The Russian Revolution and the Rise of Fascism

As Paxton (2005) points out, the Russian Revolution was directly responsible for the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany. The Russian Revolution, comprised of and led largely by a Jewish demographic, represented a threat to the nationality and national interests of European states. Fascist movements were not limited to Italy and Germany—they appeared in England, France, Spain and elsewhere—but Italy and Germany emerged as the primary Fascist states because of the force of leadership that emerged in each nation respectively: Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany. Both were at the forefront of the conservative, nationalist movement that pushed back against the rising tide of Communistic socialism, which the conservative nationalist parties vehemently opposed. The Russian Revolution was, in essence, a rejection of everything Old World, as Fitzgerald (2000) showed. The representatives of Fascism were fighting specifically for that Old World—and they were using every possible avenue they could control to wage that war. This paper will examine the relationship between the Russian Revolution and the rise of Fascism and show that essentially Fascism happened because Communism came to roost in Russia and was threatening to do the same throughout Europe.
In what way did the Russian Revolution spark the rise of Fascism? Paxton (2005) states clearly that Fascism appeared wherever there were “attempts at Bolshevik revolution—or fear of it—during the period when communism seemed likely to spread beyond its Russian home base” (p. 81). This was especially true in the strongholds of Fascism in Europe, where “Germany, Italy, and Hungary had all had particularly close calls with the ‘red menace’ after the war” (Paxton, 2005, p. 81). Fascism represented an ideology directly opposed to that of the communists. During the Weimar Republic between the wars, for example, Jewish influence had been particularly pronounced in Germany (Paxton, 2005). Had the Jewish influence, the decimation of Germany, and the destruction of the country’s culture not been the case, Hitler would have had no reason for rising up. The communists wanted revolution; the Fascists sought preservation. The Blackshirts in Italy, the NSDAP in Germany, and the extreme Right in France (unsuccessful, however, in achieving its goal), all illustrated that Fascism was a movement of a mass of people against a countering trend by the revolutionary Left.
There were very real geopolitical and socio-political factors involved in the rise of Fascism that led many ordinary men and women, workers, politicians, and elites to support the leaders who demonstrated a penchant for Fascism. Fascism was viewed, Paxton (2005) indicates, as the last hurrah of the working man who still believed in the Old World values and of the Old World patriarchs (the elites who did not want to see their countries taken over by Soviet-style separatists—i.e., Jews). Paxton’s argument is that Fascism had very clear and distinct social, cultural and emotional roots: it was connected to the culture of the past—to everything from the music of Wagner to the philosophical works of Schonerer and Chamberlain and Georges Sorel. Fascism had an intellectual basis that was opposed to the liberalism represented by the Leftist (largely Jewish) revolutionary sect that had taken power in Russia and that was rising up in Hungary, Germany, Italy and Spain (where a major civil war soon got underway to determine the fate of the Spaniards).
Marx described the relationship between Communism and the rise of Fascism well when he wrote: “the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of old ones” (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 2). For Marx, the bourgeois was the enemy—and he was the founder of Communism. The Communists who took over Russia were set on eliminating the bourgeois from the face of society. In essence, they wanted to take their place—but the immediate goal was the extermination of them and their pretensions.
In short, the Communist Manifesto was a declaration of war against the bourgeois class, the patriarchs of the Old World, the society elites, the wealthy, the privileged, the educated, the sophisticated, and the individuals who still believed in the Old World ideals—such as those which emanated from Christianity. It was a declaration of war against Europe—and Hitler and Mussolini both saw it as such. Hitler’s “swastika” was a hooked cross—a Christian symbol and the NSDAP and the Church got along well to a certain extent throughout much of the time period (though not always). All the same, the Communist threat was real, as the “red menace” of the Russian Revolution appeared knocking on the doors of another European state (Paxton, 2005). Hitler and Mussolini had enough resolve and force of personality to stare down the barrel of the “menace,” come what may. The relationship between the two was, thus, causal: had there been no Marx nor Manifesto, their would have likely been no Mein Kampf. As Hobsbwam (1996) shows, the Bolshevik threat was real: “the German revolution of 1918 confirmed the hopes of the Russian Bolsheviks, all the more because a shortlived Socialist republic was actually proclaimed in Bavaria in 1918…and a brief Soviet Republic was set up in Munich, the capital of German art” (p. 68). This surely rankled Hitler, the avid art lover and despiser of modernism, and spurred him on his determination to oppose the Bolsheviks and their decadent ideology.
In spite of this inherent conflict between Fascism and the Communist Soviet regime, the two shared similarities. Both were totalitarian in aspect. Hitler’s NSDAP in Germany was totalitarian to the core—just as Lenin’s and later Stalin’s Soviet Union was. The difference, of course, was that Hitler’s totalitarianism was centered on preservation and promotion of German nationalism and the Old World values and culture (including the preservation of the Church). The Soviet regime focused on eradication of the Old World relics (including persecution of the Church): “Religion, a form of superstition, was backward” (Fitzgerald, 2000, p. 15). Ironically, both embraced the notion of nationalism and extolled virtues like hard work, duty, and idealism—but whereas Hitler celebrated the peasant class and the bourgeois, the Soviets condemned them. Still, as Fitzgerald (2000) states, the Soviets also embraced the “cult of personality” that typified the Fascist regimes, through which Hitler and Mussolini administered (p. 15). In each regime, the Leader was hailed as a visionary and followed by the mass of people, if not outright adored.
In conclusion, had it not been for Marx and the Soviet Revolution, the rise of Fascism would have been less pronounced and perhaps non-existent. The relationship between the two was causal—and even if the regimes shared some similarities in terms of disposition (both being characteristically totalitarian) it was precisely the question of what they were totalitarian about that distinguished them from one another. The Marxists sought to upset the Old World order and replace its values and ideals with something progressive. Hitler, Mussolini and the Fascists resisted this attempt and fought tooth and nail to control all aspects of their states, from culture to work to recreation, in order to prevent the “red menace” from achieving its aim.
References
Fitzgerald, S. (2000). Everyday Stalinism. UK: Oxford University Press.
Hobsbwam, E. (1996). The Age of Extremes. NY: Vintage.
Marx, K. & Engels, J. (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party.
Paxton, R. (2005). Anatomy of Fascism. NY: Vintage.