76

p As we have seen, Lenin took an interest in social psychology only as a revolutionary. For that reason he was almost exclusively interested in dynamic socio-psychological phenomena, a category often referred to as the “frame of mind”. Lenin was not interested in the opposite, comparatively stable category described as “the psychological make-up” or “character” of a given class, professional, ethnic, or other community. Social psychology does not completely separate the two categories but it does distinguish between them.

p The words “frame of mind” are used many times in Lenin’s works. Aside from what has already been mentioned, we shall add that Lenin referred to the frame of mind as early as 1895 when he visited Orekhovo-Zuyevo. “There is the sharpest division of people into workers and bourgeois,” he wrote. “Hence the workers’ frame of mind is rather oppositional...”   [76•1 

77

p It would be wrong to disregard other terms Lenin used with considerable frequency. For instance the word “instinct” (revolutionary instinct, class instinct). It is used in a sense close to “ spontaneity”, a term very prevalent in Lenin’s works along with such terms as ’“intuition”, “sentiment”, “energy”, “passion”, “enthusiasm”, “indignation”, “haired”, “weariness”, and “apathy”.

p “The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social-Democratic...,”   [77•1  ”...a period of accumulation of revolutionary energy...,”   [77•2  ”...public, ferment and revolutionary pressure...,”   [77•3  “...the rising of hundreds of thousands of workers who have not forgotten the ‘peaceful’ 9th of January, and who long for an armed January 9.”   [77•4 

p “The workers themselves are spontaneously carrying on just such a struggle. Too passionately did they live through the great struggle in October and December.”   [77•5  The monarchist illusions the peasantry harboured “...often paralysed its energy, ...and gave rise to empty day-dreams about ‘God-given land’...”   [77•6 

p “...Unless the masses are politically conscious, wide-awake and full of determination, no changes for the better can be brought about. ...Unless the masses are interested, politically conscious, wide awake, active, determined and independent, absolutely nothing can be accomplished in either sphere...”   [77•7 

78

p “The drowsy, philistine spirit, which often in the past pervaded some of the Swiss workers’ associations is disappearing to give way to the fighting mood. . . The workers held their ground as one man.”   [78•1 

p “What is common to all three (Lenin refers here to political crises—Ed.) is a mass dissatisfaction overflowing all bounds, a mass resentment with the bourgeoisie and their government.”   [78•2 

p “Owing to the resumption of the predatory war, the bitterness of the people naturally grew oven more rapidly and intensely.”   [78•3 

p “You cannot lead the people into a predatory war in accordance with secret treaties and expect them to be enthusiastic... And it is impossible to arouse popular heroism without breaking with imperialism...”   [78•4 

p “The people cannot and will not wait patiently and passively...”   [78•5 

p “The workers of Petrograd will... bide their time, gathering their forces and preparing for resistance...”   [78•6 

p “There are signs of growing apathy and indifference. That is understandable. It implies not the ebb of the revolution, as the Cadets and their henchmen vociferate, but the ebb of confidence in resolutions and elections. In a revolution, the masses demand action, not words from the lead 79 ing parties, they demand victories in the struggle, not talk.”   [79•1 

p “Discontent, indignation and wrath are growing in the army, among the peasantry and among the workers.”   [79•2 

p Solution of the national and agrarian questions would result in ”...a real outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm among the people.”   [79•3 

p The above compilation of Lenin’s phrases shows the versatility and scope of his socio- psychological thought. It is apparent that Lenin mainly focussed his attention on psychological changes in the masses and in classes, on the dynamics of psychology. He devoted considerably less attention to stable features of the psychological make-up both of the main working classes and of various social strata, groups and professions. Though his observations in this regard do not present as complete a picture as his comments concerning socio-psychological changes, they often turn out to be of great importance since Lenin dealt with persisting psychological forms which the revolution was to overcome. Besides, there may be rare occasions when revolution finds it necessary to rely on such forms. Finally, as we have already seen, Lenin was particularly intent on having the cause of the socialist revolution, after its victory, become the body and soul of the masses, i.e., a strong psychological habit.

p So far we have mainly dwelt on Lenin’s views regarding working class psychology. However, 80 he has also left historically valuable notes and observations concerning bourgeois psychology. Following Marx, Lenin pointed out vacillations of the petty bourgeoisie between ultra- revolutionary and reactionary sentiments, as well as differences in the psychology of the petty bourgeoisie and the big bourgeoisie. “The bourgeoisie are businessmen, people who make big commercial transactions and are accustomed to getting down even to political matters in a strictly businesslike manner. They take the bull by the horns rather than putting their trust in words.”   [80•1  What Lenin wrote about the bourgeoisie in 1905 could also apply to many other historical periods: “The bourgeoisie’s recognition of the revolution cannot be sincere, irrespective of the personal integrity of one bourgeois ideologist or another. The bourgeoisie cannot but bring selfishness and inconsistency, the spirit of chaffering and petty reactionary dodges even into this higher stage of the movement.”  [80•2  In exposing bourgeois liberalism Lenin analysed its psychological causes. While making concessions to the nobility in politics, the bourgeoisie was inclined to indulge the former’s sins and consider its own position in the light of a fine liberal spirit.

