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Ante Ciliga, Trotskii, and State Capitalism: Theory, Tactics, and Reevaluation during the Purge Era, 1935-1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Michael S. Fox
Michael S. Fox*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The Moscow Trials forced the international anti-Stalinist Left to reconsider its most fundamental truths. The old, rigid categories of capitalism and socialism were no longer certain; a new urgency accompanied the question of where the revolution had gone astray. Many of the most outspoken anti-Stalinists searching for new answers had been either adherents or sympathizers of Trotskii. For many of these former staunch supporters, Trotskii's theoretical middle ground—at the same time hostile to the Stalinist bureaucracy but defensive of the land of socialized production— was no longer tenable. One after another, they broke with Trotskii. Yet this entire movement of reevaluation in Trotskii's intellectual entourage either has not been fully explored in discussions centering on Trotskii's views or, in a certain Trotskyist tradition, has been dismissed as a simple move to the Right. One of the best ways to understand both the roots and the context of such an intellectual upheaval is to focus on the key individuals.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , Spring 1991 , pp. 127 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1991

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References

The author gratefully acknowledges the help of Ivo Banac, who suggested this topic and generously shared his own research materials and advice at every stage of its preparation. Ivo Banac, Pamela Rothstein, and William B. Tomljanovich assisted with Yugoslav texts. Material from Harvard University's Trotsky Archive is cited by permission of the Houghton Library. Special thanks to Katja David.

1. Prominent among them were Victor Serge, Max Eastman, James Burnham, and Ante Ciliga. By 1939 even the orthodox Max Shactman could no longer defend the Soviet Union as a workers’ state. See Deutscher, Isaac, The Prophet Outcast (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 435–443, 471-477Google Scholar; on Burnham and Eastman and their remarkable shift from the far Left to the far Right, see Diggins, John, Up From Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History (New York: Harper and Row, 1975)Google Scholar.

2. The most complete description of the movement away from Trotskii still remains in Deutscher's Prophet Outcast, a book not inclined to take seriously those who questioned Trotskii; see, for example, 435-436.

3. An illuminating account of the early exponents of state capitalism is in Bell, Daniel, “The Post-Industrial Society: The Evolution of an Idea,” Survey 17(Spring 1971), 102–147 Google Scholar, but Bell only begins with “Bruno R.'s” 1939 theory of a worldwide bureaucratic class, and only mentions Ciliga and others as predecessors (142). Ciliga himself remains almost unmentioned in historical writing. See Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 327, 436-437; Knei-Paz, Baruch, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 420 n. 138, 556 n.203Google Scholar; Broué, Pierre, Trotsky (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 703, 708, 816Google Scholar. Of special interest are lengthy interviews with Ciliga, “Dvadeseto stoljeće u životu Ante Ciliga,” Start [Zagreb], esp. 535-537(July 22, August 5, and August 19, 1989).

4. See a book very relevant to this discussion, Lustig, Michael M., Trotsky and Djilas: Critics of Communist Bureaucracy, (New York: Greenwood, 1989)Google Scholar.

5. Bell, “Post-Industrial Society,” 143.

6. Trotsky, Leon, The Revolution Betrayed (New York: Pathfinder, 1972), 255 Google Scholar.

7. Ante Ciliga, Sam kroz Europu u ram, 1939.-1945. (Rome: Na pragu sutrasnjice, 1978), 120.

8. On the Yugoslav Communist party's factional disputes in this period and on Ciliga's position, see Banac, Ivo, With Stalin Against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 45–60 Google Scholar, esp. 56-57; Dušan Lukač, Radnički pokret u Jugoslaviji i nacionalno pitanje 1918.-1941. (Belgrade: Institut za Savremenu Istoriju, 1972), 139, 163, 171-172, 182, 185, 186-187, 215,224.

9. Ciliga, , The Russian Enigma, (London: Labour Book Service, 1940), 1–12 Google Scholar. This is the translation of his 1938 Au pays du grand mensonge.

10. Ciliga, Enigma, 14, 48.

11. Ciliga has recently said of this group, “We received their material, but we were not a Trotskyist group. Trotskiists no, but the Yugoslav opposition yes.” “vadeseto stoljeće u životu Ante Ciliga,” Start 535 (22 July 1989), 74. The evidence does not fully bear this statement out, and in his memoirs Ciliga consistently referred to his faction as a Trotskyist group (Enigma, 54-55).

