Sandinistas didn't learn historical lessons of the Russian Revolution

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'Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the workers and peasants of Russia defeated the propertied classes politically. The...government then used that viet power to move against the old ruling classes economically.' (First of a two-part series)

The February 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinistas by the pro-capitalist forces led by Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua is deepening a debate over the strategy followed by the FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) during its nearly 11 years in governmental power. Many supporters of Nicaragua's anti-imperialist and democratic revolution are asking whether or not the road taken by the Sandinistas was the only choice they had based on the relationship of class and social forces.

The FSLN followed a policy of economic compromise with the local capitalists under the program of a "mixed [i.e., capitalist] economy" and political compromise with the capitalists on agrarian and industrial development. They openly rejected the Cuban Revolution as the model to be emulated.

In a recent interview Bayardo Arce, a member of the FSLN's National Directorate, reiterated the FSLN's defense of this policy of compromise and explains: "Despite the setbacks suffered by socialism because of its structural problems in Eastern Europe and our own experience, this in no way means the perspective of anti-imperialist struggle has lost validity.

"Nor do I think socialism is over. We're simply entering a new historical phase. We have to define more clearly what socialism will be like in the era of computers and interdependence. We can't go on clinging-and we never did—to the concept of socialism as defined by the theorists of the last century.

"We'll have to adjust ourselves to the new realities, but always, at least as I see it, from a socialist point of view." (May 5, Barricada Internacional.)

Is Arce's view of "theorists of the last century," Marx and Engels, valid? Are Marx's and Engels' views of socialism and socialist revolution outdated? How are anti-imperialist struggles won and consolidated and capitalist rule defeated?

A review of two revolutions and leaderships that followed the views of Marx and Engels will show that this position of Arce and the FSLN is incorrect. A serious study of the Russian and Cuban revolutions will show that the defeat and overturn of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was not inevitable.

The October Revolution «The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events," explained Leon Trotsky, a central leader of the Russian Revolution. "The masses," he added, "go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events, and the approval of the masses." (pages 15-16, Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, Sphere Books)

That's exactly what happened in Russia in 1917. Around the slogans of peace, bread, and land the masses rose up to smash the old order.

Although Russia was an imperialist power, its class structure was marked by a semifeudal inheritance. A landed aristocracy controlled most cultivable soil. Nearly 80 percent of the population was engaged in agriculture—most as pauperized small peasants and agricultural workers who labored on large farms for starvation pay.

The industrial working class was very small. But they were heavily concentrated in large factories.

Czarist Russia was a "prison house of nations." Some 57 percent of the country consisted of subjugated and oppressed nationalities-including Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Tartars and Turks of Central and East Asia to Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians in the West.

These nations and peoples had been forcibly incorporated into the Russian state and denied the right of self-government. They were subjected to economic, social, and cultural discrimination. Great Russian Nationalism (i.e., chauvinism) was used to 18 SOCIALIST ACTION divide and dominate all the peoples country.

The weak Russian capitalist class subordinated itself to the ruling landed nobility. They refused to lead a democratic revolution against the landed aristocracy because they feared the workers and peasants more than they hated the nobility.

The tasks of earlier bourgeois-democratic revolutions (never fully completed anywhere) such as providing land to the peasants, national self-determination, equal rights for all, and religious freedom were not on the Russian capitalists' agenda.

These were the political and economic conditions in Czarist Russia when it entered World War I against Germany in 1914. Russia was no match for imperialist Germany. In 1916 an army of some 15 million had been conscripted, but by the end of that year one-third had been killed, wounded, or captured.

The interimperialist war caused great suffering for the mostly peasant country. Food and fuel became scarce in the big cities while profiteers increased their wealth.

In this context workers rose up to overturn the old regime. In mid-February 1917, women textile workers in Petrograd struck; they were soon followed by others. An armed insurrection followed and workers seized control of the city by the end of the month. Popular support for the Petrograd rebellion spread to other cities, rural areas, and the army.

Popular bodies called soviets (councils) were established to express the democratic will of the masses. The Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies became the de facto state power.

In response to the revolutionary mobilization of the workers and peasants the capitalist forces—in alliance with petty-bourgeois leftists-formed a provisional government to OCTOBER 1990 attempt to head off the mass struggle. The new regime, however, continued to fight the imperialist war against Germany under the slogan of "revolutionary defencism" and stalled on land reform.

