The Ideological Dynamics of the Development of the Theory of State in the USSR in the 1930s in the Political Works of Alexander F. Kerensky
Introduction
The journalistic activities of Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky in the 1920s and 1930s, associated with the publications Dni (1922–1933, edited by him from 1928) and Novaya Rossiya (1936–1940), as well as his life and activities in exile in general, have not been overlooked by historians. However, Kerensky ‘s journalism, mainly devoted to the politics and ideological life of the USSR, has not been analyzed in its entirety, and even less so in its positive aspects, despite its considerable volume and rich content, as well as the facts of Kerensky’s ideological development, his transformation into a significant figure in émigré political thought and polemics, and, finally, his emergence as a theorist. The reason for this is the attitude toward Kerensky as a figure of secondary importance compared to other émigré publicists (P.N. Milyukov, G.P. Fedotov, P.B. Struve, V.M. Chernov). However, Kerensky’s political works can reasonably be considered to have serious theoretical significance. Although he may not have reached the level of a political thinker and recognized theorist, nevertheless, in his works of the 1930s, Kerenky emerged not only as a critic of Bolshevism and Soviet power (in this he did not stand out among the émigrés), but also as a far from superficial theorist and researcher in the field of Soviet state theory and ideology, particularly in the analysis of the ideological and political innovations of the 1936 Constitution. His reflections and works on the USSR revealed his legal education and interest in political science, which had been sparked in him during his student years. Many of his works from the 1930s are conceptually rich and are of interest in terms of the history of the development of Soviet political theory and ideology.
Kerensky managed to penetrate the essence of Soviet discourse, and it is this depth of his view of Soviet life and thought that explains why his reasoning and rhetoric as a whole, directed against the class approach and the dictatorship of the proletariat, on the fundamental question of the state, from a certain point onward, would, in a surprising way, resonate with the contradictory Soviet political theory and rhetoric that in the 1930s began to move towards the affirmation of class values and a national state, the principles of popular sovereignty and the unity of all workers, which were also characteristic of the populist-socialist thought shared by Kerensky. He managed to strike a very important nerve in Soviet state theory: namely, the principle of a national state, which was not realized during the Stalin era and which Soviet ideologists and theorists, led by Stalin, intended to proclaim the Soviet state in 1936 in the new Constitution and in 1947 in the new program of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which was not adopted during Stalin’s time. This act was preceded by the development of the concept and rhetoric of a classless socialist society, a concept introduced into Soviet political discourse in 1932. Only A.F. Kerensky was able to see the connection between these concepts and the principles and intuitions of Soviet state theory behind them.
It is important to note that in his works of the second half of the 1930s, Kerensky reflected significant aspects of the complex of innovations in Soviet politics and culture that were introduced in the 1930s and, taken together, represented a paradigm shift in the life and thought of the Soviet state. This refers to the political, cultural, and ideological shift in the USSR, commonly referred to as the “Stalinist turn,” which culminated in the 1936 Constitution of the USSR, embodying both the essence and the contradictions of this shift.
The “Stalinist Turn” of the 1930s and the 1936 Constitution of the USSR
The “Stalinist turn” was a set of decisions in the field of state policy in the USSR, systematically implemented by the Soviet leadership headed by Joseph Stalin, beginning approximately in 1931–1932. Stalin, beginning around 1931–1932. It refers to a radical shift in the policy of the Soviet state, whose existence was linked to a paradigm shift from internationalism and world revolutionism to Soviet state-centrism and patriotism. The turn does not have a generally accepted name. It is often referred to as the “Stalinist counterrevolution,” an ideological or conservative turn. The fundamental contradiction of the “Stalinist turn” was the contradiction between the central tenets of Marxism, which formed the basis of state theory and ideology in the USSR, and the needs of the state in terms of its theoretical formulation. Given that the new state was to be theoretically based on Marxism, the people had to be defined as the source of power in the Soviet state. Marxism was necessary—and at the same time it represented a significant obstacle to “theoretical construction”: how to separate the proletariat and its dictatorship from the state if the proletariat was recognized as the demiurge of a new type of state? In fact, the goal of Marxism is communism, i.e., a society without classes and without states, and the task of the proletariat is to destroy the system of class rule, not to build a state, i.e., an organization of class rule. The proletariat creates “its own” state for the duration of this movement toward communism, i.e., it has, by definition, narrow tasks and is destined to exist for a limited time. This creates a dilemma: an inherently revolutionary proletariat or a strong, long-lasting state.
