THE REVOLUTION IN WORDS- TECHNIQUE NIQUE DEL COLPO DI STATO - CURZIO MALAPARTE THE REVOLUTION TEXTBOOK

Today I live on an island, in a house that is sad, hard, severe, that I built for myself, solitary on a sheer rock over the sea: a house that is the spectre, the secret image of prison. The image of my nostalgia. Maybe I never desired, not even then, to escape from jail. Man is not meant to live freely in freedom, but to be free inside a prison.” 
― Curzio Malaparte, Fughe in prigionE

“Un uomo? -risposi ridendo- Un uomo è cosa ancor più triste e più orrenda di questo mucchio di carne sfatta. Un uomo è orgolgio, crudeltà, tradimento, viltà, violenza. La carne sfatta è tristezza, pudore, paura, rimorso, speranza. Un uomo, un uomo vivo, è poca cosa, in confronto di un mucchio di carne marcia".” 
― Curzio Malaparte

Chapter One

THE BOLSHEVIK COUP D’ETAT

AND TROTSKY’S TACTICS

While the strategy of the Bolshevik revolution was due to Lenin, the

tactician of the October

coup d’Etat

in 1917 was Trotsky.

When I was in Russia early in 1929, I had the opportunity of talking to a

large number of people, from every walk of life, about the part played by Trotsky

in the Revolution. 

There is an official theory on the subject which is held by Stalin. 

But everywhere, and especially in Moscow and Leningrad where

Trotsky’s party was stronger than elsewhere, I heard judgments passed on

Trotsky which differed altogether from

those enunciated by Stalin. The only

refusal to answer my questions came

from Lunacharski, and Madame Kamenev

alone, gave me an objective justification

of Stalin’s theory, which ought not to be

surprising, considering that Madame Kamenev is Trotsky’s sister.

We cannot enter here into the Stalin

– Lenin controversy on the subject of

the “permanent revolution” and of the part played by Trotsky in the

coup d’Etat

of October 1917. Stalin denies that Trotsky

organized it: he claims that merit for

the Commission on which Sverdlov, Stalin

, Boubrov, Ouritzki, and Dzerjinski

sat. The Commission, to which neither Lenin nor Trotsky belonged, was an

integral part of the Revolutionary Military Committee presided over by Trotsky.

But Stalin’s controversy with the uphold

er of the theory of the “permanent

revolution” cannot alter the history of the October insurrection, which, according

to Lenin’s statement, was organized and directed by Trotsky. Lenin was the

“strategus,” idealist, inspirer, the

deus ex machina

of the revolution, but the man

who invented the technique of the Bolshevik

coup d‘Etat

was Trotsky.

The Communist peril against which go

vernments in modern Europe have

to defend themselves lies, not in Lenin’

s strategy, but in Trotsky’s tactics. It

would be difficult to conceive of Lenin’

s strategy apart from the general situation

in Russia in 1917. Trotsky’s tactics, on

the contrary, were independent of the 

general condition of the country; their

practical application was not conditioned

by any of the circumstances which were

indispensable to Lenin’s strategy. In

Trotsky’s tactics is to be found the explanation why a Communist

coup d‘Etat

always will be a danger in any European country. In other words, Lenin’s

strategy cannot find its application in

any Western European country unless the

ground is favorably prepared and the circumstances identical with those of

Russia in 1917. In his

Infantile Disease of Communism,

Lenin himself noted that the

novelty in the Russian political situat

ion in 1917 “lay in four specific

circumstances, which do not at present

obtain in Western Europe, and doubtless

never will develop either on exactly the same, or even analogous, lines.” An

explanation of these four conditions wo

uld be irrelevant here. Everyone knows

what constituted the novelty of the Russi

an political situation in 1917. Lenin’s

strategy

does not, therefore, present an immediate danger to the Governments of

Europe. The menace for them, now and always, is from Trotsky’s

tactics

.

In his remarks on

The October Revolution and the Tactics of Russian

Communists, Stalin wrote that whoever wished to form an estimate of what

happened in Germany in the Autumn of

1923, must not forget the peculiar

situation in Russia in 1917. 

HE ADDED Comrade Trotsky ought to remember it,

since he finds a complete analogy be

tween the October Revolution and the

German Revolution and chastises the Ge

rman Communist party for its real or

supposed blunders.” For Stalin, the failure

of the German attempt at revolution

during the Autumn of 1923

 was due to

the absence of those specific

circumstances which are indispensable to

the practical application of Lenin’s

strategy. He was astonished to find

Trotsky blaming the German Communists.

