p A study of Lenin’s remarks on social psychology reveals, that in the final count all these observations serve one purpose—to take a correct account of the conditions of the Party’s revolutionary activity, to make a true appraisal of the socio-psychological medium for which Party slogans are intended and thus measure the effectiveness of its work. Lenin shrewdly perceived amidst different strata of the proletariat and peasantry high tides of revolutionary energy followed by temporary ebbs, at times “dejection and apathy,”   [27•1  depending on the general political situation.

p He saw the entire range of changes: after the revolutionary upsurge of 1905-07 came “a 28 period of an enormous decline in the energy of the masses”   [28•1 ; in different historical conditions, during the war difficulties of 1918, there was a prospect of victory ”...if the necessary turn in the mood of the people takes place. This turn is developing and perhaps much time is required, but it will come, when the great mass of the people will not say what they are saying now”.  [28•2  The Party accordingly varied the methods of its work among the masses.

p Here we are only concerned with the psychological aspect of Lenin’s teaching on relationships between the Party and the masses and classes, which is closely linked with the other aspects.

p The relations between the organised vanguard and the mass are an example of Leninist dialectics.

p In the first place Lenin repeatedly stressed that the best, the most revolutionary vanguard, the most experienced workers’ party is only a drop in the immense popular ocean, and is powerless if the ocean remains still. He wrote that ”...even the finest of vanguards express the class-consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of thousands, whereas at moments of great upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities, revolutions are made by the class- consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes.”   [28•3 

p Lenin was not afraid of noting the Party’s lag 29 ging behind spontaneous shifts in the revolutionary psychology of the masses during a sweeping revolutionary upsurge. “January 9, 1905, fully revealed the vast reserve of revolutionary energy possessed by the proletariat, as well as the utter inadequacy of Social-Democratic organisation.”   [29•1  Lenin promptly drew a practical conclusion from the sweeping growth of the masses of the proletariat and peasantry who had re-awakened to political and revolutionary life after the January, 1905 events. “To drop metaphor, we must considerably increase the membership of all Party and Party-connected organisations in order to be able to keep up to some extent with the stream of popular revolutionary energy which has been a hundredfold strengthened.”   [29•2  He remarked in a letter at that time: “With the gigantic movement that there is now, no single C.C. in the world, under conditions where the Party is illegal, could satisfy a thousandth part of the demands made on it. . . Personally, I would willingly postpone it (the uprising—Ed.) ... But, then, nobody asks us anyway.”   [29•3  A congress was needed to prepare an uprising “on the basis of the practical experiences of the functionaries and on the basis of the mood of the working-class masses”.  [29•4  Lenin repeated time and again that the Party did not keep abreast of the activity of the masses. “Events have shown,” he wrote, “that we are dealing, not with an uprising of the ‘uncivilised masses’, but 30 with an uprising of politically conscious masses capable of carrying on an organised struggle. . . We must ascertain the mood of the proletariat whether the workers consider themselves fit to struggle and to lead the struggle.”   [30•1  A little later, the Moscow events “have shown that we are still inclined to underestimate the revolutionary activity of the masses.”   [30•2  In subsequent historical periods Lenin also spoke highly of the initiative of the working class. He said, for example, in 1919, that Soviet power bad been able to hold out in the villages only because it had been receiving the sincere support of the majority of the working people and added: “We have been receiving this support because the urban workers have established contact with the rural poor in thousands of ways, of which we have not even an inkling.  [30•3 

p This, however, is only one pole of the dialectics. To begin with Lenin oriented the Party’s work not only for the period of powerful upsurge but also for the period of calm when the Party was required to conduct “political agitation”   [30•4  to awaken the broad masses. The principal thing is that the vanguard is a vanguard because it is capable of carrying away and firing the masses. “And it has frequently happened at critical moments in the life of nations that, even small advanced detachments of advanced classes have carried the rest with them, have fired the masses with revolutionary enthusiasm, and 31 have accomplished tremendous historical feats.”   [31•1  This role of the vanguard has been accomplished in history not by mere propaganda of an advanced theory but the propagation of enthusiasm, by igniting the fire of revolutionary sentiment. Lenin wrote: “All great political changes have come about through the enthusiasm of the vanguard, whom the masses followed spontaneously, not quite consciously.”   [31•2 

p When in 1905 the Party set forth the slogan to concentrate on non-parliamentary means of struggle it was “the battle-cry of men who really were at the head of the masses, at the head of millions of fighting workers and peasants. The fact that these millions responded to the call proved that the slogan was objectively correct, and that it, expressed not merely the ‘convictions’ of a handful of revolutionaries, but the actual situation, the temper and the initiative of the masses.”   [31•3  The masses “instinctively feel that we are right,” Lenin wrote in 1916.  [31•4  In other words, the Party’s slogans fell on receptive socio- psychological soil and met the objective interests of the masses. Therein lay the strength of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin stressed in 1917: “It is we, and we alone, who ‘take into account’ the change in the mood of the masses, as well as something besides, something far more important and more profound than moods and changes in moods, namely, the fundamental interests of the masses”. The Bolsheviks, Lenin went on, turned 32 their backs on chauvinism, so as to express the interests of the masses and call them to revolution, “and use their change of mood not to pander to a given mood in an unprincipled manner, but to wage a struggle on principle for a complete rupture with social-chauvinism.”   [32•1 

