Evola on Bolshevism

by Julius Evola

Julius Evola analyzes the Bolshevik Revolution, emphasizing its methodical, impersonal, and technocratic nature, which he views as a dangerous embodiment of totalitarianism aimed at eradicating individualism and spiritual values in favor of a collectivist and materialistic world order.

The Bolshevik Revolution already exhibited typical features worth highlighting. The romantic, turbulent, chaotic, and irrational traits characteristic of other revolutions, particularly the French Revolution, played only a minor role in it. Instead, one can clearly see the presence of intelligence, a well-thought-out plan, and a certain technique. Lenin approached the problem of the proletarian revolution much like a mathematician tackling a complex equation, analyzing it calmly and methodically, down to the smallest details. His statement: “Martyrs and heroes are not necessary for the cause of the revolution. What it needs is logic and an iron hand. Our task is not to bring the revolution down to the level of the amateur, but to raise the amateur to the level of the revolution.” Trotsky complemented this by making the question of insurrection and coup not so much an issue of the masses and the people but rather a matter of specialized technique, requiring the deployment of trained and well-directed combat units.

Among the leaders, one can observe a ruthless consistency in their guiding ideas and their execution, indifferent to the practical consequences and the nameless suffering that resulted from the application of abstract principles. For them, the individual human being does not exist. Bolshevism brought forth elemental forces within a group of people, combining the fanatic’s brutal concentration of power with exact logic and method, always focused solely on the means suited to the end, much like what is characteristic of a technician. Only in a second phase, largely predetermined by them, did the release of the underground forces of the old Russian Empire occur, resulting in the terror of the masses, which sought to destroy and eradicate everything connected to the previous ruling classes and Russian-Boyar culture.¹

Another characteristic feature is that, unlike previous revolutions, which often slipped out of the hands of those who initiated them — leading revolutions to devour their own children — this happened only to a limited extent in Russia. A permanence of power and terror has formed. While the relentless logic of the Red Revolution did not hesitate to eliminate and erase any Bolsheviks who sought to deviate from the orthodox line — regardless of persons and without scruples about the means — there were no significant crises or major fluctuations at the center. This is as characteristic as it is ominous. It heralds an era in which dark forces no longer work behind the scenes as they did in the past but begin to unite with the human world, as they find suitable embodiments in individuals who combine demonic elements with the utmost intellectual sharpness, methodical consistency, and precise power ambitions. This phenomenon is one of the most striking features of the final stage of any cycle.

Regarding the idea of communism, one is mistaken if one forgets that communism holds two truths. The first, the so-called esoteric one, has a dogmatic and unchangeable character, corresponding to the fundamental principles of the revolution and expressed in the writings and directives of the early Bolshevik period. The second is a mutable, “realistic” truth, which is crafted from case to case and often stands in apparent opposition to the first truth, allowing for compromises with the ideas of the “bourgeois” world (patriotism, softening of collective ownership, myth of Slavic identity, etc.). These variations of the second truth are discarded once their tactical purpose has been fulfilled; they are merely tools serving the first truth. Those who are swayed by them and at some point believe that Bolshevism has now been “overcome,” that it has “evolved” and is aligning itself with normal state forms and usual international relations, are simply naive.

But one should not be deceived about the first truth either: the Marxist economic myth is not the central element. The main element is the denial of all values in the spiritual and transcendent realm; the philosophy and sociology of historical materialism are merely expressions of this denial, they are consequences of it, not the cause. Similarly, communist practice is only one method of systematically realizing this denial. What is important is the conclusion one reaches when following this path to the end, namely the absorption, i.e., the dissolution of the individual human being into the so-called “collective,” whose right exercises absolute domination. The eradication of everything that constitutes the value of an autonomous personality in a human being, and of anything that can form an interest detached from the collective, is the goal in the communist world. In particular, the mechanization, depersonalization, and rationalization of all activities on all levels are the means used for this purpose. These processes are no longer, as they were in the old European culture, the lamented and unavoidable consequences of fatal developments. Now that all horizons are reduced to the economic, the machine becomes the tool of a new messianic promise, and rationalization proves to be one of the ways to put an end to the “remnants” and “individualistic disorder” of the “bourgeois era.”

The abolition of private property and private entrepreneurship, which remains a fundamental idea in the inner doctrine of communism, independent of incidental useful adaptations, thus represents in the USSR only an episode and a purposeful means. The goal, as stated, is the realization of the mass human being and total materialism in every area, which bears a glaring disproportion to anything that could be derived from a merely economic myth. This system views the “I,” the “soul,” and the concept of “mine” as bourgeois illusions and prejudices, as fixed ideas, the source of all evils and grievances, from which a corresponding realistic culture and education must free the human being of the new Marxist-Leninist culture. Thus, the aim is to systematically eradicate all individualistic, anarchistic, and humanistic-romantic impulses from the period we have called Western unrealism. Zinoviev’s famous remark, “In every intellectual, I discover an enemy of Soviet power,” is well known, as is the intention to turn art into art for the masses. It should cease to concern itself with “psychology” and the personal concerns of individuals, not serve the enjoyment of parasitic upper classes, and no longer be an individual creation, but rather become impersonal, transforming into a “mighty hammer” that calls the working class to action. The idea that at least science might be able to disregard politics, i.e., the communist guiding image as a formative force, and remain “objective” is denied, and such a view is seen as a dangerous “counterrevolutionary” deviation. A case in point was the situation of Vasilyev and other biologists, who were exiled to Siberia because the heredity theory they supported recognized the factor of “inheritance” and “innate behavior” and did not portray humans as an amorphous substance shaped only by environmental conditions, as Marxism asserts. Consequently, it contradicted the central idea of communism. Whatever extreme theories exist in the realm of evolutionary materialism and sociological “science” in Western thought are absorbed in the form of a dogma and a “state doctrine,” so that a kind of brainwashing takes place in the new generations and a corresponding, deeply uprooted mindset is formed.