This difficult-to-resolve contradiction was clearly evident in the 1936 Constitution of the USSR. Even a cursory glance at this text reveals the vagueness of its provisions and definitions. It is possible that the Constitution was a compromise, and that this compromise was temporary. Articles 1–3 are not consistent with Articles 4–6. The central article is Article 3, which, according to the logic of the document, defines the source of Soviet power as “the working people of the cities and villages, represented by the workers’ councils.” Articles 34–35 introduce the concept of “citizens of the USSR” without establishing a connection with the “working people.” Articles 1 and 2 are irrelevant to this whole construct and can be removed from the text without any loss: the first has an exclusively rhetorical meaning, while the second has a historical one, and both succinctly remind the reader of the classes and the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., of the principles of Marxism. The term “working people,” which unites workers, peasants, and the laboring intelligentsia and brings to mind the rhetoric and terminology of the Socialist Revolutionaries and, in general, the general theoretical position of populism about a single working people, was introduced more to confuse the whole structure than to establish clarity. The “working people” conceptually replace the people, absorbing both classes and thereby levelling the class nature of the state. The people appear in Articles 4–6, which establish that state property is the common property of the people (res populi, if we translate this phrase into the language of Roman political thought). From this formulation, according to the general logic of things, it follows that the state itself is the property of the people or, in any case, can be defined as belonging to the people (res publica). But the Soviet state is not defined in this way, and the question of who “holds all power in the USSR” is not clearly answered and remains open to speculation; the state status of “workers and peasants” is also unclear; and the limits of the dictatorship of the working class are not established. More precisely, when speculating on the text, it follows that there is no longer a dictatorship, but Stalin’s report “On the Draft Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” suggests the opposite. Article 126, with its metaphorical definitions of the ruling party, also makes an unusual impression. The text is riddled with ambiguities, vagueness, and metaphors, and it is possible that the 1936 Constitution served for forty years not in spite of this, but because of it.
Before us, to use V.S. Nersesyan’s expression, are examples of Stalin’s “ideological philology.” The task of the text of the Constitution, as well as Stalin’s report, is to “melt down” the original meanings of the “prototext” and, recreating them in a specially complicated and “compressed” construction, to obscure the original intention, the original plan, which was clear and logical; but not to obscure it completely, rather to make it so that the original intention “shines through” the laconic and heavy constructions. The original intention was to proclaim the USSR a people’s state. This was preceded by the task set at the 17th Conference of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1932): without weakening, but rather strengthening the state of the proletarian dictatorship, to build a classless society in the USSR by the end of the five-year plan. The task was formulated according to the rules of “ideological philology”: to turn the workers into conscious and active builders of a classless socialist society. The meaning of the new task was clear: if socialism was to be declared built in the near future, then, since, according to Lenin, socialism was a process of class destruction, it was necessary in theory to determine the results achieved in this process and bring them into line with the level of “readiness” of socialism. But there was another, hidden logic: to provide a theoretical basis for the planned declaration of the USSR as a people’s state.
The fact that the principle of a classless society was a lead-up to the principle of a national state as a new designation of the essence of the Soviet state followed not only from the initial versions of the Constitution, which assumed that there were no longer any class divisions in the USSR, but also from a number of articles published in Soviet magazines and newspapers in April-May 1936, before the draft of the new Constitution appeared on June 12. before the draft of the new Constitution appeared on June 12. These texts stated that the Soviet state was a national or truly people’s state. The authors were well-known Soviet politicians and ideologists: E.B. Pashukanis, A.I. Stetsky, M.B. Mitin, N.A. Voznesensky, A.Ya. Vyshinsky, and others. The most famous of these publications was E.B. Pashukanis’ article “The All-People’s Soviet State” in Pravda on May 9, 1936. It was the most “prestigious” and least conceptual: the style of the newspaper did not allow for deep theoretical analysis. It stated: “The dictatorship of the proletariat has created and forged a truly united people, unbroken by class contradictions… The Soviet state is a state of the whole people. Our state affairs are the affairs of the whole people.” The author practically quotes Cicero’s words about the state as the property (or affair) of the people. The “state of the whole people” disappears from the ideological rotation immediately after the publication of the draft Constitution. Soviet ideologists, who drafted the Constitution and understood its original intent, did not reveal this logic for obvious reasons (and how could they have done so?), and among foreign observers, only Kerensky was able to see and reveal it.
It was not clear from Pashukanis’ text whether the phrase “people’s state” was a political and legal term representing a new definition of the essence of the Soviet state together with the dictatorship of the proletariat, or whether it was a literary epithet. The answer is easy to find in other works from April-May 1936, for example, in the work of M.B. Mitin: “The new Soviet constitution, developed under the direct guidance of Comrade Stalin, will be… the constitution of a socialist, all-people’s state.” The second important provision of the “new rhetoric” was the thesis about the transformation of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) into a truly popular party: “At present… our party is the only and truly popular party.” As can be seen, these two innovations were paradigmatic in relation to Soviet state theory and were directly linked to the thesis of a classless socialist society.
Pashukanis’ article contains a passage that is important in relation to A.F. Kerensky, because it was an attack directed against the political line to which Kerensky belonged, and which he read: “Once upon a time, the populist parties—in particular the Trudoviks—claimed that their goal was to unite all the working classes: factory workers, peasants, and the working intelligentsia. They contrasted these broad tasks with the ‘narrowness’ of the Marxist-Bolsheviks, who supposedly proceeded solely from the interests of the proletariat. Lenin and Stalin, in their criticism of the Narodniks, exposed all the falsity and poverty of these verbal attempts to establish the unity of the working people on the basis of the preservation of capitalism.”
