p Lenin’s observations and statements relating to social psychology, if arranged chronologically, would appear to centre mainly around two historical landmarks—the 1905-07 Revolution, and the years of 1917-22. Twice his thought delved especially deep into the most subjective, most intimate aspects of the life of classes and of the masses in general. Not being a professional psychologist, Lenin, nevertheless, was a psychologist as a politician and a revolutionary. And it is only natural that his psychological insight was keener at times when a revolutionary task started to materialise.

p However, it was not just a matter of Lenin’s growing interest in the psychological aspects of revolution. He was convinced, and his conviction had been verified by life, that revolutions represented moments of extreme changes and crises in the psychology of man, of masses of people, and of entire nations. At such moments a true revolutionary should be more of a psychologist than 52 ever. “Every revolution,” Lenin explained, “means a sharp turn in the lives of a vast number of people... And just, as any him in the life of an individual teaches him a great deal and brings rich experience and great emotional stress, so a revolution teaches an entire people very rich and valuable lessons in a short space of time. During a revolution, millions and tens of millions of people learn in a week more than they do in a year of ordinary, somnolent life.”   [52•1 

p Those words were written in 1917, but as far back as 1905, at the height of the revolution, Lenin felt quite the same. “In the history of revolutions there come to light contradictions that have ripened for decades and centuries. Life becomes unusually eventful. The masses, which have always stood in the shade and have therefore often been ignored and even despised by superficial observers, enter the political arena as active combatants. These masses are learning in practice, and before the eyes of the world are taking their first tentative steps, feeling their way, defining their objectives, testing themselves and the theories of all their ideologists. These masses are making heroic efforts to rise to the occasion and cope with the gigantic tasks of world significance imposed upon them by history; and however great individual defeats may be, however shattering to us the rivers of blood and the thousands of victims, nothing will ever compare in importance with this direct training that the masses and the classes receive in the course of the revolutionary struggle itself.”  [52•2  Here is one more extract from Lenin’s “Lecture on the 1905 Revolution”, deli 53 vered in 1917. The history of that Revolution shows how great the dormant energy of the proletariat can be. In “a revolutionary epoch... the proletariat can generate fighting energy a hundred times greater than in ordinary, peaceful times. It shows that up to 1905 mankind did not yet know what a great, what a tremendous exertion of effort. The proletariat is, and will be, capable of...”   [53•1 

p Quite a number of Lenin’s statements on social psychology, relating to the years of 1905-07, have been referred to above. All of them testify to his keen interest in the psychological aspect of social life.

p In addition here are other observations, made by Lenin in 1905, on how people had lost faith in live tsar. According to Lenin, as soon as “the revolutionary energy and the revolutionary instinct of the working class have asserted themselves with irresistible force”  [53•2  despite all police wiles and deceits, the vestige of naive faith in the tsar had to die out. “Generation after generation of downtrodden, half-civilised, rustic existence cut off from the world tended to strengthen this faith. Every month of life of the new, urban, industrial, literate Russia has been undermining and destroying this faith.”   [53•3  That is why the decade of the working class movement preceding 1905 not only produced thousands of Social-Democrats who consciously broke with that faith. “It has educated scores of thousands of workers in whom the class instinct, strengthened in the strike movement and fostered by political agitation, has shattered this 54 faith to its foundations.”   [54•1  Hence, different prognosis, different political prospects. “The masses of workers and peasants who still retained a vestige of faith in the tsar were not ready for insurrection, we said. After January 9 we have the right, to say that now they are ready for insurrection and will rise.”   [54•2 

p In 1905 Lenin wrote: “Nor is it only the barometer that indicates a storm: everything has been dislodged by the mighty whirlwind of a concerted proletarian onslaught.”   [54•3  What sweeping changes occurred during the short, though violent, storm, how many illusions were cast off and how many new psychological phenomena became evident. “The bourgeoisie and the landlords have become fierce and brutal. The man in the street is weary. The Russian intellectual is limp and despondent. The party of liberal windbags and liberal traitors, the Cadets, has raised its head, hoping to make capital out of the prevailing weariness born of the revolution... But below, deep down among the proletarian masses and among the mass of the destitute, starving peasantry, the revolution has made headway, quietly and imperceptibly undermining the foundations, rousing the most somnolent with the thunder of civil war.”   [54•4 

