Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime

by Richard Pipes

From the accliamed authority on Russia and the Russian Revolution—the final volume in his magisterial history of the Russian Revolution, covering the period from the outbreak of the Civil War in 1918 to Lenin's death in 1924

"Offers a penetrating analysis of the making of the Soviet system.... [It is] a passionate book whose outstanding scholarship is rooted in universal values like truth, honor, responsibility and the sacredness of human life." — Philadelphia Inquirer

"Timely.... The work is enriched in intriguing ways by the author's access to the once-secret archives of the Soviet Union." — Los Angeles Times

Genres: History, Russia, Russian History, Nonfiction, Politics, European History, Russian Revolution

608 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Born in Poland, Richard Pipes fled the country with his family when Germany invaded it in 1939. After reaching the United States a year later, Pipes began his education at Muskingum College, which was interrupted in 1943 when he was drafted into the Army Air Corps and sent to Cornell to study Russian. He completed his bachelor's degree at Cornell in 1946 and earned his doctorate at Harvard University four years later.

Pipes taught at Harvard from 1950 until his retirement in 1996, and was director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968-1973. A campaigner for a tougher foreign policy towards the Soviet Union during the Cold War, in 1976, he led a group of analysts in a reassessment of Soviet foreign policy and military power. He served as director of Eastern European and Soviet affairs at the National Security Council from 1981 until 1983, after which he returned to Harvard, where he finished his career as Baird Professor Emeritus of History.

Reviews

[James Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third and final book of what proved to be a most enjoyable and educational series. I mainly wanted to read these books because I have always been interested in the conflict and military leadership of the Red army and the White army. What drove them and where did the leadership come from.
To my amazement the Russian Civil War and the American Civil War had some similarities. The Red Army, like the North had a great man power and industrial advantage. The White Army, like the South had better Leadership, their officers were ex-czarist Officers.
Some of the differences were that the average Russian citizen wasn't as patriotic and committed to one side or the other. According to the author they felt comfortable with the czarist rule and being dictated to. There was a feeling of safety with his rule over their lives. And the second difference was that in the Ameican Civil War, there was not any military intervention from any other Nation. In the Russian Civil War, England and France to lesser degree supplied and initially fought with the Whites. The White's finally succumbed to the over whelming superiority of man power and the Red Armies advantage on resources, And the lack of a central command and coordination within the different White armies. The White Armies Generals and the Military Leadership was superior to the Reds, but they had no understanding of how important a centeralized Government was, and how important political leadership was.
After reading this book, I began to understand why there was a fear of communism in the United States and I began to understand how this fear dictated our involvement in Korea and Vietnam.
Even before the Bolshevik's Government seized power, they were planning a worldwide communist revolution. They were backing Communist parties in Germany, England and Western Europe. The Bolshevik's did not regard human lives, they were considered expendable to further the expansion of the party and the leaders strategy.
The Bolshik's under Lenin seized all property and even the sanctity of the Church into the state. Lenin believed that Russia could prosper without having a monetary system to drive the economy, that the farmers would give a large quantity of their crops to the state only keeping a small amount for their families and seeds to plant for future Crops in exchange for basic needs. The results were that the farmers gave a lesser amount to the state and sold large quantities on the black market.
During the 1921 famine in Russia, millions of lives were lost amoung the poor and peasants. The Communist leaders always had plenty to eat. To show how Lenin and the Bolshevik's had so little regard for human life, while their citizens were starving for like of food, they were selling food on the world market, and this while Hoover and the American Relief Administration were sending food and feeding the Russian people.
After WWI Russia and Germany were forming an alliance that would modernize the Russian army, while German manufacturers set up plants to produce planes, tanks and artillery. This was a way for Germany to be able to build up their war machine and getting around the strict limits of the Versailles Treaty on building up their military. I highly recommend this book for its historical lessons.

[Alex Givant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Закончил чтение 3-х томника, всем рекомендую. Всё, что мы знаем из школьного курса истории - правда на 1% от 1% (и то это многовато).

[Sarah McC · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you had told me three months ago that when I finally finished reading all 500+ pages of this book about the Bolshevik rise to power, I would actually be sad that it was over, I would not have believed you. But, it’s true. I really, really, really liked this book. So much so that I found the author’s address so I can write him a letter, and I’m planning to actually purchase this book. Seriously.

Where to even begin? I read Mr. Pipes’s book 'The Three Whys of the Russian Revolution' first; it was assigned reading for Tapestry. I was really impressed by the author’s ability to write about complicated situations and theories with clarity. I am no expert on Russia or her history, yet Pipes kept my interest throughout the entire book. More, he intrigued me and caused me to think about and reassess many of my views of Communism and Russia.

