Tuesday 5 May 2020

Historical Origins of Fascism!

-Rajesh Tyagi/ 4.5.2020

Contrary to popular perception, Fascism has it’s origins, neither in Germany nor even in Italy, but in the soil of Russia, where Tsarist reaction reigned at the turn of the last century. Forefather of fascism, thus, is not Benito Mussolini, but the triumvirate of Rasputin- the clergyman in Tsar’s Court, Alexandra- wife of Tsar Nicholas and the Tsar himself!

Before fascism raised it’s ugly head in Italy at the end of the second decade of the last century, it had existed for around two decades in Tsarist Russia as an ultra-nationalist movement of white terror, in support of Monarchy.

Known for their brutality, the ‘black hundreds’, the participants in the reactionary movement, rather preferred to call themselves- the ‘yellow shirts’! Later, Mussolini, would make a hybrid blend of the two -Black Hundreds and Yellow Shirts- into ‘Black Shirts’, covering up the footprints of his movement going back to their Russian origins, heavily discredited by then as anti-worker. Later, preparing a copycat for Germany, Hitler would rename his Nazi Movement as ‘Brown Shirts’!


Pursuant to an economic crisis, the powerful strike movement in St. Petersburg, at the end of 19th Century, rang alarm bells, against what was viewed in the corridors of establishment- the danger of rising tide of the revolution from below.

Representatives of conservative intellectuals, government officials, Russian Orthodox clergy and landowners thus came together around 1900 to found two dubious political organisations- "Svjashchjennaja Druzhina" (The Holy Brigade) and "Russkoye Sobraniye" (Russian Assembly) in St. Petersburg with an avowed objective to counter the revolution and defend the Monarchy against it.

The unsuccessful rebellion of 1905, that came amidst the widespread devastation of Russo-Japanese war, shook the Tsarist Monarchy to it’s roots. This convinced Rasputin that traditional police methods of Tsarist Okhrana, alone, were not sufficient to defend the Monarchy against the revolution. What really needed, was thus the organisation of grassroot terror that must have it’s roots among the mass to weed out the sprouts of the revolution, at their germination. Terrorist militias, sponsored by the Monarchy from behind the veil and controlled by the loyalists, were thus the way forward!

"Svjashchjennaja Druzhina" (The Holy Brigade) and "Russkoye sobraniye" (Russian Assembly) that were already active for last few years in St. Petersburg, the centre of the workers’ revolutionary movement, became the nucleus for organisation of the future movement of Black Hundreds!

1905, the year of the Russian Revolution, thus, witnessed a sudden spurt in the number of black hundred organisations, that included, among others: "Soyuz Russkogo Naroda" (Union of the Russian People) in St. Petersburg, "Soyuz Russkikh Lyudey" (Union of the Russians) in Moscow, "Russkaya Monarkhicheskaya Partiya" (Russian Monarchist Party) in Moscow and elsewhere, "Obshchestvo Aktivnoy Bor'bys Revolyutsiyey" (Society of Active Struggle Against Revolution) in Moscow, "Belyy Dvuglavyy Oryol" (White Two-headed Eagle) in Odessa, Ukraine.

Among the prominent leaders of the movement, were- Alexander Dubrovin, Vladimir Purishkevich, Nikolai Markov, A. I. Trishatny, Pavel Krushevan, Pavel Bulatsel, Ivan Vostorgov, M. K. Shakhovskoy, Saint John of Kronstadt, Hieromonk Iliodor, Bishop Hermogen, and others.

Membership of the Black Hundred organizations, was derived from different social strata- landowners, clergymen, the big and petty bourgeoisie, merchants, artisans, workers and finally the ‘lumpens’- the "declassed elements"!

Despite their differences in tactical outlook, all black-hundred organizations were united in their resolve against the revolutionary movement.

An apex body- ‘The United Gentry Council’, guided the activities of the black-hundredists, while the tsarist regime provided moral and financial support to the movement through it’s secret police ‘Okhrana’ agents among them.

The Black Hundreds were founded on a devotion to Tsar, church and motherland, expressed previously by the motto of Tsar Nicholas: ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality’.

The black-hundredists conducted oral propaganda in churches by holding special services and also during meetings, lectures and demonstrations. Such propaganda promoted and provoked anti-semitic sentiments and monarchic exaltation. They caused numerous pogroms and terrorist acts against revolutionaries and other public figures.

