E H Carr.
This collection of articles, reviews, and lectures primarily
focuses on Carr’s assessment of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and its
revolutionaries.
The items that comprise this slim volume were written before
1950, offering a welcome opportunity for a limited survey of his work and its
place in the field of Soviet studies.
The themes of the lectures are broad in scope. Ranging from
figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky and literary figures such as
Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Like all Carr’s work, his writing style is clear and
straightforward, explaining complex historical and political events in a
language untainted by jargon.
However, one major criticism of Carr’s work and perhaps the
biggest charge against him is that he was only interested in writing about the
victors in history. This is not true. While he did not deal with the defeat
suffered by Leon Trotsky and others on the scale of, say, Isaac Deutscher, he
nonetheless treated the defeated with precision and sympathy.
The first chapter, "The Russian Revolution: Its Place
in History," is a well-written attempt to situate the revolution within
its historical context. This is a solid piece of writing, free of the usual
cynicism that permeates Soviet historiography today. Carr correctly observes
that the Russian revolutionaries learned lessons from previous revolutions,
including the French and English bourgeois revolutions.
The second chapter serves as a preface to a translation of
the novel "What Is to Be Done?" By Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Vladimir
Lenin held the book in high regard. One of Lenin's great works, "What
Is to Be Done?", written in 1902, took its name from this book. He called
the author a “great Russian socialist.” This is a very sympathetic portrait of
Chernyshevsky. The novel is highly thought of in academic circles. Joseph Frank
wrote, "No work in modern literature, with the possible exception of Uncle
Tom's Cabin, can compete with What Is to Be Done? In its effect on human lives
and its power to make history. For Chernyshevsky's novel, Far more than Marx's
Capital supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian
Revolution."[1]
Carr’s third chapter is titled "Red Rosa." As Carr
admits, it is tough to do justice to Luxemburg in the space of eleven pages of
text. A full-length biography and then some are needed. Luxembourg was held in
high esteem amongst the Bolshevik leaders. Lenin especially commented that
“Although the Eagles do swoop down and beneath the chickens fly, chickens with
outspread wings never will soar amid clouds in the sky.”[2]
Carr properly designates Luxembourg as an equal of any
leading Marxists of the time. She played a crucial role in exposing Eduard
Bernstein’s revision of Marxism. Her Accumulation of Capital, written in 1915,
was, among other things, an attack on Bernstein’s revisionism. Luxembourg,
it is true, did not hold back any criticism, especially of the Bolsheviks, if
she felt it was warranted.
The paragraph below, quoted in Carr’s book, has been
interpreted as a thinly veiled attack on the Bolsheviks, but I am not sure Carr
reads it that way.
“The essence of socialist society consists in the fact that
the vast labouring mass ceases to be dominated, but rather, makes the entire
political and economic life its own life and gives that life a conscious, free,
and autonomous direction. The proletarian revolution requires no terror for its
aims; it hates and despises killing. It does not need these weapons because it
does not combat individuals, but rather institutions, and it does not enter the
arena with naïve illusions whose disappointment it would seek to avenge. It is
not the desperate attempt of a minority to mould the world forcibly according
to its ideal, but the action of the great, massive millions of the people,
destined to fulfil a historic mission and to transform historical necessity
into reality.[3]“
Carr’s fourth chapter is titled "The Bolshevik
Utopia." This is a highly misleading piece of writing, as it gives the
impression that Marxism has a utopian content. Given that Carr is usually very
precise in his writing, this is not a mistake or slip of the pen. Carr did
identify with this characterisation of the Bolsheviks. It is somewhat
surprising, given that Carr would have been familiar with the decades-long
struggle the Marxist movement carried out against the utopian socialists.
The Tragedy of Trotsky is by far the most interesting piece
of this collection. The chapter is a multi-layer review of Isaac Deutscher’s
biography of the Russian revolutionary. Carr, it must be said, was one of the
first historians to carry out a significant attempt at restoring Trotsky to his
rightful place in Soviet and international history. Using sources from the
Russian archives, he was one of the first historians to write a detailed
account of the political struggles within the leadership of the Communist Party
of the USSR from 1923 to 1924.