p “This liberal logic is psychologically inevitable; our nobility must be depicted as negligible in order that its privileges may seem only a negligible departure from democracy.

p “With the bourgeoisie occupying a position between the hammer and the anvil, idealistic phrases, too, are psychologically inevitable, phra 81 ses which our liberals in general and their pet philosophers in particular are now mounting with such bad taste.”   [81•1 

p According to Lenin, the bourgeois struggle for freedom was marked by inconsistency and half- measures, and this gave rise to two tendencies among the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia which for the most part was of bourgeois origin. On the one hand, ”. . .the revolutionary intelligentsia, which comes mainly from these classes, has fought heroically for freedom.”  [81•2  On the other hand, it displayed a time-serving attitude and catered to the needs of the autocracy and the bourgeoisie.

p “There you have,” Lenin wrote, “the psychology of the Russian intellectual: in words he is a bold radical, in deeds he is a contemptible little government official.”   [81•3  Still Lenin pointed out on more than one occasion the natural and inevitable conflicts arising between the bourgeois intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie. For instance: “The refusal of the intellectuals to be treated as ordinary hired men, as sellers of labour- power..., has led from time to time to conflicts between the bigwigs of the Zemstvo Boards and the doctors who would resign in a body, or to conflicts with the technicians, etc.”   [81•4 

p One could cite many observations Lenin made concerning such social strata as the salaried employees (state officials), the military and the clergy.

82

p Lenin’s observations concerning the military are interesting in that he brought out the contrast in the spirit of the old Russian army of the tsar and of the new Soviet army, and indicated that even back in pre-revolutionary times there was the irrevocable process of socio-political differentiation among the military. The more the government employed troops against the population, the more the troops became involved in political life. The counter-revolutionary army, Lenin said, inevitably bred firstly the nuclei of revolutionary fighters, and secondly, masses of neutrally-minded. In other words, when the government sent soldiers against the revolution it stirred “to action the most backward people, the most ignorant, the most cowed, and the politically inert...”   [82•1  and the struggle enlightened, roused and enlivened these people.

p In a few words Lenin aptly expressed the change that had taken place in the attitude of the masses toward the men in uniform. Those words were later popularized in literature and theatre: “We know that another voice is now rising from among the people; they say to themselves: now we need not be ’afraid of the man with the gun...”  [82•2 

p Lenin also gave a very apt description of officialdom in pre-revolutionary Russia and its political wavering in 1917.

p We shall quote only one of the many observations made by Lenin concerning the clergy. Lenin drew particular attention to the person of the village priest. He wrote in 1908: “Why has the 83 village priest—that policeman of official orthodoxy —proved to be more on the side of the peasant than the bourgeois liberal? Because the village priest has to live side by side with the peasant, to depend on him in a thousand different ways, and sometimes—as when the priests practice small-scale peasant agriculture on church land—even to be in a peasant’s skin himself... So it turns out that the most reactionary priest finds it more difficult than the enlightened lawyer and professor to betray the peasant to the landlord.”   [83•1 

p Lenin had a lot to say, and his sayings are well known, on the situation of women in pre- revolutionary Russia, on women’s role in the revolutionary proletarian movement and in socialist construction. Some of the thoughts Lenin expressed are of particular value to a psychologist.

p “Proletarian women,” Lenin wrote in 1916, “will not look on passively as poorly armed or unarmed workers are shot down by the well- armed forces of the bourgeoisie.”   [83•2 

p Concerning emancipation of women from domestic drudgery, Lenin wrote in 1921 that that kind of transition was a difficult one, because it involved “the remoulding of the most deep- rooted, inveterate, hide-bound and rigid ‘order’...  [83•3 

p It is not our aim to list all of Lenin’s descriptions of social groups, strata and classes. It appears essential, however, to show that all his scientific and revolutionary work was based on an important principle of knowing, and using to 84 advantage the specific psychological features of each stratum, each profession, and—most important—of each class. Note the following remark by Lenin: “Of course, there are and always will be individual exceptions from group and class types. But social types remain.”   [84•1 

p We should like to dwell particularly on that aspect of social psychology which pertains to the national question.

