would have us believe??or was October a repudiation of February...

...Lunacharsky was in an hysterical state during this time...

...Steinberg cites the words he spoke on January 31, 1918: The Revolution "can storm the world with its moral integrity...

...Secretary, All-Russian Constituent Assembly of 1918 I. N. Steinberg has never been a Bolshevik...

...Steinberg says that the "victorious masses" in October were filled with comradeship, solidarity and forgiveness for their former political enemies??namely, the Russian democratic leaders...