But as Trotsky explained, while the masses enter history based on rejecting the old order, how far the process goes is dependent on program and leadership. The soviets were formed at the initiative of the workers of Petrograd.

Yet the capitalist class maintained control of the government through a provisional government supported by the "claimed" representatives of the workers and peasants, particularly the Social Revolutionaries, a populist party rooted in the peasantry, and the Mensheviks, a social-democratic party.

The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries argued that the Russian democratic revolution must be led by the liberal capitalists. They favored a parliamentary republic where the workers' and peasants' interests would be subordinated to the capitalists.

In the period from the downfall of the Czar in February 1917 to the seizure of power by the soviets (under Bolshevik leadership) in October 1917, the Bolsheviks were a minority in the soviets. But based on the experiences of Marx and Engels, Lenin, the party's main leader, explained that only the workers and peasants could successfully carry through and consolidate the democratic revolution in Russia.

Lenin along with Trotsky argued that the revolution could only succeed along these lines: a fight for all power to be taken by the soviets of workers' ', peasants' , and soldiers' representatives; no support to the capitalist Provisional Government; and political opposition to any soviet party that compromised on this question.

To achieve their immediate goals of peace, land, bread, and liberty, the Bolsheviks argued, the workers' soviets had to take power, instead of voluntarily ceding it to the privileged classes represented by the Provisional Government, as the Mensheviks and leaders of the Social Revolutionaries had done.

The leadership of the revolution would be the urban workers, in alliance with the peasants, especially the poorest peasants, and the rurat workers. Under the guidance of the workers' vanguard party, Lenin explained, the revolution could then move in transitional stages from the solution of immediate democratic, social, and economic tasks toward the socialist transformation of the country in cooperation with the working people of the world.

Power taken

Based on this revolutionary perspective the Bolsheviks won the majority of the Petrograd soviet and used that base to organize the insurrection in October 1917.

After taking power the Petrograd workers and soldiers handed it over to the All-Russia Congress of Soviets. The soviets functioned on the basis of full internal democracy. All political tendencies loyal to the revolution had complete freedom to advance their views. It was the highest form of democracy that has ever existed. It was the instrument the workers and peasants used to seize an consolidate power.

Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the workers and peasants of Russia defeated the propertied classes politically. The new workers' and peasants' government then used that soviet power to move against the old ruling classes economically. Factory committees were set up to lay the organizational basis for state regulation of the industrial economy.

The new leadership began to carry out the tasks of the democratic revolution: land to the peasants, self-determination for the oppressed nations, and equal rights for women, among others. Most importantly the new workers government sued for peace with imperialist Germany.

On all counts progress was made: landed estates were expropriated and land parceled out to peasants. Self-determination was granted to the oppressed nations. They could secede from Russia or freely remain a part of the Soviet Union.

Peace with Germany was achieved at high cost; but it gave the new state some breathing space.

Imperialist intervention

The response of the local capitalists and world imperialism to these measures was to step up economic sabotage and direct military intervention.

The Bolsheviks had two choices: seek a deal with imperialism and the politically defeated capitalist class or deepen the revolution, while awaiting reinforcements from the extension of the revolution to other parts of the world.

Unlike the Sandinista leadership, the Bolsheviks chose the latter course. In response to imperialist attacks the new workers' and peasants' republic began nationalizing more and more capitalist enterprises.

The Red Army organized under Trotsky's leadership led the military defense of the revolution. The imperialist armies of Britain and Japan, supported materially by the U.S. government, sought to smash the new Soviet—i.e., workers' —state.

By the end of 1918 every capitalist enterprise of decisive economic importance had been nationalized and placed under administration of the workers, consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The result: capitalist property relations were definitively abolished. All key instruments of production were centralized in the hands of the new state—that is, in the hands of the working class as the ruling class. The imperialists and local capitalists were defeated. The challenge for the new state was to consolidate its rule and move forward.

In spite of the immense suffering caused by World War I and the high loss of lives during the Civil War, Lenin's party did not follow the Sandinistas' strategy of compromise with imperialism or the local capitalists (as codified by their policy of "mixed economy" and "political pluralism") to "save" the revolution.

Lenin understood that such a policy of trying to find a middle road would only embolden the reactionaries and inevitably lead to the downfall of the first victorious socialist revolution. The expropriation of the capitalist class economically as well as (continued on next pag