p The doctrine of the revolutionary situation is the key element of Lenin’s theory of socialist revolution. In many of his works, Marx analysed the process in which revolutionary crises came to a head. Thus, he brought out in detail how and what had caused “the eruption of the general discontent" in France in 1848, and which factors at the time had accelerated “the outbreak of the revolution".  [211•5 

p Lenin continued this work in the new conditions, when capitalism had entered the stage of imperialism and when the socialist revolution was knocking at the door. Lenin translated into the language of politics the proposition about the most acute conflict between the productive forces and the relations of production, a conflict that was about to boil over. He showed which situations in the sphere of politics expressed this conflict, which political forces were set in motion when the conflict arose, and how the political crisis from which revolution developed was created. Lenin devoted much attention to analysing the awareness and attitudes of the masses, the changes in the sphere of ideology and social psychology as the deep-going political crisis developed. The great revolutionary assessed the profound causes and the possible immediate factors which worked to create revolutionary situations.

p On the eve of the 1905 revolution, Lenin began to analyse the question of revolutionary situations. On January 4, 1905, he published an article 212 entitled “The Autocracy and the Proletariat”, which said that the working class “must rouse and rally to its side the broadest possible sections of the exploited masses, muster all its forces, and start an uprising at the moment when the government is in the most desperate straits and popular unrest is at its highest".  [212•6  There Lenin already stressed such important conditions for an uprising as the moment when the “government is in the most desperate straits" and “popular unrest is at its highest.” During the revolutionary upswing in 1913, Lenin returned to his analysis of this question and formulated the key proposition about the mounting of revolutionary crises: “Oppression alone, no matter how great, does not always give rise to a revolutionary situation in a country. In most cases it is not enough for revolution that the lower classes should not want to live in the old way. It is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to rule and govern in the old way."  [212•7  That is precisely when a political crisis tends to develop on a national scale. “A nation-wide political crisis is in evidence in Russia, a crisis which affects the very foundation of the state system and not just parts of it, which affects the foundation of the edifice and not an outbuilding, not merely one of its storeys."  [212•8  Of great methodological importance is Lenin’s remark to the effect that the crisis must go to the “very foundation of the state system”, and that the crisis must be so profound that no reform will help to overcome it. This kind of crisis affects the whole of society’s political life, ranges over the whole of its political organisation and results in great upheavals.

p Analysing the growth of the strike movement in Russia a year before the Lena shootings, and indicating that no other country in the world had so many participants involved in political strikes, Lenin emphasised that this was an expression of “the special conditions in present-day Russia, the existence of a revolutionary situation, the growth of a directly revolutionary crisis. When the moment of a similar growth of revolution approaches in Europe (there it will be a socialist and not a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution, as in our country), the proletariat of the most developed capitalist countries will launch far more vigorous revolutionary strikes, demonstrations, and armed struggle against the defenders of wage-slavery".  [212•9  Thus, the mounting of the revolutionary crisis must precede both the socialist and the bourgeois-democratic revolution, for in both cases the revolutionary eruption must be preceded by a political crisis going to the very foundation of the state system and incapable of resolution by means of political half-measures.

p Two years later, Lenin gave a full-scale definition of the revolutionary situation, which fully applies to socialist revolution. He also returned to the question of the role of the struggle for democratic demands in preparing the socialist revolution in advanced capitalist countries.

p In 1915, Lenin wrote: “To the Marxist it is indisputable that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, it is not every revolutionary situation that leads to revolution. What, generally speaking, are the symptoms of a revolutionary situation? We shall certainly not be mistaken if we indicate the following three major symptoms: 1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ’upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for ’the lower classes not to want’ to live in the old way; it is also necessary that ’the upper classes should be unable’ to live in the old way; 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."   [213•10 

p Only the involvement in the crisis both of the ruling and of the oppressed classes indicates that the political crisis is profound and that the ordinary political machine of the ruling classes is unable to cope with it.

p Lenin also showed that it is “not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break (or dislocate) the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls’, if it is not toppled over".  [213•11  Thus, the revolutionary situation is created by the objective course of social development, and no revolution is possible without such a situation, but for the revolution to originate the revolutionary class must be capable of taking strong revolutionary action to overthrow or undermine the government. All of this indicates the maturity of the new element, which is capable of destroying the old, the obsolete in social life.

p In this work of Lenin’s which I have quoted—“The Collapse of the Second International"—Lenin asks whether a revolutionary situation 214 had developed at the outbreak of the world war and replies in the affirmative. He also gives this important feature of political crisis: “All governments are sleeping on a volcano; all are themselves calling for the masses to display initiative and heroism."  [214•12  This appeal for mass initiative and the awakening of this initiative is an important feature of the mounting revolutionary situation. But even in that period, in the period of wartime, Lenin did not connect the origination of revolutionary situations exclusively with war. Among the various types of political crises, he pointed to the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, when France was divided into a reactionary and a progressive camp. Another example cited by Lenin was the 1913 incident in Alsace, when a Prussian officer’s abuse of the French-speaking population sparked off an outburst of indignation against the oppression by the Prussian militarists.

p Summing up these facts, Lenin wrote: “The socialist revolution may flare up not only through some big strike, street demonstration or hunger riot or a military insurrection or colonial revolt, but also as a result of a political crisis such as the Dreyfus case or the Zabern incident, or in connection with a referendum on the secession of an oppressed nation, etc."  [214•13  The tactics of the working-class party is not to confine itself to parliamentary statements, but to involve the masses in vigorous action, to extend the struggle over every vital democratic demand and to carry it to direct attacks on the bourgeoisie.

p Indeed, it is Lenin’s elaboration of the question of deep-going political crisis that led him to draw, before the October Revolution, the important conclusion about the advance of socialist revolution in Europe. He wrote: “The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inevitably, sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will participate in it—without such participation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible—and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses and errors. But objectively they will attack capital, and the class-conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, expressing this objective truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle, will be able to unite and direct it, capture power, seize the banks, expropriate the trusts which all hate (though for different reasons!), and introduce other dictatorial measures which in their totality will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, which, however, will by no means immediately ‘purge’ itself of petty-bourgeois slag."   [214•14  Such is the picture of revolution as a living 215 phenomenon, instead of a doctrinaire scheme. “To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.—to imagine all this is repudiate social revolution”   [215•15 

p No revolution can start without a deep-going political crisis affecting the very foundations of the state system and ruling out any solution by means of partial reforms. This crisis involves not only the proletariat but also the semi-proletarian sections, a part of the petty bourgeoisie, and small nations in vigorous revolutionary activity. Revolutionary eruptions are also variously directed against landowner, religious, national and monarchist oppression. Various sections of the population are involved in the revolutionary crisis, entering upon a path of struggle for various reasons and carrying with them into the revolution their own prejudices and reactionary visions, their weaknesses and mistakes. But objectively they all join in the fight against capital. The task of the vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, is to unite all these sections and to direct them into the revolutionary mainstream, which leads to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the takeover by the working class and the victory of socialism.

The picture of advancing socialist revolution completes the characteristic of political crises fraught with revolution. At this point, Lenin supplemented his earlier analysis of deep-going political crises by indicating the social sections and the manner in which (for which immediate reasons) they enter into the political crisis. He said that the objective truth of the diverse motives underlying the struggle carried on by the patchwork mass ultimately amounts to an “attack on capital”, and this objective truth is expressed by the working class. Its leadership helps the masses to purge themselves from their “petty-bourgeois slags" in the flames of revolution.