“Trotsky was a hero of the revolution; He fell when the
heroic age was over.” E H Carr.
This collection of articles, reviews and lectures deal
predominantly with Carr’s assessment of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and its
revolutionaries. To say that Carr had a contradictory attitude to the
Revolution and for that matter Marxism, in general, would be an understatement.
The items that make up this slim volume were written
before 1950 and give me a welcome opportunity for a limited survey of his work
and the place it occupies 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 style of writing is clear and straightforward
and explains 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 simply not true while he did not deal with the
defeat suffered by Leon Trotsky and others on the scale of say Isaac Deutscher
he did none the less deal with the defeated in a precise and not unsympathetic
manner.
The first chapter The Russian Revolution; its place in
History is a well-written attempt to place the revolution in its historical
context. This is a solid piece of writing which is free of the usual cynicism
that permeates Soviet historiography today. Carr correctly observes that the
Russian revolutionaries learned the lessons from previous revolutions including
the French and English bourgeois revolution.
The second chapter is a preface to a translation of the
novel What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky. The novel was highly
thought of by Vladimir Lenin. One of
Lenin great works What is to be Done, written in 1902 took the name of this
book. He called the author a “great Russian socialist”. This 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 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 called Red Rosa. As Carr admits
it is very difficult to do justice to Luxemburg in the space of eleven pages of
text. A full-length biography and then some is needed. It is clear that
Luxemburg was held in high esteem amongst the Bolsheviks 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 Luxemburg as an equal of any
leading Marxists of the time. She played a crucial role in the attack on Eduard
Bernstein’s revision of Marxism. Her Accumulation of Capital written in 1915
was among other things an attack on Bernstein’s revisionism. Luxemburg, 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’s
reads it that way.
“The essence of socialist society consists in the fact
that the great labouring mass ceases to be a dominated mass, 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 institutions because it
does not enter the arena with naïve illusions whose disappointment it would
seek to revenge. 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 called The Bolshevik Utopia.
This is a very misleading piece of writing, in that 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 really did identify
with this characterization of the Bolsheviks. It is a little strange given that
Carr would have been familiar with the decades-long struggle the Marxist
movement carried out in opposing 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 major attempt at restoring Trotsky
to his rightful place in Soviet and international history. Using sources from
the soviet archives he was one of the first historians to write a detailed
account of the political struggles inside the leadership of the Communist Party
of the USSR 1923-24.
Carr clearly 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.
But he brilliantly summarized and analyzed the complex issues of program,
policy and principle with which Trotsky grappled in a difficult 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 criticize in Trotsky’s response to the provocations of Stalin, Zinoviev and
Kamenev, the historian left no doubt that he viewed Trotsky as, alongside of
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 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 had
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 he dealt with the Soviet revolution, the party strife which had preceded
and which had followed it, and especially the struggles inside 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 just
bad academic standards and this is 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 that has
bettered Carr’s work.
It is not within the realm of this review to examine the
current state of soviet historiography suffice 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 very right-wing ones at that. Many of them do not
even retain minimal 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 favorite devices is to refer to “rumors” about Trotsky’s intimate
relations, without even bothering to identify the rumor’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 great and enduring landmark in
historical writing devoted to the Bolshevik revolution. “It will take a very
great historian to better his work. In today’s climate I for one am not holding
my breath.
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, 1950, 1952, 1953);
The Interregnum, 1923-1924 (London, 1954).
[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
