Revolution! by Pete Ayrton

Author:Pete Ayrton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Bertrand Russell

Like H. G. Wells, the British philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) went to Russia in 1920. He went as a supporter of Communism as a system he hoped would replace Capitalism – his trip led him to take a much more critical view of the Bolshevik Revolution. Russell was fully aware of the difficulties that the Bolshevik government faced in the years after the October Revolution, including the need to wage a Civil War against enemies supported by the most powerful capitalist empires. He also acknowledged the economic and political discipline necessary to industrialise and develop an economy that before the Revolution was overwhelmingly rural. But he came to believe that the methods used by the Bolsheviks would take them further and further from their democratic aims. Russell’s views on the Bolshevik Revolution were published in his lucid 1920 book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. They were a hostile assessment of the Revolution: ‘I am compelled to reject Bolshevism for two reasons: First, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Communism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible; and, secondly, because even after paying the price, I do not believe the result would be what the Bolsheviks profess to desire’ (The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, London, 1920, page 89).

From his letters reprinted here it is clear that Russell wondered whether his own position of privilege did not influence his views:

When the body of a new society has been built, there will be time enough to think about giving it a soul – at least so I am assured. ‘We have no time for a new art or a new religion,’ they tell me with a certain impatience. I wonder whether it is possible to build a body first, and then afterwards inject the requisite amount of soul. Perhaps – but I doubt it [. . .] I cannot give that importance to man’s merely animal needs that is given here by those in power. No doubt that is because I have not spent half my life in hunger and want, as many of them have. [Petrograd, 13 May 1920]

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