What everyone should know aboul state repression

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Victor Serge's booklet What Everyone Should Know About State Repression has just been published by New Park Publications, price £1.

It is reviewed here by Ernie Stubbins. Next Ernie will review a new book on Tsarism's Lenin addressing a mass rally in 1919 In fact Stalin, in 1924, adopted the opposite method of redressing the imbalance in the weight of the peasantry.

He simply swept 200,000 workers into the party through the "Lenin levy' This raw and untrained cadre was easy prey for bureaucratic rule.

Trotsky's insistence on the need for the working class to maintain a position of leadership over the workers' state was twisted by Stalin to accuse him of 'underestimating the peasantry' And his insistance on the need for centralised planning was used as an accusation that he believed in facile panaceas.

In The New Course, Trotsky answers these slanders. Little did he realise then that Stalin, backed theoretically by Bukharin, would the next year attempt an all out refutation of the theory of permanent revolution-the theory central to the achievement of the 1917 October Revolution!

In 1925 after the publication of the Lessons of October in which Trotsky lays the betrayal of the German Revolution at the door of Stalinism, Zionviev and Kamenev joined Trotsky to form the United Opposition.

It was this joint opposition that produced the Platform of the Left Opposition in 1927 prior to the 10th anniversary of the Revolution.

Seized

The Central Committee refused to publish it, the printing press of the Left Opposition was seized, and Trotsky was expelled from the Executive Committee of the Comintern.

The 7hour demonstration in October turned in favour of the Left Opposition but at the next Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Control Commission inkpots and abuse were thrown at Trotsky as he spoke.

A demonstration staged by the Opposition on November 7th was broken up and the later Trotsky and Zionview were expelled from the party.

But at the 15th party congress on December 2nd when 121 oppositionists signed statement the Zinovievists deserted.

The main political attack in the Platform is on the 'opportunism' of the Stalinists, their blocking with forces of the bourgeoisie against the working class and poor peasants.

This is illustrated, not just from the dangerous strengthening of the kulaks and Nepmen and the failure to industrialise, but also in the defeat of the German Revolution, the British General Strike and the Chinese Revolution.

Stalinism was the right in the German KPD to the extent that the lefts were being pushed into an ultra left split; in Britain they had blocked with the agents of Chamberlain; in China they had pursued Menshevik policies of allying with bourgeois forces of the bourgeois nationalist party, the Kuomintang.

The pamphlet starts with a detailed exposure of the abysmal failure of Soviet economic policy, reflecting the work Trotsky was assigned to on the Supreme Council of the National Economy after he had been removed from the Revolutionary Military Committee.

The composition of the party reflects the political orientation to the better-off peasants rather than to the working class, the middle and poor peasants.

Appendages

And the state apparatus, and the status of the soviets as mere appendages of the state machine is contrary to the Bolshevik policy of active involvement of workers and peasants in the state machine, the ending of the bourgeois separation of the state from society and of its intimidating remoteness.

The Plattorm draws parallel with German Social Democracy, where the revolutionary elements thought they had defeated Bernstein's revisionism, only to find it reasserting itself later as the dominant ideology.

The revolutionary social democrats relied too much on the revolutionary instincts of the working class and underestimated the extent to which the period of peaceful development which had given birth to so powerful a workers bureaucracy and aristocracy, would compel not only the opportunists but the centrists also to capitulate to the bourgeoisie.

«They underestimated the real danger and mobilised the revolutionary rank and file against it with insufficient energy. We are not going to repeat that mistake, We are going to correct, in good time, the course of the party leadership:"

Ironically of course the Larger defected within weeks of larger part of the Opposition making thiş statement.

Also revolutionaries have to assess the correctness of the decision not to split the party at that time, to fight as the champions of party unity who strove to reunite the party with the working class.

The Platform at no point uses the term 'betrayal' against the party leadership, referring instead to 'mistakes' and to the "weakness' of the party.

Clearly the fight against Stalinism was to be a much more difficult task than Trotsky envisaged at that time. Indeed it is a central problem which Trotskyism still faces!

Victor Serge, born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich in 1890, spent his early political life in the anarchist movement and joined the Russian Communist Party shortly after revolution in 1917.

He edited the French edition of International Correspondence, helped prepare the 1923 insurrection in Germany and wrote several important books on He joined the Left Opposition in 1923, was expelled from the Party in 1928 and was several times imprisoned by Stalin's regime. . • Deported from Russia in 1936, he re established contact with Trotsky and conducted a long correspondence with him (most of which is available only in French, see 'La Lutte Contre le Stalinisme'. , Serge and Trotsky, Maspero 1977).

Searching for arms during the Relationships with Trotsky, initially warm, broke down in a series of disagreements which showed Serge's persistent anarchist tendency.

At issue were questions such as the POUM and the Kronstadt mutiny.

