Progress Publishers
[3]
Translated from the Russian by Liv Tudge
Designed by R. Kazakov ~
Contributors
Professor V. P. Filatov (To the Reader, Chapter II,
Conclusion); Professor A. A. Babayants (Chapter IV);
Professor V. N. Konyukhovsky (Chapter 1:1, Chapter
111:1, 2, 3, 4); Assistant Professor V. T. Kuzmin
(Chapter 1:3); Assistant Professor G. P. Pozhidayev
(Chapter 111:5); Professor Yu. A. Sherkouin
(Chapter 1:2)
J1EHHH - PEBOJIrOUHOHEP
Ha amauiiCKOM
__COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1980JI
10103--065 „ „„
016(01)---80
0103020000 ~ [4] CONTENTS Page TO THE READER............. 7 CHAPTER I THE INTELLECTUAL BASES OF REVOLUTION 1. Lenin and Philosophy........ 13 2. Lenin and Marxist Social Psychology ... 34 3. Lenin and Economic Theory...... 43 CHAPTER II CREATING A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY 1. A Worldview in the Making . . . . J. 60 2. A New Type of Party........79 CHAPTER III LENIN AND THE REVOLUTION 1. The Russian Autocracy Under Fire ... 86 2. Lenin in the Years of Reaction..... 108 3. The Revolutionary Upsurge...... 118 4. Proletarian Internationalism on the Line . . 121 5. Lenin's Leading Role in the October Revolution ............. 133 CHAPTER IV THE ARCHITECT OF THE SOVIET STATE 1. Creating a New State System..... 157 2. Working for Peace and Defending the Revolution ............. 175 3. Pointing the Way to Socialism..... 187 CONCLUSION ............212 [5] ~ [6] __ALPHA_LVL1__ TO THE READERIn calling Lenin a great revolutionary, we are well aware of what that word means to people all over the world---that it is a proud title belonging to those who commit their lives to the fight for freedom, for justice, for the happiness of the common man.
Different people view him in different lights, yet we would be hard pressed to find anyone who had never heard of Lenin, the revolutionary to whom we dedicate our book.
Never has so much been written about one man, about one life---a life which was a mosaic of action and unremitting effort in the cause of revolution. Lenin, not quite 54 when he died, devoted over 30 years of his life, wholly and selflessly, to the working class, to all working people. All those years he fought tirelessly to free the peoples of Russia from the tyranny of autocracy, from the oppression of the landowners and the capitalists; he fought against militarism, war and colonialism; he fought for the freedom and happiness of every nation on earth, for socialism.
Why are people still writing about Lenin?
Some wish to demonstrate, in the light of historical developments, the importance of the assessments and predictions that he grounded on the hard facts 7 of his time, the path to socialism that he mapped out for mankind.
Others attack his theories, trying to deny that the world of exploitation and oppression, of coercion and injustice, is doomed, to deny that the future belongs to the working class, to socialism---vainly hoping to prove that Lenin's views are outdated or were never rooted in reality.
Lenin's unique revolutionary genius enabled him to make the workers, the world's exploited millions, see how their most deep-rooted hopes, their dearest desires could be realised. He based himself firmly on the Marxist doctrine of the transformation of society through revolution---indeed, he expanded that theory, applying the teachings of Marx and Engels to Russia, in a time when the world was going through an unprecedented period of change.
Lenin approached this theory as a practical revolutionary, and consequently widened the horizons of philosophy, sociology, political economy and history. A classic example is the contribution he made to the theory of the socialist revolution: in linking it with the practical aspects of the socialist revolution and the building of socialism in the USSR, he laid the foundations of the developed socialist society. The building of socialism has itself become an issue of international significance, as the emergence and establishment of the socialist world system has pointed the way to social progress for all people the world over.
Lenin ranged widely in the fields of philosophy, sociology and political economy, tackling problems important to the revolutionary transformation of society. Among the topics he covered are the formation 8 of a revolutionary proletarian party---an altogether new type of party, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the alliance of the working class with the peasantry and all other working people, socialist democracy, the theoretical and practical approach of the Communist Party to the national and agrarian questions, and the scientific bases of the building of socialism.
Lenin was strongly against lifeless dogmas inapplicable to real situations. For him, theory was a revolutionary's guide to action; without theory a revolutionary movement simply could not exist. Yet he also believed that revolutionary theory should continually draw on revolutionary practice---which did not, of course, mean that the basic tenets, the tried and tested ground rules, should be abandoned under pretence of keeping up with the times.
Lenin was not one of those 'suffering heroes'---- isolated champions of the people---who abounded in pre-revolutionary Russia. He was in close and constant contact with the members of the liberation movement---workers, peasants and intelligentsia. He shared his knowledge and experience with them, while at the same time learning all he could from them, aware that they would be vital participants in the coming revolution. He saw the strength of the working class, of the workers as a whole, in organised action, undertaken in the conscious spirit developed in them by the revolutionary party. From his deep involvement with ordinary people, Lenin knew how they felt and what they wanted, and used that knowledge to the full in formulating the Party's policy and slogans.
Lenin's antagonism to the enemies of the working people, of the exploited masses, never faltered. He 9 viewed all social problems from the working-class standpoint, insisting that any other approach simply did disservice to socialism, hindered the workers' cause, clouded their class consciousness and brought the bourgeoisie easier victories in their clashes with the working class and other working people.
