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p Russia was the first country where, in alliance with the working peasants, the working class consummated a socialist revolution and established the proletarian dictatorship. The 184 mission of being the first to break the chain of imperialism and break away from its hold fell to the Bolshevik Party and the working people of Russia, and this, naturally, attracts the attention of the Communist and Workers’ parties of all countries to the experience of the working people of Russia and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They regard the October Revolution as a major fount of revolutionary ideals and a treasure-store of experience of the strategy and tactics of the proletarian struggle.

p What makes the struggle of the working class for power in Russia of world-wide importance?

p In “Left-Wing” Communism—an Infantile Disorder, Lenin wrote that the international importance of the October Revolution must be understood in both its broad and narrow sense. In the broad sense its importance is that by breaking through the chain of imperialism it had repercussions in all countries. The socialist revolution, he said, kindled sparks in all the countries of the world and brought imperialism closer to the edge of the abyss, showing the bourgeoisie that its rule was coming to an end. “Follow the road blazed by the Russians" became the catchword of the proletariat throughout the world.

p In the narrow sense Lenin meant “the international validity or the historical inevitability of a repetition, on an international scale, of what has taken place in our country”. He held that “on certain very important questions of the proletarian revolution, all countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done”.  [184•* 

p Anybody studying the experience of the October Revolution will find that the concrete events and facts of the revolutionary movement, the activity of individual parties, the struggle of the proletariat, the mass actions of the working people, the armed collisions and strikes, the drastic changes in the tactics employed by the Bolsheviks and their occasional setbacks and ultimate triumph are of international significance. The actions of the Communist Party and the peoples of Russia during the historic year of 1917 were an expression of the processes which have been and will be inevitably repeated in other countries.  [184•** 

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p At the turn of the century Russia was the focal point of the typical socio-economic contradictions of world imperialism: between labour and capital, between developing capitalism and considerable survivals of feudalism and serfdom, between highly developed industrial areas and the backward outlying regions. These contradictions were sharply accentuated by the political, spiritual and national oppression instituted by the tsarist autocracy. The social problems confronting Russia—abolition of landowner oppression, deliverance of the working people from capitalist slavery and national oppression, the need for socialist reforms—were crucial for many other countries as well.

p The importance of the October Socialist Revolution to the world is precisely that it not only resolved the national contradictions in Russia but laid the beginning for the eradication of the contradictions rending modern imperialism. The basic contradiction in Russia, as in other countries with all their distinctions, was between the aspiration of a small minority, representing finance capital, to perpetuate exploitation and aggression and the striving of the masses for peace, democracy and social justice. This contradiction, which remains the principal contradiction of all imperialist states, was resolved in Russia through the overthrow of the rule of the exploiters and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship. This showed the working people of every country the way to the solution of their cardinal problem.

p Lenin considered that it was of immense importance for the communist movement to study the experience of the October Revolution, noting that in the course of the struggle for socialism we were “paving the way for the art of making revolution without mistakes”.  [185•*  He often said that the West European revolutionaries frequently lauded the Bolsheviks but rarely studied their experience. Yet a study of the history of the struggle for power in Russia gives a deeper understanding of the laws of the development of socialist revolutions in our day. It helps to foresee and surmount difficulties and obstacles in the way of these revolutions, and to determine more realistically and accurately the 186 strategic line of the revolution, and display flexibility in putting this line into effect. Lastly, it teaches revolutionaries to see the substance of Right and “Left” opportunism and how to fight this opportunism.

p It is vital to study the experience of the revolution also because in recent years, particularly in connection with the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution and the centenary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, bourgeois historians and philosophers have written many books and articles in which they distort the basic problems of the history and theory of the October Revolution. Anti-Soviet writers repudiate the socialist character of the October Revolution, portraying it as a “peasant” or even a “bourgeois” revolution; they characterise the revolution as a “coup” accomplished by the Bolsheviks in order to seize power; they go to all lengths to belittle the historic impact of the revolution, asserting that it was of “local importance”.