p Then the counter-revolution got the upper hand, and the years of reaction set in. Lenin made far less statements on social psychology. In 1908 for the first time he expounded on the philistines: “And today, in the period of sweeping counter- revolutionary repressions, the philistines are adapt 55 ing themselves in cowardly fashion to the new masters, currying favour with the new caliphs for an hour, renouncing the past, trying to forget it...”   [55•1  Yet, Lenin realised full well that that was a superficial process. Deep down in society no force was capable of eradicating the changes that the revolution had brought about in the thinking of the masses. Those changes were irreversible, they lived deep in the hearts of millions of people, and sooner or later were bound to come to the surface like seeds in the spring. Lenin referred to the indelible trace the 1871 Paris Commune had left in the minds of millions. “The epic of its (the Commune’s—Ed.) life and death,” he wrote, “the sight of a workers’ government which seized the capital of the world and held it for over two months, the spectacle of the heroic struggle of the proletariat and the torments it underwent after its defeat—all this raised the spirit of millions of workers, aroused their hopes and enlisted their sympathy for the cause of socialism. The thunder of the cannon in Paris awakened the most backward sections of the proletariat from their deep slumber, and everywhere gave impetus to the growth of revolutionary socialist propaganda.”   [55•2  The 1905 December events in Russia likewise left a trace which no reaction could obliterate. The heroism of the Moscow workers, Lenin pointed out, set an unforgettable example to the working people, “started a deep ferment..., the effects of which never died down, in spite of all persecution... After December they were no longer the same people. They had been reborn.”   [55•3 

p Proceeding from his observations, Lenin, a the very dawn of the new revolution, noticed vague psychological symptoms of it, above all among the workers. The coming storm was already felt in 1910—economic and political strikes either alternated or were closely interconnected, uniting the workers. “The proletariat has begun. The democratic youth are continuing. The Russian people are awakening to new struggle, advancing towards a new revolution. The first beginning of the struggle has shown us again that the forces are alive which shook the tsarist regime in 1905...”   [56•1  True, psychological phenomena of quite a different nature—the thirst for general theoretical knowledge—were typical of the period when there was no open struggle.

p With a fresh revolutionary upswing Lenin again displayed a keen interest in the psychological processes within different sections of the working class, the peasantry and among other social groups. That upswing was to culminate in the 1917 October revolution.

p Lenin recorded the slightest changes that seemed to be of very little or no importance whatsoever. A “spontaneous desire is to be observed to collect funds to aid the starving and to help them in other ways,” he noted in 1912, and added that that desire “must be supported and furthered by all Social-Democrats in the spirit of class struggle...”   [56•2 

p The workers’ and students’ strikes of 1910-11, the resumption of demonstrations and rallies—all that Lenin summed up as signs of “growing re 57 volutionary feelings.”   [57•1  A year later, in 1912, he anticipated those sentiments as a confluence of a multitude of streamlets into a single flow. “Signs from various quarters indicate that the weariness and stupor brought about by the triumph of the counter-revolution are passing away, that once again there is an urge for revolution.”   [57•2  There “is inflammable material everywhere, and everywhere a revolutionary mood is growing among the masses, including even those workers and peasants who are held down by barrack drill.”  [57•3  The “whole of this country is getting into a ferment. The most backward sections both of the workers and the peasants are coming into direct or indirect contact with the strikers. Hundreds of thousands of revolutionary agitators are all at once appearing on the scene. Their influence is infinitely increased by the fact that they are inseparably linked with the rank and file, with the masses, and that they remain among them, fight for the most urgent needs of every worker’s family, and combine with this immediate struggle for urgent economic needs their political protest and struggle against the monarchy. For counter-revolution has stirred up in millions and tens of millions of people a bitter hatred for the monarchy, it has given them the rudiments of an understanding of the part played by it, and now the slogan of the foremost workers of the capital—long live the democratic republic!—spreads through thousands of channels, in the wake of every strike, reaching the backward sections, the remotest provinces, the 58 ‘people’, the ‘depths of Russia’! ”   [58•1 

p Lenin foresaw the coming second revolution which by 1913 displayed a much greater store of revolutionary energy in the proletariat, than the first one. The revolutionary upswing was not something coming from above, although political consciousness, experience and determination of the foremost class and its vanguard had increased.

p “But in our country this rise is taking place spontaneously, because tens of millions of the semi-proletarian and peasant population are passing on, if one can use this expression, to their vanguard a sentiment of concentrated indignation, which is surging up and overflowing.”  [58•2 

p 1913. Strike-demonstrations, red banners being unfurled in the streets of the capital, revolutionary speeches and slogans brought to the crowd— such strikes, Lenin held, could riot be evoked artificially. But neither could they be slopped once hundreds and hundreds of thousands were involved. Yet, that kind of a strike was by itself only a means for inciting protest, for arousing the indignation of the whole huge country. “It is essential that the smouldering resentment and subdued murmurings of the countryside should, along with the indignation in the barracks, find a centre of attraction in the workers’ revolutionary strikes.”   [58•3 

p We shall not be considering the changes which, according to Lenin, occurred in the psychology of the masses both in Russia and abroad as a result of the 1914-17 World War. Part of the proletariat then turned out to have been overwhelmed by bourgeois chauvinism. Still, on the whole, the war 59 could not stop the urge for revolution.