Lenin was an unaffected person who set high standards for himself and valued a similar attitude in his colleagues. Before and during the October Revolution of 1917 and afterwards, at the head of the Soviet Government, he remained true to his revolutionary principles and gave them precedence over all. He was firm and patient with comrades who fell into doubt or error, and helped them recover the correct orientation. But should anyone deliberately abandon Marxism, reject the Communist Party's political line, he would act without hesitation, even if those in question had once been close to him. He accepted no compromise---the interests of socialism, of the Party, the Revolution, the people surpassed all other concerns.
The socialist transformation of Russia took place under Lenin's supervision. In those early days theoretical guidelines for the building of socialism in the new Soviet state were needed; the prospects of the world socialist revolution had to be defined; the people, having taken power, had to turn all their energies to defending the Revolution from internal enemies and foreign intervention. It is no exaggeration to say that durng those grim years---though not only then--- Lenin rose to the occasion in heroic style. Without hesitation the Communists took charge of a countryravaged by enemy forces and interventionist troops, besieged on all sides, racked by famine, dislocated to 10 the point of paralysis, and riddled with epidemics--- and launched into socialist transformation. It goes without saying that this demanded tremendous political courage and a profound conviction that the chosen path was the correct one, that yesterday's downtrodden classes---the workers and peasants---would be equal to the task. The situation almost defies description: a host of unprecedented, complex, dreadfully urgent questions arose---questions on which the fate of the Revolution, of socialism itself, hinged and which had to be solved without delay. The difficulties, the uncertainties of the new life daunted even some committed Party members: they wavered and began to doubt that success lay ahead. But the revolutionary courage of which Lenin himself was a prime example, the united will and solidarity of the Communist Party, its collective reason and inner-Party democracy proved strong enough to withstand the most gruelling trials.
In the face of opposition from opportunists, sceptics and other hostile elements, Lenin put forward the theory that socialism in one country was a real possibility---and history bore him out. Not long after the Revolution, the Communist Party started the process which would eventually transform the country into a powerful, industrially progressive socialist state.
Lenin, a thoroughgoing proletarian internationalist, viewed the building of socialism in the context of the revolutionary liberation movement all over the world. He laid great emphasis on unity, on the formation of a worldwide front, which would range the working people against the capitalists, who were themselves an international force. He was a spirited opponent of opportunism, nationalism and irresponsible heroics 11 within the international labour movement; he showed the communist parties and the working class that such attitudes posed a real danger to the future of the Revolution and to socialism.
The 110th anniversary of Lenin's birth in 1980 was celebrated by progressive people the world over, for the heritage of Lenin the internationalist belongs not to the Soviet Union alone, but to all mankind. His precepts are a powerful weapon for the working class and for all the downtrodden and exploited in their fight for social and national liberation and for international accord based on the principles of work, peace and friendship.
If this book brings the reader closer to Lenin the revolutionary, it will have fulfilled its purpose.
[12] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER I __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE INTELLECTUAL BASES OFGreat thinkers are assessed in the light of their positive contribution to intellectual progress, the advances they make on the achievement of their predecessors. One of Lenin's great accomplishments was the development of Marxist theory in the new historical circumstances. Let us examine first his contribution to philosophy.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. Lenin and Philosophy __ALPHA_LVL3__ Marxism---the Highest Philosophy is one of the most
ancient intellectual disciplines.
Over the ages it has given rise
to a host of different
philosophical schools which reflect the interests of various
social strata and social classes. Yet all these numerous
schools of thought, with their varying intellectual
value, have arisen as response to one fundamental
problem---that of materialism and idealism.
All phenomena are either material or ideal. Material phenomena are all those things which exist objectively---that is, independently of man's will and consciousness. Ideal phenomena are those which exist within the human consciousness. Since there is nothing in this world but the material and the ideal, it is 13 impossible to construct a functioning worldview or to develop a philosophical system without having tackled the basic issue of philosophy: the relationship between thought and being, the relative importance of consciousness and matter.
Throughout the history of philosophy there have existed two opposing schools of thought on this issue: those philosophers who believe that matter is primary over consciousness belong to the materialist trend (from the Greek materia---`matter', `substance'); those who consider consciousness to be primary are idealists (from the Greek idea---`concept'). And there are, further, two basic kinds of idealism: objective and subjective. Objective idealism holds that the world exists objectively, outside of the human consciousness, in the form of Spirit, the Absolute Idea, the Universal Will or some similar formulation. Subjective idealists maintain that the world is the sum total of the ideas arising in the mind of each individual (the subject)---that it is the product of the subject's consciousness.
Materialism is the philosophy of the most progressive classes, those whose commitment to social progress demands an objective and dependable world-picture. In its contemporary Marxist-Leninist form, materialism is an intellectually valid, progressive worldview. The accurate description it gives of the world forms a stable foundation for both intellectual and practical activity.
Idealism, on the other hand, is anti-scientific, contrary to proven fact and results in a distorted worldpicture. It is the more dangerous in that, although ostensibly based on human reason, it actually hampers 14 real knowledge of objective reality and its laws. As a rule, idealism is a weapon used by the reactionary forces of society.
The entire history of philosophy is summarised in the fierce, long-standing and continuing conflict between these two worldviews.
