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PIATAKOV: A MIRROR OF SOVIET HISTORY 109activity, both in the USSR and in Europe, and in a political situation likethat in the Soviet Union, in which the only active social force was thebureaucracy, the revolutionaries had no choice but to side with the bureaucracyand, in so doing, go against their ideals or testify to their faith in thoseideals from exile or from prison. Of course, 1919 was not yet 1928, and Piatakovthen took only the first steps along that path. But the "discoveries" hemade at the time, through Trotsky, clearly indicated the direction that pathwas to take.In the first place, there was the discovery of "Russia" and the East. Afterthe defeats of the summer had barred the way to Europe, which wentthrough Ukraine and Hungary, Trotsky proposed sending the unemployed"Ukrainian" (in quotation marks because few of them were actuallyUkrainian) leaders to the Urals, which were to be transformed into a bastionof the revolution. For Piatakov, who was sent to lead the First Labor Army,his time in the Urals meant his first separation from Europe and, though in asincerely revolutionary form, his discovery of the imperial, Asiatic dimensionof the new (and of the old) state.In the second place, fresh from a disaster caused partly by the naïveté ofthe Left, Piatakov discovered, through Trotsky, the value of bureaucracy, ofcommand, and of administrative efficiency—in their harder and more primitive,military versions. After some months, the leader of the military opposition,who loved to dress as a "Ukrainian brigand," was discovered byLiberman in smart uniform and shining boots jumping to attention toanswer a telephone call from Trotsky. Trotsky, we might say, had becomein Piatakov's eyes a new "miracle man," who personified efficiency, hardness,"culture," and organization and who, with these qualities, was savingthe revolution.Eight years of collaboration and joint reflection followed this meeting.The first four, 1920-1923, were the more intense. The year 1919-1920,marked by debate about militarization and the creation of the Labor Armies,was dedicated to reflections of an almost Weberian savor on bureaucratsand bureaucracy. We will return to these in the last section. Here I wishonly to say that the discovery of bureaucracy was without doubt "anti-Marxist" (to be convinced of this, it is enough to recall how simplistic andUtopian the theory of the state and of its apparatus is not only in Marx andEngels but also in the Lenin of State and Revolution, even though the latterwas soon forced to rethink his ideas on the matter). We have here a firstexample of that process of selection to which ideology was then subjectedby the actual situation: those pieces which best fit the needs of the momentwere favored and then integrated, where the theory was found lacking, withparts dictated by "common sense."