Reading the Bolshevik [Lenin] failure of the July Days against The Black Monk [and vice versa]

The July days of 1917 [the 3rd through the 7th] were a time of open demonstration against the provisional government of Russia. The demonstrations were started by the 1st machine gun regiment and in conjunction with the Kronstad sailors and workers from the local Petrograd Soviet. Though popular sentiment for Soviet power was growing during this time, and support for the provisional government was dwindling it was still a surprising turn of events, sparked in part by the failure of the first offensive effort against the Germans in many months, the Galician Offensive, which resulted in 200,000 casualties. There were Bolsheviks amongst the ranks of the Kronstad sailors and it appeared to some members of the Provisional Government to be an attempted Bolshevik coup. This vision of the protests, or at least the ideals of the Kronstad Sailors, are illuminated by the shouts of the Bolshevik slogan "All Power to the Soviets!" At the peak of the protests a workers apparently shouted in the face of S.R. Minister of Agriculture Chernov, screaming "Take power, you son of a bitch, when it's given to you."

However, upon the arrival of the Sailors, Soldiers and Workers at the Bolshevik headquarters in Kseshinskaya Palace, Lenin did not greet them in a way that would befit the arrival of allied brothers in revolutionary struggle, but rather sent them off, not encouraging them to take action against the leadership of either the provisional government, or the present leaders of the Soviet. "Confused and lacking leadership and specific plans, the demonstrators roamed the city, fell to drinking and looting and eventually dispersed."

Lenin and the Bolsheviks had been unprepared for this, caught off balance if you will. As Fitzpatrick describers it, "The Kronstadt Bolsheviks, responding to the sailors' revolutionary mood, had taken an initiative, which, in effect, the Bolshevik Central Committee had disowned. The whole affair damaged Bolshevik morale and Lenin's credibility as a revolutionary leader" Furthermore, despite disowning this effort, the Bolsheviks were still blamed for it and there was a crackdown upon revolutionary groups, many were arrested, including Trotsky and Lenin fled the country for Finland.

Background established. Creative re-reading of this event, particularly Lenin's failure to seize the revolutionary moment, which is made clear through his writings from Finland, calling for the Bolsheviks to be prepared for armed insurrection, to be prepared to seize the moment - obviously he had no interest in missing yet another opportunity. 

First the easier way - Contextualizing these events through the Чёрный монах - Creatively - Associatively, almost with out goal.

The first concept that comes to mind is [perhaps of course] insurrection as Lenin's Black Monk. He had dreamed of the story regarding it, or perhaps been told the story? He cannon be sure, but then it appears before him, with little warning. He was not prepared for it and he interacted with the Monk/demonstrators, he was not as articulate as he would have liked to have been. When the conversation had passed, he could think only of questions he would liked to have asked [Read: actions he would liked to have taken]. While he had prepared himself for such an arrival, in theory, as Fitzpatrick says of Lenin with the Kronstad Bolsheviks, he was caught off balance. Lenin almost certainly would have been pleased to see revolutionary sentiment growing, and growing along the lines that he had set, Bolshevism. As Kovrin was pleased to have seen the Monk. He desired to see his Monk again, and to able to have that dialogue, as a matter of fact, he would miss it for no think. Kovrin meditated on the idea in his study and hoped that by revisiting the same places, he would again have his opprotunity. Lenin wrote letters from Finland, informing his Bolshevik comrades that the time was coming, his specter, his Black Monk would return and they must be ready to seize all of the momentum, speed and knowledge of the fast flying creature which visits those who do the "Work of the Gods" - to create a revolution.

Lenin as certain characters within the story, holds appeal for me. Perhaps it is because of his role as a primary actor in the stories regarding early days leading up to the Bolshevik Coup, and these characters are at the least, somewhat active in their environment. Perhaps it is worth musing on Lenin as the Black Monk himself. Appearing and disappearing throughout this revolutionary environment in which we're swimming. The Black Monk appears on the scene and stirs the emotions of certain individuals, however, when the situation becomes to heated [and through this reading, Kovrin's health degrades to such a degree that he receives assistance and stops working] he disappears [To Finland]. The Bolshevik movement is damamged severely and sentiment regarding them as a leader of revolution dwindles to a degree. But Lenin continues to work, writing to the dedicated Bolsheviks and Kovrin continues, in role now as perhaps an arrested Bolshevik [Trostky?], to consider his life before - the work, the love of the work, his goals, despite the illness that it eventually caused. Eventually the role of the monk grows  and he returns, on a sealed German train, to awake the sleepy Kovrin and draw him back into the revolutionary moment. Perhaps there is then a stronger metaphorical choice than Trotsky here, someone who suffered due Lenin's choice, perhaps the people in general again, as one can certainly point out that Lenin's eventual rule was not without cruelty - and in the end Kovrin dies. However, it is worth noting - Kovrin built his revolution in the end. Though it cost him his life, the end of The Black Monk details how he died with a smile upon his face. 

