HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

106 ANDREA GRAZIOSIfirst system of state industry in history," something quite different fromsimple "industrialization." 4Π. IDEOLOGYThe years from 1915 to 1918 are a good starting point. These were theyears of left communism, when Bukharin and Evgeniia Bosh were the peopleclosest to Piatakov. There are two points concerning their positions atthat time to which I would like to call the reader's attention.The first concerns the series of problems linked to state, nation, andWorld War I. To tackle these problems, in 1916 the trio, in conflict withLenin and under the influence of the European Left, elaborated a platformof remarkable historical and political blindness. Faced with a war which,particularly in Eastern Europe, revolved around the nationality problem,and from which numerous new, more-or-less national 5states were toemerge, this platform affirmed that both the question of state and that ofnation, and in particular that of the national state, were dead, no longerrelevant, no longer on the agenda. With this "theoretical" baggage—weshall return to it in the section devoted to nationality—Piatakov and Boshwent back to the Kiev of 1917, where they at first completely ignored thevery visible nationalistic unrest underway, as is confirmed by their decisionnot to discuss the national movement in the party (only at the Bund'sinsistence did Piatakov eventually accept discussion of the activities of theRada).The second point concerns the impossibility for socialist revolution inthe backward tsarist empire. Of this the Piatakov of 1917 was convinced,and in agreement with him were many other Bolsheviks, such as Rykovand, in particular, many leaders of the future Left, such as Preobrazhenskii.This position was partly responsible for the unorthodox line Piatakov followedin Kiev and for the polemicizing with Lenin. And, the position itselfwas soon contradicted by reality—in this case the welcome reality of4Since I shall deal with the same phenomena from more than one point of view, some repetitionsare unavoidable. I have tried, however, to limit them as much as possible.5Actually, the disintegration of the old empires led to the formation of a new multinationalstate, i.e., the Soviet Union, as well as to the birth of many states that claimed to be "national"but were not—at least in the sense that they included vast territories inhabited by large nationalminorities (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, etc., come to mind). From this point of view,World War I was just one step forward, though quite an important one, in that tragic process ofthe formation of nationally "homogeneous" states which has dominated Eastern European historyduring the past century and a half. The most intelligent contemporary observations onwhat was happening and on its tragic perspectives are perhaps those of L. von Mises, Nation,State and the Economy (Vienna, 1919; reprint, New York, 1983).