The Political Rhetoric of Kerensky until 1936
During his student years, A.F. Kerensky attended meetings of the Narodniks and became imbued with their ideas, which shaped his political worldview and, to a large extent, his position in his subsequent political activities. The ideas of Marxism were not close to him because of their openly proclaimed principle of class struggle, as well as because of their greater coherence and logic, and, consequently, their complexity, compared to the vague Narodnik-socialist ideas. “Almost all of us sympathized with the Narodnik movement, or rather with the Socialist Revolutionaries, but as far as I remember, there were no Marxists among us,” Kerensky would later recall of his student years. Despite a certain inclination toward political thought and science, which manifested itself in his desire to transfer from the history and philology department to the law department, he was more attracted to lofty rhetoric than analysis and theory. Kerensky’s political convictions were closest to the system of ideas and programmatic statements of the People’s Socialist Party. Kerensky’s political and rhetorical maxims were the ideas of freedom, unity of the working people (i.e., workers, the peasantry, and the intellectual intelligentsia), popular sovereignty, and the people’s state; ideas of socialism understood in a populist sense; humanism; and the apology of the individual. He was opposed to any kind of dictatorship, whether of the individual, the party, or the class; and the pathos of the revolution was for him more moral than political: “I am deeply convinced that the cause of the liberation of the working masses will be a feat of the greatest humanity, or it will not be at all. Not only labor, but Man himself is an eternal and inviolable value.” This prophecy was clearly inspired by the slogan of Kerensky’s revered French poet Charles Péguy: ‘The social revolution will be moral or it will not be at all.’ Kerensky formulated the ‘basic law of every revolution’: Everything for the people and everything through the people.”
The romanticization of February, which Kerensky considered a “symbol of popular rule,” and the rhetoric of a “return to February,” contrasted with the “illegitimate” and “irregular” October, were an essential part of his work. If February in Kerensky’s life was associated with the enchantment of his rise to the heights of power and all-Russian glory, then October, on the contrary, was associated with an equally rapid fall. Kerensky’s “February rhetoric” is also linked to the apologia of labor, the working people, and the unity of all workers: “February was a social revolution that gave the working classes the leading role in the state.” ‘February, in his opinion, ’did not stem from a sense of class elitism, but from an awareness of national unity.’” February, as “the affirmation of national unity around a non-partisan, national Provisional Government,” according to the main character of February 17, was interrupted by the “reactionary,” “destructive” October, which he considered the beginning of misfortune for Russia: “…The healthy process of the rebirth of semi-autocratic Russia into a modern democratic state was interrupted at the very beginning by the Bolshevik reactionary coup of October,” and thus ‘the new democratic people’s Russia born of the revolution’ did not come into being through the fault of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Kerensky’s attitude toward Lenin and Bolshevism, defined by this “antithesis of February and October,” in turn determined the direction of his rhetoric and the content of Days. This negativity persisted throughout the newspaper’s existence, manifesting itself even when all the events—both of February and October—had receded into the distant past. Keren’s negative attitude toward Stalin, which had become clear by the end of the 1920s, was not straightforward, but in many ways it was similar to his attitude toward Lenin: in his rejection, Kerensky proceeded from a negative attitude toward dictatorship in general (and he unquestioningly regarded the Soviet regime as a dictatorship: this was the dogma of almost the entire émigré community). Like most other émigré publications, Dni was characterized by hostility and unfriendly criticism of the policies of the USSR and of all decisions and actions of the Soviet authorities. The editorial staff of Dni, receiving “news” from Soviet Russia (and in fact feeding on gossip), selected the most negative items, and Soviet reality was shown through “black glasses,” while any initiatives of the Soviet authorities in the pages of Dni were bound to “suffer defeat.” At the same time, Kerensky constantly “found” evidence of “dissatisfaction with the dictatorship” and “thirst for freedom” supposedly hidden in the depths of Russia, i.e., he saw exactly what he wanted to see. Here are some examples from Days in 1931. Correspondence from Russia was something like this: “The struggle between Molotov and Stalin.” The “analysis” was equally impressive: “The convulsions of the five-year plan.” However, this distorted perception cannot obscure the fact that Kerensky read the Soviet press very carefully, was deeply immersed in Soviet reality, and absorbed all the information coming from the USSR through various channels.
From the end of 1927, Kerensky’s rhetoric began to change. In the leading editorial article of “Days” (clearly written by Kerensky) in November 1927, “October is excluded,” written on the basis of the expulsion of G.E. Zinoviev and L.D. Trotsky, i.e., the active creators and “living symbols” of October, expressed confidence that “the deprivation of Trotsky and Zinoviev of all privileges… symbolizes a phenomenon of truly enormous historical significance. ‘October,’ as an idea of destruction… is now excluded from Russian life.” The expulsion of Trotsky and Zinoviev from the party is given the significance of “crossing the Rubicon”: this event is equated with the “expulsion” of October itself. The author emphasizes that the new “idea-force of the Stalinist apparatus” is a negation of the idea of October; that if “Lenin’s idea destroyed, now we must build,” and therefore the apparatus discarded the old “destructive ideas.” The historian of Russian emigration, Yu. Suomela, writes: “…Kerensky, understanding the background to Stalin’s actions, began to write about him in a new way. In mid-December 1927, the first favorable reviews of Stalin appeared in the pages of Den.” The researcher exaggerates somewhat, but he is not far from the truth: Kerensky’s favorable attitude toward Stalin seemed to him to be more of a contrast to his negativity toward Trotsky and Zinoviev. However, in the late 1920s, Kerensky began to harbor vague hopes for the USSR, which were reflected in a series of articles he wrote in late 1928 about the state.
