ABSTRACT
The Russian debate about Europe in the period from the First to the Second World War was, like almost all other Russian debates and developments in this period, a rather messy affair. Its dynamism was not generated by the sheer number of positions and the lively interaction between them, as had been the case in the preceding period. To the contrary, the debate contained an ever decreasing number of positions. Neither was the messiness due to great divisions where different frameworks and moral judgements were concerned. When, at the time of the Russo-Polish War, only the Bolshevik and the romantic nationalist positions were left in the debate, these issues were all but laid to rest. Instead, the messiness of the debate stemmed from the plethora of views of how to delineate ‘Russia’ and ‘Europe’, in-group and out-group. The First World War set the nationalist cat among the social democratic pigeons, inasmuch as the definition of their supra-national in-group – ‘true Europe’ – came under immediate pressure. The question of the relative importance of national and class identities created immediate confusion as to who the social democratic ‘we’ actually referred to. The social democrats were not the only ones to grapple with this problem
during this period. When the tsarist regime fell in March 1917, the problem of delineating the in-group also confronted all those who saw Russia as an autocratic project. This problem was then extended to all non-Bolshevik groups, once the ‘liberal moment’ in Russian history came to an end with the Bolshevik coup in November 1917. The non-Bolsheviks had to face up to a reassessment of what Russia and Europe meant to them once the Russian state apparatus had fallen into Bolshevik hands. However, this reassessment only had a limited impact on the debate, since the
state, once captured by the Bolsheviks, immediately redefined public political space. If the state’s ability fully to control this space was, at least up to the early 1930s, not total, then its claim to doing so certainly was. As already mentioned, by
the early 1920s the romantic nationalist position was already the only non-Bolshevik position that was able to find a tenuous foothold at the margin of the debate. As that foothold slipped, only the state’s position was left. From that moment onwards, the Russian debate about Europe was reduced to a debate about the position of the state. The Bolsheviks fought it out between themselves as to whether Russia’s relationship to Europe should be one of economic integration or isolation, and how ‘true Europe’ should be delineated from ‘false Europe’. Thus, by the 1930s, the Russian debate about Europe was reduced to only one question, with two aspects: How far was it possible for Stalin’s state to contract public political space and the in-group of persons who represented ‘true Europe’? At the outbreak of the First World War, the dynamism of the debate was still at
a peak. As social democrats throughout Europe stood up for their national leaderships, the carpet was pulled from under the feet of the Menshevik as well as the Bolshevik positions. They were thrown into such disarray, and were discussing matters along so many different and criss-crossing fault lines, that it may be more appropriate to speak of a social democratic position united in a number of internecine feuds than to stick to the delineation of two separate positions. This confusion was not due directly to the outbreak of war between capitalist European states, the possibility or even the likelihood of which had been casually referred to on a number of occasions within both positions. Capitalism was, after all, held to epitomise ‘false Europe’, the passing of which might prove to have unpleasant side effects, but which was nevertheless to be welcomed. Rather, the problem raised went straight to the heart of the delineating of self and Other in the Russian social democratic debate about Europe. A number of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks refused, at the crucial moment, to place the interests of what had up until then been seen as ‘true Europe’ – that is, the European working movement including the Russian one – above the interests of ‘Russia’, however defined. Although there was little overt rallying behind the Russian state from these quarters, their attitudes towards the war effort were so varied that for this reason alone it makes little sense to speak of a Menshevik position and a Bolshevik position on Europe at this particular time.1