p Commenting on the words of Lazzari, the Italian Socialist, who once said: “We know the Italian people’s mentality,” Lenin remarked ironically: “For my part I would not dare to make such an assertion about the Russian people...”   [84•2  Indeed, Lenin, the great Russian revolutionary leader, would not claim knowing the Russian people’s psychology. And that is saying a lot.

p In the first place, this implies that every national culture comprises two antagonistic cultures and there can be no such thing as a single psychology of such an ethnic community as a nation. Furthermore, Lenin’s words imply that playing up some features that are common to the entire nation serves to foster bourgeois patriotism and nationalism, thereby stifling revolutionary awakening of the masses. And, perhaps, the most important inference is that excessive stressing of national peculiarities serves to disunite the world revolutionary movement rather than unite it. This, Lenin writes, in a sense is the same as subordinating the all-Russian cause to “the narrowness which makes the St. Petersburger forget about Moscow, the Muscovite 85 about St. Petersburg, the Kiev man about everything except Kiev...”   [85•1 

p Lenin’s views on national sentiments are best seen in his article entitled “On the National Pride of the Great Russians”.

p He wrote: “The interests of the Great Russians’ national pride (understood not in the slavish sense) coincide with the socialist interests of the Great-Russian (and all other) proletarians.”  [85•2 

p “We are full of a sense of national pride, and for that very reason we particularly hate our slavish past..., and our slavish present... Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogises his slavery (e.g., calls the throttling of Poland and the Ukraine, etc., a ‘defence of the fatherland’ of the Great Russians)—such a slave is a lickspittle and a boor, who arouses a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt, and loathing.”   [85•3 

p Lenin regarded the process of assimilation of nations under capitalism as remarkable historical progress. Lenin was for national-liberation movement as long as they were against domination of one nation by another. It should be noted that he never separated the question of national movements from that of the classes taking part in these movements. He wrote: “The typical features of the first period are: the awakening of national movements and the drawing of the peasants, the most numerous and the most sluggish section of the population, into these movements, 86 in connection with the struggle for political liberty in general, and for the rights of the nation in particular.”   [86•1 

p Lenin vigorously opposed national discrimination regarding it as a way “to poison the minds of the ignorant and downtrodden masses.”   [86•2 

p As far as national-liberation movements are concerned, Lenin was interested in psychological aspects pertaining, for instance, to the feeling of hurt national pride, of offence on the part of oppressed nations toward the great-power oppressors, and to oppressed nations’ distrust of their oppressors.

p Nothing, or almost nothing, is said, however, in Lenin’s works about “ethnic psychology”— specific features of the national character or the psychological make-up of a given nation or people. Rarely do we find mention of the Russian people’s capability for self-sacrifice or the German people’s inclination for theoretical thinking. On the whole such generalizations are alien to Lenin’s way of thinking. This is because he believed that “In any really serious and profound political issue sides are taken according to classes, not nations.”   [86•3 

p To sum it up: Lenin was mostly interested in changing aspects of social psychology. He did not consider social psychology to be the source and solid foundation of social phenomena. He knew that social psychology could change and had to change. This left no place for idealisation or for making an absolute law out of spon 87 taneity, instincts or passions of the masses. Tsarist minions strove hard to “fan base passions among the ignorant masses”.   [87•1  Lenin was interested only in those aspects of mass psychology which facilitated revolution and were influenced by it.

p As an instance of Lenin’s understanding of socio-psychological dynamics we should like to quote from his “Before the Storm” (1906): “More and more workers, peasants and soldiers, who only yesterday were indifferent, or even sided with the Black Hundreds, are now passing over to the side of the revolution. One by one, the illusions and prejudices which made the Russian people confiding, patient, simple-minded, obedient, all-enduring, and all-forgiving, are being destroyed.”   [87•2 

p “The workers’ party,” Lenin wrote that same year, “places all its hopes on the masses; on the masses who are not frightened, not passively submissive and who do not humbly bear the yoke, but who are politically conscious, demanding and militant.”   [87•3 

p Lenin’s instructions were to use mass psychology to radically overhaul old social relations and systems. But he also maintained that everything pertaining to psychology which puts a brake on the tempestuous course of history should be overhauled. Take the peasants for instance: as a class they have a special kind of psychology— “...the peasant... is a practical man and a realist...”   [87•4  It requires special ability to win and 88 change over the in psychology of the mass peasants. “...And not to dare to give orders!”   [88•1 — Lenin warned with reference to the peasants.

p Lenin’s understanding of relations between the party and the masses is based on a wealth of socio-psychological observations. Lenin instructed to live in the midst of people, to know their sentiments, to understand the masses, to know how to approach them, to win their absolute confidence.

This explains why Soviet, social psychology considers its specific laws and phenomena proceeding from observations which Lenin made in the course of an entire epoch for guidance in revolutionary practice.