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CRITIQUE:

The Scope of the Title

The title of this thoroughly researched work doesn't quite do justice to its scope.

It actually analyses in detail (1) the perspectives of American liberals on, and the relationship of American liberals with:

* World War One;

* the Russian Revolution (the February Revolution);

* the Russian/ Bolshevik Revolution (the October Revolution);

* the Russian Civil War;

* the recognition of the Soviet Union; and

* the League of Nations.

The Definition of "Liberals"

This study was published in 1962 and concerns the period between 1914 and 1933.

The term "liberal" doesn't necessarily mean what it means (in America) now ("progressive"), or what it might have meant in 1962. It doesn't necessarily mean that a liberal is a socialist or social democrat, let alone a Marxist or communist.

In the first decade of the 20th century, liberals believed that "it would be possible in the not too distant future to substitute the rule of reason for the rule of force in the relations among men, in international as well as domestic affairs."

Before the outbreak of World War One, liberals opposed war as a vehicle for solving problems at an international level.

However, the War exposed a cleavage within liberalism between:

* the [pro-] war liberals (who could justify the conduct of a war, if it was effectively a "war to end all wars"); and

* "anti-imperialists" (who opposed wars to the extent that they were vehicles to further the interests of a participant nation's imperialism).

Both groups required a precise definition of their "war aims".

Wars and Revolutions

These characteristics were not just important in the case of a war between nations, but in the case of a revolution within a nation:

"It was the anti-imperialists who from the beginning insisted that the [Russian Revolution] would prove to be a blessing to the world.

"It was the war liberals who (together with conservatives) deplored the revolution as a menace to civilisation - that is, to the successful prosecution of the war against Germany.

"...Whatever their differences, liberals were trying to work out a solution to the problems raised by the revolution within the context of certain assumptions which conservatives did not share.

"All of them looked with horror on the suggestion that Bolshevism be crushed by force..."

Anti-Bolshevism wasn't an automatic response of the liberals. The war liberals were primarily concerned that the revolution would distract attention from the struggle against Germany. (There was a widespread conspiracy theory or suspicion that the Bolsheviks were somehow in cahoots with the Germans.)

The Self-Determination of Nations

Christopher (Kit) Lasch argues that "no principle was dearer to anti-imperialists than the inalienable right to 'self-determination'." This principle implied that:

"The Russians had a right to 'work out their destiny for themselves', free from foreign interference."

One American liberal argued, "The Russian people have the same right to establish a socialistic state as we had to establish a republic."

In other words, there was an analogy between the Russian Revolution and the American War of Independence.

It was argued that "a people's right to revolution is one of the most sacred that there is, and no outsiders have a right to interfere with it."

Another liberal asserted, "If they want a Bolshevik form of government, a monarchy or anything else, they should have it."

At this early stage, it wasn't generally known or suspected that Bolshevism was a threat to the governments of other nations, i.e., that the Soviet Union might have intended to export revolution to other nations (e.g., by way of the type of permanent or advocated by Trotsky).

The anti-imperialists countered that "the United States [in particular] would have nothing to fear from international communism if it eliminated the poverty and misery on which communism thrived."



Allied Intervention in the Civil War

Notwithstanding the principle of self-determination, the Allies in World War One sent armed forces into Siberia, ostensibly to prevent Germany from accessing Russia's military resources and using them against the Allies back on the western front.

In contrast, the liberals believed that:

"Bolshevism if left alone would gradually grow more moderate...

"By ostracising the revolution the West had again and again driven it into extremes which otherwise might have been avoided. It followed from this that a more conciliatory attitude on the part of the Western nations might bring to the surface those elements of moderation and good sense which anti-imperialists still thought of as representing 'the real Russia'. Indeed, anti-imperialists thought the triumph of moderation inevitable...

"On the other hand, a massive assault on Bolshevism would leave Russia in ruins, both economic and political; it would crush not only Bolshevism but all that remained of Russian democracy, clearing the way for a military dictatorship which would impose on Russia a tyranny worse than the one from which the revolution had delivered it."

Instead, the Russian anti-Bolsheviks ("the White Russians") pleaded for Allied intervention in what would soon become the Russian Civil War.

At the same time as agreeing to intervene on the side of the White Russians, the Allies rejected the Bolsheviks' request for economic aid "designed to eliminate the poverty and misery in which Bolshevism presumably took root."

The Bolsheviks were effectively fighting for their lives. As one journalist wrote:

"...The alternative to understanding and conciliating the revolution was the bloody suppression of it by an armed alliance of reaction.

"The triumph of reaction would in turn...provoke another series of revolutions, more violent than the last, in which what little remained of Western civilisation would go down in ruins."

Lasch concludes that the suppression of self-determination abroad would lead to its suppression at home:

"The effort of policing the world would make police states of the Western nations themselves."

Moreover, the Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks resulted in them assuming "an attitude more or less permanently antagonistic to the West."

Tricked Into Oppression

Lasch doesn't expressly say as much (he was, after all, writing in the middle of the Cold War), but it can be inferred that the immoderate and oppressive nature of the Soviet regime was a product of the Allied support of the anti-Bolsheviks and the refusal to supply economic aid at the end of the War (against the wishes of the American liberals).

In other words, the regime's systemic oppression might have been an act of (disproportionate) self-defence against real and tangible enemies, working both inside and outside the Soviet Union.


FOOTNOTES:

(1) Via contemporary articles, correspondence, journals, memoirs, and official reports.



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