The second aspect of this basic issue hinges on whether man can really know the world around him and discover the laws which operate within it. Two schools have also grown up around this issue---the question of cognition. The materialists hold that cognition---real knowledge----of the world is possible and that the knowledge we amass about the essence of objects and phenomena is perfectly dependable. However, many idealists deny that we can ever know the world at all: supporters of this view are known as agnostics (from the Greek agnostos---unknowable'), while others claim that cognition is possible, but do so at the cost of distorting the concept of cognition, since they are referring to real knowledge not of the objective world but of man's thoughts (the subjective idealist viewpoint) or of the Absolute Idea, the Universal Will, etc. (the objective idealist stance).
Materialism and idealism are thus the two opposing standpoints from which philosophers proceed to interpret the world. Similarly there exist two opposing methods of studying the world: the dialectical and the metaphysical.
Dialectics (from the Greek dialegesthai---'to discuss') views reality in constant movement and development. The scientific dialectical method evolved gradually, as philosophical thought matured. Previous to the emergence of Marxist dialectics, its foremost 15 proponent was the German philosopher Hegel (1770--1831), who held that the world is in a process of universal movement, of development from lower to higher stages, and concluded that the source and motive force of this movement are the internal contradictions which exist within all phenomena. But Hegelian dialectics were imperfect, being rooted in an idealist concept according to which all movement and development issues from and is directed by a supernatural consciousness from which the world has sprung---a Universal Reason or Absolute Idea.
The metaphysical approach to reality is the direct antithesis of dialectics. It either denies the existence of change and movement, or maintains that any movement is purely mechanical, a mere increase or decrease in quantity.
The materialism which predated Marx and Engels was metaphysical and abstract, divorced from the dialectical method and from the world of social relations. Marx and Engels were the founders of genuinely scientific and materialist dialectical philosophy. They subjected German classical philosophy to a critical revision, drew essential and valid conclusions from the latest advances in the natural sciences, set their discoveries into the context of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat---and consequently revolutionised the accepted views of nature and society. By merging the materialist worldview and the dialectical method, they created the highest form of materialism---dialectical materialism---and applied it rigorously to an interpretative study of society, until ultimately they uncovered the laws to which nature, social life and human thought are subject.
16The dialectical materialist worldview is a true reflection ot reality, it proceeds from the assumptions that the world consists exclusively of matter in movement, which is subject to its own inherent laws, and that those laws are accessible to the intellect.
In ideological terms, Marxist philosophy reflects the basic interests of what is at once the largest and the most revolutionary class in contemporary society: the proletariat. It provides the proletariat and the Party which leads it with scientifically validated knowledge of the laws of social development, knowledge which proves invaluable to the cause of revolution: dialectical and historical materialism are the theoretical bases of revolutionary strategy and tactics. Marxist philosophy proves beyond doubt that the socialist revolution is inevitable, that socialism and communism will prevail. Further, it provides an understanding of the processes of world development, of the unquestionable legitimacy of revolution, and furnishes essential ammunition in the conflict with the reactionary ideologists of the imperialist world. Marxism is the moral lorce of the working class, which, conversely, is the physical force behind Marxism---a combination which the bourgeoisie finds thoroughly daunting.
The Marxist pa ides that have formed since Marxism became trie dominant doctrine in the labour movement have found themselves under continual attack from bourgeois ideologists; the enemies of the proletariat do all they can to disrupt the movement trom within, with the help of its vacillating and untrustworthy elements. Attempted refutations and ' corrections' of Marxism are motivated by political and philosophical revisionism, and are designed to eradicate __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---2095 17 the revolutionary spirit in the ideology and policy of the working-class parties, to rob them of their revolutionary perspectives and make them unsure of their aims. But the revolutionary Marxist line stands firm and continues to flourish within the movement. And nowhere has it been more consistently expressed than in Lenin's life and work.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ No Philosophy Is Impartial Lenin espoused Marxism from
the very outset of his
revolutionary career, and proceeded
to defend and develop its every aspect, which involved
him in research into philosophy, political economy
and scientific socialism. His contribution to this
immense fund of knowledge was so great that what was
formerly known as Marxist doctrine is today quite
rightly known as Marxism-Leninism.
Lenin answered the philosophical questions that faced mankind in a period characterised by imperialism, proletarian revolutions and the socialist transformation of society, and unprecedented scientific progress. While analysing that time of far-reaching historical change, he showed how dialectical contradictions operate in society, and on this basis formulated the concrete aims, strategy and tactics to be adopted by the proletariat of Russia and other countries in the approaching conflict.
Among the vast corpus of Lenin's theoretical works are several which were landmarks in philosophy as such; but his writings in economics, politics and other disciplines are also philosophically significant because they show clearly how the dialectical-materialist approach can be applied to the most varied phenomena. In developing Marxist philosophy, Lenin addressed 18 all the problems of dialectical and historical materialism: we will examine some of them here.
Lenin advanced the proposition that philosophy is subject to political commitment, showing how meaningless it is to speak of the impartiality of philosophy, of its `apolitical' spirit---as if philosophy could stand above all society's conflicts, above the battles between the exploiting and the exploited classes. He wrote: 'To expect science to be impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naive as to expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether workers' wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the profits of capital.'^^*^^ And further, in his major philosophical treatise Materialism and Empiric-Criticism, he stated that 'recent philosophy is as partisan as was philosophy two thousand years ago. The contending parties are essentially---although this is concealed by a pseudo-erudite quackery of new terms or by a weakminded non-partisanship---materialism and idealism.'^^**^^ Given that society is divided into hostile classes, every system of thought must necessarily reflect the interests of one or other of those classes. As Lenin put it in Socialism Demolished Again: 'Not for nothing has it been said that were the truths of mathematics to affect the interests of men (or rather, the interests of classes in their struggle), those truths _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism', Collected Works, Vol. 19, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 23.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 358.