The “chronicler of the revolution,” N.N. Sukhanov, gives the following assessments of A.F. Kerensky: “Standard-bearer of the great democratic revolution,” “ardent champion and poet of democracy,” Kerensky “was a sincere democrat, a fighter for the triumph of the revolution—as he understood it.” He asserts that “Kerensky had no strictly defined direction, no complete system of views.” “However,” Sukhanov continues, “despite all this, it cannot be said that Kerensky’s thinking was completely alien to theoretical work, that he was lazy about it… Kerensky was keenly interested in theoretical work, he was not at all lazy in using it, but he still failed to build a system of views.” According to M.I. Basmanov, G.A. Gerasimenko and K.V. Guseva, “his ideology was eclectic: some elements were taken from socialist ideology, some from bourgeois liberalism, and some were built on the idea he preached (and which truly belonged only to him) of returning Russia to February.” Eclecticism coexisted in Kerensky’s thinking and rhetoric with vagueness and expressiveness (Alexander Fedorovich was an impressionable man who loved and knew how to share his impressions) and with a wealth of lofty principles: “He very often referred to the ideas of popular sovereignty (as befits a liberal, without revealing the content of this concept), the sanctity and inviolability of the individual, the affirmation of democracy and freedom as the main values of society…” – The authors of the book quote one of Kerensky’s statements: “Freedom is for me the ultimate goal of all political, social, and personal activity. I will say: just as Lenin was a fanatic of violence, so I am a fanatic of freedom.” It is obvious that the catchy phrases ‘fanatic of freedom’ and ‘fanatic of violence,’ although good for inflammatory speeches, are equally meaningless.
December 1928 was marked by new ideas and motives in Kerensky’s publications. In his article “The State Above All,” he puts the following words into the mouth of a certain specialist from Russia, a non-party bureaucrat: “…For a radical transformation of the existing system, what is needed above all is an idea. We have no ideas. We are searching for them.” In response to this ‘request,’ Kerensky criticizes the ‘Soviet ideocracy’ ruling in the USSR, i.e., Leninism, as an ideology destructive to the country, which must be eliminated. In order to lead Russia “out of the impasse of ideocratic stagnation” and overcome the “ideocratic violence of Leninism,” he rather confusingly formulates something like the foundations of a new ideology for Russia, the basic tenet of which should be the idea of the omnipotence of the state: “This idea is the absolute power, the omnipotence of the state… Before imposing a certain democratic state system in Russia, it is necessary to first restore sovereignty and the supremacy of state power in the country itself.”
In his work “The Idea of Service to the State,” Kerensky continues to develop new ideas, confirming his loyalty to the ideals of popular sovereignty and emphasizing his commitment to statism, the principles of which he was indeed committed to: “I have always been an absolute statist… For me, the state has always been a supra-personal, absolute, positive, creative value.” It is precisely statism that serves as a counterweight to ideocracy in his new rhetoric: ‘Ideas must be at the service of the state,’ while ideocracy, on the contrary, ”subordinates the entire state to its private, party idea.” From this, Kerensky concludes that the domination of “individual, class, or class ideas over all others, over the state itself” is unacceptable. According to his long-held conviction, democracy is the political system that prevents the establishment of class dictatorship over the state. In his 1929 work, he makes the following demand: “In the fundamental law of democracy—universal, direct, equal, and secret elections—the last requirement is the cornerstone, without which the first three have no meaning.”
One could say that the demand for secret elections is a demand for the abolition of the dictatorship of the “single and only party”
New motives and original theses, reminiscent of the programmatic statements made by Kerensky, caused surprise among the émigré community and led to controversy. Publicist V.V. Sukhomlin rightly criticized Kerensky for the fact that his ideas suffered from “one significant flaw—unclarity, a lack of ‘political conclusions’”; also, these “arguments about the need to restore ‘the omnipotence of the state’ in Russia” made a frightening impression. It is interesting that Kerensky’s thoughts and feelings, in those parts where his statism takes on its most rigorous tone, were quite in tune with Soviet ideology from 1928 to 1929, i.e., from the moment when power began to be concentrated in the hands of I.V. Stalin, who was embarking on a path of rejecting the thesis of the withering away of the state and moving toward the statism of Marxist doctrine. The very title of the article, “The Idea in the Service of the State,” expresses a premonition of Stalin’s future “rebuilding” of Marxism, which, in the words of N.A. Berdyaev, would result in Marxism becoming part of the five-year plan.
Kerensky expresses confidence in the coming democratization of Russia, which should be served by the elimination of the “supra-state, party dictatorship,” which in turn will lead to the rebirth of the Bolshevik dictatorship: “I am confident… in the direction Russia will take in overcoming Bolshevism. It will move toward emancipation.” In his concluding polemical article, “My ‘Fascism,’” in which he attempts to parry the polemical attacks of his opponents, Kerensky, emphasizing the “supra-party, supra-class nature of the state,” groups his thoughts and premonitions: “To establish in the minds of the young Russian generations the state as a special, self-sufficient, absolute value means to prepare a strong and healthy foundation for future state-building in Russia. The state, above all, must be our common guiding idea…”
Thus, in the new statist rhetoric of 1928–1929, Kerensky, opposing the class-party principle of state building, linked the principles of a strong state and popular sovereignty as those that should become decisive for the Soviet state moving from class society to national unity. Of course, these principles had long been firmly linked to the image of February in Kerensky’s political worldview. In 1932, he wrote: “Only by returning to the path of popular sovereignty, only by subordinating the government to the free will of the people, only by turning to the fundamental ideas of the February Revolution will Russia regain its internal peace, its right to free labor, and its prosperity.” Of course, at this stage, the publicist was not particularly successful in reaching the level of theory, and his predictions in 1928–1929 were based on intuition and foresight, abilities that had always been his strong points. They did not let Kerensky down this time either. His keen intuition allowed him in the late 1920s to look beyond the political horizon into a realm open to few: the realm of philosophy and state theory. His premonitions proved correct: in the early 1930s, the USSR began a confident move from internationalism to statism, a course aimed at strengthening the state not only in practical terms but also in theoretical terms, i.e., a course toward building a new state. the USSR began a confident movement from internationalism to statism, a course toward strengthening the state not only in practical terms, but also in theoretical terms, i.e., a course toward building a new theory of the state based on the principles of universalism. The contradictory results of this process were reflected and crystallized in Stalin’s Constitution.
