>>> Alexandre Fenelon <sfenelon at africanet.com.br> 12/10/99 07:34PM I agree partially with you, but some hard policies towards the
peasants and the failure to achieve cooperation with other left
wing socialists (like internationalists mensheviks, left SR's and
even center SR's like Chernov) probably made the civil war longer.
And the offensive against Poland (they could simply had defended
themselves- Stalin and Trotsky were against the offensive to
Warsaw)added to the War Communist policy even after the Civil War
(one more time against Trotsky's opinion)put an extraordinary strain
in the USSR economy, so if the Bolsheviks were not the sole responsibles
they also were not innocent.
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Charles: I thought Trotsky was for extending the war with Poland and Lenin was against it; and so in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , the SU lost land to Poland , because Lenin cut off more war.
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> The early USSR experience should be used
>> as justification for a gradual approach in the transition to socialism
>> (not to mention the need for democracy). I disagree from writers like
>> Trotsky and E. Hobsbawn who said the Soviet Revolution wouldn't be
>> succeded withouth a International Revolution.
>
>Then you agree with Stalin and Bukharin that socialism is possible in a
>single backward country? An international revolution may not have made
>the USSR utopia, but it would have helped.
They were not completely wrong. A international revolution was not possible in 1921 and the survival of a state dedicated to spread revolution in all other countries would be troublesome, at least. So the only alternative was to build socialism in one country.
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Charles: I see it this way too. The idea was NOT "build socialism only in one country, and be against revolutions in France, Germany, England, the U.S." , but rather the idea was " if no "advanced " country has a socialist revolution, we are not going to call ours off. " How could the Soviets make a revolution in another country ? The failure of there being revs. in other countries was not the fault of the Soviets.
CB