__PRINTERS_P_19_COMMENT__ 2* 19 would be heatedly challenged.'^^*^^ Dialectical materialism is one of those intellectual disciplines that are of direct relevance to the classes, governments and parties involved in the conflict; beyond all doubt it supports the interests of the working class.Lenin emphasised that party commitment is a proletarian concept, and that the idea of non-- partisanship was originated by the bourgeoisie in a deliberate attack on the revolutionary party spirit of the working class in its fight against capitalist domination. This so-called non-partisanship is simply a means of promoting bourgeois party commitment; the 'objective approach' is the means by which the ideologues of imperialism defend bourgeois class interests and justify the reactionary policies of the ruling classes.
But Lenin also warned against a simplistic intellectual approach. In a criticism of the idealistic philosophical views of certain natural scientists, he pointed out that perfectly sound and scientific practical research and theoretical studies might well be used to form reactionary philosophical conclusions. In such cases the conclusions could be rejected but the scientific groundwork could and should be retained.
Lenin's resolute challenge to bourgeois ideology has lost none of its force today. Two social systems are locked in ideological conflict; the opponents of Marxism-Leninism are attacking Marxist philosophy on an ever wider front. The strength of communist ideology hinges on revealing bourgeois attitudes in their true light and on consistently defending and developing Marxism-Leninism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 200.
20 __ALPHA_LVL3__ The Philosophical Lenin's philosophical
definition of matter is of vital
imortance to philosophy, to the
natural sciences and to all
disciplines which touch on the
problems of nature and society.
The metaphysical materialists had long held that matter and the atom---which they took to be the smallest particle in existence, impenetrable and indivisible---were one and the same thing. But at the turn of this century it was established that atoms, far from being unchanging and indivisible, are composed of electrons, a totally different form of matter. This wrecked the theories of the metaphysical materialists, who emerged from the debacle proclaiming that matter had `disappeared', that the atom had become ' immaterial', that science itself had refuted the materialist worldview.
Lenin proved that, on the contrary, what these discoveries had demolished was not matter itself---but merely the limits on our understanding of matter. Whereas previously the atom has formed the boundary of knowledge, scientists could now progress beyond that boundary, advancing their understanding of the real nature of matter. Lenin firmly belived that 'the electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite, but it infinitely exists'.^^*^^ More recent advances in science have completely justified that remarkable prediction^^**^^: modern physics has discovered over 30 _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Materialism and Empiric-Criticism', Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 262.
^^**^^ Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was written in 1908 and published in 1909. (Editor's note).
21 elementary particles within the atom, each of which is a complex combination of numerous individual characteristics.Lenin saw that the natural sciences were on the threshold of a tremendous upheaval; he proved on philosophical grounds that progress in physics had revolutionary implications.
How, then, does a philosopher define matter? In Lenin's view: 'Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.'^^*^^
This definition reflects the very essence of the materialist worldview and exemplifies the materialist approach to the basic issue of philosophy. But its most important feature is that such a definition does not depend on the scientific understanding of the qualities and structure of matter, current at any given time. Intellectual advances notwithstanding, Lenin's philosophical concept of matter cannot become obsolete: scientific progress will never affect the proposition that the basic characteristic of matter is its objective reality. 'The sole ``property'' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind.'^^**^^
Lenin did not, of course, maintain that this was the sole characteristic of matter according to dialectical _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Materialism and Empiric-Criticism'', Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 130.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 260--61.
22 materialism: it is `sole' only in the sense that it alone marks the boundary between materialism and idealism and is the only validation that materialism needs.His uncompromising stance against philosophical idealism and its claims that knowledge must necessarily be limited is to this day a model of the kind of philosophical analysis which cuts through the intricacies of scientific thought.
Lenin also viewed the phenomenon of consciousness from a firmly materialist standpoint. The natural sciences and philosophy had long sought to define the nature and source of consciousness; from his study of the available data, Lenin concluded that consciousness arose as the result of a lengthy evolution of matter. Though matter---the natural world---has always existed, mankind appeared at a comparatively late stage, many millions of years after the natural world. As man is a thinking creature, it follows that consciousness is a product of nature, a feature of matter---or rather of that highly organised part of matter that is the human brain.
Lenin viewed the antithesis of matter and spirit dialectically, warning that the antagonism between them should not be overemphasised, since it is just another aspect of the basic problem of philosophy--- the primacy of matter or consciousness: 'To operate beyond these limits with the antithesis of matter and mind, physical and mental, as though they were absolute opposites, would be a great mistake.'^^*^^ Matter is primary and consciousness secondary---but they have a _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 246.
23lot in common. Though consciousness is secondary, it is a feature of highly organised matter---the brain--- and therefore exists in reality. Far from being alien to nature, consciousness is as normal a product of the natural world as those material objects which it reflects. Consciousness is a reflection of objective reality in the human brain.
Consciousness really exists. It is an active element in man's transformation of the world, since we use our scientific knowledge to manipulate nature to achieve planned aims. 'Man's consciousness,' wrote Lenin,' not only reflects the objective world, but creates it.'^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin's Theory A central place in Lenin's
theoretical works belongs to
his theory of reflection---the
basis of the theory of cognition advanced by
dialectical materialism.