p Bourgeois historians misrepresent the role played by the Bolshevik Party, distort its tactics at the various stages of the revolution, pass over in silence the efforts of the Bolsheviks to secure the peaceful development of the revolution, and misinterpret their various slogans. Moreover, they deliberately distort the nature of the inner-party struggle. In particular, many of them make a hero out of Trotsky and whitewash his opportunist, counter-revolutionary activities.  [186•* 

p In the circumstances, Soviet scholars feel in duty bound to fight this falsification of the Bolshevik experience of revolution and combat the attempts of bourgeois science and propaganda to undermine the influence of this experience on the revolutionary movement.

p Let us consider some aspects of the Bolshevik Party’s activities during the revolution of 1905-1907, the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution of February 1917 and the October Revolution of 1917.

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p The bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905-1907 in Russia was the first people’s revolution of the epoch of imperialism. It differed basically from all preceding bourgeois-democratic revolutions in other countries in that, first, although its nature was bourgeois-democratic it was proletarian on account of the leading role played in it by the working class and of the means of struggle used against the autocracy (strikes and armed uprising). Second, the abolition of the landed estates was one of its major issues. Besides, as one of the driving forces of that revolution, the peasantry was allied to the proletariat and not to the bourgeoisie, as was the case in the bourgeois revolutions in the West. Third, whereas in the preceding bourgeois revolutions the fight for power was between two principal classes—the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie, in Russia, on account of new socioeconomic conditions there were, as Lenin pointed out, two social wars: one was for land, freedom and democracy, and the other was fought within the developing bourgeois system for society’s socialist reorganisation. Both these wars were headed by the proletariat. Fourth, the working class of Russia had its own party, which was a revolutionary party of a new type created and led by the genius of the revolution Vladimir Lenin.

p All this made the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia a people’s revolution which could not stop in midstream but had to move on to the proletarian revolution.

p “The victory of the bourgeois revolution,” Lenin wrote, “is impossible in our country as the victory of the bourgeoisie. This sounds paradoxical, but it is a fact. The preponderance of the peasant population, its terrible oppression by the semi-feudal big landowning system, the strength and class-consciousness of the proletariat already organised in a socialist party—all these circumstances impart to our bourgeois revolution a specific character.”  [187•* 

p Above we noted that one of the distinguishing features of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia was that it was proletarian for the means of struggle that were employed. However, the arsenal of the working class provides for several forms of struggle for power, both nonpeaceful and peaceful. In the situation prevailing in Russia 188 at the time the autocracy could be overthrown only by force of arms. This was due to internal and international factors.

p Tsarist Russia had a backward and reactionary political system. Lenin called it one of the oldest, most powerful, barbarous and brutal monarchies, a prison of nations, a tyrannised country where arbitrary rule prevailed, a country which had not had any representative institutions prior to 1905 and where the four Dumas set up after the revolution had no real power because this power was in the hands of the autocratic government. Lenin wrote that “the struggle in the Duma ... cannot be the main form of the struggle, because this ‘parliament’ is admittedly not recognised by either of the combatants—either the Durnovos, Dubasovs and Co. or the proletariat and the peasantry”.  [188•*  The Russian landowners and bourgeoisie served tsarism faithfully. Regarding the autocracy as the best champion of their privateproprietor interests and as the most effective instrument helping them to hold the masses in leash, they went to all ends to safeguard it, proclaiming that the throne was “sacred” and “inviolable”.

p In Russia the bourgeois-democratic revolution matured and took place at a time when capitalism was developing rapidly. In her economy many of the key positions were in the hands of the imperialists of other countries, who were interested in the preservation of the tsarist system  [188•**  and gave their utmost assistance to the exploiting classes of Russia against the revolution.

p These internal and international factors compelled the proletariat to use force against the autocracy. An armed uprising, Lenin wrote, was the only way the proletariat could root the tsarist autocracy out of Russian soil and establish the autocracy of the people.

p He not only raised the question of the armed uprising as the only means of overthrowing tsarism but worked out in detail the methods of preparing for this uprising, putting forward and substantiating political slogans which the people 189 could accept and understand and which led them directly to an uprising. These slogans were: immediate institution of an eight-hour working day by revolutionary means; the setting up of revolutionary peasant committees to implement democratic reforms in the countryside up to the confiscation of the landed estates; the staging of mass political strikes, the arming of the workers and the formation of a revolutionary army.

