Bolshevization

Two referents of one word

Bolshevization has at least two distinct meanings. The narrower, Soviet-specific usage is the Bolshevization of the soviets: the process by which the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) won majorities in the soviets in the second half of 1917, especially active after the Kornilov Rebellion of September 1917, and accompanied by the ousting of the previously dominant moderate socialists, above all the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The party's majority was concentrated in the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of the large industrial cities, where it reached up to 90 percent of seats in the Petrograd Soviet and up to 60 percent in Moscow. Relying on that majority the Bolsheviks convened the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets and prepared the armed insurrection of October 25 (November 7) 1917.

The wider usage belongs to the Communist International. There, Bolshevization was the slogan proclaimed at the Fifth World Congress, held in Moscow from 17 June to 8 July 1924 with 504 delegates from 46 communist and workers' parties and 14 workers' organizations from 49 countries, the first congress without Lenin. In practice it meant building centralized, disciplined organizations on the Leninist model and loyal to the Russian party majority. The consequences for member parties were concrete: the congress resolution entrusted the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) with control functions over communist parties, including the right to correct and even annul decisions of their leading bodies and their program documents, introduced the dispatch of ECCI Organizational Department instructors to party congresses to convey ECCI directives, and required all member parties to restructure on the basis of production cells.

Two phases: 1917 and 1924

The two processes share a name but differ in referent, arena and period. In 1917 Bolshevization was fought out in the soviets and in the streets of Russia and ended in insurrection; the Fifth Congress decisions, by contrast, came in the light of the defeat of revolutionary uprisings in Europe, and their target was the internal life of the communist parties themselves.

Institutionally, the campaign of the mid-1920s imposed a stricter bureaucratic centralism on member parties, flattening the earlier diversity of radicalisms into a single approved model of communist organization. Respect for Bolshevik achievements and the defence of the Russian Revolution were transformed into dependency on Moscow and belief in Soviet infallibility. Cycles of "internal rectification" disgraced and expelled one leadership after another, so that by the later 1920s many founding communists had gone; the drive for uniformity was finalized at the 1928 World Congress. In the wider Comintern account, the organization underwent a process of Bolshevization throughout the 1920s that increased the centralization of its structure and the dominance of the Russian Communist Party within its ranks, and this process intensified with Stalin's rise to power. The years 1924 to 1928 in particular involved increasing Russian dominance, a Russification of ideological and organizational structures, and the canonization of Leninist principles of party unity, discipline and democratic centralism, most notably the concentration of power in the Russian party delegation to the ECCI.

Bolshevization and the question of Stalinization

The Fifth Congress is usually described as the bridge between the four revolutionary congresses of 1919 to 1922 and the Sixth Congress of 1928, which consolidated Stalin's unchallenged sway. Yet the congress was not a Stalinist congress: Zinoviev led the Bolshevization campaign at the height of his power, and opposition survived among the German, Swedish, Italian and other sections. The level of discussion, the range of views and the tolerance of differences had nonetheless declined greatly from the Fourth Congress, and rivalry among the Bolshevik leaders was already being translated into organizational measures, including denunciations and expulsions such as those of Brandler and Thalheimer from the KPD leadership and Souvarine from the French party.

Where Bolshevization ends and Stalinization begins remains a matter of dispute among historians and among currents of the communist movement. Bolshevization is dated by some from 1924 with completion from 1929, while other accounts treat the Comintern and its affiliates as Stalinized from 1924 onward, so the boundary is contested rather than settled. One scholarly overview periodizes the degeneration differently, placing "state Bolshevism" in 1919 to 1923, when the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Communist Party of the USA were subordinated to Russian imperatives, "incipient Stalinism" in 1924 to 1928, which saw the politics of subordination restructured, and the period from 1929 onward, when Stalinization accomplished a distinctive subordination. A left-communist reading of the Fifth Congress is more sharply drawn: Zinoviev's Bolshevization was bound up with redefining the united front as unity "from below" under communist leadership and with an analysis of social democracy as a wing of fascism, a formulation that precluded a united front with social democrats against Hitler; Radek condemned Zinoviev's speech as annulling the Fourth Congress resolution on the united front, while the congress thesis asserted that the tactics of the united front from below were the most important.

