The History of Debs and the Russian Revolution

In an earlier post Matt Erard had noted that Debs had said, shortly after the Russian Revolution, that "I'm a Bolshevik from the top of my head to the tips of my toes" - and Debs was hardly alone.

Students of the period from 1917 to the early 1920's will find that many (most) radicals, East, West, North, and South saluted and supported the Bolsheviks and the early experiments in Russia.

Many of us have lost sight of the profoundly revolutionary nature of the early Soviet Union - in films, art, music, poetry, architecture, etc. This was a dramatic period in which, despite the Civil War, with its terrible bloodshed, and the excesses that always occur in a Civil War - look at our own, the Russians felt free to experiment, and they did.

We know, if we are subject to the "propaganda mills" of the West, of the limits of the early revolution - but not of its enormous successes, the sense of freedom many felt. It was, in every area of life, truly revolutionary. Many errors, many mistakes, and some crimes. But the period of true systematic terror, of a totalitarian regime, lay ahead, under Stalin. Lenin did not encourage any special honors, he did not want his pictures displayed. Many of us may need, just for the sake of scholarship and history, to take a long hard look at that early period.

However . . . while Debs did indeed say he was a Bolshevik, when Lenin laid down the 21 demands that would have permitted the Socialist Party to join the Communist International, Debs was clear in rejecting them. Hardly a good Bolshevik then, but rather the leader of a profoundly American movement.

It is my hunch that some of those who are written off as Social Democrats (such as Frank Zeidler and Norman Thomas) would understand and agree with my points about the early period in Russia immediately after the revolution.

So in quoting from Debs one wants to be clear about the whole period, and not simply that one quote from Debs.

Fraternally,
David McReynolds