From a Classless Society to a National State: Kerensky on the Soviet state and the 1936 Constitution of the USSR
As Kerensky grew as a political publicist, his writings became increasingly conceptual, constructive, and restrained. His position on the USSR and Stalin gradually took on a more rigorous form and became significantly less negative, but it never became entirely consistent. Between Dni and Novaya Rossiya, a newspaper called Svoboda (only five issues), in which he proposed a dichotomy between the old (i.e., in his favorite expression, “Lenin-Trotsky”) Bolshevism and Stalin’s neo-Bolshevism, in whose struggle the new emerges victorious, which is assessed, with all reservations, positively. As Yu. Suomela writes, “in 1936, Kerensky founded the magazine Novaya Rossiya, whose title unambiguously indicated that the Soviet Union had once again become Russia. According to Kerensky, the credit for this belonged primarily to Stalin and his national policy. He explained the change in his views by the fact that after the first years of Bolshevism, the Soviet state had once again become a national Russia.” In addition to numerous works by A.F. Kerensky, the pages of Novaya Rossiya would publish texts by N.N. Alekseev, Yu.A. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, G.P. Fedotov, M.V. Vishnyak, S.O. Portugeis, G.D. Avksentyev, P.A. Berlin, and others.
As already emphasized, Kerensky closely observed Soviet realities, noting changes in Soviet politics. The new magazine owed its existence to these changes, which together constituted the “Stalinist turn.” On March 8, 1936, the first issue of Novaya Rossiya (New Russia) was published—a phrase he took from his “February Rhetoric.” “New Russia,” Kerensky wrote, “is not only the title of the magazine, but also the common banner of those who write in it.” On this banner, he inscribed the words “people’s state.” Again, as in 1928–1929, we are faced with statements that are clearly programmatic in nature but do not translate into any more or less clear program: Kerensky once again appears as a “distinctly political impressionist” promoting a new rhetoric. He sees the essence and direction of everything happening in the USSR in the fact that “the eternal essence of Russia, overcoming all the most brutal ideological experiments carried out on it, is seeking new forms of existence. This is the whole meaning of the events currently taking place in the USSR.” In the search for new forms “from Lenin’s ‘springboard for world revolution’… Russia is turning into a people’s state. These two words have already been spoken by Stalin.” However, “a people’s state is the negation of dictatorship. A people’s state can only be a free state.” Here Kerensky amazingly accurately predicts the term that would soon be used by Soviet ideologues. It should be emphasized that although many emigrants saw changes in the politics and culture of the Soviet Union by the mid-1930s, and some noted changes in Soviet ideology (for example, G.P. Fedotov), only Kerensky managed to identify and conceptualize the innovations in theory (Fedotov merely approached the formulation of this question).
In issue No. 2 of Novaya Rossiya, Kerensky “quotes” Stalin: “We can say with complete confidence: yes, our state is a people’s state. We now speak with complete confidence – our people, the government of the peoples of the USSR.” Did Stalin speak of a “people’s state,” or did Kerensky “hear” this? The phrase “people’s state” does not appear in any of Stalin’s speeches or writings. Until 1936, the Soviet state was not referred to as “people’s” in the press or rhetoric; the concept of the “Soviet people” only slowly began to gain ground from 1936 onwards. Nevertheless, this highly creative “quotation” revealed Kerensky’s intuition and his keen and attentive sense of the changing political climate, which enabled him to accurately name the new term of Soviet state theory – “people’s state” – two months before his rotation began. He senses and describes the general shift in Soviet culture and politics toward statism and patriotism, rightly believing that a new ideology is maturing within the government: “Revision of school curricula. Restoration of discipline. The struggle to strengthen the family… Finally, the rollout of a plan of so-called constitutional reforms. All this indicated that behind the outward concessions made by the authorities to the population, there was some kind of general plan, some kind of new general line. There was a feeling that, along with the growth of Stalin’s personal autocracy and self-rule, some kind of state ideology was maturing in the depths of the Kremlin.” Of course, the new ideology, the contours of which Kerensky defined in 1928, could not be based on class division and had to be aimed at the unity of the people and the state: “We need to find some new guiding idea that would unite the broadest strata of the people and respond to a feeling that resonates equally with everyone. In today’s Russia, class cannot be such a unifying idea… What idea can replace class, one that would resonate most deeply in people’s hearts, one that would overcome divisions and forge unity in the national consciousness in times of danger? Of course, it is the idea of the homeland, the nation, the state.”