We speak of Lenin's theory of reflection because in applying the views of Marx and Engels to the changed circumstances of his day, he extended those views substantially. The question of cognition, of knowledge, was of prime importance to Lenin because it had become central to the idealist-versus-materialist controversy towards the end of the nineteenth century. Reactionary philosophers had seized on new data on the real nature of the world, which had overturned the old beliefs, and, by twisting the discovery that all knowledge is relative at any given moment, they were trying once more to confine cognition to the realm of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Conspectus of Hegel's Book The Science of Logic', Collected Works, Vol. 38, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p. 212.
24 agnosticism and idealism. This prompted Lenin to defend and develop the Marxist theory of cognition.Lenin defined matter as a philosophical category denoting objective reality, which is given to man by his sensations. This answered the question of whether it is possible for man really to know the world from the materialist stance: since matter is reflected in man's sensations, there is no barrier between our sensations and the objective world---and therefore there is no doubt that we can know the world. The basic axioms of the theory of reflection are: that things exist objectively, independent of the individual perceiving them; that they are accessible to human cognition; and that our knowledge is a reflection of the world around us.
In the historical perspective, we see that it was practical activity which caused consciousness to emerge and develop. 'The world,' wrote Lenin, 'does not satisfy man and man decides to change it by his activity.'^^*^^ Productive activity---the creation of the material objects needed by society---is therefore tremendously important to cognition, which is why Lenin referred to it in his theory of reflection. He saw activity as the motive force behind the act of cognition, and as the test of the knowledge we have gained: 'The standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge,'^^**^^
The reflection of the objective world in the human consciousness is by no means a simple, direct mirror-- _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 213.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Materialism and Empiric-Criticism', Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 142.
25 image. Cognition is a manifold process with several distinct, albeit related, stages: 'From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice,---such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality.'^^*^^In his theory of reflection, Lenin traced the transition from ignorance to knowledge, from incomplete and inaccurate knowledge to a more adequate understanding, and showed that this was a dialectical process, thus solving the problem of truth, which is central to the theory of cognition. Objective truth is arrived at gradually, dialectically.
This led Lenin to an important discovery about the relationship between absolute and relative truth: true knowledge, as we mentioned earlier, is relative---but in every relative truth there is a grain of objective, absolute truth which can be tested in practical action. Absolute truth---complete and comprehensive knowledge---is reached through combining relative truths, each with its portion of incomplete and inaccurate knowledge.
Lenin's theory of reflection represented a great advance in philosophy. He considered that a man was a genuine philosophical materialist only if he accepted that cognition is the reflection of the objective world in the human consciousness. And that principle is equally valid today, for the bitter controversy between materialism and idealism remains a living issue.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ An Advance in Materialist Dialectics Working on the ideas of Marx
and Engels, Lenin related
materialist dialectics closely to
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Conspectus of Hegel's Book The Science of Logic', Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 171.
26 the phenomenon of development (evolution), stressing the importance of a correct understanding of this process. In On the Question of Dialectics, he discussed two developmental concepts: one saw development as repeated cycles of increase and decrease and the other defined it as a unity of opposites---the splitting of a single entity into mutually exclusive components and the formation of a relationship between them. 'In the first conception of motion, s e I /-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external---God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of "s e I /"-movement.'The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second a I one furnishes the key to the ``self-movement'' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the ``leaps'', to the "break in continuity'', to the "transformation into the opposite'', to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.'^^*^^ Lenin emphasised two essential features of the dialectical concept of development: the leap which marks the transition from old to new, and contradiction as the motive force of that transition.
Lenin's analysis of the two views of development is particularly relevant today. The ideologues of capitalism resort to all kinds of sophistry to prove that the capitalist form of production stands firm, that its contradictions can be overcome without any momentous changes in the capitalist system. In fact, the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 360.
27 development of capitalist society, the escalation of class contradictions, the increase in revolutionary activity among the working class indicate that the objective, irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism can only be resolved if it is replaced by socialism through revolution. And this is what is meant by a leap in the process of historical development.Lenin showed that the categories and laws of dialectics are not artificially imposed on objective reality by human reason, but are a reflection of the objective nature of reality itself. Since reality embraces both nature and man---both object and subject---the dialectical account of development not only teaches us about being but is also a logical system, a theory of knowledge (cognition). The laws of being and the laws of cognition are one and the same---and each law and category of dialectics is both a reflection of certain aspects of the objective world and an essential feature of cogniton. In asserting that dialectics, logic and the theory of cognition are one, that 'dialectics i s the theory of knowledge',^^*^^ Lenin considerably widened the scope of dialectics.
He was deeply interested in the central issue of dialectic logic and the theory of cognition---the law of unity and the conflict of opposites. 'The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts ... is the essence (one of the ``essentials'', one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics.'^^**^^ This law shows us the root causes of the eternal movement and development of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 362.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 359.