p In the resolution of the Third Party Congress, which closely examined the question of an armed uprising, it was stated that the party had to explain the course of the revolution to the working class. Declaring that the armed uprising was one of the main urgent tasks of the party at that revolutionary moment, the Congress instructed the party organisations to explain to the proletariat: (a) by means of propaganda and agitation, not only the political significance, but the practical and organisational aspect of the impending armed uprising; (b) the role of mass political strikes, which may be of great importance at the beginning and during the progress of the uprising; (c) the necessity to take the most energetic steps towards arming the proletariat, as well as drawing up a plan of the armed uprising and of direct leadership thereof, for which purpose special groups of party workers should be formed as and when necessary.”  [189•* 

p Taking as their guideline Lenin’s propositions on the means of struggle against the autocracy as outlined in works written on the eve and during the first Russian revolution, and also the decisions of the Third Party Congress, the Bolsheviks made ready for the uprising which took place in December 1905. Although the uprising was crushed, Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not relinquish their view that there would have to be an uprising in the future. In reply to Plekhanov, who declared that the workers should not have taken up arms in December 1905, Lenin said that, on the contrary, they had to take up arms with more determination and energy. He insisted that the masses should be made to see that “the December struggle was the most essential, the most legitimate, the greatest proletarian movement since the Commune”.  [189•** 

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p Lenin regarded the revolution of 1905-1907 as the prologue to new battles, as the rehearsal of a really triumphant revolution. The first Russian revolution did not lead to bourgeois-democratic reforms but it by no means showed that the line towards such reforms was futile. “As to what you say about it being time to ’liquidate the belief in a second coming of the general-democratic onset’,” Lenin wrote to a Bolshevik on December 2, 1909, “I definitely do not agree with you there. You would only be playing into the hands of the otzovists (who are very prone to such ‘maximalism’: the bourgeois revolution is behind us—ahead is the ’purely proletarian’ one) and the extreme Right-wing Menshevik liquidators.”  [190•*  The general-democratic struggle, he said, would remain on the agenda until its aims were achieved. He demonstrated this with examples from the history of France and Germany, where the “general- democratic onset" ended only after a decade of revolutionary struggle.

p Lenin’s profound analysis of the lessons of the revolution of 1905-1907 was of immense assistance to the Bolsheviks in mapping out the tactics designed to bring the socialist revolution to victory. This analysis was made in many of the works written by him in the decade after the revolution. He took the new experience of the post-revolution period into account.

p As Tim Buck, Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada, wrote, Lenin’s insistence on theoretical clarity concerning the aims of the revolution and the role played by the working class and its party in 1905 is a “striking example of the importance to the working class of Lenin’s emphasis upon the indestructible relationship between correct theory and correct practice.. . . The lesson of that struggle against the Right-wing deviation and petty-bourgeois anarchist confusion is particularly dramatic because, carried through by Lenin to ideological victory, it played a major part in preparing the Great October Revolution. Without the correct political line and understanding for which Lenin’s long struggle had won authority, the revolution would have been diverted and the fruits of its victories would have been dissipated.”  [190•** 

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p An evaluation of the world war that had broken out was of immense importance for a correct assessment of the prospects for revolution. The Bolsheviks considered that the war had to be used to overthrow capitalist rule, and they supplemented the slogan calling for an armed uprising by urging that the imperialist war should be turned into a civil war. This was fully consistent with the situation obtaining at the time because the only way to halt the world-wide slaughter and secure the victory of the working class over the bourgeoisie was to turn the imperialist war into a civil war.

p Lenin concentrated on activating the party and on mustering and preparing the forces for a new revolution. The tactics of the Bolsheviks were directed towards establishing links with different strata of the population and towards winning more influence in the mass organisations. Without this preparatory stage the party would not have been ready for the period of revolutionary storms.  [191•* 

p The efforts of the Bolsheviks, who were pursuing correct tactics, bore fruit. Thanks to their quick reaction to the least changes in the situation, the masses understood the need for carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Tsarism was deposed in February 1917.

p In their distorted picture of the revolution of February 1917, bourgeois “sovietologists” play down the significance of the organising role played by the Bolsheviks. For example, Marcel Liebman, a French bourgeois historian, writes that the revolution “was not organised by any party or political leader”, but took place as a result of a spontaneous outburst of popular discontent.  [191•**  Liebman distorts the correlation between the spontaneous and the conscious in a revolution. In the February revolution, as in any other revolution, there were elements of spontaneity, but the Bolshevik Party was in all respects prepared for it and headed the revolutionary movement.