Two conceptual articles by Kerensky in 1936, “The Soviet State and the All-Union Communist Party” and “From Lenin to Mussolini,” published before the new Constitution came out, as well as a big conceptual work published in Russkie Zapiski in 1938, “After Elections Without Elections,” are all about the national state. These works are accompanied by numerous articles and notes from Novaya Rossiya in 1936–1937. The main idea of these works is to establish that Stalin and the Soviet builders of state theory and ideology rejected the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and returned to the idea of a national state, which, according to Kerensky, had populist origins. It was precisely in order to achieve a state of the whole people that the thesis of building a classless society was put forward as a method of “technical” rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was the essence of the new Soviet ideology that began to take shape in the late 1920s. The idea and practice of a state of the whole people contradicted not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Kerensky was convinced Stalin was trying to level out and replace with his own personal dictatorship, but also the leading role of the party in the Soviet state. However, the party began to undergo changes not in order to give way to popular rule, but to strengthen Stalin’s personal dictatorship. The creation of a “new ruling class” serves the same purpose—no longer based on party membership and belonging to the proletariat, but on a new foundation of service to the state. Kerensky puts forward the thesis of Stalin’s dictatorship in a very insistent manner, ignoring facts that cast doubt on this “dogma.” Kerensky thus defines Stalin’s national state as a dictatorial state, but considers this type of dictatorship more progressive than class dictatorship because, firstly, it brings the Russian state closer to its true goal, i.e. the rule of the people in practice; and secondly, the rhetoric of universality, however superficial, confirms that the state is already on this path. These are Kerensky’s conclusions, which he drew in 1936–1937 on the basis of his study of Soviet ideology and his previous reflections and predictions.
The article “The Soviet State and the All-Union Communist Party” was a kind of polemical response to E.B. Pashukanis’ article “The All-People’s Soviet State” (Pravda, May 9). E.B. Pashukanis, who at that time was one of the leading Soviet legal scholars, director of the Institute of State and Law of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and deputy people’s commissar of justice of the USSR, argued that Lenin and Stalin had exposed the falsehood and poverty of the “populist parties, in particular the Trudoviks.” Kerensky responded to this attack, but his focus was on the people’s state. He incorporated it into a single chain of theoretical changes: from the concept of socialism in one country to the concept of a classless society and, finally, to the affirmation of the people’s state itself: “Through the state of the proletarian dictatorship, we moved toward its withering away in a classless society, and arrived at a ‘people’s state,’ albeit a ‘classless’ one, but one in which ‘powerful state authority is necessary.’” He unequivocally interprets this innovation as a revision, if not an abolition, of the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in response to the “falsehood and poverty” remarks, not without sarcasm: “The All-Russian Communist Party is returning to the ‘counterrevolutionary’ populist idea of a ‘state of the whole people,’ which Lenin has so many times reduced to dust.” Kerensky traces the origins of this idea and points to the principles of unity between the working people, i.e., the working classes, and the people’s state, put forward by the People’s Socialists, whose principles and activities he was well acquainted with.
Indeed, the program of the Labor People’s Socialist Party, drawn up in 1906, states: “Everything for the people and everything through the people—that is our slogan… We… will direct our efforts toward making the state a people’s state… The state must become a people’s state not only in form but also in substance.” The Enes were a party of ‘evolutionary socialism’ and opposed the revolutionary path, so Lenin’s assessment of their ideas as counterrevolutionary is quite understandable. Unlike many other political forces and organizations emerging in Russia at the time, the Enes were not strong in the theoretical foundation of their programmatic principles, and the principle of a people’s state in the party’s documents and in the works of its ideologists (A.V. Peshekhonov and others) received neither justification nor development.
Kerensky accepted this innovation in Soviet ideology as a victory for his view of the destructiveness of “Leninist ideocracy” and, in a stronger vein, as the triumph of the idea of popular sovereignty, to which, in his opinion, Stalin would be forced to return. Confident in this ideological victory, he was ready to give the Soviet leader the benefit of the doubt: “It can be said that Stalin’s proclamation of ‘socialism in one country,’ which was completely illiterate from the point of view of Marxist theory, was the beginning of Russia’s return to the path of its unique historical development.” Here Kerensky, in his enthusiasm, fails to notice his own mistake (“illiterate from the point of view of Marxist theory”—it is difficult to take his judgments about Marxist literacy seriously without irony) and demonstrates his support for Stalin in abolishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, not forgetting to mention Enes’ principle of class unity: “Socialism in one country” rapidly, contrary to all laws of economic development, slipped into a “classless society.” So be it. In the end, it is not so important under what verbal cover Stalin is forced to admit that the state of the proletarian dictatorship has turned out to be a ‘people’s state’ in which all working classes are ‘united’ for common social creativity.” Kerenky’s peculiar support for Stalin did not mean that he recognized the sincerity of the Soviet leadership’s intentions; he remained true to his “classical” convictions (or, more accurately, delusions): “The task set by the Kremlin is clear: under the pressure of the insistent demands of the new Russia… to create the appearance of a state of the whole people, while preserving in essence all the autocracy of the party apparatus.”