The ‘black-hundred’ were known to have used violence and torture on anyone they believed was a threat to the Tsar. Two Duma delegates of Cadet Party- a bourgeois liberal party- Grigori Borisovich Lollos (Poltava province) and Mikhail Herzenstein (Terijoki) were assassinated by them, in broad daylight, to create terror. Their press organ- Russkoe Znamya- declared openly that "Real Russians assassinated Herzenstein and Lollos with consent of officials". It regretted that "only two Jews perished in the crusade against revolutionaries."

Russian bourgeoisie was not lagging in it’s support to the movement of fascism. This support was clearly indicated in the bourgeois press that dedicated columns after columns to the service of black hundredists. Bourgeois rightist newspapers, such as Moskowskije Wedomosti (Moscow News), Graschdanin (Citizen) and Kievljanin (Kievan) gave broad publicity to them, on their pages.

The black hundredists, however, did not depend upon the support of the bourgeois press alone, they had a whole network of their own papers and journals, that included among others- Russkoje Znamja (Russian Banner), Potschajewskij Listok (The Pochayev page), Semschina, Kolokol (Bell), Grosa (Thunderstorm), Vetschje and others.

Staunch supporters of the House of Romanovs, opposed to any retreat from the autocracy of the reigning Monarch, the Black Hundreds were noted not only for their violent opposition to the workers’ movement but for their ultra-nationalistic Russo-centric doctrines and xenophobic beliefs, including anti-semitism, anti-Ukrainian sentiments that supplied direct incitement to pogroms.

What a real dupe in the name! The ‘black hundreds’ was simply the other name for white terror in Tsarist Russia!

They were ruthless towards any independent movement of the working class, with special hostility to revolution and marxism, that they referred to as twin conspiracy of the Jews to destroy Christianity and Church through it’s secret protocol- The Communist Manifesto.

Starting as strike breakers, the Black Hundreds made anti-semitism their prime weapon in the struggle against the revolution. Anti-Semitism, was in fact a double edged, potent weapon in the peasant Russia. Not only Marx but even the top leaders of Russian Marxism- Plekhanov, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and even Lenin- could be conveniently linked to a Jewish ancestry. It was a vicious maneuver to divide the working class on ethnic lines. The politically backward and ignorant rural peasant was the ready stock for a violent war of the counter-revolution.

The Black Hundreds, represented the evil force, determined to destroy the revolution. While the not so mysterious title- ‘Black’, denoted this reactionary essence of these early fascists, the ‘Hundreds’ represented their assumed mass character.

In 1905, the black-hundreds organized a series of anti-Jew pogroms in various cities of Russia- with biggest murderous showdowns in Nizhni Novgorod and Balashov.

The pattern of these pogroms was almost similar. A big crowd carrying portraits of the Tsar over their shoulders, led by priests from the front and flanked by the police on both sides, and having hundreds of drunkens and lumpens in it’s folds, would march through the crowded streets of the city, shouting the slogans- ‘God save the father Tsar’!

After approaching a workers’ colony or a Jew settlement, a stone would be pelted on the procession and the ruckus would start, to subside only after complete devastation- leaving many young people killed or maimed, women mass raped and houses and property looted and burnt!

The thugs, however, could not find any success in St. Petersburg, as Leon Trotsky, the 26 years old Chairman of the first Soviet in the world- the St. Petersburg Soviet- could foresee the danger in time and fortified the defence of the revolution by arming the Petersburg proletariat, against the fascists.

As the Party Committees at Ekaterinoslav and Borisoglebsk, published the leaflet appealing to the working class to organise the armed defence against the black-hundreds, and Lenin received it through Samara Party Committee, he was quick in whole-heartedly supporting the cause of arming the working class. In his article-“The Black Hundreds and the Organisation of an Uprising” published on Aug 29, 1905, in Proletary No.14, Lenin condemned those of cowardice, who spoke against it.

Lenin and Trotsky, both were convinced that fascism had to be fought against by the working class in the streets with the force of arms! Both of them rejected all coward sermons of liberals and Mensheviks, against the armed resistance to fascists.

1905 revolution failed to topple Tsarist Monarchy but before beating a retreat, it succeeded in wresting a Duma from the Tsar.

After fall of the first Duma within two months, at the eve of the elections to the second Tsarist Duma in the year 1906, a dispute of strategic political significance, arose between the two factions of the RSDLP- the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks- on the question of strategy in the fight against the black hundreds.