28 the material world, of society and consciousness; it is comprehensive and universal.Lenin's concept of development as a conflict of opposites was no abstract schema; he linked it directly to reality, to practical activity, on the grounds that a scholarly analysis of society's contradictions was essential to a soundly-based political programme. Any unity, coincidence or equivalence of opposites can only be relative and temporary, since their conflict is absolute ---that is, unqualified and unlimited. A clear awareness of the oppositions and contradictions in politics and revolutionary activity removes the danger of clouding the distinctions between classes and parties, between progressive and reactionary forces, and ensures firm and permanent adherence to revolutionary class positions. Lenin sharply criticised the opportunist SocialDemocratic leaders who refused to accept that the contradictions of bourgeois society were becoming more intense in the imperialist stage of capitalism. Lenin's critique and its philosophical basis are still effective today against those who seek to paper over the contradictions of imperialism and thus hinder their abolition through revolution,
To Lenin, the Marxist proposition on the organic link between materialist dialectics and revolutionary action was vitally important. But he made it clear that the relationship between dialectics and politics--- that is, revolutionary activity---was not a question of mechanically applying 'eternal philosophical truths' to the realities of revolution, because 'the fundamental task of proletarian tactics was defined by Marx in strict conformity with all the postulates of his materialist-dialectical Weltanschauung. Only an objective 29 consideration of the sum total of the relations between absolutely all the classes in a given society, and consequently a consideration of the objective stage of development reached by that society and of the relations between it and other societies, can serve as a basis for the correct tactics of an advanced class.'^^*^^ Dialectics embraces an infinite variety of approaches to reality. This is not an abstract versatility, but emerges from contact with the infinite variety of the real world. And the dialectical method continues to grow and gain strength from its contact with the remarkable scientific and technical developments and social advance in the world today.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ SociologyAnother of Lenin's great achievements was his contribution to the materialist conception of history---that is, to Marxist, scientific sociology. Marx and Engels, by applying dialectical materialism to social phenomena, had developed historical materialism, an intellectual system which explained social progress and classified the regularities of social development.
Lenin rated the materialist view of history as one of the greatest accomplishments of Marxist thought. In 'The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism', he wrote: 'The chaos and arbitrariness that had previously reigned in the views on history and politics were replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious scientific theory, which shows how, in consequence of the growth of productive forces, out of one _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Karl Marx', Collected Works, Vol. 21, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 75.
30 system of social life another and higher system develops---how capitalism, for instance, grows out of feudalism.^^*^^In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin described philosophical materialism and historical materialism as one and the same thing, on the grounds that 'materialism in general recognises objectively real being (matter) as independent of the consciousness, sensation, experience, etc., of humanity. Historical materialism recognises social being as independent of the social consciousness of humanity. In both cases consciousness is only the reflection of being, at best an approximately true (adequate, perfectly exact) reflection of it.'^^**^^
Dismissing subjective and idealist views of society and of the motive forces of its development, he held that without class and party commitment, all attempts to understand social phenomena are futile, and showed that behind every social theory lie class interests which must be taken into account. Party commitment 'enjoins the direct and open adoption of the standpoint of a definite social group in any assessment of events'.^^***^^ And Marxist scientific sociology must be guided by a concretely historical approach to society in general and to its component parts, for there is no such thing as 'society as a whole'. The dialectical approach to social phenomena, according to Lenin, was _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 25.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 326.
^^***^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Economic Content of Naroclism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve's Book', Collected Works, Vol. 1, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 401.
31 rooted in a circumstantial analysis of specific situations, in an ability to determine accurately the historical background of any given event. Lenin himself was incomparably proficient in this kind of analysis.Lenin performed a great service to the proletariat in Russia and throughout the world by defending and developing the views of Marx and Engels on the historic role of the Communist Party. He was the first Marxist to understand that the existence and spread of imperialism made the formation of a militantly revolutionary working-class party increasingly imperative. His statements of this new type of party were founded on an analysis of the experience of the international labour movement: specifically, the Party was to give the working class political leadership, organise its efforts and develop its understanding. The organisational principles which Lenin worked out for the revolutionary party will be considered in greater detail in Chapter II.
In the course of the class struggle, various organisations form within the proletariat: trade unions, cooperative societies, women's societies and youth groups. But the Party is a superior form of organisation, political in essence and impartial as regards factors such as profession or age. It is superior to other proletarian organisations in that it embodies the interests of the whole working class and guides its relations with other parties and classes and with the state. Party members work through the other working-class organisations to influence the population as a whole, to unite it in militant support of the basic interests of the working class and all working people.
32LENIN the Revolutionarr
__CAPTION__
The Ulyanov family. Standing, from left to right: Olga,
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Lenin with the leaders of the St. Petersburg League of
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I'asilyevsky Island, !> January 1905, a painlinu
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The barricades on Malaya Bronnayu Street in Moscow
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Lenin delivering the April Theses at the Taurida
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Lenin in Petrograd. January 1918
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Lenin speaking at the unveiling of a temporary monument
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Lenin in his study
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Lenin on the presidium of the First All-Russia Congress
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Lenin on the presidium of the First Comintern Congress.
__CAPTION__
I.enin witli II. (;. Wells in the Moscow Kremlin.
__CAPTION__
Lenin watching tests on an electric plough in Moscow.
1921
__CAPTION__
Lenin and Krupskaya with the peasants of Kashino during
__CAPTION__
Lenin with delegates to the Second All-Union Miners'
__CAPTION__
Participants in the campaign against illiteracy. 1918
__CAPTION__
A chemistry lecture at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba
__CAPTION__
Threshing grain at the Lenin Agricultural Commune in
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The Lenin Hydroelectric Station on the River Volkhov, built on Lenin's instructions as part
__CAPTION__
The main console of the Lenin Atomic Power Station in
Lenin was convinced that the Party, the most progressive working-class force, should not become indistinguishable from the class it represented, since the conditions of capitalism were such that the entire class simply could not become as politically aware and active as its vanguard. And this led him to an important practical observation: the Party's contacts with the people must be continually strengthened, because the vanguard alone could never defeat the exploiters; it had to win the confidence, the total support of the working people---the chief source of its strength.