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p While implementing bourgeois-democratic slogans, the February revolution ushered in the beginning of the growth into the socialist revolution as foreseen by Lenin. It was namely in this period that the Bolsheviks showed how to achieve the hegemony of the proletariat, work for an alliance with all the revolutionary forces and secure the solution of the problems arising during the period of the revolution’s development. This brings a whole range of major issues into focus. We shall deal with only four of them, which are crucial to the present-day communist movement.

p The problem of the choice of the moment for the beginning of the revolution is unquestionably important. The party with Lenin at its head chose the moment for the revolution after closely considering the general and specific factors determining the development and maturity of the revolutionary situation. This analysis enabled Lenin to draw the conclusion that “it was easier for the Russians than for the advanced countries to begin the great proletarian revolution”.  [192•*  Here he pointed out the following circumstances: “It was easier for us to begin, firstly, because the unusual—for twentieth-century Europe—political backwardness of the tsarist monarchy gave unusual strength to the revolutionary onslaught of the masses. Secondly, Russia’s backwardness merged in a peculiar way the proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie with the peasant revolution against the landowners. That is what we started from in October 1917, and we would not have achieved victory so easily then if we had not. As long ago as 1856, Marx spoke, in reference to Prussia, of the possibility of a peculiar combination of proletarian revolution and peasant war. From the beginning of 1905 the Bolsheviks advocated the idea of a revolutionarydemocratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Thirdly, the 1905 revolution contributed enormously to the political education of the worker and peasant masses, because it familiarised their vanguard with ’the last word’ of socialism in the West and also because of the revolutionary action of the masses. Without such a ’dress rehearsal’ as we had in 1905, the revolutions of 1917—both the bourgeois, February revolution, and the proletarian, October 193 revolution—would have been impossible. Fourthly, Russia’s geographical conditions permitted her to hold out longer than other countries could have done against the superior military strength of the capitalist, advanced countries. Fifthly, the specific attitude of the proletariat towards the peasantry facilitated the transition from the bourgeois revolution to the socialist revolution, made it easier for the urban proletariat to influence the semi-proletarian, poorer sections of the rural working people. Sixthly, long schooling in strike action and the experience of the European mass working-class movement facilitated the emergence—in a profound and rapidly intensifying revolutionary situation— of such a unique form of proletarian revolutionary organisation as the Soviets."  [193•* 

p Immediately after the February revolution Lenin most certainly did not undertake to determine accurately, to the day or even month, when the socialist revolution would triumph in Russia. The possible time of the revolution became clearer with the maturing of the situation for it. Before adopting the decision to start the revolution it was necessary to assess the situation soberly and all-sidedly. Revolutionary courage, perseverance, confidence that the analysis was correct and a high sense of responsibility were also needed. In the article headed “The Crisis Has Matured" (September 29 [October 12], 1917) Lenin wrote: “The whole future of the Russian revolution is at stake. The honour of the Bolshevik Party is in question. The whole future of the international workers’ revolution for socialism is at stake.”  [193•**  There had to be unerring accuracy in determining the time for resolute action in a situation that was changing quickly. An error of one day could be catastrophic. Lenin took this task on himself without hesitation.

p In the “Letter to Members of the CC”, written in the evening of October 24 (November 6), he stressed that it was no longer possible to wait, that “the matter must be decided without fail this very evening, or this very night”, that the Kerensky government had to be arrested, the military cadets disarmed and the power taken over. “History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be 194 victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk losing much tomorrow, in fact, they risk losing everything.”  [194•* 

p Another aspect of the experience of the October Revolution was the ability of the Bolsheviks to analyse the alignment of class forces perspicaciously and resolve intricate problems linked with the assessment of the situation.

