The Interwar Period

1
The Interwar Period

• Socialism in one country?
• ----------
• Balance sheet

2
Midterm exam, Tuesday, Feb. 17th

• Part I. Indentify and give the significance of
  five (5) of the following 4 each, 20
• Locarno pacts
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
• Part II. Briefly comment on the validity of four
  (4) of the following statements, 10 each, 40
• The Russian Revolution was the inevitable result
  of changes in class structure in Tsarist Russia.
• Part III. Essay, 1 question out of 2, 40

3
Studying for the midterm

• Go over class notes and presentation outlines
• Think of questions which might be asked
• Go back through readings, trying to answer them

4
The Interwar Period in Context

• An unsettled uncertain period
• Tremendous energy unleashed
• Modernism in art and architecture
• Citizens rights extended, regimes democratized
• New political forms emerge
• Fascism, Nazism, Soviet Communism
• An age of anxiety?

5
Experimentation in Art Design
6
De Stijl Bauhaus
7
Democratization

• Universal manhood or universal suffrage in most
  countries
• New political democracies established
• Extension of public housing, public health,
• Some welfare state measures
• Mass media (radio film) connect people, provide
  a new intimacy
• Make people listeners or viewers potential
  observers

8
Older democracies

• Britain France stabilize in 1920s despite
  threats of revolution
• UK
• Irish question
• resolved?
• or put out of mind?
• Integration of the working class
• Labour comes to power in minority governments
  (1924-26, 1929-1931)
• General strike fails
• France growing stalemate between right left

9
The 1929 crash

• October 1929 NY Stock market crashes
• Immediate knock-on effects
• Scramble for liquidity
• Bankruptcies, bank failures
• Creditanstalt (1931) gt runs on other banks,
  firms, pressures on govts dependent on credit
• Rising unemployment
• Falling demand reinforces downward spiral
• US responds by raising tariffs, calling loans
• Impact spreads rapidly to Europe
• Germanys ability to pay reparations depends on
  US loans.
• Contraction of world trade

10
1930s

• Most governments respond by
• Balancing budgets
• Instituting import quotas, protective tariffs
• Little sense of how to manage business cycle or
  halt the decline
• Reluctance of most governments to inject
  stimulus
• Exceptions
• United States
• Sweden
• Nazi Germany

11
Democracies v. dictatorship

• Support grows for extremist parties, right or
  left
• Communists, Fascists, Nazis
• France polarized democracy survives,
• with an increasingly strong anti-democratic right
• But problems on southern tier, successor states
  
• Portugal
• Spain collapse of 2nd Republic
• Austria civil war in 1934
• Hungary
• Poland.
• Liberal democracy in question
• Not clear to everyone that liberal democracy is
  desirable
• Alternate models available
• Admiration, flirtation with fascism in
  intellectual circles
• For others, Communism is the solution

12
Back to the USSR

• Problem
• what do you do next when you have made an
  unlikely revolution?
• Lenins solution the New Economic Policy (NEP)
• Stalin Stalinism

13
Marxs theory of revolution

• Revolution as the product of class struggle
• State is the instrument of the ruling class
• Revolution will occur at the highest phases of
  capitalism
• Proletariat seizes control of the state
• Establishes socialism state ownership of the
  means of production
• Creates the conditions for communism the
  withering away of the state

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Lenins modification

• Revolution
• can take place in a backward country in which the
  objective conditions are not right
• can be brought about by a small conspiratorial
  organization a vanguard party
• can serve as a catalyst for revolution elsewhere

15
Putting theory into practice

• Bolsheviks seize power in Oct. 1917
• Multiple problems
• Establishing control
• What to do about the war?
• How to proceed with the revolution?

16
Solutions

• Sue for peace
• Fight civil war
• Suspend Constituent Assembly, elected in 1918
• Implement war communism, seizing food, material
  needed for war effort
• Consolidate power in 1920

17
The revolutionary project

• Problem
• What do you do when revolution elsewhere fails to
  materialize as expected?
• Options
• Continue to promote world revolution?
• Build socialism in one country?
• Consolidate your position?

18
Lenins interim solution

• New Economic Policy (NEP)
• Advocated by Bukharin
• one step backward, two steps forward
• temporary reversion to capitalism to get the
  economy going again (1921-28)
• Private ownership permitted
• Ultimate direction determined by Lenins
  impairment (1922), death (1924) and Stalins
  succession to power

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Stalins succession

• Stalin
• A lesser figure in Bolshevik hierarchy
• However, as general secretary of the Communist
  Party, well placed
• Uses control of the administrative apparatus to
  advance supporters
• 1925 Moves against left (Trotsky, Kamenev,
  Zinoviev) in defense of NEP
• 1927-28 Moves against Bukharin moderates,
  promoting Socialism in one country

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Stalins policies

• Use of party state apparatus, terror,
• to industrialize USSR
• plan the economy via five year plans
• lay the conditions for socialism and communism
• Justification
• bourgeoisie in Russia had failed to industrialize
  the country and establish the conditions for
  socialism
• therefore the party state must do it instead
• Process required forced saving from peasantry
• attacks on kulaks

21
Leninism v. Stalinism

• Democratic centralism (Lenin) presumes that party
  has a voice
• Discussion permitted until decision made
• Then everyone adheres
• Under Stalin, party persists, but increasingly
  under attack
• Purges, show trials, used to eliminate potential
  rivals, including Bukharin, other members of
  Lenins politboro
• Stalinism more centralism rather than
  democratic centralism

22
Consequences

• Agriculture collectivized, opponents liquidated
• Russia industrialized, but at tremendous human
  cost
• Decline in individual consumption
• USSR substantially isolated from other countries
• Until mid-1930s, beacon for some
• Afterward, The god that failed

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Soviet Communism Nazism compared

• Totalitarian or nearly totalitarian
• Each, by extension of party state, reduces
  private space
• Elevation of leaders
• Use of propaganda
• Marginalization demonization of selected
  groups
• Jews, Slavs, Gypsies
• Kulaks, capitalists
• Recourse to terror, anomic violence
• Moscow trials, purges
• Kristallnacht
• SA SS activities

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Balance sheet

• Liberal democracy survives in
• Britain
• France (until 1940)
• Low Countries
• Scandinavia (including Finland)
• Czechoslovakia (until 1938)
• Under siege in Spain (Civil War 1936-1939)
• By mid 1930s, a world not very safe for democracy

25
Midterm exam, Tuesday, Feb. 17th

• Part I. Indentify and give the significance of
  five (5) of the following 4 each, 20
• Locarno pacts
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
• Part II. Briefly comment on the validity of four
  (4) of the following statements, 10 each, 40
• The Russian Revolution was the inevitable result
  of changes in class structure in Tsarist Russia.
• Part III. Essay, 1 question out of 2, 40