Although a consistent admirer of Trotsky, Serge remained sufficiently independent to maintain his own position to the end. By the end of 1938 Trotsky was obliged to issue a public statement Victor Serge and the Fourth International', formally disassociating the International from Serge.

Slander campaign

The pamphlet under review is the first English edition of a French publication of 1926, itself a compilation of articles written in 1920.

Its publication by the British Workers Revolutionary Party is obviously to be welcomed, but it should be recognised as part of the provocateur Malinovsky.

WRP's efforts to give historical and intellectual backing to its shabby 'Security and the Fourth International' slander campaigns against its political rivals in the degenerated Trotskyist movement.

The first section of the pamphlet describes the activities of the Okhrana, the security police of the Russian Empire. It is based on the files and documents of the Okhrana captured by the revolution.

Serge points out that political surveillance begins externally-following of revolutionaries, listening in to telephone calls, intercepting mail etc. Today we Quin imm 1719 could add a range or new - -11 - 11 techniques to this list, but the , principle remains unchanged.

Following on from external surveillance, the political police proceeds to penetrate the revolutionary organisations themselves, by the recruitment of agents provocateurs.

Techniques

A captured Okhrana directive sets out the techniques of recruitment and use of such agents-seeking out the weakest and aggrieved among the revolutionaries, or simply those with insuperable money problems.

Once recruited, care was to be taken not to expose the agent. If necessary he or she should be arrested to maintain 'cover' Taking a large number of examples from captured Okhrana documents, Serge demonstrates how systematically provocateurs were recruited and operated.

By 1912 each of week archrevolutionary organisations, the ethnic minorities, the extreme right wing bodies, philanthropic organisations, scientific societies and even the Jesuits had successfully been infiltrated.

Estimates of the numbers involved run as high as 40,000 agents over a 20 year period.

At one point Okhrana agents were responsible for the entire propaganda machinery of the Bolsheviks in exile.

Here emerges an important point-the limitation of the provocateur.

For the Okhrana to make full use of its position in the propaganda network would have exposed it and put an end to it.

The police forces are constantly forced to calculate the odds between continuing, deepening their penetration on the one hand, and on the other the immediate gains to be made from destroying as much of the organisation as they already know.

There were two spectacularly successful examples of penetration into the party leaderships-Azev into the Socialist Revolutionaries and Malinovsky into the Bolsheviks.

Malinovsky even became the leader of the Bolshevik fraction in the 4th Duma in 1913, 6 years atter his recruitment by the Okhrana, and enjoyed the confidence of Lenin and Zinoviev for several years.

The implantation of provocateurs was only one weapon in the arsenal of repression.

Serge describes the enormous growth of mail interception, and the development of sections devoted to breaking codes and cyphers.

The extent of scientific methods developed at the turn of the century may be surprising to some readers.

Serge discusses the Okhrana's methods of systematising their observations into network diagrams, resulting in a map of the revolutionary movement and its internal interconnections.

• Internal documents of the Okhrana showed that they often knew more about the revolutionary organisations than the leaders of those organisations themselves.

In closing the first section, Serge reflects on the failure of the enormous police apparatus to prevent the revolution.

This resulted of course not only from the courage and self sacrifice of the revolutionaries as compared with the self interestedness of the state employees, but also from the causes of the revolution itself-the consequences of the economic crisis.

Although enormous damage could be done to the revolutionary movement, the revolution itself flowed from the logic of the situation in Russia.

Even the provocateurs, despite their ability to damage the revolution, were obliged to serve the revolution.

Even while he was in the pay of the Okhrana, Malinovsky was obliged to act as Lenin's mouthpiece in the Duma.

The real danger of provocation is the distrust it sows in the ranks of the revolutionary movement.

Having discussed the problems of state repression Serge goes on to discuss the problems of working in conditions of illegality.

In this section, and the following section of practical advice, Serge brings together his experience of many years underground work in the anarchist movement in France and Spain (which culminated in the Barcelona uprising of 1917) with the Leninist systematic organisational work which led to the creation of the Russian Bolshevik party.

He begins by showing the need for educational and propaganda work about the nature of the bourgeois state.

The workers must be shown, over and over, that the police, judges, courts etc. represent the interests of the employers, that there is no "ustice' standing over the class struggle.

Beyond this starting point, it is necessary for the party to be prepared against state bans.

Not only is it the official state forces that must be guarded against, but also the private police and investigative bodies.

The conclusion from this section is the necessity of a commitment by party members to illegal work at crucial periods of historical development.

Serge's practical advice is still worth reading, although it is now inadequate in the face of the technical developments in the state machinery since 1917.

He has useful points to make about being followed, taking notes at meetings, about using telephones eto. etc., Which should be taken seriously-they kept him alive during many years of illegal political activity.

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Socizlisi Press, Hednesdos 19 Seprember 1979 NDUSTRIAL METES