We are well aware of the anti-religious campaign, which does not merely have the character of simple atheism but represents a genuine and real counter-religion. In it, the innermost nature of Bolshevism, mentioned earlier, is revealed, organizing the most suitable means to eliminate the great sickness of Western man, namely that “belief,” that need to “believe,” which became a substitute when the possibility of genuine contact with the transcendent world was lost. Similarly, there are also plans to introduce “emotional education” to eliminate the problems of the “bourgeois human being,” such as sentimentality, erotic obsession, and passion. After the leveling of classes, where only the structures imposed by technocracy and the totalitarian apparatus are recognized, there comes the leveling of the sexes. The complete alignment of women with men is legally established in all areas, and the ideal is that not men and women stand opposite each other, but “comrades” and “female comrades.” Thus, the status of family life is also viewed unfavorably, not only in the form it took during the “heroic era of law,” but also in its remnants from the traditionalist and domestic bourgeois time with its sentimentalities and conventions. The so-called ZAGS² already represented a typical reversal in this sense; in any case, the numerous actions in the USSR are well known, ensuring that education essentially becomes a matter of the state and that the child prefers the “collective” life to family life.

According to the first Soviet constitution, strictly speaking, any foreigner automatically became a member of the Soviet Union if he was a proletarian worker, while a Russian who was not a proletarian worker was excluded from it and, so to speak, disenfranchised, becoming a pariah without legal personality. According to strict communist orthodoxy, Russia was simply the country where the world revolution of the fourth estate had already triumphed and organized itself to continue expanding. The Russian people have always harbored within them a somewhat unclear messianic impulse, alongside their mysticism of community: they saw themselves as the god-bringing people, destined to fulfill the work of universal salvation. All of this has been taken up again in reverse form and brought up to date with Marxist terms. God has been transformed into the earthly, collectivized human being, and the “god-bringing” people are the people destined to lead their culture to victory across the entire world by all means. The subsequent softening of the extreme form of this principle through the condemnation of Trotskyism changes nothing in the fact that the USSR still feels, not only justified but even obligated, to intervene wherever communism needs support around the world.

From a historical perspective, with Stalin’s seizure of power, the myth of “revolution” in the old sense, always associated with chaos and disorder, seems to have receded far into the distance: instead, a new form of order and unity is being pursued through totalitarianism. Society becomes a machine in which there is only one motor, namely the communist state. The individual is merely a lever or cog in this machine, and if he resists, he is immediately crushed by the mechanism, for human life holds no value in this system, and any atrocity is permissible. Matter and spirit are combined in this singular enterprise, so that the USSR reveals itself as a block from which nothing can escape, simultaneously a state, economic empire, and church, representing both a political-ideological and an economic-industrial system. Here we see the ideal of the superstate as a horrific inversion of the traditional, organic ideal.

Of utmost, general importance for us in the Soviet-communist ideal are those aspects in which something like a peculiar asceticism or purification has attempted, or is still attempting, to radically overcome the individualistic and humanistic element and return to the principle of absolute reality and impersonality, though this is inverted and directed not upwards but downwards, not towards what lies above man, but towards the sub-personal, not towards an organism, but towards a mechanism, and finally not towards spiritual liberation, but towards complete social enslavement.

That in practice, the primitive status of the vast, diverse mass that makes up the USSR, from which almost all higher elements have disappeared due to the massacres, postpones the actual formation of the “new man,” the “Soviet man,” to a distant future is not of much significance. The direction has been set. The final myth of the world of the fourth estate has taken on a clearly defined shape, and one of the greatest concentrations of power in the world is at its disposal — a power that is simultaneously the center for organized, underground, or open agitation among international popular masses and colored peoples.

(Translated from the Italian and annotated by Heinrich Matterhorn)

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1. Translator’s note: The boyars were members of the highest-ranking noble class in medieval Russia, second only to the ruling princes. They held significant political power, often serving as advisors to the grand princes and tsars, and controlled large estates, making them influential in both governance and military affairs.

2. Trans. note: ZAGS (ЗАГС) is an acronym in Russian for “Zapis’ aktov grazhdanskogo sostoyaniya” (Запись актов гражданского состояния), which translates to “Civil Status Acts Registration.” It is the government body responsible for registering vital events such as births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and name changes. Essentially, it functions as a civil registry for personal legal records.