Ante Ciliga Russian Enigma Pdfbackuptype



The Russian Enigma - Ante Ciliga Originally written in 1936-37 and published in Paris, 1938 under the title 'Au Pays du Grand Mensonge'. The first part of his account of his time in the Soviet Union, The Russian Enigma, was distributed by the Labour Book Service in 1940, and the complete text was published under the same title by Ink Links in 1979. Russian Enigma (Pt. 1 & 2): Ante Ciliga:: Books It is possible that the bureaucracy considered the matter important, but for the masses who bowed their heads it mattered little Amiri Barksdale marked it as to-read Feb 16, Problems that one might have thought long since settled rissian history were suddenly once again on the agenda, and with.

The Russian Enigma – Ante Ciliga – Google Books. In the criticism of the Lenin of the revolutionary period the tone was set by the Workers Opposition ofmore accurately, by its left wing, which took an organized form inunder the name of the Workers Group.

The Russian Enigma has 2 ratings and 1 review. R said: Arguably the most informative first hand account of the Soviet prison system. The Russian enigma [Ante Ciliga] on *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Russian Enigma (Pt. 1 & 2) [Ante Ciliga] on *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. A clear and concise introduction to modern Russian history and .

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The present chapter, however, was simply cut out by the publisher. And so it appeared for the first time in in [unverified], distributed by Ink Links. What is equally important however, is the intellectual development Ciliga underwent during his time in Russia. He entered The USSR as an ardent Bolshevik, yet he was forced by the pressure of the reality of the situation to recognise enimga something, somewhere, had gone very wrong.

This led him to the Trotskyist Opposition. In essence all the Trotskyists wished for was a change of personel at the top of the Soviet State — they thought they could do Stalinism better enigka Stalin. The equation of Communism with nationalisation demonstrates the lack of any real difference between Stalinism, Trotskyism or Leninism — they are all predicated on the idea of State ownership of the means of enigmx not the self-activity of the working class itself.

Ciliga recognised the paucity of this vision and that he had to reject Lenin if he wished to remain a revolutionary. To his eternal credit and despite the anguish it caused him, he took this step. The extreme left Communist groups of the extreme left were not afraid to grapple with the whole revolutionary cliiga in Russia, contrary to the Trotskyist Opposition, in the eyes of which the Lenin epoch remained sacrosanct. The role of Lenin in the revolution was the subject of heated discussions during the time when I was incarcerated in the Verkhne-Uralsk isolator.

In its discussions with others as in its own meetings the Trotskyist Opposition defended the view that Lenin was always right.

The Russian Enigma – Ante Ciliga

In reality, Trotsky added, Lenin was in fact a proponent of the permanent revolution, and that was why their disagreement was purely formal and of no great importance. This led the Trotskyist Opposition to develop this new theme: Refusing to adopt a critical attitude towards either, it smeared a bureaucratic veneer over the most hotly debated aspects of the two tendencies.

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To the myth fabricated by Stalin, it did not oppose a serious study of the facts, but another myth.

A characteristic fact — the Trotskyists, who loved quotations — nearly always referred to Trotsky, enihma only with rare ruszian to Lenin. The Democratic Centralist group found itself in a very different position when Lenin was in question. Unlike the Trotskyists, the group had its origins russina the Bolshevik old guard.

Deeming enigmma Lenin eniigma departed from his own enitma, or that he did not see where his policies were heading, the group had been set up to defend Leninism against Lenin.

They criticized the policy of Lenin in power, taking their stand on the Leninist principles of The State and Revolution. The Five Year Plan shook the group to its foundations. The majority, like the majority of Trotskyists, capitulated. They justified their capitulation by paying that from the moment when NEP and the bourgeoisie were liquidated, socialism was being built, and they were in the wrong.

If the condition of the workers is wretched, that is because one cannot make an omelette without ennigma eggs; before the complete enkgma of socialism a final difficult stage has to be traversed — that of the liquidation of the last capitalist class, the petty-bourgeoisie.

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If one holds to Leninist principles on this, the attitude of the capitulatory is not lacking in logic. Lenin castigated with an iron hand all the oppositional forces that spoke of bureaucratism and State capitalism as a danger threatening the working class.

The Leninist conception admitted of no other counter-revolution And thereupon comes the Five Year Plan, which wages war on the petty-bourgeoisie and liquidates it. One had to choose: Those Decemists who did not capitulate chose the second course But this re-evaluation which in fact rejected all the post-October ideas of Lenin, and put in question even those of pre-October, was effected only slowly, step by step.

And the small group of Decemists ruseian our isolator split on this occasion into three or four fractions. Some continued to think that Lenin, after October, although making some small mistakes, had a correct attitude, and that the line only began to deviate with Stalin.

The third fraction declared that in spite of all proclamations, the socialist structure of the revolution had always been weaker than the petty-bourgeois structure.

The revision of Leninism consequently bore no longer only on State capitalism but also on the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the beginning, when Lenin, inupheld the thesis of the single party and the dictatorship, the Decemists had approved and had then broken with the Workers Opposition, who at once denounced them.

Experience of the dictatorship of the party led them to reject their original views. The reassessment of Lenin s political ideas was more rapid than of his economic ideas.

The Russian Enigma: Chapter 9

During two years of exile the opportunity was given me to follow all these twists and turns. The end result of this was a critical, not to say hostile attitude towards the practice and the theories of the post-October Lenin.

