On Soviet communism.

• Author: Laqueur, Walter
• Position: Letter to the Editor

IN THE COURSE of an otherwise informative article William Odom has the following to say about the impact of European and Russian Social Democrats of the Menshevik persuasion and their impact on American Sovietology: They were convinced that Marxism was basically sound as a theory of development, that Lenin was merely a Social Democrat gone astray and that he was not beyond redemption....Similar thoughts were uttered in an earlier article by Martin Malia.

Before this travesty of the historical role of Menshevism becomes a new orthodoxy a few corrections may be in order. Menshevism was in the beginning Marxist, but then virtually every Russian intelligent was at the time (and as we learn from Mr. Kristol's article in the same issue, the phenomenon was not unknown in the West). But after 1919 there were no more realistic and perspicacious assessments of Soviet developments than those of the Mensheviks. (The few who disagreed, like Dan and Yugov, left the party). Even Martov, the most Marxist of them all, when asked by a Soviet newspaper to contribute an article about Lenin, replied that the only article he was willing to write about Lenin was his obituary. This does not betray a belief in Lenin's redemption.

Menshevik attitudes toward Bolshevism were succinctly expressed by Pavel Axelrod in a letter in 1921 in which he said that "it was not in an outburst of polemical ardor but from deep conviction that he had described ten years earlier the Leninist as a Black Hundred gang of double dyed criminals within the Social Democratic Party."

In 1928, Abramovitch, the Menshevik representative, told the Second International: "However much Fascism and Bolshevism may differ in their social ideals and class contents, they are alike as blood brothers in their methods and ways. Fascism and Bolshevism are the two great dangers threatening the working class from opposite sides but equally strongly. It is imperative that the Socialist International fights them in different fashion but with all the energy and strength it can muster."

It is useful to recall that such views were uttered at a time when Soviet studies were dominated by non-Social Democrats such as Sir Bernard Pares, S. Harper, F. Schumann and E.H. Carr. There is but little doubt that Abramovitch would have been drummed out of a meeting of American Sovietologists for uttering such crude and primitive anti-communist views.

I have recently written about the record of Menshevism in this respect, which was superior to all other groups (Novoe Vremia, Moscow, 45, 1992), and there are other, more detailed and thorough studies such as those by M. Andre Liebich. What could...