Mensheviks led by their leader Fyodor Dan, made electoral alliance with bourgeois liberal Cadet Party against black hundreds. Lenin, refused to join this alliance and the Bolshevik faction launched it’s candidates separately. Non party elements like Rozhkov and Riazhanov also supported Lenin’s policy and opposed Dan. Mensheviks and Cadets, accused Lenin and Bolsheviks of helping the black hundreds by weakening the opposition alliance. Lenin vehemently retorted that the alliance between the workers and bourgeois liberal parties would only weaken the revolutionary left by making it a tail of rightwing bourgeois party and would rather strengthen the black hundreds. Election results proved Lenin right!

Lenin’s policy was thus not to forge any electoral alliance with the bourgeois parties of any colour and on any pretext whatsoever, not even against the black hundreds!

Due to the correct policy of Lenin inside Duma, coupled with the stiff resistance by the working class on streets, the black-hundred thugs started to disappear and their movement started to die down by 1907. Despite best efforts of it’s leaders to revive it through uniting the black hundreds into an All Russia Organisation- "Ob’yedinyonniy russkiy narod" (Russian People United)- electing a Directorate- glavnaya uprava, and organising four Congresses, it failed to revive itself.

In one of his articles, published later in Pravda Truda No.14, on Sept 26, 1913, underscoring the fall of black hundreds, Lenin argues an interesting and very important point that the objective policy and purpose of the leaders of black hundreds was to defend the Monarchy and landlordism but to do it they needed support of the peasant mass. So they were bound to conceal their true aims from the peasantry and dupe it by cultivating it’s inertness, ignorance and idiocy. But it could not go long way. This deceit of the leaders of black hundred, got exposed gradually, leaving them with substantially reduced following.

In Tsarist Russia, revolution and counter revolution were facing each other and racing against each other. Economic and resultant political crisis of Tsarism, was giving impetus to both of them simultaneously. While the ruling classes were leaning upon and promoting the rightwing terror, the working class was embracing revolution. Finally, the revolution won, defeating the counter revolution. It won, because of the program of Lenin and Trotsky and for their unrelenting struggle against the bogus program of Mensheviks.

When the false left leaders of today, seek a refuge for their shameful failures through the claim that the victory of fascism is the result of capitalist crisis, they tell a lie to themselves. Victory of fascism is not embedded in the capitalist crisis, but in the policy paralysis of these Mensheviks, of their Stalinist program. The program of Stalinism- ‘Popular Frontism’- i.e. collaboration between workers and capitalist parties, is the sure shot recipe of complete disarming of the working class and destruction of the revolution.

Capitalist crisis supplies equal impetus to both the revolution and counter revolution. Which of them will win against the other, would not be decided by capitalism or it’s crisis, but by the living struggle of the two.

At the helm of Lenin’s strategic policy, lies the political independence and centrality of the working class in all political struggle. Contrary to it, the Stalinist-Menshevik policy of ‘Popular Frontism’, destroys them both, subordinates the working class to bourgeois leaders and parties and delivers it, bound hand and foot, to the class enemy. Quite opposite to Lenin’s policy, the policy of Stalinists is the formula of class collaboration between the antagonistic and hostile classes of workers and capitalists to the detriment of working class and revolution.

Though February revolution officially dissolved the black hundreds but it made little impact till Bolshevik government forcibly liquidated them in 1922. Lenin’s letter to Polit Bureau of March 19, 1922, signalled the final blow to black hundreds. The Bolshevik forces, under direct leadership of Trotsky, crushed the black hundreds in a violent spree after they prepared a coup in opposition to the government decree for seizure of the Church property to help the famine stricken peasantry.

Even after emigrating abroad the black hundred leaders continued to intervene mainly through condemning the white guardists for not emphasizing monarchism as their key political foundation and for slipping to liberalism. One of it’s leaders- Boris Brasol, escaped to the US where Henry Ford employed patronaged him, giving him free hand to run his publication- ‘The Dearborn Independent’ and then ‘The International Jew’.

Today, all pseudo-lefts, with Stalinists leading in the front, are pursuing the line of Mensheviks. With no viable strategy at their hands to counter fascists in the streets, these fake left leaders are entering into rightwing electoral alliances with bourgeois parties of various descriptions.

These fake leaders take the name of Lenin, but pursue the policies of Mensheviks, the anti-Leninists!

This Menshevik policy, has completely confused and misled the working class into a quagmire.

The challenge before the youth and workers is to take a decisive break from the bogus policy of the false left leaders and turn to the essential strategic lessons of the October revolution.

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