The book was brilliant all the way through. The beginning is a little rough, as he is describing Russia’s civil war between the Reds and Whites. There are a lot of names of people and places, and since they all look like Tzagoragphy, it gets a little complicated for English-speaking folks like myself. But once I got through that bit, things settled out with the main players and places, and it was much easier to follow.

Pipes doesn’t really limit himself to just the history of what was happening in Russia. My favorite chapter actually looks at the concept of totalitarianism: what it is and where it has existed in recent history. Throughout the chapter, Pipes compares and contrasts the regimes in Russia, Germany, and Italy. This is especially intriguing because Germany and Italy are always classified as fascist and put at one end of the political spectrum, while Russia is labeled communist and placed at the other. Yet Pipes argues that these “governments” had far more in common than most people credit, and he argues the point very well.

In that chapter, too, Pipes talks a great deal simply about the steps to totalitarianism, and how Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini all worked within and through their legal political systems to gain control. Fear, Pipes tells us, is the totalitarian’s best friend. Each of those three regimes chose a scapegoat (capitalists or Jews for example) and then built up fear of that group, until the population was willing to do whatever it took to protect themselves from this threat. Except there wasn’t really a threat and there wasn’t really a need for protection—but that realization came too late; power had already been given up by the people.

So I don’t know, it was just a lot of food for thought, looking at our government and the many wolves to which they point. Are the wolves real, or are they merely shadows being used as excuses to take more and more control of our lives?

Anyway, I couldn’t believe how easily this book read. So many books of this weight are written specifically for people who are already neck-deep in studying the topic, and thus are almost impossible for a newbie to the situation to understand. Example: I also checked out a book on Mussolini’s Italy. I gave it up after the first four or five chapters. The author assumed that I already understood exactly what was going on in Italy and who was in charge and why and how they got there. Pipes, on the other hand, manages to explain the background thoroughly but not overly, making the rest of what he has to say meaningful, relevant, and interesting.

If you ever have to do any studying of Russia from the point of the Revolution to Lenin’s death, I strongly recommend this book. If you don’t feel like reading all 512 pages, at least read chapter five, on totalitarianism, and the last chapter, which is a summary of the rest of the book.

This is one of the few non-fiction books that I’ve read lately that I see myself reading again in the future.

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third book in the Russia series. More history than the Old Regime, more study of society than Revolution. Covers the period from the Civil Wars to the death of Lenin. The problem of culture -- the "proletarian" writers who actively suppressed all others in the name of Revolution and produced no work that survives. The anti-religious movement -- the confiscation of consecrated vessels from the Russian Orthodox Church on the pretext of feeding the hungry -- the Jewish Communists attacking Judaism with particular fervor, such that non-Jewish Communists were told to emulate them in attack Christianity (without the desired effect of making the Orthodox think that they were not particularly anti-Orthodox). Famine. Comparisons with Fascism and Nazism. And more.

[Claudia Moscovici · Rating 5 out of 5]

While few question Stalin's evil intentions, Lenin is sometimes depicted
as a genuine and well-meaning ideologue. Pipes' work shows how Lenin and the Bolshevik regime sowed the seeds for the totalitarian dictatorship consolidated by Stalin.

[Ellee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another author who clearly knows the subject matter! A great scholarly overview of the early years of Communism in Bolshevik Russia.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a sequel to _The Russian Revolution_, and picks up where the previous book left - after the Bolshevik's seizure of power in the October revolution, and at the beginning of the long civil war between the Reds and the Whites. After a detailed account of that struggle, the book moves on to examine various facets of Bolshevik rule, concluding with the death of Lenin in 1924 and the ascendancy to power of Joseph Stalin.

This is a long book, and the first few chapters on the Civil War (almost 150 pages worth of material) are pretty slow-going. But the book picks up steam as it moves along, and the chapters on culture, religion, and the relationship between Communism and National Socialism are both gripping and informative.

Of particular importance is Pipes' dismantling of the romantic myth of Lenin and Trotsky. Even today, too many people believe that the evils of communism were the product of Stalin alone, of a dysfunctional personality that happened to seize power and thereby derail a noble utopian experiment from its progressive path. In contrast to this myth, Pipes makes clear that Stalin merely inherited the system that Lenin built. And while Stalin certainly murdered a vastly larger number of people than Lenin, the institutions and principles on which he acted were already established and waiting for him by the time he took power in 1924.