12. Enigma, 54; Ciliga to Dewey Commission, 3 July 1937, Trotsky Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University (hereafter Trotsky Archive).

13. Ciliga, “V bor'be za vyezd iz SSSR: Iz Iugoslavskoi partiinoi zhizni,” unpublished Trotskii opposition circular, [1936 ?], Trotsky Archive.

14. Enigma, 56.

15. Ciliga, “V bor'be za vyezd“; “Stalinskie repressii v SSSR,” Biulleten’ oppozitsiii 47 (January 1936), 1-4; Enigma, 135, 300-302; Ciliga, , Sibirie: Terre de l'éxil et de l'industrialisation (Paris: Plon, 1950), 296–297 Google Scholar. This work is the second part of Ciliga's memoirs, written between 1938 and 1941; it is translated in a complete reprint of Enigma (London: Ink Links, 1979). Other Trotskii supporters who escaped Stalin's prisons included Victor Serge, the Russo-Belgian oppositionist released in 1936 through the pressure of prominent French intellectuals, and an Armenian worker, A. A. Davtian (pseud. Tarov), who escaped the USSR in 1934 and corresponded with Trotskii in 1935 (Broué, Trotsky, 816, 1048).

16. Enigma, 209-214; Ciliga, “Po sovetskim izoliatoram,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik 11(12 June 1937), 4-8.

17. Trotskii to Ciliga, 10 January 1936, Trotsky Archive; Ciliga, “Stalinskie repressii.”

18. Trotskii to Ciliga, 24 December 1935; Ciliga to Trotskii, 13 January 1936; Trotskii to Ciliga, 10 January 1936, Trotsky Archive.

19. Trotskii, , “Problems of the Development of the USSR,” Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1930-31, 14 vols. (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), 204;Google Scholar Enigma, 263, 271-272. On these debates and the political life of the Verkhne-Uralsk Prison, see Broué, Pierre, “Les trotskystes en Union sovie'tique, 1929-1938,” Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no. 6(1980): 38–40 Google Scholar.

20. See Avrich, Paul, “Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers’ Group,” Russian Review 43(January 1984): 1–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Ciliga, , “A Talk with Lenin in Stalin's Prison,” Politics 3(August 1946): 235–237 Google Scholar (this is the full version of the truncated chapter “Lenin, Too” in Enigma).

22. Ciliga's original letter to Trotskii apparently does not survive, but Trotskii's reply does: Trotskii to Ciliga, 24 December 1935.

23. Trotskii to Ciliga, 10 January 1936; Trotskii to Ciliga, 24 December 1935.

24. Trotskii to Ciliga, 24 December 1935.

25. Trotskii to Ciliga, 10 January 1936.

26. Ciliga to Trotskii, 17 January 1936, Trotsky Archive.

27. Ciliga to Milan Ćurćin, 11 February 1936, Nacionalna i sveučilišna biblioteka, Zagreb, Manuscripts Division, Uredništvo “Nove Evrope,” R7446. I am indebted to Ivo Banac for the information from this archive cited in this article.

28. Trotskii to Serge, 30 July 1936, Trotskii-Sedov papers, Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California. Hereafter Trotskii-Sedov papers.

29. Ciliga to Trotskii, 17 January 1936.

30. Trotskii to Ciliga, 24 December 1935; Trotskii to Ciliga, 10 January 1936.

31. Ciliga, “V bor'be za vyezd.”

32. Ciliga, “La répression en U.R.S.S.,” La Révolution prolétarienne, 25 February 1936.

33. Trotskii to Ciliga, 6 May 1936, Trotsky Archive; Sedov to Ciliga, 4 December 1936, Trotskii- Sedov papers.

34. “Po povodu statei tov. Tsiliga,” Biulleten’ oppozitsii 51 (July-August 1936): 16.

35. Ciliga to Trotskii, 14 May 1936, Trotsky Archive.

36. Ibid.

37. Sedov claimed technical difficulties prevented printing the letter after one issue, but a second issue appeared without it as well (Sedov to Ciliga, 4 December 1936, Trotskii-Sedov papers).