p The programme charted by Lenin in the April Theses and then adopted by the party, was a creative application of the Bolshevik line under new conditions. The attempts to show, as Trotsky  [194•**  and other falsifiers of the history of Bolshevism have endeavoured to do, that this was something quite new and unexpected have no leg to stand on. Their aim is to “prove” that the party was inconsistent and unprepared, and on that basis give out that the October Revolution was “accidental”. Actually, the April Theses concretised and developed the ideas that were propounded by Lenin in works like Several Theses (1915), On the Two Lines in the Revolution, Draft Theses, March 4 (17), 1917, Letters From Afar and others.

p Later, in polemics with Kautsky, Lenin wrote the following about the stages of the revolution in Russia:

p “Yes, our revolution is a bourgeois revolution as long as we march with the peasants as a whole. This has been as clear as clear can be to us; we have said it hundreds and thousands of times since 1905, and we have never attempted to skip this necessary stage of the historical process or abolish it by decrees. Kautsky’s efforts to ‘expose’ us on this point merely expose his own confusion of mind and his fear to recall what he wrote in 1905, when he was not yet a renegade.

p “Beginning with April 1917, however, long before the October Revolution, that is, long before we assumed power, we publicly declared and explained to the people: the revolution cannot now stop at this stage, for the country has marched forward, capitalism has advanced, ruin has reached fantastic dimensions, which (whether one likes it or not) will demand steps forward, to socialism. For there 195 is no other way of advancing, of saving the war-weary country and of alleviating the sufferings of the working alid exploited people.

p “Things have turned out just as we said they would. The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning. First, with the ‘whole’ of the peasants against the monarchy, against the landowners, against medievalism (and to that extent the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, with the poor peasants, with the semi-proletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a socialist one. To attempt to raise an artificial Chinese Wall between the first and second, to separate them by anything else than the degree of preparedness of the proletariat and the degree of its unity with the poor peasants, means to distort Marxism dreadfully, to vulgarise it, to substitute liberalism in its place. It means smuggling in a reactionary defence of the bourgeoisie against the socialist proletariat by means of quasi-scientific references to the progressive character of the bourgeoisie in comparison with medievalism.”  [195•* 

p The victory of the February revolution did not lead to the establishment of absolute rule by the proletariat and the peasantry. None of the classes that came to power almost simultaneously had that power firmly in their hands. Alongside the Provisional Government, which was a dictatorship of the exploiting classes, Soviets, whose class content was the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, were set up by the insurgent workers and soldiers. However, on account of the petty-bourgeois element that swept over the class-conscious proletariat and due to the changes that had taken place in its composition during the war and some other reasons, many of the Soviets found themselves controlled by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who voluntarily ceded power to the bourgeois Provisional Government.

p After taking stock of the complex and contradictory situation in the country, Lenin came to the conclusion that the bourgeois-democratic revolution had ended, although it did not bring about the implementation of the Bolshevik 196 slogan of a “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”, and that from now on the task was to move farther to the socialist revolution, which would place the power in the hands of the working class and the poorest strata of the peasants.

p Lenin held that the slogan “All power to the Soviets!" had to become the party’s principal slogan. It did not signify a simple reshuffle of the government—the removal of the bourgeois ministers and their replacement by representatives of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who held the majority in the Soviets at the time. It meant the establishment, from top to bottom, of the absolute and complete rule of a new type of state authority, the Soviets, and the dismantling of the old state machine.

p As we noted earlier, Trotsky held different views on the character and prospects of the October Revolution. In August 1917 he wrote that it was “futile to think ... that, for example, revolutionary Russia can withstand conservative Europe”. In the foreword to the book 1905 he maintained that after seizing power the proletariat “will come into conflict not only with all the bourgeois groups that supported it at the early phases of its revolutionary struggle but also with the broad masses of the peasants with whose assistance it came to power”.