According to Kerensky, a national state in the USSR was impossible in practice, primarily because the role of the party in the Soviet state was incompatible with the existence of popular sovereignty: after all, the party “by its very nature, ideology, and objectives… is completely incompatible with the role of leader of all activities of a national, i.e., multi-party or non-party, state by its very nature.” Kerensky notes Stalin’s attempts to “tear the state apparatus out of the narrow, deadening framework of party fanaticism” by constructing the concept and promoting the practice of “non-party Bolsheviks” (after 1936, this would develop into the idea and practice of a “bloc of communists and non-party members”). However, in Kerensky’s opinion, this was not enough: he put forward a “demand” for the separation of the party from the state. It is difficult to say how seriously the publicist himself took his proposals, but here he touches on another sore point of Soviet state theory—the task of integrating the ruling party into new theoretical constructs of the state. The fundamental problem was the impossibility of separating the party from the state, since the party that conceived and created the Soviet state was, in essence, that state. Stalin approached the resolution of the problem of the party and the state from this angle, attempting to theoretically recreate the party as the party of the entire people (a risky move, but one determined by the logic of the state’s universal character), but he did not see it through to the end.
The last aspect that is important in connection with the work “The Soviet State and the All-Union Communist Party” is the hidden polemical battle, a kind of “intellectual duel” between A.F. Kerensky and E.B. Pashukanis (at least, this is what emerges from the dynamics of the texts). Neither in Pashukanis’ other works nor in his publications of April-May 1936 was criticism of the principle of the people’s state put forward by the “Narodniks and Trudoviks,” and the national state was not constructed in opposition to the ideas on which they relied. It is possible that Pashukanis’s passage about the “Narodniks and Trudoviks” was an attack on Kerensky: the allusion is too clear. Kerensky considered it a challenge directed at him in response to a phrase from the debut issue of Novaya Rossiya about Russia turning into a people’s state. Kerensky’s words about the party returning to the counterrevolutionary populist idea of a people’s state, as one might suppose, are a response to remarks about the falseness and poverty of the populists (no less painful was the accusation that the populists rejecting the capitalist path of Russia’s development and the idea of establishing the unity of the working people on the basis of preserving capitalism).
The final nuance in the comparison of the two texts is a remark at the end of Kerensky’s article. Insisting on the separation of the party from the state, he asserts that “it is no coincidence that in the same issue of Pravda, which sets out the new official doctrine of the ‘all-people’s Soviet state,’ there is a leading article, ‘The Party Apparat,’ which definitely raises the question of how to separate the party from the state…” It is clear that here Kerensky, as usual, is taking his wishful thinking for reality, but that is not the point. The essence of the conflict lies in the fact that it is quite likely that E.B. Pashukanis participated in the drafting of the editorial, since, in addition to the main topic (Marxist doctrine of law), in the 1930s he was seriously engaged in the problems of reconstructing the state apparatus, the struggle against bureaucracy, etc. But here we are talking specifically about the comparison of texts, and not about the polemic itself, since Kerensky was hardly familiar with Pashukanis’ publications on the problems of the state apparatus.
The polemic with Soviet ideologists would be reflected in Kerensky’s other works: “inspired” by the idea of popular sovereignty, which he sincerely believed to be his own idea and intuition, Kerensky would strive to reveal and justify this conviction as fully as possible. In his article “From Lenin to Mussolini,” he reinforces his position on the people’s state and emphasizes the connection between this term and the concept of a “classless society”: speaking of the new state ideology maturing in the depths of the Kremlin, he asserts that “it was precisely for this new ideology that a ‘classless society’ was needed. A ‘new’ society that could be laid at the foundation of a ‘people’s state of the working class.’” Here, the publicist seems to be restoring Stalin’s logic: “…In order to break out of the vicious circle of the proletarian dictatorship, which is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of a people’s state, it was necessary to resort to a heroic measure: to declare that all classes no longer existed in the USSR.” It should be noted that in his report on the draft Constitution, Stalin, justifying the preservation of classes, declared them not only “new” but also “friendly.”
The second important idea of the article is the bold statement, for an emigrant, that the “new dictatorship” is more progressive than the “old” one, i.e., the proletarian dictatorship: “…A dictatorship built on a class basis… is a dictatorship that inevitably destroys the state, because it contradicts the very nature of the state… For what I considered and still consider to be a dictatorship based on the idea of a national state… less destructive to the state, they even tried to label me a ‘fascist.’” The third idea is Kerensky’s establishment of a connection between Stalin’s definition of the nation, which he analyzes, and his own ideas from 1928–1929: “A common past, a common territory, a unity of psychological makeup, economic ties—this is the ‘created history’ of a nation, where… all coexisting classes are only elements of the super-personal, super-class living organism of the Nation-State.” In subsequent publications, Kerensky explains in more detail how the “new” dictatorship is better than the “old” one: “Let them not think, however, that I see nothing positive in the fascistization of Stalin’s dictatorship, in its transformation from a class-proletarian dictatorship into a ‘popular,’ plebiscitary-Caesarist dictatorship.” Kerensky sees the reason for his optimism in the fact that, in addition to the “servile state,” there is also a “new” Russia, and it is “this Russia in the new constitution—still in theory—that is receiving the technical apparatus for building a truly free democratic state.”
After the publication of the draft of the new constitution, Kerensky continues his polemic with Soviet thought, only now Stalin takes the place of Pashukanis: “… Stalin, instead of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is being pushed into the background, declares Russia a national state of all workers and restores the very universal suffrage and the very democratic constitution that were declared a mortal sin by the social traitors.” Kerensky insists on the abolition of the council system: “The most important thing is that the proletarian dictatorship has been surrendered, the Soviet system itself has been destroyed, for instead of a class-based, multi-stage election system, a territorial system of direct elections is being introduced and all hierarchical links between the councils from the bottom to the top are being destroyed. From now on, under the name ‘soviets’, the USSR will have ordinary local and central representative institutions, ordinary in structure.” Developing this thesis in another work, he asserts: “The recognition of the nation, the people, and the state as a unity bound by a common past, a common territory, and a unity of psychological makeup obliged Stalin, in the name of strengthening his personal dictatorship, to rebuild the entire framework of the state from top to bottom on new, popular principles.”
