What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?
for more information). Such a policy would be too contradictory to be applied. Either the economic reforms would remain a dead letter under party control or the economic reforms would provoke demands for political change. This last possibility may explain Lenin’s vitriolic attacks on the “Workers’ Opposition.” This opposition, like the “Left Communists” of 1918, was ultimately defeated by organisational pressures within the party and state. Victor Serge “was horrified to see the voting rigged for Lenin’s and Zinoviev’s ‘majority'” in late 1920. [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 123] Kollantai complained that while officially one and a half million copies of the “Workers’ Opposition” manifesto was published, in fact only 1500 were “and that with difficulty.” [quoted by Schaprio, Op. Cit., p. 291] This applied even more after the banning of factions, when the party machine used state power to break up the base of the opposition in the trade unions as well as its influence in the party. “Vi
for details). The fact that Leninists try to discredit anarchists by saying that we sound like the right is sad. In effect, it blocks any real discussion of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism (as intended, probably). This ensures that Leninism remains above critique and so no lessons can be learnt from the Russian experience. After all, if the Bolsheviks had no choice then what lessons are there to learn? None. And if we are to learn no lessons (bar, obviously, mimic the Bolsheviks) we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes — mistakes that are partly explained by the objective circumstances at the time and partly by Bolshevik politics. But given that most of the circumstances the Bolsheviks faced, such as civil war and isolation, are likely to reappear in any future revolution, modern-day Leninists are simply ensuring that Karl Marx was right — history repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce. Such a position is, of course, wonderful for the pro-Leninist. It all