From a thoroughgoing analysis of imperialism, Lenin concluded that it was the last and highest stage of capitalism, the immediate forerunner of the socialist revolution. Reviewing all the contradictions in the imperialist system, he discovered that socialism could triumph initially in several countries or even in one country alone.
Lenin also went into such important questions as war, peace and revolution, the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the national-colonial issue, expanding the answers provided by historical materialism. He also advanced the important idea that the transition from capitalism to socialism could take different forms in different countries.
After the October Revolution in 1917, Lenin turned his attention to the theoretical bases of the new society, producing works which developed Marxist doctrines on socialism and communism. During that crucial and complex period it took a penetrating, powerful and wide-ranging mind to determine the main lines of development towards socialism and to spell __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---2095 33 them out in a form which was at once theoretically irreproachable and intelligible to the widest range of people. Lenin possessed such a mind. His plan for building socialism is a model of its kind: it tackled the problems of reforming a country on socialist principles in a scientific, comprehensive and realistic manner, and ranged from top to bottom of the social edifice, covering such issues as the development of the productive forces, and the transformation of social relations and of people's characters and attitudes.
This has been but a brief outline of Lenin's contribution to the development of Marxist philosophy. Lenin's theories and practical revolutionary activity transfigured the age we live in. His philosophical works are an invaluable intellectual guide, a spiritual and political challenge, essential reading for all who wish to see the revolutionary perspectives of our time with unclouded eyes.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2. Lenin and Marxist Social Psychology __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.]Lenin's theoretical works exhibit an encyclopaedic grasp of the tenets of social psychology. As befits a great revolutionary, he was deeply interested in those socio-psychological phenomena which mark radical changes in the content and conditions of social consciousness. Lenin was the first to relate psychology to revolution and to explore the theoretical implications of this. He also broke new ground by fruitfully applying his discoveries to the sphere of practical revolutionary action.
34 __ALPHA_LVL3__ PsychologyLenin introduced into Marxist social psychology a wide complex of issues connected with the dialectical interaction of ideology and the consciousness of ordinary people. He tackled the question in the context of spontaneity versus conscious action within the labour movement, and illustrated it through a close study of the way the class struggle is affected by conscious intellectual effort and by simultaneously occurring undercurrents of change in the mass psyche.
In 1905 he noted that the progress of the Russian _-_-_
^^*^^ RSDLP are the initials of the Russian Social-- Democratic Labour Party, a revolutionary Marxist proletarian party. It is now called the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). For more details on the Party, see Chapter II.
^^**^^ See V. I. Lenin, 'The Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.', Collected Works, Vol. 8, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p. 370.
35 labour movement towards revolution was marked by three transitions: from narrow propaganda circles to extensive agitation on economic themes; to extensive political agitation and street meetings and marches; and, finally, to direct revolutionary activity and an armed rising of the people. And each step is firmly based on 'socialist thought working mainly in one direction ... and ... the profound changes that had taken place in the conditions of life and in the whole mentality of the working class'.^^*^^Not long before the Revolution Lenin called for another research effort, even more wide-ranging than the first, to study the development of the psychological preconditions of the socialist revolution. He largely supplied his own answer, by showing that the objective course of history itself creates the subjective conditions---the suitable psychological climate---which transforms the revolutionary situation into political reality, into revolution as such. He indicated suitable ways of studying those phenomena which touch on the attitude that millions of people bear towards their own political and economic activity---specifically on the transformation of moods and feelings into a basis for conscious revolutionary action.
After the Revolution, at the head of the world's first proletarian state, Lenin was faced with the need to mobilise the abilities and willpower of vast numbers of people in order to create a socialist society which would pioneer new kinds of social and economic relations. Lenin's ability to think on a huge scale, his faith _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'New Tasks and New Forces', Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 211.
36 in the creative strength of the people and his specific socio-psychological approaches to different social groups led him to the conviction that 'the minds of tens of millions of those who are doing things create something infinitely loftier than the greatest genius can foresee'.^^*^^ __ALPHA_LVL3__ The Revolution in Psychology The conjunction of objective historical development
and Lenin's personal and intellectual capacities led
him to promote a profound and fal"reachlng upheaval in
social psychology at the turn
of this century. To ensure success, the proletarian
revolution would have to be founded on a
clear and precise understanding of what he called
'socio-psychical conditions'.^^**^^ Though social
psychology had emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, no one
had seriously studied social moods, or realised that
changes in the mass consciousness have a vital effect
on the course of history. Lenin pioneered this
approach.
Today virtually every branch of Marxist social psychology, however limited its field, continues to operate on the methodological guidelines laid down by Lenin, while in certain branches his influence extends far beyond methodology. The first example we could give is class psychology and its application to the realities of revolution and socialist construction, the psychological aspects of the introduction of consciousness into _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, Collected Works, Vol. 20, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 474.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'A Third Step Back', Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 550.