Bolshevization beyond Moscow

At least in its early phase, Bolshevization was also a demand for internal organizational reform rather than only a channel of Moscow-directed control. Before 1924 the term meant that affiliated parties were based on democratic centralism, so that party decisions reached by voting were binding on all members and Comintern and ECCI decisions were binding on member parties. The Communist Party of Great Britain, from 1922, was reorganized along these lines, replacing informal control by a few individuals with a democratic centralist structure and aiming at a situation in which, instead of "as a rule very few members do the work while others are inactive and apathetic," every member would have to be a working member. The same logic of restructuring appears in the Fifth Congress document "Basic Conditions for the Formation of Mass Communist Parties," which proposed reorganizing communist parties on the Bolshevik factory-cell model in preparation for the next revolutionary upsurge.

At the same time the campaign excluded the Comintern's own founding cadres. Amadeo Bordiga, founder of the Communist Party of Italy, fell out of favour as the party embraced Bolshevization and was expelled in March 1930. The Czechoslovak section, the KSČ - around 138,000 members as of 1928, the Comintern's second-largest section - saw oppositional elements, some allied to Trotsky and the International Left Opposition, purged in 1929, when Klement Gottwald became Secretary-General.

The institutional record

The Bolshevization turn of the mid-1920s belongs to the Comintern under Zinoviev, its first ECCI chairman from 1919 to 1926; the centralization continued under his successors Bukharin (de facto leader, 1926-1928) and Manuilsky (de facto leader, 1929-1934), and under Dimitrov as General Secretary from 1934 to 1943.

Later limits and failures

Bolshevization did not succeed everywhere or evenly. In 1917 the party's majority did not extend to the soviets of Peasant Deputies: of 455 such soviets, 264 had no Bolshevik faction at all. Results in city duma elections were modest, with the Bolsheviks taking 33.5 percent in Petrograd, 11.6 percent in Moscow, 7.5 percent in provincial cities and 2.2 percent in county towns, while the Socialist Revolutionaries took 37.5 percent in the Petrograd City Duma and about 50 percent in 50 provincial cities. In Great Britain the Communists were defeated in their efforts to Bolshevize and take over the Labour Party, and in Finland they failed to Bolshevize the main socialist movement. In the USSR, a number of senior KPD leaders in exile were caught up in the Great Purge of 1937-1938 and executed.

Chronology

• 1917 September: after the Kornilov Rebellion the Bolshevization of the soviets accelerates; on September 17 (old style) Nogin becomes chairman of the Moscow Soviet presidium.
• 1917 September 25 (old style): Trotsky heads the Petrograd Soviet.
• 1917 by early November: the Bolsheviks hold up to 90 percent of seats in the Petrograd Soviet, up to 60 percent in the Moscow Soviet, and most seats in 80 local soviets of large industrial cities.
• 1917 October 25 (November 7): the October armed uprising, prepared on the basis of the soviet majority.
• 1924 June 17 - July 8: Fifth Comintern Congress in Moscow proclaims Bolshevization and expands ECCI control over member parties.
• 1926-1928: continued centralization and Russian dominance under Bukharin as de facto Comintern leader.
• 1928: the World Congress finalizes the drive for uniformity; the Communist Party of Korea is dissolved in December.
• 1929: Bolshevization completed in the periodization that dates it from 1924; Gottwald becomes Secretary-General of the KSČ after purges.
• 1930: Bordiga, founder of the Communist Party of Italy, is expelled.
• 1937-1938: senior KPD leaders in exile in the USSR are executed in the Great Purge.