It seems difficult to me to separate these ideas. To read Lenin's failure of the July Days against the Black Monk and then to do the same thing in reverse - rather than to have a dialogue between the two, in which they inform one another. This is something from a literary and historical analysis standpoint that I will have to explore further. It feels important to be able to make this distinction more clearly. Worth coming back to. 

Reflections on Slavoj Žižek's Stalinism Revisited [from his text In Defense of Lost Causes]

When trying to reflect on a piece by Slavoj Žižek I often find myself at a loss for where to begin. This is also true with his piece Stalinism revisited, in which he looks back upon the times of Stalin's great Purges in Soviet Russia with a critical lens, but one that is able to see [somewhat] past the blood and body counts.


Though it would be hard to claim an overriding thesis for the piece as there are several subsections each with their own emphasis, and ambiguity is something that Žižek has been accused of on more than one occasion, they are all connected under the banner of re-evaluating Stalinism on a more even footing than is often achieved.

In short however, if I were pressed for a thesis out of this work I would posit one from near the beginning, which sets the tone for this, slightly overwhelming, work.

The conservative counter cultural revolution brought forth by Stalin was not

a thermidor [or retreat from revolutionary ideals], but rather may

have saved humanity, and even mankind.

This is a big claim, and to support it Žižek employs an interesting strategy. Early on he makes this broad claim, which sounds absurd, perhaps even offensive, and provides a few quick supports to the idea. Particularly the emphasis on mechanization of a populace as a work force, positing that the creation of "Proletarian Units" is a form of biopolitics and the creation of a people who's functioning [happiness?] would no longer be measured, "by a shout or a smile, but by a pressure gauge or a speedometer," could actually, if played out have proved worse for humanity than the Purges of Stalin. After all, the purges and cultural revolution led by Stalin brought back earlier versions of morality and artistic forms that were attractive to large crowds [prerevolutionary art forms, stepping away from modernism].

In this way, constraining this move towards modernism and a populace of mechanized humans [to risk sounding dramatic], Žižek argues that Stalin may have in fact saved what kept these people human.

While for my own purposes of understand I almost feel compelled to restate all of Žižek's claims here, but that was not the purpose of this reading and this space is not for that purpose either. So, moving on to a more analytical position.

This was interesting for me on two levels. One: Žižek's structuring of his argument is very interesting. He provides us with a daring claim, supports it immediately in a way that is concrete and understandable, and then proceeds to use that first success as a framework for the further discussion on Stalinism to come. This further discussion is thus not only based on the premise that there may some validity to Žižek's thesis, but it acts in both ways: it both reinforces the thesis and is reinforced by the thesis.

Furthermore, Žižek draws upon unusual sources for illustration of his points. At one moment I think I am attempting to understand how there is a "fetishization of the Other" [capitalization intentional] and that Stalin, as well as those under him act on behalf of a concept of the People, rather than the people's wants members of a whole, when all of a sudden I'm reading about Shostakovitch's music and how it presents an example of a split...Ok. Not such a stretch to draw upon a Russian composer writing under the Stalinist regime in order illustrate an idea about how this system worked. However, as the adage most attributed to Martin Mull goes, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." On some level perhaps Žižek was aware of this, and the line of reasoning was not terribly clear, until he brought in a seemingly random support for it - and before I know it I am reading a small handful of pages focused on a 3.5 second segment in the film Casablanca . While this seems almost non-sensical this move was incredible on the part of Žižek. The analogy with the logical choice, A Russian composer in the period being discussed, had little hope of being clear or compelling, so a seemingly unrelated analogy was brought in to supplement it and thus not only was the use of Shostakovitch now more clear, so was this facet of his argument.

Here I can see how this sort of a strategy may assist my analysis on my topic (which is of course the purpose of reading an author such as Žižek at this point in the project). While I do not anticipate digging into American film in order to illustrate a point about Russian sentiment at the turn of the century, I am attempting to utilize certain works or art, and artistic movements in this way. Either using something a lens between two objects [say for example, Lenin's refusal to assist the Bolshevik shippers soviet, and Checkhov's Black monk] or utilizing it to strengthen a logical support that may need clarification.
An interesting tactic, to be sure.
[And now I want to watch Casablanca] 

Secondly, as a bit of an aside, this article on Stalinism is providing an interesting extra perspective for me, as I am currently also reading Keeping Faith With the Party, by Nanci Adler. The text documents the great number of Soviet citizen's who returned, after having been imprisoned in the Gulag unjustly during the purges, only still strongly support the Bolshevik Communist Party and it discusses the authoritarian framework and psychological processes that would allow this to happen with such frequency. The two texts are informing one another for me the result of which I am still somewhat processing. The Adler text is certainly the result of historical, as well as psychological research, while Žižek, while his roots are in history, in a historical event, his methodology is decidedly philosophical.

[To be expanded/concluded]