p We see that Lenin was against the Party blindly following mass psychology. He stated directly: “Naturally, we shall not submit to everything the masses say, because the masses, too, sometimes—particularly in time of exceptional weariness and exhaustion resulting from excessive hardship and suffering—yield to sentiments that are in no way advanced.”   [32•2 

p Such is, on the psychological plane, the dialectics of relationships between the mass and the vanguard, or, as Lenin wrote in “What Is to Be Done?”, of “the rank and file” and “ professional revolutionaries.”   [32•3  The Party must always be with the masses, it “must go where the masses go, and try at every step to push the consciousness of the masses in the direction of socialism...”   [32•4  The Party also wins its leading role by always being together with the masses, by inspiring and guiding them by its efforts. Yet history is essentially made by the working masses. Lenin wrote in 1905 that the working class felt “an instinctive urge for open revolutionary action” and the Party should “learn to set the aims of this action correctly”, that is, “to lead the proletariat” and “not merely to lag in the wake of 33 events.”   [33•1  In early 1917 he pointed out that “the only effective force that compels change is popular revolutionary energy” which “finds expression in comprehensive mass revolutionary propaganda, agitation and organisation conducted by parties marching at the head of the revolution, not limping along in its tail.”   [33•2  “Socialism cannot be decreed from above, its spirit rejects the mechanical bureaucratic approach; living, creative socialism is the product, of the masses themselves.”   [33•3 

p Let us recall how Lenin put the question of the Party’s duty with regard to the mood of the masses in July 1917. He commented on the “growing popular discontent, impatience and indignation. . . It was the imperative duty of the proletarian party to remain with the masses and try to lend as peaceable and organised a character as possible to their justified action. . .”   [33•4 

p Let us recall bow boldly Lenin faced the peasants’ desire for equal division of the land after the October Revolution gave the key economic and political positions to the proletariat: “ Experience is the best teacher and it will show who is right. Let the peasants solve this problem from one end and we shall solve it from the other. Experience will oblige us to draw together in the general stream of revolutionary creative work, in the elaboration of new state forms. We must be guided by experience; we 34 must, allow complete freedom to the creative faculties of the masses.”   [34•1 

p Let us recall, at last, how Lenin argued for the need for a political respite, in 1918: the Bolsheviks had convinced the people, they had won influence over them from the rich, yet the ruin, the famine, the consequences of the war—“all this has inevitably caused extreme weariness and even exhaustion of wide sections of the working people. These people insistently demand and cannot but demand a respite.”   [34•2 

p Thus Lenin appraised the Party’s attitude to the creator and decisive force of history, the toiling masses. This is the only yardstick to be applied to it both by political practice and history. “...Any false note in the position of any party immediately lands that party where it deserves to be.”   [34•3  With this understanding of the relationship between the Party and the masses Lenin paid much attention both to the psychology of the masses and that of the Party members; on several occasions he sternly criticised the latter.

p In 1922 Lenin wrote: “The economic power in the hands of the proletarian state of Russia is quite adequate to ensure the transition to communism. What then is lacking? Obviously, what is lacking is culture among the stratum of the Communists who perform administrative functions.”   [34•4 

p At the same time Lenin found strong, impres 35 sive words to say about the ideological and psychological prestige of the Party and its representatives among the masses. He wrote in 1907 that, after the split with the Mensheviks, “it was necessary to arouse among the masses hatred, aversion and contempt for these people who had ceased to be members of a united party. . .”   [35•1  These words are a good illustration of the importance Lenin attached to the sentiments the masses had for the Bolsheviks whose agitation and propaganda had always been “an appeal to the people’s sentiments”,  [35•2  as Lenin wrote about the manifesto of the Third International. This factor, coupled with scientific soundness and objectivity, gave strength and conviction to all Party slogans and appeals. Make the Soviets an organ of insurrection, an organ of revolutionary power! “Apart from this, the Soviets are a meaningless plaything that can only produce apathy, indifference and disillusion among the masses, who are legitimately disgusted at the endless repetition of resolutions and protests.”   [35•3 

p The strength of the Party was in the clarity of its agitation and the influence of its example. “What is expected of us is propaganda by example; the non-Party masses have to be set an example,” Lenin wrote.  [35•4  He urged to develop mass agitation in 1918 “among the workers” and peasants “of the famine-stricken gubernias,” in particular, for a “crusade for grain to Yelets Uyezd” where yields had been good.  [35•5 

p Here is another example of the great importance Lenin invariably attached to psychology and the socio-psychological tasks of Party work. When speaking at, a meeting about the Red Army’s successes in 1919 he pointed out that they were due entirely to intensification of Party activities and to cultural and educational work in the ranks of the Red Army. “This brought about, a psychological change, and as a result our Red Army won the Don region for us.”   [36•1 

To take into account psychological change, to bring about this change, is, from the viewpoint of social psychology, the dual task of the Party in guiding the masses, in attaining the goals of the revolution, in building socialism.