The Phantom of the Russian Bonaparte

Abstract

Chapter 14 traces the evolution of the concept of Bonapartism. Marx and Engels thought it a remediable ‘wrong turn’ in history’s evolution that happily occurred only under capitalism; Louis Napoleon and Bismarck were its archetypical expressions. Initially, the Bolsheviks did not take issue with this characterization. But by the 1920s the Bolsheviks recognized that Bonapartism could also occur under socialism, and that the dictatorship it entailed would be a military one; the dictator would either be an army general or a civilian totally dependent on the military for his power. This caused the Bolsheviks to consider Napoleon Bonaparte, rather than Louis Napoleon, the prototypical Bonapartist in power. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the role the accusation of Bonapartism played in Khrushchev’s dismissal of Marshal Zhukov as Minister of Defence in 1957.