As he himself boasted, and as his contemporaries could not fail to notice, Lenin was ruthless in his pursuit of power and showed no qualms in ordering the deaths of anyone who stood in his way. Under Lenin arose the dreaded Cheka, later to become the GPU, the NKVD, and finally the KGB. And Lenin was not long in putting this organization to use in the "Red Terror," designed to consolidate Bolshevik control against popular resistance. Thousands were shot in the basements and courtyard of the Lubianka prison and dumped into common graves. In the face of the famine of 1921-22 - a famine caused at least in part by the Soviet authority's draconian policy of forced requisition of peasants' crops - Lenin was indifferent to the suffering of his people, shipping grain out of the country while peasants starved to death, and cynically exploiting the famine to confiscate valuable property from the Orthodox church. "It is now and only now, when in the regions affected by the famine there is cannibalism and the roads are littered with hundreds if not thousands of corpses, that we can (and therfore must) pursue the acquisition of [church] valuables with the most ferocious and merciless energy, stopping at nothing and suppressing all resistance."

Nor was Trotsky any better, though with him even more than Lenin history has cast a favorable and romantic glow over his persona. As Pipes writes, in a passage worth quoting at length:

"There are many instances in history when the loser earns posterity's sympathy because he is seen as morally superior to the victors. It is difficult to muster such sympathy for Trotsky. Admittedly he was more cultured than Stalin and his confederates, intellectually more interesting, personally more courageous, and, in dealings with fellow Communists, more honorable. But as in the case of Lenin, such virtues as he possessed manifested themselves exclusively within the Party. In relations with outsiders as well as those insiders who strove for greater democracy, Trotsky was at one with Lenin and Stalin. He helped forge the weapons that destroyed him. He suffered the same fate that was meted out, with his wholehearted consent, to the opponents of Lenin’s dictatorship: the Kadets, the Socialists-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks; ex-tsarist officers who would not fight in the Red Army; the Workers’ Opposition; the Kronshtadt sailors, and the Tambov peasants; the priesthood. He awoke to the dangers of totalitarianism only when it threatened him personally: his sudden conversion to party democracy was a means of self-defense, not the championship of principle.
Trotsky liked to depict himself as a proud lion brought down by a pack of jackals; and the more monstrous Stalin revealed himself to be, the more persuasive this image appeared to those in Russia and abroad who wanted to salvage an idealized vision of Lenin’s Bolshevism. But the record indicates that in his day Trotsky, too, was one of the pack. His defeat had nothing ennobling about it. He lost because he was outsmarted in a sordid struggle for political power."

As this passage indicates, Pipes does not refrain in this book from casting moral judgment upon the persons and events that he describes. Pipes' conservative inclinations manifest themselves throughout the book, from his scornful asides at the Enlightenment faith in the transformative power of reason, to his respectful and sometimes defensive attitude toward tsardom. But as he himself notes in his concluding chapter, it would be odd indeed to assume a guise of detached neutrality when surveying facts of such a monstrous nature. "The refusal to pass judgment on historical events rests on moral values, too, namely the silent premise that whatever occurs is natural and therefore right: it amounts to an apology of those who happen to win out." Pipes calls the Russian Revolution what it was - a colossal failure. It failed on its own terms, in its inability to spark a worldwide socialist revolution or to establish a successful centrally planned economy. But more importantly than this, the Russian Revolution was a failure on basic humanitarian and moral terms. The one thing the Bolsheviks managed to do well was to seize and hold power. But given the terrible means they needed to achieve and maintain that power, this is as damning as praise can be.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

the wilde Amazone

Fatally Flawed
4/10

The second volume of Richard Pipes' history of the Russian Revolution shares many of the flaws as the first volume: a refusal to contemplate much recent scholarship, a correspondingly shallow sociological framework, and a complete lack of sympathy not merely for the Bolsheviks, but for the Russians as a whole. Only when they serve as victims of the Bolsheviks does Pipes profess any sympathy.

Pipes devotes a whole chapter to Lenin's vicious persecution of religion. Yet one cannot forget Pipes' own comment in Russia Under the Old Regime that Russian Orthodoxy was the most sycophantic and callous of the Christian churches.

In discussing this book's weaknesses, three come to mind most strongly. The first is Pipes' explanation of the Civil War. According to Pipes although the Bolsheviks had virtually no popularity they were able to maintain control of Russia because they were fortunately centered in the heartlands of Russia's industrial might. With this centre under control they were able to conquer the rest of what would become the Soviet Union, which they did with appalling cruelty.