p Georgi Plekhanov, too, was opposed to the line of action proposed by Lenin. In his “May Day" letter to the “ Association of Socialist Students”, which was printed on one and the same day by three bourgeois newspapers—Rech, Dyelo Naroda and Yedinstvo—he wrote that even the international socialist congress of 1889 comprehended that “the social, or more exactly—the socialist, revolution presupposes prolonged educational and organisational work within the working class”.  [196•*  He said that this is forgotten by people who “call on the Russian working masses to seize political power, an act which would make sense only if the objective conditions necessary for a social revolution prevailed. These conditions do not exist yet.”  [196•** 

p This plainly revealed Plekhanov’s formal, dogmatic approach in assessing the situation, his renunciation of 197 creative Marxism and his incomprehension of the correlation of the objective and subjective factors of revolution. Developments showed that Lenin was right.

p Flexibility of tactics, swift and timely changes of revolutionary slogans, promptness in deciding the concrete tasks of the revolutionary struggle and in choosing the ways of carrying them out, and combination of peaceful and nonpeaceful means of struggle are the third lesson which the international revolutionary movement draws from the experience of the revolution in Russia.

p The Bolsheviks framed their tactics in accordance with the situation in Russia. Lenin enjoined that in view of the dual power that had emerged after the February revolution armed force could not be used to overthrow the Provisional Government because it would mean attacking the Soviets, too, which, with the Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries in control, had come to terms with the Provisional Government and were supporting it. In Russia, he said, “by way of an exception" power could pass from the Provisional Government to the Soviets peacefully. He wrote: ”. . . in Russia power can pass to existing institutions, to the Soviets, immediately, peacefully, without an uprising.”  [197•* 

p What made it possible for the revolution in Russia to develop peacefully after the February bourgeois-democratic revolution?

p —The proletarian dictatorship was already in existence in the form of the Soviets. At the time the Soviets were in the hands of the Mensheviks and Socialist- Revolutionaries. Therefore, had all power in the country been transferred to the Soviets after the February revolution, this would not have signified the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship. It would have been a dictatorship of the working class and peasants, but unquestionably it would have facilitated the preparation of the conditions for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

p —The armed workers and the army were on the side of the Soviets.  [197•**  The capitalists did not venture to attack the Soviets and had to submit to them.

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p —More democratic freedoms existed in the country than in even the most democratic bourgeois republics of the day. This allowed the Bolsheviks to step up their work among the masses and openly organise them for the struggle to continue the revolution and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

p —The existence of broad democratic freedoms created the conditions not only for the peaceful transfer of power from the Provisional Government to the Soviets but also for the most peaceful and painless struggle by the party in the Soviets after all power had passed to them. “There is a degree of freedom now in Russia,” Lenin wrote, “that enables the will of the majority to be gauged by the makeup of the Soviets. Therefore, to make a serious, not a Blanquist, bid for power, the proletarian party must fight for influence within the Soviets.”  [198•* 

p There was, thus, every possibility for the peaceful development of the revolution following the victory of the February bourgeois-democratic revolution and the rise of dual power in Russia.

p At the same time, the Bolsheviks made ready for another way of struggle, for an armed uprising. Lenin considered the arming of the proletariat an indispensable condition ensuring the peaceful development of the revolution (through pressure from below), and a precaution against the event such development became impossible and the proletariat would have to adopt different tactics and forcibly overthrow capitalist rule, as in fact was the case. Therefore, in addition to revolutionising the army the Bolsheviks made every effort to set up fighting units of the Red Guard and a workers’ militia and to organise the proletarian and semiproletarian elements in the countryside. The worker and peasant masses sided with the Bolsheviks. This was not a spontaneous process but the result of the Bolsheviks’ persevering organisational activity.

p Having adopted tactics calling for the peaceful development of the revolution, the Bolsheviks had temporarily to postpone the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. Lenin wrote that in that period of the revolution 199 “civil war, so far as we are concerned, turns into peaceful, prolonged, and patient class propaganda”.  [199•* 

p The period in which the revolution in Russia developed peacefully lasted until the forcible dispersal of the demonstration of workers and soldiers in Petrograd on July 3, 1917. This peaceful period ended through the fault not of the Bolsheviks but of the bourgeoisie aided by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had turned the Soviets into an instrument of the Provisional Government and done nothing to prevent the shooting down of the July demonstration.

