Contenu du sommaire

M. Reiman, The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution. A contribution to the history of Bolshevik policy in the autumn of 1917. Favourable conditions for the take-over by the Bolsheviks presented themselves in autumn 1917, after the failure of Kornilov's revolt. The social and political foundation of the Provisional Government broke down. Bolsheviks predominated in the Soviets. In the Bolshevik Central Committee, the majority advised the convocation of a Congress of the Soviets and the formation of a Soviet government. The right wing of the Party pronounced itself against the take-over by the Bolsheviks and for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. Lenin adopted a leftist position: the party should seize the power as quickly as possible. During the struggle that created a split in the Party, Lenin succeeded to isolate the right wing and arrived at a compromise with the majority of the Central Committee. His endeavours to put into practice his own plans for assuming power collided with the position adopted by the Party and with the exterior circumstances which did not allow to constitute a government outside of the Congress of the Soviets. The situation as a whole developed in conformity with the view of the majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee.

N. Werth, Social structure of the communist party of Bielorussia under the NEP (according to the investigation of the temporary Bielorussian Bureau). This article analyses, on basis of a document of the temporary Bielorussian Bureau, a section of the Central Committee of the Russian communist party, the structure of the communist party of Bielorussia in 1924, before the campaign of adhesion to the "Lenin promotion". The social composition of this party of 8 000 members sets out the difficulties which meet the party in its implantation effort within the peasantry — a great part of rural communists are not peasants — and within a working class, not yet very numerous and further decimated by civil war and foreign occupation; on the other hand, the permanent members of the party: clerks and employees, constitute the principal mass of the party army (over 2/3 of its members). The party, conforming to the character of this multinational region, accepts militants of various national and political horizons, those in particular belonging to the Jewish Bund. Most of the militants joined the party during the civil war, whereas the "Old Bolshevik Guard" represents but 8% of the party forces. Finally, the analysis of the causes of exclusion from the party sets out the domination of ideological relations inherited from the ancient regime (problems of alcoholism, religious practices, etc.). The structure of the party itself reflects the socio-economic composition of this agricultural region, but slightly industrialized, and the difficulties which the party has to overcome there in order to enforce its policy.

W. Berelowitch, The Soviet school of the years 1920. The article endeavours to determine the scholar policy of the Bolsheviks from 1917 to the end of the twenties. The objective aimed at is not only to alphabetize Russia but to turn the school (especially the primary school) into a basic instrument for the penetration of Bolshevik ideology. During the twenties, the Soviet school is implanted, the price being a radical destruction of all that formerly existed, which is repercuted on scholar results; the administrative apparatus is dismantled, traditional subjects are abolished or renovated, teachers are subjugated or dismissed. Progressively, the communist school is separated from whatever was foreign to the Leninist conception: libertarian ideas and projects of "free education", that served only to destroy the ancient school, the "leftism" that preached cultural nihilism, whereas the new regime intends to spread a "new culture", hence build up a new school, are only empty concepts to which the population must submit. At the end of the twenties, the process is finalized and the "Stalinist" school functions already with its anti-religious propaganda, its holidays, its campaigns and its pioneers.

P. Dumont, Bolshevism and the East. The Turkish communist party of Mustafa Suphi. 1918-1921. The history of the origins of the Turkish communist party coincides to a large extent with the life story of its first leader, Mustafa Suphi. Interned in Russia during the First World War, as an Ottoman subject, Mustafa Suphi seems to have then established his first contacts with the Bolsheviks. After the October revolution, we find him in Moscow, as chief editor of Yeni Dünya and at the head of the Turkish section of the Central Bureau of the Peoples of the East, dependent upon Stalin's Commissariate of Nationalities. In March 1919, he represents Turkey at the First Congress of the Hlrd International. During the years 1919 and 1920 he travels throughout Crimea and Turkestan with the object of establishing Moscow's control over the Muslim sections of the party. He arrives in Baku on the 27th of May 1920 and takes charge of the « Turkish communist party » created there by certain Unionists. He reorganizes it and joins to it a paramilitary section. At the end of 1920, he travels to Turkey. His intention is to go to Ankara and to negotiate with Mustafa Kemal the settlement of his party in Anatolia. But nationalists of Oriental provinces, Karabekir in particular, will view very badly this initiative and provoke on his way anti-communist "popular manifestations" that will lead, end January, to his assassination (together with fourteen companions) off the Trabzon coast, under circumstances that were never completely elucidated.

Marc Slonim, Reminiscences on the revolution. In the extracts from his Memoirs (unfortunately unfinished) the critic Marc Slonim (1894-1976), who had been the youngest députée to the Constituent Assembly of 1917, tells of his initiation to the revolutionary ideas, then of his action as propagandist and educator in the workers' circles at the eve of the Revolution. He recalls the testimony of members of aristocracy about the discredit thrown by Rasputin on the Imperial family. Lastly, he describes his action as a member of the Petrograd committee of the S-R party, immediately after the February revolution, and the dissensions between the right and the left of the party on the subject of war. He stresses the efficiency of the Bolshevik slogans opposed to those of the S-R, and briefly evokes the figures of Kerenskij and Lenin, such as he had seen them in 1917.