Kevin Murphy: Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory .

Kevin Murphy Revolution and Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory Berghahn Books, 2005, 234 pp. ISBN 1-571-81429-9 (hbk) 45 [pounds sterling]

In this book, Kevin Murphy provides a frontal assault on what now seems to be the nearly unanimous view regarding the Russian Revolution, both in the West and in the former Eastern bloc countries; namely, that it was a coup instigated by an authoritarian, undemocratic Bolshevik Party which, once it had seized power, stifled all opposition and democratic debate and established the one-party Stalinist dictatorship.

By conducting an enormous amount of primary research in eight Russian archives that were opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Murphy focuses his assault on Moscow's largest metal factory--called the 'Gouzhon' in the pre-revolutionary period, and later the 'Hammer and Sickle' factory. He meticulously examines the evidence regarding the political consciousness of the factory's workers from 1900 through to the complete consolidation of Stalin's power in 1932. At all stages, Murphy skilfully interweaves events in the factory with the overall political situation outside, including international events such as the failed Chinese revolution of 1925-27 and the British General Strike of 1926. Crucially, Murphy notes that 'if Soviet workers generally exhibited a sense of "terror" in their relations with the state in early Soviet society, or later volunteered support for Stalinism, one would reasonably expect that evidence of such sentiments could be found in the largest metal factory in the capital'. The result of his exhaustive research is conclusive in showing that there is no evidence for either assertion. On the contrary, the evidence shows the growing confidence of workers in 1917, and its subsequent ebbs and flows before it drastically falls away a decade later.

The book is enlivened by quotes from an array of meetings, which give a real flavour of the lives and moods of workers, and their fluctuations over the three decades under discussion. The methodology is sound: the use of a large unit such as the Gouzhon factory provides a representative sample of the views of workers in Moscow--and, to some extent, in Russia as a whole. The strength of this approach is that it enables changes in workers' consciousness to be located within the context of wider political forces.

In chapter 1, Murphy focuses on three waves of militancy: the 1905 revolution (when two million workers went on strike); the upheavals following the Lena Goldfields massacre in 1912; and the upsurge in the first seven months of 1914, before the commencement of the First World War. A member of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SR) is quoted as saying that in the downturn between 1908 and 1911, the SR was the only party in the factory, and that he or she was not aware of the Bolsheviks having been there. State repression seriously curtailed worker militancy, but all this began to change during the revolutionary year of 1917, as discussed in chapter 2, as the Bolsheviks rose to ascendancy on the basis of their politics and unity: 'opposition to the war, against a compromise with the capitalists, and for Soviet rule'. The decisive shift from the SRs to the Bolsheviks came during the general strike of 12 August. Curiously, the Gouzhon factory, with its three thousand dues-paying metalworkers' union members, was one of a few that even by mid-September did not have a 'Bolshevik mood'. But the October revolution had widespread support, including among non-party workers in the factory who, remarkably, comprised the majority of Red Guard volunteers from Gouzhon. Here Murphy stresses the reality of heightened class conflict, which resulted in workers learning for themselves, and in the process 'gaining a visceral sense of their own collective power'. In the early months of the revolution, 'the SRS promoted a strategy of direct action, egalitarianism, and worker unity that was hardly distinguishable from the Leninists'.

Chapter 3 examines class conflict during the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1921. The Hammer and Sickle factory workforce expanded from 1,412 production workers in 1921 to 3,600 in 1924. This was higher than the prewar total, and indicative of the economic recovery of Soviet society; yet poverty and deprivation were still rife. The hope that the revolution would spread to more developed European countries did not materialise. There was, in the words of Carr and Davies, an 'uneasy compromise between red managers and unions'. But this was also the period of the expansion of party membership, and of the party's increasing bureaucratisation, corruption, and privilege--and veering away from the goals of the revolution. This critical period is explored with great care by Murphy, for he is insistent that the trajectory was by no means pre-ordained. In the context of an isolated revolution, much of the base of which was destroyed during the Civil War, this was a period of what Murphy describes as 'ascending Stalinism', whereby gradually but surely the whole goal of society became 'productivist', and in which all opposition to the regime led by Stalin was systematically crushed. Yet the accounts of political debates within the factory show that from the 1923 Trotskyist Opposition through to the United Opposition of 1926, before its defeat by the end of 1928, significant numbers of workers were very close to the ideals of the oppositionists. As late as 1927, a factory leaflet stated that 'bootlickers and informers in the party have taken over'.

Chapter 5 provides a detailed discussion of the various opposition forces up to the first five-year plan. Chapter 4, entitled 'Everyday life under developing Stalinism', is a fascinating account. With great intellectual honesty, Murphy provides an excellent discussion of the life of workers in the factory during the NEP period, focusing on women, religion and alcohol and hooliganism. In sum, the party made serious efforts under the most difficult of circumstances to advance the cause of women in the early years. The Bolsheviks set up a women's section, the Zhenotdel, the aim of which was to build up women's cadres and transform their lives; and in 1920, the Soviet Union was the only country in the world that allowed free abortion on demand. But by the end of the NEP period, women in the factory were seen as an obstacle to the productivist drive, and all pretences to women's liberation were abandoned. In regard to the tackling of religion and the abuse of alcohol, Murphy suggests that no real effort was made, and therefore these vices were always prevalent in the factory--and indeed, in Soviet society as a whole.

The final chapter, 'The Stalinist counterrevolution', covers the culmination of the forces and politics discussed in the preceding three chapters. Murphy argues that the period 1929-1932 saw the lowering of real wages, the driving of political dissent underground, and workers compelled to work longer hours and more often.

Nonetheless, a small minority of workers believed that Stalinism represented the communist ideal. But for the vast majority, the rapid industrialisation drive was directly at odds with their material interests as workers: thus voluntary political conviction gave way to coercive measures and, thereafter, the ineluctable path to dictatorship and the police state. Murphy quotes a famous remark by Alec Nove about the results of the first five-year plan: '1933 was the culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standards known in recorded history'.

Kevin Murphy has produced an outstanding and original work that is a must-read for all those interested in Soviet history. Moreover, he provides a methodology that can be replicated by others not only in order to test Murphy's conclusions, but also to help bring light to controversial debates on other epochs. The judges of the annual Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize have fittingly chosen this book as their winner for 2005, for which they deserve congratulations.