Indeed, Pipes goes on to sneer at the Bolsheviks for taking so long and at Trotsky's skill as a military commander. But this is clearly flawed. After all, Mao Tse-Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and no doubt many others had been heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Yet they still managed to triumph and win.

The Whites were never able to create their own Yenan. Despite mass poverty, famine and economic collapse within the Red zone, they were never able to create a real war economy in their own areas and appeal to the rest of the country.

The simple fact was that the Whites were too autocratic and dictatorial to mobilize the popular support they needed to win. Reading Jon Smele's monograph on the fate of Admiral Kolchak brings out their own cruelty and incompetence.

Likewise Geoffrey Swain has lucidly argued that the anti-Bolshevik cause suffered a fatal defeat when the populist SRs were betrayed by the quasi-monarchist whites.

I'm also not pleased at Pipes' treatment of atrocities. Pipes of course agrees that they were responsible for most of the pogroms committed against Jews. But one should point out that they could be quite vicious against Gentiles as well. And as one might expect from a Commentary contributor Pipes tries to show Woodrow Wilson as unduly soft-hearted and sympathetic towards the Reds. One should read David Foglesong's book on American intervention to find out what really happened.

Second, as a Polish refugee from the Nazi-Soviet pact, Pipes want to show as much as possible the identity of the two dictatorships, and how Leninism was the key inspiration of later totalitarian regimes.

The key flaw in Pipes's approach is his tendentious and partial use of the literature. He relies on conservative scholars like Renzo De Felice, Ernest Nolte and James Gregor to help argue, among other things, that Mussolini was in many ways a socialist.

By contrast Adrian Lyttleton's seminal work on the Fascist dictatorship and Denis Mack Smith's portrayal of Mussolini's breathtaking opportunism go by completely unmentioned.

In order to emphasize Hitler's radicalism he often cites Herman Rauschning's "memoirs," yet recent scholars find him unreliable and inaccurate. Ian Kershaw's recent biography of Hitler does not cite him at all, and in turn Pipes ignores Kershaw's invaluable The Nazi Dictatorship.

Pipes also relies heavily on David Schoenbaum's Hitler's Social Revolution, yet he makes no mention of the many scholars who have heavily qualified Schoenbaum's argument that there was one.

Finally, Pipes quotes Domenico Settimbrini's suggestion that if Russia had been neutral in 1914, Lenin would have been as "interventionist" and militarist as Mussolini was in successfully agitating against Italian neutrality.

In response one should point out that if Russia had been neutral in 1914, there would not have been a world war and there would have been no war for Lenin to intervene in.

Second, if Lenin had supported intervention he would no doubt have been treated by Pipes with much more indulgence.

Finally, I can't help but object to Pipes's counter-revolutionary sententiousness. How else can one explain such fatuous statements that in Marxism, "social antagonism was for the first time accorded moral legitimacy: hatred...was made into a virtue." This incidentally occurs in a chapter where Pipes, while ostentatiously asserting the identity of right and left "extremism," cites against the Jacobins Pierre Gaxotte, anti-semite, member of Action Francaise, and Vichy's official historian of the French Revolution.

And really one must object to Pipes quote of Karl Popper on the final page: "Everyone has the right to sacrifice himself for a cause he deems deserving. No one has the right to sacrifice others or to encite others to sacrifice themselves for an ideal." Is it too much to point out that Pipes and Popper cannot believe this?

For a start it would forbid conscription, while "encitement" is an inseparable part of democratic debate. And from El Salvador to Palestine to Vietnam there has no been end of sacrifices the men of Commentary and Encounter have demanded from desperately poor and miserable people.

Pipes' reputation reflects less on his skill as a historian than on the lock step mentality of conservative journals, and the unwillingness of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books to challenge them.

One should really turn instead to Catherine Merridale's recent work on Russian mourning and upcoming work by Lars Lih.

pnotley

[Graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

The third installment of Pipes' trilogy and very much the worst. Not recommended. While the author was able to keep the right-wing banter to a minimum in the first two books, he seems incapable in this one. There is literally an entire section devoted to Fascism that has very little to do with the Bolshevik regime at all. The author wishes to compare Fascism with Communism. That is fine and all, but why in this book?

