Changes at the top – Major shifts in VSVR politics immediately after the Civil War (1884)
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War there were several major shifts in VSVR politics which led to the fading of the Central Committee and the emergence of a new, even more centralised, committee – the Political Bureau, otherwise known as the Politburo.
Of the ten members of the Central Committee in 1883 2 died during the War and 3 were placed under house arrest. Meanwhile the Moderate Spanish politician Pablo Iglesias left the Republic in March 1884 (whilst the war was coming to a close) to take up the position of Chairman of the Spanish People’s Party. In May, as a protest against Lenin’s suppression of the Right, August Bebel resigned from the Central Committee to take up the role of chief editor at the nation’s 3rd largest newspaper – Unity (behind the Leninist paper Spark and the state paper Truth).
And then there were three...
The only remaining Central Committee members were Lenin, Schlieffen and Clara Zetkin. Whilst the Central Committee was filled back up with a multi-factional contribution Lenin took the decision to further centralise the head of the Party by creating the Politburo – a league of the 5 leading politicians of the Party who would each have an equal vote in decisions made by the Politburo with the Chairman, Lenin, having the casting vote. However with only two Marxist-Leninsts and one Militarist left from the old Central Committee Lenin would have to bring new figures to prominence to represent the Centre of the Party.
As the new leader of the Moderate faction Karl Kautsky was the obvious first choice. Kautsky was an important, if uninspiring, figure in Marxism and the chief proponent of Orthodox Marxism in the Republic. A largely respected figure he promised to carry on the policies of Karl Marx after his recent death calling for revolution by force, Party democracy, freedom and Marxist economics. In spite of his muted opposition towards Lenin for some perceived infringements on democracy and freedom (namely his treatment of the Anarchists, Independents and Trade Unionists following the Civil War and the failure to call elections) he was largely in favour of the new Marxist dominated People’s Party. He regarded the new ‘revisionist’ tendencies that had started to become popular among Marxists as a much greater threat than Lenin and quickly set about expulsing Eduard Bernstein and his supporters from the Moderate faction.
There was initially talk of inviting former Chairman Engels back to mainstream politics however it was clear that the great thinker and politician was in no state to make a return. The tragedy of the death of his dear friend, Karl Marx, in 1883 and his wife shortly later coupled with the horror of the Civil War had sent him into a deep depression. He had stopped writing and was, indeed, barely functioning; he was certainly in no state to join the new Politburo.
Whilst Lenin searched for a 5th member a new force swiftly emerged in VSVR politics – the Democrats.
Led by the recently expelled Moderate Eduard Berstein the Democrats were derided as ‘revisionists’ by some and praised as upholders of peace and democracy by others. Placed slightly to the Right of Centre in the Party’s political spectrum the Democrats were artificially strengthened by an intake of support from Party members who used to support the ‘Old Right’ (Trade Unionists and Anarchists). Whilst clearly another Marxist faction the Democrats profoundly disagreed with the other Marxists on how the revolution was to be achieved. Whilst the Orthodox Marxists claimed the working classes could only empower themselves through blood, violence and the destruction of the capitalist system Berstein and the Democrats claimed that they could win power through peace, democratic action and the reform of the capitalist system. In practise Berstein supported a move away from seeing the military as an offensive weapon towards seeing it as a defensive tool to protect the VSVR and the Comintern rather than directly expand it. He also claimed that the Marxist and Anarchist support of violent rebellion and even terrorism abroad was not the correct way to secure socialism (after all it had proven to be much more successful in pre-industrial society than in the industrial societies they targeted), instead the VSVR should lend political and financial support to the democratic socialist parties of Europe. He called for the adaption of the French Workers’ League into a political rather than military institution, the withdrawal of support from the Communist Unity Group in Britain (a group whose main weapon of the revolution was dynamite and who lacked mass support) and instead support for the Labour Party (a party that had twice been in power since its foundation in 1852). On top of his support for peace Berstein demanded an end to all restrictions on the press an on factions in the Republic coupled with an immediate leadership election.
The Marxist-Leninists Clara Zetkin and Lenin himself, the Militarist Alfred Schlieffen, the Moderate Karl Kautsky and the Democrat Eduard Berstein were now the 5 most powerful people in the Republic. Three German men and one German woman were being led by a Russian towards the betterment of a largely German internationalist Republic.