Postrevolutionary Syndromes

The centenary of the Russian Revolution had the welcome effect of bringing the events of 1917 back to the forefront of Western public interest. Yet it reduced an entire process to two dates at best, February and October. The Russian Revolution was not only the history of two insurrections; nor was it the matter of a single year. At the end of 1917, there were still many events to come; and the changes in Russia's political, economic, and social structures were only beginning. It would take at least three more years of turmoil and struggle to shape the new regime. In addition to the country's appalling situation at the end of the Civil War and the concern about the future of its people, there are questions about its supporters' state of mind. A look through the Communist Party's archives for 1920–23 reveals entire folders of documents about sick leaves on physical or mental grounds. Exhaustion was not only the consequence of stress, disease, and poor material condition; it also reflected acute social and political concerns. How could an activist transcend his/her own heroism and dedication during the Revolution and Civil War? How would he/she build a new set of beliefs and values adapted to the new period of "peaceful socialist construction"? Three recent books give us some enlightening clues about different ways of tackling this issue. One option was to stick to revolutionary ideals in politics as the Left Oppositionists did. A second consisted in transferring communist commitment to everyday life and becoming a communard. Ossifying the past by celebrating the revolution again and again was a third alternative.

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Lev Trotskii's struggle against Stalin was magnified for a long time as revolutionary romanticism before being vilified as a mere struggle for power between leaders. Yet this crucial episode of early Soviet history is still a new field for academic research. ¹The young Russian historian Aleksandr Reznik aims at going beyond "textocentrism" and "Trostkocentrism" (14) and tries to describe the 1923 Left Opposition as a living social group and not only as Trotskii's followers or disembodied bearers of ideology. On the basis of party and state sources from the center and the provinces (mostly Perm´), Reznik delineates the "political culture" (19) of Russian Communists, defined not only as a set of values but also as practices, emotions, and ways of communicating.

The chronological framework of his study covers a short period, from August 1923 until January 1924. Two texts were milestones of the crisis: the "Declaration of 46" in October 1923 claimed that "The factional regime must be eliminated and … must be replaced by a regime of comradely unity and inner-party democracy." In December, Trotskii published a series of articles in Pravdaarguing for The New Courseand analyzing bureaucratization, which was for him the background of the struggle inside the Party itself. However, the 13th Party Conference ended on 18 January with the defeat of the opposition, three days before Lenin's death became a major reason to close off discussion. In the first chapter, Reznik traces this story in detail. He highlights some particularly sensitive core issues in the conflict, which he develops in later chapters: from Trotskii's role and his relations with other oppositionists to the mechanism of inner-party discussion and the type of arguments exchanged and to the strategy of both camps to obtain defined...