In the criticism of the Lenin of the revolutionary period the tone was set by the Workers Opposition ofmore accurately, by its left wing, which took an organized form inunder the name of the Workers Group.

He was one of the most outstanding figures of the Bolshevik revolution. The Workers Group went even farther and attacked the political regime and the single party established by Lenin russjan to the NEP. In the person of Serge Tiyunov, filiga Workers Group in our isolator possessed a highly educated, very active, uncompromising representative. Moreover, according to some reports, he was not devoid of Nechayevist traits.

Against the Leninist line, they demanded organization of production by the masses themselves, beginning with factory collectives. Politically, the Workers Group demanded the control of power and of the party by the worker masses. These, the true political leaders of the country, must have the right to withdraw power from any political party, even from the Communist Party, if they judged that that party was not defending their interests. Socialism could only be the work of free creation by the workers.

While that which was being constructed by coercion, and given the name of socialism, was for them nothing but bureaucratic State capitalism from the very beginning.

Induring the largest of the strikes led by the Workers Group, they appealed to the Cilkga and the international atne through a Manifestoin which they set out their views, clearly and without beating about the bush.

This Manifesto is one of the most remarkable documents of the Russian revolution. For a long time in the isolator I abstained from participating in discussions on the role of Lenin.

I belonged to that young Communist generation that had been raised on the idea that Lenin was sacrosanct. For me, it went without saying that Lenin was always right. The results — the revolutionary conquest of power, and holding it — spoke in his favour.

Thus, I and my generation concluded that the tactics, and the means, too, were justified.

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When I arrived at the isolator, it was in this sense that I intervened. So I was not a little put out to hear the Decemist, Prokopenya, give me this ironic advice: You rely on one of the last articles he wrote before his death, the one on russiwn reform of the Workers and Peasants Inspection.

Did ciljga call on the masses to organize themselves against the bureaucracy? He proposed the anhe of a special organ with a well-paid staff, a super-bureaucratic organ to combat He banked on the bureaucratic apparatus, but, fearing that it would overdo things, he sought to restrict the evil by making one part of the apparatus control the other.

But it is no less a fact. If I felt little inclination for a study of the discussions and quarrels of the past, it was because Aante was overwhelmed by the problems of the present.

To the extent that historical problems interested me, it seemed to me that these groups overestimated the importance of their old differences with Lenin. The fate of the revolution, in my opinion, was decided by the relationship of class forces, and not by the formulas or theses upon which this or that internal tendency had been able to tussian.

As the fulfilment of the Five Year Plan progressed, so the question of organizational, political, and economic formulas again became correspondingly immediate.

Ante Ciliga – Wikipedia

Problems that one might have thought long since settled by history were suddenly once again on the agenda, and with added force. The suppression of the petty-bourgeoisie and of private capitalism, made it plain that within the social arena there were no other forces but the bureaucracy and the proletariat. The struggle of the labouring masses against the bureaucratic tyranny could henceforth only be against the organizational forms that the bureaucracy had given the economy.

But these forms had not been invented by Stalin. They had been bequeathed him by Lenin. The Russian revolution, in spite of its antagonisms and internal strife, is an organic whole.

And Lenin cannot be exonerated. Applying himself to the study of these new questions, the Myasnikovist, Tiyunov, wrote an essay on the historical dispute over the bureaucratic or the socialist organization of production. His work was based on a ane of the military measures taken by Trotsky to organize production during wnigma period of war communism.

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He reached the conclusion that the manner in which Lenin organized industry had handed it over entirely into the hands of the bureaucracy. And the direct consequence of that recapture of the factories from the proletariat meant that they had lost the revolution. Another Decemist, Misha Shapiro, wrote a refutation, supporting the traditional viewpoint of the Decemists: According to Shapiro, the Workers Opposition did not represent the interests of the proletariat, but those of the trade-union bureaucracy.

And if the demands conceding the transfer of the factories to the trade unions had been satisfied, the only difference would have been the management of the factories by the trade-union bureaucracy in place of the party bureaucracy. To be able to fight the bureaucracy, the proletariat needed freedom: But with us there is only one. How, then, has it happened that our revolutions too, has succumbed?

The young Decemist Volodya Smirnov even went so far as to say: Lenin was never an ideologist of the proletariat. From beginning to end he was an ideologist of the intelligentsia. That conception left the forces and perspectives of socialism somewhat in the shade. The majority of the Decemist faction, Davidov, Shapiro, etc. Grasping the importance of bygone problems ckliga the understanding of new problems, for a precise assessment of future tasks, I set myself to studying them seriously. The nuances in the interpretation of these questions by the extreme left milieu favoured critical examination and self-determination.

And, studying them after an intense revolutionary experience, I approached them in a state of mind obviously different from that of comrades who ten years before had found in them reasons for splitting. I had behind me fifteen years of ciluga history of the revolution and could judge the past with a mind both clearer and more aware than theirs. I subjected Lenin to criticism, the leader and the prophet, crowned by the immortal glory of the revolution, and even more by the legend and the mystification of the post-revolutionary myth.

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And, in spite of the critical spirit of the surroundings in which I laved, I entered the sanctuary on tiptoes, so much did I find myself guilty in listening to that inner voice saying to me: And the farther I penetrated into the sanctuary the more day after day, week after week, month after month I asked myself the fundamental question: And is it, perhaps, diliga also, Lenin?

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