38. Ciliga, “Pis'mo v redaktsiiu,” Sotsialisticheskii vestnik 7-8(27 April 1937): 23-24

39. Enigma, 272, 273. Ciliga consulted Trotskii on drafts of his book, sent condolences on the death of Lev Sedov, and kept Trotskii informed of the anti-Trotskyist campaign in the Yugoslav Communist party (see Ciliga to Trotskii, 2 February 1937; Ciliga to Trotskii, 20 February 1938; Ciliga to Trotskii, 25 January 1938, Trotsky Archive).

40. Trotskii responded to such criticisms in “Their Morals and Ours,” New International, June 1938, 163-173.

41. Serge, Victor, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941, trans. Sedgwick, Peter (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 349 Google Scholar. Ciliga sent to Serge a copy of his 14 May 1936 letter to Trotskii, in which he outlined his differences with Trotskii.

42. Enigma, 232, 277.

43. Kus-Nikolajev to Sedov, 2 December 1937, Trotsky Archive.

44. Ciliga to Ćurćin, 21 January 1938 and 5 February 1938, Nacionalna i sveućllišna biblioteka, Zagreb, Manuscripts Division, Uredništvo “Nove Evrope,” R7446.

45. Josip Broz Tito to Wilhelm Pieck, 11 January 1938 in Tito, Sabrana djela, 30 vols. (Belgrade: Izdavački centar “Komunist,” 1977-) 4:13; idem, “Protiv trockističkih špijuna i njihovih pomagača,” Sabrana djela 4:50-52.

46. Robert H., McNeal, “Trotskyist Interpretations of Stalinism,” in Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, ed. Tucker, Robert C. (New York: Norton, 1977), 36 Google Scholar.

47. One of the best accounts of Trotskii's view of Stalinism is chap. 10, “The Revolution Bureaucratized,” of Knei-Paz, Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, 367-441.

48. Trotskii, “The Class Nature of the Soviet State,” Writings of Leon Trotsky, 112-113.

49. Knei-Paz, Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, 387-388; Trotskii, The Revolution Betrayed, 249.

50. See, for example, Farl, Erich, “The State Capitalist Genealogy,” International 2(Spring 1973): 18–23.Google Scholar This article is useful for a bibliography of Lenin's writings on state capitalism.

51. For the first full-length treatment of Machajski and Makhaevism, see Shatz, Marshall S., Jan Waciaw Machajski (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989)Google Scholar, especially chap. 7, “Makhaevism after Machajski,” 161-177. On anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist use of the term state capitalism, see Avrich, Paul, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), 193 Google Scholar; for some of the documents, see Paul Avrich, ed., Anarchists in the Russian Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973).

52. Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1973), 28–34, 396 n.99Google Scholar; Bukharin, N.I., Imperialism and World Economy (New York: Howard Fertig, 1966), 158–159 Google Scholar; Bukharin, , Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), 226 Google Scholar.

53. V. I. Lenin, “O ‘levom’ rebiachenstve i o melkoburzhuaznosti,” 5th ed., 55 vols., Polnoe sobranie sochenenii 36:301.

54. Lewin, Moshe, Lenin's Last Struggle, trans. Sheridan Smith, A. M. (New York: Pantheon, 1968), 26–28, 115-116Google Scholar.

55. Shatz, Machajski, 22, 164; Avrich, “Miasnikov,” 20-29.

56. “La Révolution russe et les raisons de sa dégénérescence,” La Révolution prolétarienne, 25 November 1936, 363, 365.

57. For a contemporary criticism of state capitalism in this vein see Yugow, Aron, Russia's Economic Front for War and Peace (London: Watts, 1941), 261 Google Scholar.

58. This issue was raised by Hilferding, Rudolf, “State Capitalism or Totalitarian State Economy,” Modern Review l(June 1947): 266–271 Google Scholar [originally in Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, May 1940].