But for Trotsky the success of an attemp

t at revolution does not depend on

circumstances analogous to those obta

ining in Russia in 1917. The reason why

the German revolution in the Autumn of 1923 failed was not because it was

impossible at that time to put Lenin’s st

rategy into operation. The unpardonable

mistake on the part of the German Co

mmunists lay in their neglect of the

insurrectional tactics of Bolshevism. The

absence of favorable circumstances and

the general condition of the country do

not affect the practical application of

Trotsky’s tactics. In fact, there is no

justification of the German Communists’

failure to reach their goal.

Since the death of Lenin, Trotsky’s great heresy has threatened the

doctrinal unity of Leninism. Trotsky is a

Reformer who has the odds against him.

He is now a Luther in exile, and those

of his adherents who were not so rash as

to repent too late, have hastened to repent- officially-too early. Nevertheless, one

still frequently meets with heretics in

Russia who have not lost the taste for

criticism and who go on drawing the most

unexpected conclusions from Stalin’s

argument. This argument leads to the co

nclusion that without Kerenski there

could be no Lenin, since Kerenski formed one of the chief elements in the

peculiar condition of Russia in 1917. But Trot

sky does not recognize that there is

any need for Kerenski; any more than for Stresemann, Poincaré, Lloyd George,

Giolitti, or MacDonald, whose presence, lik

e that of Kerenski, has no influence,

favorable or unfavorable, on the practica

l application of Trotsky’s tactics. Put

Poincaré in the place of

Kerenski and the Bolshevik

coup d’Etat

of 1917 would

prove to be equally successful. In Mosco

w, as in Leningrad, I have sometimes

come across adherents of the heretical th

eory of the “permanent revolution” who

virtually held that Trotsky could do wi

thout Lenin, that Trotsky could exist

without Lenin; which is equivalent to saying that Trotsky might have risen to

power in October 1917 if Lenin had stayed

in Switzerland and taken no part

whatever in the Russian revolution.The assertion is a risky one but only

those who magnify the importance of

strategy in a revolution will deem it arbitrary. What matters most are

insurrectional tactics, the technique of the

coup d’Etat

. In a Communist revolution

Lenin’s strategy is not an indispensable

preparation for the use of insurrectional

tactics. It cannot, of itself, lead to the capture of the State. In Italy, in 1919 and

1920, Lenin’s strategy had been put into comp

lete operation and Italy at that time

was, indeed, of all European countries,

the ripest for a Communist revolution.

Everything was ready for a

coup d‘Etat

. But Italian Communists believed that the

revolutionary state of the country, the

fever of sedition among the proletarian

masses, the epidemic of general strikes,

the paralyzed state of economic and

political life, the occupation of factorie

s by the workers, and of lands by the

peasants, the disorganization of the army,

t

he police and the civil service, the

feebleness of the magistrature, the subm

ission of the middle classes, and the

impotence of the government were conditions sufficient to allow for a

transference of authority to the workers.

Parliament was under the control of the

parties of the Left and was actually back

ing the revolutionary activities of the

trade unions. There was no lack of determination to seize power, only of

knowledge of the tactics of insurrection

. The revolution wore itself out in

strategy. This strategy was the preparation

for a decisive attack, but no one knew

how to lead the attack. The Monarchy (which used then to be called a Socialist

Monarchy) was actually talked of as a seri

ous obstacle to an insurrectional attack.

The parliamentary majority of the Left was very much concerned with the

activities of the trade unions, which gave it reason to fear a bid for power out-

side the sphere of Parliament and even

directed against it. The trade unions

suspected Parliament of trying
to convERT THE proletarian revolution into a

change of ministry for the benefit of

the lower middle classes.
 How could the

coup d‘Etat

be organized? Such was the problem during the whole of 1919 and

1920; and not only in Italy,

but in almost every Western European country.

Trotsky said that the Communists did not

know how to benefit by the lesson of

October 1917, which was not a lesson in revolutionary strategy but in the tactics

of an insurrection.

This remark of Trotsky’s is very important for an understanding of the

tactics used in the

coup d‘Etat

of October 1917, that is, of the technique of the

Communist

coup d’Etat