Page - 226 - in Otto Bauer (1881–1938) - Thinker and Politician

226 chapter 5 4 TheGradualDevelopmentofAttitudestowardRevolutionand BolshevikPractice ThevictoryoftheOctoberRevolutioninRussiaposedachallengetoEuropean Social Democracy. For decades, socialist revolution had been the centre of discourseinEuropeaseitheraninevitableresultofthedevelopmentofmodern societies(thedeterministversion)or,alternatively,anactof theworkingclass determinedbythatdevelopment(theactivist-deterministversion).Contraryto theseexpectations, a social revolution tookplace inacountry thatEuropean SocialDemocracyhadcompletelydisregarded in itscalculations. Its theorists facedwhatappearedtobeavitalcomplicationforthefateoftheinternational workers’movement:howtoevaluatetheRussianexperimenttheoreticallyand practically.As to the former, themostpressingdilemmawashowto integrate it intoMarxist theory,and,withrespect topractice,whether itwas legitimate to adopt theRussian revolutionarymodel and its relevantmethods. Leading SocialDemocratswereabsorbed in thisdebate for years.Asa result, splits in theSecondInternationalintensified(althoughelaboratingthisindetailwould gobeyondthescopeofthiswork). Thesdap’s internaldebateabout the legitimacyof theRussianRevolution, its perspectives and consequences for international socialism, corresponded with a succession of political events in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. It isworthconsidering that theAustrianparty followed thedevelopments in Russiamore attentively thanwas the case with its Social-Democratic sister parties. The reasonswere that, by and large, the sdap factionof the Second International had cultivated a friendly attitude towards the Bolsheviks, and, withViennabeingacentreofRussianemigration,hadaclose relationship to theRussianSocial-Democraticmovement. Itwasdue to thesecircumstances that the sdap enthusiasticallywelcomed theoutbreakof revolution and the first strides towards Soviet power in Russia, the nationalisation of land and banks.134When theBolsheviks dissolved the constituent assembly, attitudes in the sdap radically changed, although they did not deny the progressive characteroftheOctoberRevolution.TheAustriansdistancedthemselvesfrom the Bolsheviks. This ambivalent attitude towards the events in Russia and themethods theBolsheviks adhered to inorder to construct a socialist state influencedBauer’spositiontothesamedegree. BauerwasoneofasmallnumberofMarxisttheoristswhoanalysedtheOcto- berRevolutionanditshistoricalconsequencesforyears,meticulouslykeeping 134 SeeArbeiter-Zeitungof11December1917and1January1918;compareLöw1982,p. 10.