59. Enigma, 48, 108, 137.

60. Ibid., 102.

61. Ibid., 136.

62. Ciliga, “Où va la Russie des Soviets,” La Révolution prolètarienne, 10 July 1938, 205.

63. Ibid.

64. See, for example, Hilferding, “State Capitalism or Totalitarian State Economy.”

65. Yvon, M., “What has Become of the Russian Revolution?” (New York: International Review, 1937), 62–63 Google Scholar. This work was originally published as “Ce qu'est devenue la revolution Russe,” Brochures de la revolution proletarienne, no. 2 (Paris).

66. Craipeau, Yvan, Le Mouvement trotskyste en France: Des origines aux ensignements de mai 68 (Paris: Syros, 1971), 210–211 Google Scholar.

67. Trotskii, “Un état ni ouvrièr ni bourgeois?,” La Quatrième Internationale, June 1938, 98-102.

68. Trotskii, “The USSR in War,” New International, November 1939, 325, 325-332; See also Knei-Paz, Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, 419-427.

69. Beilharz, Peter, Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism (London: Croom Helm, 1987)Google Scholar, chap. 5; Wald, Alan M., The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 190 Google Scholar. In the latter see also 172-192 on Burnham and Shactman's break with Trotskii. On state capitalism theory among British Trotskyists see Cliff, Tony, State Capitalism in Russia (London: Pluto, 1974)Google Scholar, and Callaghan, John, British Trotskyism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 91–94 Google Scholar. In 1956 the state capitalism theory also surfaced in the Polish United Workers’ party; see Craipeau, “Le Mouvement trotskyste,” 213-214.

70. Trotskii, “The Questions of Wendelin Thomas,” Writings of Leon Trotsky, 358-360 (originally in Biulleten’ oppozitsii, 56-57 [June-August 1937]: 12-14); Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 436-437. See also Avrich, Paul, Kronstadt 1921 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), 229–231 Google Scholar, and Peter Sedgwick's perceptive analysis of Serge, with significant relevance to this debate over Kronstadt, “The Unhappy Elitist: Victor Serge's Early Bolshevism,” History Workshop Journal 17(Spring 1984): 150-156. Relevant articles are collected in Lenin, V. I. and Trotsky, Leon, Kronstadt (New York: Monad, 1986)Google Scholar.

71. Serge, Victor, “Les ecrits et les faits,” La Révolution prolétarienne, 10 September 1937, 702–703 Google Scholar; John G. Wright, “The Truth about Kronstadt,” New International, February 1938, 29 n.ll; “A propos de Makhno et de Cronstadt,” La Lutte ouvrière, 10 September 1937. See Serge's response, “Les idees et les faits,” La Révolution prolétarienne, 25 October 1938, 330-332.

72. Trotskii, “Hue and Cry over Kronstadt,” New International, April 1938, 103; “More on the Suppression of Kronstadt,” New International, August 1938, 249; Wright, “Truth about Kronstadt,” 51. On Trotskii's role, see Avrich, Kronstadt, 145-148, 211; Trotskii's letter to Sadov is cited in Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 437 n 1.

73. Trotskii, “Hue and Cry,” 103-106.

74. Getzler, Israel, Kronstadt 1917-1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 256–257 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Getzler shows (208) that, despite Trotskii's claims, a large percentage of veteran revolutionary sailors remained in Kronstadt after 1917.

75. Trotskii, “More on the Suppression of Kronstadt,” 250.

76. Serge, “Once More: Kronstadt,” New International, July 1938, 212, 211. Also published as “Sur Cronstadt 1921—et quelques autres sujets,” La Révolution prolétarienne, 25 August 1938, 263-264. See also his Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 124-132 and passim.

77. Sedgwick, “Unhappy Elitist,” 150.

78. Ciliga, , The Kronstadt Revolt, (London: Freedom, 1942), 8, 11, 13, 7Google Scholar; originally published in La Revolution proletarienne, 10 September 1938.

79. Ibid., 8.

80. Serge, “Reply to Ciliga,” New International, February 1939, 54; the original is in La Révolution prolétarienne, 25 October 1938, 330-332.

81. Ciliga, Kronstadt, 13.

82. Trotskii attacked Serge for demanding freedom not from excessive Bolshevik centralism but from party discipline; Trotskii, “Moralists and Sycophants against Marxism,” New International, August 1939, 229-233.

83. Trotskii, “Their Morals and Ours,” 166; Deutscher, Prophet Outcast, 437.