Left Communists (Soviet Russia)

The Left Communists (Russian: левые коммунисты, levyye kommunisty) or Left Bolsheviks (левые большевики, levyye bolsheviki) were a faction of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) which arose in 1918, during the debates on signing a separate peace with the Central Powers of World War I. The faction opposed such a treaty, instead advocating a "revolutionary war" to foment socialist revolution in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and elsewhere.^[1] The group also held radical views on economic and social policy (including cultural, educational, and family policy) and military organization, and rejected the concept of national self-determination (particularly an independent Poland).^[2] The faction was led by Nikolai Bukharin, and included Andrei Bubnov, Alexandra Kollontai, Valerian Osinsky, Georgy Pyatakov, Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, Karl Radek, and Vladimir Smirnov. Their support was strong in the party's Moscow bureau and in Petrograd.^[3]

At the Seventh Party Congress (6–8 March 1918), which had been packed with supporters of the peace by Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, the Left Communists abstained from the vote calling for ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918). They abandoned their advocacy of "revolutionary war", but in their journal Kommunist^[4] (published in four issues in Moscow in April–June 1918) criticized the "pragmatism" and "conservatism" of Lenin and his allies, urging immediate nationalization of industry, workers' control, and no compromise with capitalist forces, domestic or foreign. Left Communists were dominant in VSNKh from 1917 to 1918, when they were replaced by moderates such as Alexei Rykov, Vladimir Milyutin, and Yuri Larin.^[3]

The faction largely died out by the end of 1918, as its leaders accepted that their program was unrealistic in the circumstances of the developing Russian Civil War and as the policies of War communism satisfied their demands for a radical transformation of the economy. The Military Opposition and the Workers' Opposition inherited some characteristics and members of the Left Communists, and the tendency re-emerged in Gavril Myasnikov's Workers Group during the debates on the New Economic Policy and the succession to Lenin. Most Left Communists were affiliated with Leon Trotsky's Left Opposition in the 1920s and expelled from the party at the 15th Party Congress (2–19 December 1927), and later killed in Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.^[3]