Carr thought that there was an alternative to Stalinism in
the form of Leon Trotsky and his Left Opposition. According to the Marxist
writer David North, “Carr was not politically sympathetic to Trotsky. However,
he brilliantly summarised and analysed the complex issues of program, policy,
and principle with which Trotsky grappled during a challenging and critical
period of Soviet history. Carr’s account made clear that Trotsky became the
target of an unprincipled attack that was, in its initial stages, motivated by
his rivals’ subjective considerations of personal power. While Carr found much
to criticise in Trotsky’s response to the provocations of Stalin, Zinoviev, and
Kamenev, the historian left no doubt that he viewed Trotsky as, alongside
Lenin, the towering figure of the Bolshevik Revolution”. [4]
Carr’s Place in
Soviet Historiography
Carr was part of that generation of historians, although not
a Marxist, who sought to make an objective evaluation of the October Revolution
and its aftermath. As one writer commented, "not exactly a Marxist, but
strongly impregnated with Marxist ways of thinking, applied to international
affairs."
Carr, who worked under difficult circumstances throughout
his career, had to come to terms with the debilitating effect of Stalinism on
his field of historical study. According to Deutscher, “The Stalinist state
intimidated the historian and dictated to him first the pattern into which he
was expected to force events and then the ever-new versions of the events
themselves. At the outset, the historian was subjected to this pressure mainly
when dealing with the Soviet Revolution, the party strife that had preceded and
followed it, and especially the struggles within the Bolshevik Party. All these
had to be treated in a manner justifying Stalin as the Leader of monolithic
Bolshevism”. [5]
Since Carr’s time, there has been a distinct and traceable
decline in the historical study of the Russian Revolution. The failure of
today’s historians to produce an objective and intelligent account of the
revolution has more to do with current politics than it does with merely poor
academic standards, despite having access to archives that Carr could have only
dreamed of. In fact, outside the confines of the International Committee of the
Fourth International, there has been no historian who has bettered Carr’s work.
It is not within the realm of this review to examine the
current state of Russian historiography; suffice it to say it is at a very low
ebb. Far from being objective historical studies, many of the books appearing
lately have been hagiographies, and they are also very right-wing. Many of them
fail to meet even the most basic academic standards.
One such book is Robert Service’s biography of Trotsky.
According to David North, “Trotsky: A Biography is a crude and offensive book,
produced without respect for the most minimal standards of scholarship.
Service’s 'research,' if one wishes to call it that, has been conducted in bad
faith. His Trotsky is not history, but rather an exercise in character
assassination. Service is not content to distort and falsify Trotsky’s
political deeds and ideas. Frequently descending to the level of a grocery
store tabloid, Service attempts to splatter filth on Trotsky’s personal life.
Among his favourite devices is to refer to “rumours” about Trotsky’s intimate
relations, without even bothering to identify the rumour’s source, let alone
substantiate its credibility.[6]
In conclusion, I am not saying Carr is without flaws and
limitations. His work, however, will “remain a significant and enduring
landmark in historical writing devoted to the Bolshevik revolution. “It will
take a very great historian to better his work.
[1] Joseph Frank, The Southern Review
[2] Leon Trotsky- Hands Off Rosa Luxemburg! (June 1932)
[3] Rosa Luxemburg: What Does the Spartacus League Want?
(December 1918)
[4] North, David, In Defence of Leon Trotsky, Mehring Books,
Detroit,2015
[5] Isaac Deutscher’s Heretics and Renegades and Other
Essays (Hamish and Hamilton, London, 1955). Scanned and prepared for the
Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers.
[6] In The Service of Historical Falsification: A Review of
Robert Service's Trotsky-David North 2009
Notes
1.
Heretics and Renegades and Other Essays, Isaac
Deutscher, Hamish and Hamilton, London, 1955).
2.
EH Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1921
(three volumes, London,
3.
The Interregnum, 1923-1924 (London, 1954).