p These shots put an end to dual power; the power was seized by the reactionary bourgeoisie, to whom the Soviets, i.e., the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries predominating in them, transferred the country’s administration.

p The new political situation made it necessary for the Bolsheviks to adopt tactics other than those they had been employing until July. This responsible task was carried out by the 6th Party Congress held at the close of July and the beginning of August 1917.

p The Congress endorsed Lenin’s line aimed at achieving socialism in one country and his practical programme for the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. Guided by the propositions formulated by Lenin in The Political Situation, On Slogans and other works, the Congress resolved that the violence of the bourgeoisie had to be answered with violence by the revolutionary people and that power had to be seized by means of an uprising. Due to the fact that the Soviets with their Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik leadership had lost all authority and become an instrument of the counter- revolution, the slogan “All power to the Soviets!" was temporarily dropped. This was a line aimed at turning the imperialist war into a civil war. As we can see, the Bolsheviks did not for a moment cease their painstaking preparations for an armed uprising, and Lenin’s works and the documents of the 6th Congress completely refuted Trotsky’s allegation that in the summer of 1917 the party “did not have a clearcut plan for the seizure of power by an armed uprising" and that “a wait-and-see attitude was predominant”.

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p The 6th Congress showed the principled stand and determination of the Bolsheviks to put the party’s policy into effect. It categorically rejected the Trotskyite ideas voiced by Bukharin, who regarded the peasantry as a closeknit stratum and said that after receiving land the “satiated” peasant would back out of the revolution and the working class would have to fight alone and rely on “the proletariat of Western Europe”. He argued that in the event it was victorious the proletarian revolution would declare a “ revolutionary war" on the imperialists and that that war would “kindle the fire of the world socialist revolution".  [200•*  This argument showed that he did not believe the socialist revolution could triumph in Russia.

p After the 6th Congress the Bolsheviks got down to energetic preparations for the uprising. The defeat of the Kornilov revolt through the efforts of the Bolsheviks was a powerful stimulus to the creation of the political army of the socialist revolution. The masses saw that the Bolsheviks were the only force of the revolution capable of heading the struggle against the counter-revolution. After the revolt was suppressed the Soviets started turning Bolshevik and there was a sharp swing to the Left, to the side of the Leninist Party, by the urban and rural masses. The Kerensky administration discredited itself by failing to live up to its promises to the people. No land law was passed, and the land committees set up by the peasants to divide the land among the landless and land-hungry were arrested.

p The swift Bolshevisation of the Soviets enabled the Bolsheviks to bring the slogan “All power to the Soviets!" back to the agenda. However, Lenin time and again said that the peaceful development of the revolution was preferable. For instance, in the article “The Russian Revolution and the Civil War”, published on September 29 in the newspaper Rabochii Put he wrote: “If an alliance between the city workers and the poor peasantry can be effected through an immediate transfer of power to the Soviets, so much the better. The Bolsheviks will do everything to secure this peaceful development of the revolution.”  [200•**  In the article “The Tasks of the Revolution" printed a few days later by 201 the same newspaper, he re-emphasised: “Our business is to make sure of the ‘last’ chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.”  [201•*  And further: “... the proletariat would support the Soviets in every way if they were to make use of their last chance to secure a peaceful development of the revolution.”  [201•** 

p Twenty-four days before the armed uprising broke out Lenin wrote for the last time that it was desirable to use peaceful means to attain victory. In the famous letter to the Central Committee, the Moscow Committee, the Petrograd Committee and Bolshevik members of the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets dated October 1 (Old Style) the great leader of the proletariat pointed out: “It may very well be that right now power can be achieved without insurrection, for example, if the Moscow Soviet were to take power at once, immediately, and proclaim itself (together with the Petrograd Soviet) the government. Victory in Moscow is guaranteed, and there is no need to fight. Petrograd can wait. The government cannot do anything to save itself; it will surrender.”  [201•*** 

p This is further evidence of Lenin’s flexibility in charting revolutionary tactics, of his avoidance of set patterns. It shows how much he desired a bloodless victory of the socialist revolution. In spite of everything the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries did everything to concentrate power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, which took all measures to suppress and crush the revolution. To achieve its aims and acting in the interests of the vast majority of the population, the proletariat had therefore no alternative but to resort to armed force and establish Soviet power by insurrection. True, the October Revolution was accomplished without much bloodshed. From reminiscences and documents we know that there was very little loss of life during the storming of the Winter Palace.  [201•**** 