p Then came 1917 with revolutionary feelings reaching the point where a revolutionary crisis developed. And again the palette of Lenin the psychologist became richer, abounding in colours. Of interest in this respect is Lenin’s assessment of the important fact that “the broad, unstable, and vacillating mass” which, as he put it, was closest to the peasantry, was changing camps. That mass was swinging either to the right or to the left, Lenin observed. As part of that mass, the soldiers, in the first months of 1917 “swung away from the capitalists towards the revolutionary workers. It was the swing or movement of this mass, strong enough to be a decisive factor, that caused the crisis.”   [59•1 

p The concept of a revolutionary crisis or a revolutionary situation is of great importance for the study of Lenin’s legacy in social psychology.

p It was between the two Russian revolutions that as important a part of Lenin’s science of revolution as the doctrine of revolutionary situation, was formulated. Although original ideas of the doctrine are found in Lenin’s articles written in 1904- 05, on the whole it was set forth in 1913, in “May Day Action by the Revolutionary Proletariat” and “The Adjourned Duma and the Embarrassed Liberals”, and expounded in 1915 in “The Collapse of the Second International”. In “~‘Left-Wing’ Communism—an Infantile Disorder” (1920) Lenin reiterated the essence of the doctrine on the revolutionary situation.

p The doctrine is related to the subject under consideration inasmuch as it provides a graphic example of the role Lenin assigned to the psy 60 chology, sentiments and activities of the masses. As is known, Lenin regarded the swing of the masses from passive submission to oppression, to indignation and revolt as the most important symptom determining a revolutionary situation. His works written in 1915 listed the symptoms of a revolutionary situation two of which are given below: “(2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in ‘peace time’, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the ‘upper classes’ themselves into independent historical action.”   [60•1 

p From the point of view of social psychology, a crisis among the “upper classes” is of interest in that it leads to a rift “through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth”.  [60•2  In “May Day and the War” (1915) Lenin summed up the essence of a revolutionary situation as follows:

p “ ( α ) the lower orders won’t, the upper classes can’t

p ( β ) growth of misery

p ( γ ) extraordinary activity.”   [60•3 

p As has been mentioned, the outlines of Lenin’s future doctrine on revolutionary situation were manifest in his works of 1904, for instance, in the following remark: the party of the proletariat must “start an uprising at the moment when the 61 government is in the most desperate straits and popular unrest is at its highest.”   [61•1  The psychological aspect is revealed here very expressively. In 1905 Lenin warned that the slogan of insurrection was inappropriate without signs of a definite crisis, “until the masses have definitely shown that they have been roused and are ready to act...”   [61•2 

p Many years later, when the doctrine of a revolutionary situation had been elaborated, Lenin depicted that aspect of a revolutionary situation after the 1905 January events in the following words: “Within a few months, however, the picture changed completely. The hundreds of revolutionary Social-Democrats ’suddenly’ grew into thousands; the thousands became the leaders of between two and three million proletarians. The proletarian struggle produced widespread ferment, often revolutionary movements among the peasant masses, fifty to a hundred million strong; the peasant movement had its reverberations in the army and led to soldiers’ revolts, to armed clashes between one section of the army and another. In this manner a colossal country, with a population of 130,000,000, went into the revolution; in this way, dormant Russia was transformed into a Russia of a revolutionary proletariat and a revolutionary people.”   [61•3 

p In 1915 Lenin analysed a new revolutionary situation and noted the following social psychological phenomena: “The smouldering indignation of the masses, the vague yearning of society’s downtrodden and ignorant strata for a kindly 62 (‘democratic’) peace, the beginning of discontent among the ‘lower classes’ all these are facts... The experience of the war, like the experience of any crisis in history, of any great, calamity and any sudden turn in human life, stuns and breaks some people, but enlightens and tempers others.”   [62•1 

p Then came 1917, the great year in human history. “The revolutionary situation in Europe is a fact. The extreme discontent, the unrest, and anger of the masses are fads. It is on strengthening this torrent that revolutionary Social-Democrats must concentrate all their efforts.”  [62•2  In “Letter to Comrades” Lenin summed up what he knew about the sentiments of the masses: ”. . .that ‘ everybody’ reports it as a tense and expectant mood; ...that ‘everybody’ agrees that the workers are greatly dissatisfied with the indecision of the centres concerning the ‘last decisive struggle’ . . .that ‘everybody’ unanimously characterises the mood of the broadest masses as close to desperation...”  [62•3  Lenin summed up those sentiments by “enough of wavering.”   [62•4 

Such was the psychological aspect of the political process, rapid growth of politically active mass and the strength of that mass. ”...Symptomatic of any genuine revolution is a rapid, tenfold and even hundredfold increase in the size of the working and oppressed masses—hitherto apathetic— who are capable of waging the political struggle.”   [62•5  Revolution “is not made to order; it results from an outburst of mass indignation.”   [62•6