The most important idea running through all of Kerensky’s texts on the new Constitution is his well-founded conviction that the USSR is presented in the Constitution as a state of the whole people. This conviction was not shaken by the absence of the term itself in the Constitution. Kerensky believed that its task was to establish a truly national state with all the attributes of democracy. This was not a matter of the publicist’s inattention to terminology: the point is that Kerensky is promoting his main idea that even by implementing plans to strengthen the social base of his personal dictatorship “under the guise of super-democratic institutions,” Stalin, perhaps unconsciously and contrary to his intentions, is following the historical logic of the revival of a “new Russia” with its will to freedom. Therefore, unlike many foreign observers and critics, Kerensky does not accept the idea that the new Constitution is merely a facade (as insisted, for example, by L.D. Trotsky) and considers it to be the Constitution of a national state.
In his work “After Elections Without Elections” (1938), Kerensky sums up his thoughts on the Soviet state and the 1936 Constitution. This article, on the one hand, summarizes his theses and, on the other, demonstrates an extreme form of dogmatism and political bias, as well as credulity toward “sources” that provided exclusively negative information about the Soviet Union. Speaking of the “degeneration of the October Revolution,” he states: “This period, which began approximately in 1931 and 1932, was a transitional period from Lenin’s construction of a dictatorship to Stalin’s, from a committee-party type of dictatorship to unlimited personal autocracy.” Kerensky reinforces this idea with his favorite fantasy that “there is no internal, spiritual reconciliation with dictatorship in Russia, and the will to freedom is not weakening but growing stronger.” From both a practical and theoretical point of view, unlimited personal autocracy in Soviet Russia is a meaningless definition, and therefore Kerensky’s fantasies about a mystical “new Russia” and “red marshals” who supposedly insisted on a new constitution are groundless; hence Kerensky’s conclusion that “there is no huge majority, no majority of the population at all behind Stalin” is unconvincing and does not follow from the real state of affairs.
Conclusion
A. Y. Shirinsky-Shikhmatoff classifies Kerensky as a supporter of National Bolshevism: “A. F. Kerensky is an exceptionally sensitive ‘seismograph’ of emigration. A number of his statements are close to ours, at least in terms of terminology… In some respects, this similarity even goes beyond terminological coincidences: the speaker, like us, the National Bolsheviks… believes that the nationalization of the revolution taking place in Russia cannot be regarded as a simple maneuver… that a process of organic restoration of the national and historical continuities disrupted by the revolution is taking place in the country, which is of paramount importance.” Indeed, Kerensky’s keen intuition allowed him to see and identify the subtle, elusive movements of Soviet political thought in the theory and ideology of the Soviet state. With regard to the principles of popular sovereignty, his works on the development of Soviet state theory do indeed contain profound thoughts and insights. The reason for Kerensky’s thoughtfulness and deep immersion in Soviet political discourse was a kind of “zeal for democracy” that made him sensitive to the slightest changes not only in the vocabulary of Soviet texts, but also in their tone. However, Kerensky’s initial distance from Marxism and from strict theory in general served him poorly: he was unable to fully grasp the concepts of expediency and necessity in politics.
As for practice, Kerensky proved to be a completely faulty “seismograph.” His “practical vision” was extremely distorted. Democratic illusions and “February dreams,” as well as old grudges, prevented him from seeing the real logic of history, which lay in the need to strengthen the power of the party and Stalin’s personal power system and, thanks to this, the manageability of the state in the face of the rapidly approaching war. Kerensky’s occasional understanding of Stalin’s actions and ideas as the head of the only socialist state at that time, surrounded by a hostile geopolitical environment, was drowned out by his political idealism and his émigré circle’s assessment of the Soviet leader as a dictator concerned only with protecting and strengthening his own power. All of Stalin’s decisions and actions appeared to Kerensky to be aimed exclusively at strengthening his own dictatorship, but such conclusions did not correspond to the context of the time and did not meet the imperatives of sound political sense. This was influenced by a special kind of “jealousy” towards Stalin as a “democratic dictator” (an expression coined by L. Feuchtwanger), since at one time Kerensky himself could well have considered himself, and apparently did consider himself, a “democratic dictator,” if not the sole ruler of Russia: at certain moments in 1917 his power exceeded the sum of the powers of any other participant in the political life of the time, whether an individual or a party. “Zeal” for Stalin the dictator was intertwined with ‘zeal’ for Stalin the republican, the proclamation of the USSR as a people’s state, as if liberating the republic from the shackles of the dictatorship of the proletariat: after all, in September 1917, Kerensky single-handedly declared Russia a republic, granting himself the right to proclaim the will of the people in order to preempt the Bolsheviks, who were demanding the proclamation of a Soviet Republic. Hence his obsessive conviction that “the majority of the population does not support Stalin.” And if Kerensky was, even in a limited sense, ready to recognize Stalin as a democratic dictator, he was unable to recognize him as a republican.
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