202

p This relatively easy and bloodless victory of the proletariat was made possible by the Bolshevik Party’s extensive work at the preceding stages. Organised in the Soviets the masses acted consciously, resolutely and courageously, while the enemy, the bourgeoisie, as Lenin said, had been undermined and eroded by the long political period from February to October, and like ice melted by spring waters no longer had the inner strength to resist.  [202•* 

p The fourth lesson of the October Revolution is that democratic and socialist tasks have to be combined in the socialist revolution. During the October Revolution it was found necessary to carry out not only socialist tasks but also many tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which neither the revolution of 1905-1907 nor the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February 1917 had been able to fulfil. Lenin wrote: “In a matter of ten weeks, from October 25 (November 7), 1917 to January 5, 1918, when the Constituent Assembly was dissolved, we accomplished a thousand times more in this respect than was accomplished by the bourgeois democrats and liberals (the Cadets) and by the petty-bourgeois Democrats (the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries) during the eight months they were in power.”  [202•** 

p The October Socialist Revolution overthrew the bourgeois Provisional Government and established the power of the working people—the dictatorship of the proletariat. It 203 strikingly bore out Leninist theory of the socialist revolution and demonstrated that the Bolsheviks had pursued correct strategy and tactics. The revolution owed its success to the colossal theoretical, political and organisational work of the Bolsheviks.  [203•*  In the CPSU Central Committee’s Theses “50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution" it is stated: “At the different stages of the revolution the Party applied flexible and diverse tactics, utilising peaceful and non- peaceful as well as legal and illegal means of struggle, and demonstrating its ability to combine these means and to move from om form and method of struggle to another.”  [203•** 

p The Bolsheviks won because, as Lenin said, they did not repeat v ords learned by heart but closely studied the new historical conditions and took note of every change. They won because, unlike the opportunists, they shouldered the entire responsibility for the revolution. It was none other than Lenin, who, in reply to the words of the Mensheviks that “there is no party in Russia that can take power”, retorted: “There is such a party!”. More important still, that party had an action programme which Lenin had mapped out long before October 1917.

p The experience of 1917 teaches that a revolution cannot be successful if its leaders waver and are irresolute, if supreme tenacity, circumspection and presence of mind are not displayed, if it is not firmly decided to carry the struggle to final victory in unity, purposefully, with dedicated heroism, and if waverers are not relentlessly shaken off.

p Such are some of the issues that characterise the specifics of the party’s struggle to overthrow tsarism and capitalism.

p The revolutions in the People’s Democracies demonstrated that the Communist and Workers’ parties concerned had taken this experience of the Bolshevik Party int< account. If 204 we single out the general features in the revolutions in these countries we shall find that they are similar to the general features characterising the experience of the bourgeoisdemocratic and socialist revolutions accomplished by the Bolshevik Party. This shows that the experience of Leninism and its theory of revolution have common characteristics which will undoubtedly manifest themselves in future revolutions regardless of how they are carried out.

p The present significance of the experience gained in the 1917 revolution in Russia is constantly underscored also by the fraternal parties in the capitalist countries. “The October Revolution,” Waldeck Rochet noted in a speech at the colloqium headed “The October Revolution and France" sponsored by the Maurice Thorez Institute, “showed there were universally applicable common principles of the socialist revolution. In particular, it showed that the working class has to conquer political power in alliance with other working people victimised by capitalism, that it is necessary to establish a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat and promote socialist democracy, nationalise the basic means of production and build a socialist economy serving the people, that there is a need for a party which is, in fact, the revolutionary vanguard of the working class.”  [204•* 

The experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution is an inexhaustible source of strength for the entire communist movement fighting for the triumph of socialism.