National Bolshevism

National Bolshevism is a political ideology that tries to unite elements of Fascism with Bolshevism.

History

Origins

In Russia

During the Russian Civil War, a number of prominent Whites switched to the Bolshevik side because they saw it as the only hope for restoring greatness to Russia. In these groups of people, there was Professor Nikolai Ustrialov (an ex-anti-communist who came to believe that Bolshevism could be modified to serve nationalistic purposes) and his followers the Smenovekhovtsy, came to regard themselves as National Bolsheviks. Similar ideas were expressed by the Evraziitsi movement and writers such as D. S. Mirsky and the pro-monarchist Mladorossi.

In Germany

In Germany, this ideology was originally a a current of the Communist Party of Germany and the Communist Workers' Party of Germany, a communist group that wanted to unite all German communists to make them fight against German nationalists who rejected the Treaty of Versailles. The most important exponents of this ideology in that time were Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim.

Role in Fascism

During the 1920s, a lot of non-Nazi fascist movements were National Bolshevik and became very pupular in the world of German intellectuals of that time with Ernst Niekisch of the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany being its most important exponent. National Bolshevik tendencies were present even in the Nazi Party, but to a lesser degree.

Role in Stalinism

Ustryalov and others sympathetic to the Smenovekhovtsy cause, such as Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Ilya Ehrenburg, were eventually able to return to the Soviet Union and following the co-option of aspects of nationalism by Stalin and his ideologue Andrei Zhdanov enjoyed membership of the intellectual elite under the designation non-party Bolsheviks.