[Kenneth Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book follows the Bolsheviks from the civil war until Lenin’s death and how they consolidated power and ruled Russia. During the civil war Lenin made concessions to various nationalistic movements to enable his forces to defeat the Whites. However, as soon as the war was won he began to renege on these concessions.
The book then traces the actions of the Bolsheviks as they took over every aspect of lives of the people. The structure of the government was brought under control of the Bolsheviks. The government was essentially the party. Once the goby was in tight control, Lenin turned his attention to every aspect of society. He went after the Orthodox Church as well as other religious faiths. He saw these as places of resistance to communism. They took over the economy, trade unions, education and even marriage. The legalized divorce and made marriage a civil matter not religious.
It is fascinating to see the attempts to control all of societal customs and the success and failure of these efforts. Most of the changes were accompanied with terror to suppress dissent. The communist government ended up ruling much as the Tsars had previously.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a heavy book, and the format is not linear, with many chapters going back in time repeatedly to cover different aspects of the years of Lenin's reign. There's a lot of interesting information, but you do have to work pretty hard to follow it and make sense of it all. I prefer books that start with a time period and cover everything relevant to that year or span of time before moving forward rather than going back and forth to cover themes. That being said, I did appreciate learning more about this phase of Russian history.

[Richie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is clearly biased against communist and collectivism in general. At times there are editorializations which put this on full display.

That being said, the historical research, notes, bibliography, and analysis is superior to most books on the subject. Many times the footnotes share dissenting opinions and counter-evidence to what the author is including in the main text. Pipes commands attention and this book is as entertaining as it is enlightening.

Highly recommend.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. Just the perspective, pacing and amount of detail that works perfectly for me. I am open to the author's anti Bolshevik tendencies. I feel like he calls it as he sees it. This is part of a series of works - Russia under the Tsars, the Revolution and now this one covers the period after the revolution through the many winding trails of the civil war.

[Mike_msc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Отличная историческая работа. Образец анализа больших объёмов информации и выстраивания непредвзятой трактовки событий. Для российского историка задача неподъемная, поэтому ожидать схожего по качеству произведения в России в ближайшее время не стоит.

[Fred R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a decided Pipes partisan.

[James Varney · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good; so important. In many ways, I find this a more significant book than Pipes' "The Russian Revolution," although obviously they are meant to be read together. It seems to me the totalitarian machinery the Bolsheviks virtually invented and which has been copied with unfailingly horrific results every time, offers us more of a lesson than the Revolution itself (though that event is more properly seen as a coup d'etat, as Pipes loves reminding readers). It is always remarkable to see the positive changes, however small, that came about as a result of the Bolsheviks' New Economic Policy, and shiver at their refusal to acknowledge or continue any of them. The reasons for the Reds' victory in the Civil War, and its scale, are made clear. Put simply, these are some of history's biggest "bad guys" and Pipes provides a meticulous prosecution.

Of particular interest today, it seems to me, is Pipes' chapter on Fascism, Communism and National Socialism and the clear parallels. They are all one, essentially, and all build on a model created by Lenin. The failure to recognize these connections continues to bedevil the West, it seems to this reader.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pros: Really interesting overall, and contains an excellent chapter about how a dictatorship is a dictatorship, shredding the usual left/right paradigm.

Cons: I didn't really need the entire blow-by-blow recap of the Civil War.

Unexpectedly interesting: Tambov's rebellion.

Best picture: A greasy looking Stalin lurking in the gloom behind Lenin's corpse. Runner up: Trotsky standing in the snow, looking like he has piles.

Most amusing fact of life in a brutal regime that killed millions: The difficulties they had in keeping Lenin's body from deteriorating, and the fact that just a few years earlier the Bolshies had mounted a ferocious attack on the Orthodox Church's saints, who supposedly never rotted either.

[寻找家园 · Rating 4 out of 5]

布尔什维克力图消灭“个体的小我”，塑造“集体的我们”，用集体创作的无产文化取代过去的个人创作的文学，最后留下的作品籍籍无名。布尔什维克甚至主张废除婚姻与家庭，鼓吹不受约束的性行为。尊师重教的礼节被学生谩骂攻击老师的新常态取代。鼓励文盲为主的工农上大学，排斥知识分子入学。抢劫教堂并压制东正教、犹太教等。这些手段后来大都被东亚某国继承了下来。作者将gc主义和法西斯主义、纳粹主义进行了比较，并认为耄发动文歌不仅师法列、斯，还采用了希特勒的手段。注意到列宁惯于采用分而治之的手段，分化犹太人和东正教。列宁认为民族自决要服从于“无产阶级自决”，边疆脱离俄国的话布尔什维克也会把它们收回来——也就是说列宁不是真的鼓吹民族自决。斯大林是真正继承列宁衣钵的人，其执政逻辑如出一辙。总而言之作者完全否定了布党政权。

[Bill]

Well researched and written. This story should be known by all.

[Vadim Iurov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learnt a lot

[sologdin · Rating 1 out of 5]

wherein the piper names his own tune and still wants paid.