Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime

CONTENTS

Cover

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 The Civil War: The First Battles (1918)

Why the Red Army won; birth of the Volunteer Army; the rise of the Whites in Siberia; slow emergence of the Red Army; the Moscow Centers; origins of the Directory; Denikin’s early moves; Kolchak Supreme Ruler; Kolchak’s policies.

2 The Civil War: The (1919–1920)

Creation of the Red Army; its morale and discipline; Allied policies; Britain’s role; French intervention; Kolchak’s offensive; Denikin’s campaigns in early 1919; Red counteroffensive in the East; Denikin orders drive on Moscow; the Whites, Poland and Finland; the “Greens”; Britain reassesses her involvement in Russia; Trotsky tries to resign; Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine, 1918–20; the end of Kolchak; the end of the National Center: the Whites approach Moscow; Iudenich attacks Petrograd and suffers defeat; the Reds crush Denikin; Wrangel; an assessment of the Civil War; its costs.

3 The Red Empire

The non-Russian population; the nationality question emerges in 1917; separatism after October; the Ukraine; Bolshevik reconquest of Muslim areas; the reconquest of the Caucasus.

4 Communism for Export

Early attempts to stir revolutions abroad; creation of the Comintern; war with Poland; Second Comintern Congress; Red defeat in Poland; emergence of Communist parties in Europe; Comintern and the colonies; liberal sympathizers; “fellow-travelers”; support of businessmen; the issue of Russia’s debts; Moscow and Germany; Moscow’s manipulation of the foreign press; Russian émigrés; why the Comintern failed.

5 Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism

The concept of “totalitarianism”; Mussolini’s “Leninist” roots; Nazi anti-Semitism; Hitler and socialism; common features of the three totalitarian regimes; the ruling party; the party and the state; crowd manipulation and the role of ideology; the party and society; differences among totalitarian regimes.

6 Culture as Propaganda

Culture and Communism; “Proletkult”; Communist censorship; Bolshevik attitude toward literature; Belles-lettres; theater and cinema; painting, architecture, and music; Lenin’s “monumental propaganda”; schools and schooling; besprizornye; higher education; the drive against illiteracy; Communist ethical teachings; family and sex; expulsion of intellectuals from Soviet Russia; concluding observations.

7 The Assault on Religion

Communist attitudes toward religion; the reestablishment of the patriarchate and first decrees against the Church; exposure of relics of saints; the 1922 campaign to break the Orthodox Church; the drive against religious beliefs; the “Living Church”; persecution of the Jewish religion; treatment of Catholics; and Muslims; the effect of persecution.

8 NEP: The False Thermidor

NEP was no Thermidor; the great peasant rebellion of 1920–21; the emergence of Antonov; the Kronshtadt mutiny; the reign of terror in Tambov; abolition of forced food exactions and transition to NEP; intensified political and legal repression; the SR “trial”; cultural life under NEP; the 1921 famine; increased control over foreign Communist parties; Rapallo; 1923 Communist alliance with German nationalists; German-Soviet military cooperation begins.

9 The Crisis of the New Regime

Bureaucratization of the Communist Party; and of the state; “Workers’ Opposition”; Lenin’s illness and Stalin’s rise; Lenin isolated; the controversy over Georgia; Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky; Trotsky’s decline; Lenin’s death.

Reflections on the Russian Revolution

The causes of the Revolution; the Bolshevik power seizure; Bolshevism not “utopian”; the function of ideology; Communism and the legacy of Russian history; Leninism and Stalinism; the human cost of the Revolution; the inevitability of Communism’s failure; the moral implications of its history.

Glossary

Chronology

Notes

Selected Bibliography