37 spontaneous mass activity and into relations between the Party and the proletariat which it leads. The second area is political psychology---that is, the assessment of political decision-making, even on the international level, from a psychological standpoint.National psychology is another area in which Lenin's ideas have had a revolutionary influence: the scope, depth and attention to detail of his work in this field is unequalled. It became a pressing issue because ancient and artificial prejudices, mutual distrust and outright hatred between the nations and nationalities which made up the former Russian Empire were hindering the creation of the new life after the Revolution. Morever, bourgeois psychologists and sociologists were using national psychology to justify the colonial misdeeds of the imperialist powers. In Lenin's case, -however, the problems of national psychology provided important proof that proletarian internationalism is a politically viable principle. Arguing against those whose political beliefs rested on an insistence that national inequality is the natural result of psychological or ethnic distinctions between peoples, Lenin wrote: 'Whoever does not recognise and champion the equality of nations and languages, and does not fight against all national oppression or inequality, is not a Marxist; he is not even a democrat.'^^*^^ The Leninist line on national psychology remains a powerful weapon against the exploiting classes and their deliberate incitement of nationalism and chauvinism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Critical Remarks on the National Question', Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 28.
38As a scholar and student of philosophy, history and political economy, Lenin rejected intellectual superficiality; this same attitude can also be traced in the development of his psychological theories. Even as an undergraduate he paid considerable attention to the pronouncements of bourgeois socio-psychologists on the role of social psychology in the formation of the `world-picture', views which largely arose around the turn of this century and have been refuted by the course of history itself.
In the years before the first Russian revolution of 1905, Lenin took a firm stand against the psychological theories of Mikhailovsky, a Russian sociologist whose arguments on the Hero and the Crowd, borrowed from Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde, helped to bolster bourgeois concepts of social psychology. Lenin's critique of Mikhailovsky, though formulated at the end of the nineteenth century, is still effective today in countering the views of extreme left factions.
Lenin kept up a constant attack on those who called themselves Marxists but really believed in nothing at all and introduced all sorts of bourgeois distortions into Marxism. Their major fault in his eyes was that they followed the fashion of basing political conclusions on psychological argument but dedicated most of their attention to extraordinary allegations that the socio-psychological climate was not ripe for revolution. Lenin, for his part, knew that it was necessary to combat the negative features of the mass psyche---its passivity, acceptance of servitude, monarchist prejudices and narrow class instincts which hindered the cause of united revolutionary action.
39Lenin's psychological insights, amassed in the years leading up to the October Revolution, were verified in practice during that period. Moreover, they proved invaluable when he led the Revolution and later, immediately after the seizure of power, when the people, having overthrown the exploiters and destroyed the old state machine, had to contend with the problems of building a new state. The Soviet psychologist Kolbanovsky wrote: 'Due to his perfect knowledge of the people, its history, its achievements even under serfdom and capitalist oppression, Lenin had an unshakable faith in the people's creative potential, in the existence of vast reserves of talent in the very ``depth'' of the nation, of a desire to be involved in the epochmaking task of creating a new society.'^^*^^ Lenin's views, innovatory in the Russian context, had a revolutionising effect upon psychology in general.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Developing the Psychological Views of Marx and Engels Lenin's contribution to social
psychology is a development
of the ldeas of ^arx a"d
Engels, particularly in the
sphere of the psychology of the class struggle. Engels
had opened up this branch of social thought with his
discussion of class psychology and the class motives of
social action. Analysing the direct contradiction
between labour and capital, Engels concluded that
communism 'recognises as justified, so long as the struggle
exists, the exasperation of the proletariat towards its
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. N. Kolbanovsky, 'V. I. Lenin and the Problems of Social Psychology', in: Problemy obshchestvennoi psikhologii (Problems of Social Psychology), Mysl Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p. 73.
40 oppressors as a necessity, as the most important lever for a labour movement just beginning'.^^*^^Lenin made considerable advances along the same road, exploring the development of psychological traits specific to the proletariat as a class. He revealed the complex dialectical interaction between the causes and effects of the proletarianisation of wide sections of the population as capitalism developed, in the course of which attitudes fundamental to the peasant mentality were drastically altered.
Having established the basic categories of the psychology of the class struggle, Lenin proceeded to a psychological analysis of those classes which would carry out the revolution in Russia: the proletariat and the peasantry. He considered, for example, the changes in the consciousness of those peasants who joined the working class, reviewing the period prior to the peasants' transition to a new social role, the transition itself and the final result, and tracing the emergence and operation of socio-psychological factors specific to each stage. He emphasised that the class attitudes and mentality of the peasants would change when they ceased to be petty proprietors and became part of a labour collective. New traits would appear in their consciousness: solidarity, a sense of unity, dedication to the common cause and readiness to take a selfless stand against the class enemy.
Lenin explained the difficulty of achieving 'a victory over our own conservatism, indiscipline, petty-- _-_-_
^^*^^ Frederick Engels; 'The Condition of the Working Class in England', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p. 582.
41 bourgeois egoism, a victory over the habits left as a heritage to the worker and peasant by accursed capitalism'.^^*^^He introduced the concepts of revolutionary energy, creativity and initiative into social psychology, using them to analyse the actions of the whole people, and of those groups and individuals 'that are able to discover and achieve contact with one or another class.'^^**^^ It was the active nature of this contact which, in Lenin's view, distinguished Marxism from the other socialist theories, which lacked the scientific rigour to combine their study of objective reality with the concrete psychological factors mentioned above to form a coherent intellectual system.
Not surprisingly, it was Marxist psychologists who continued Lenin's pioneering work on the mental and physical activity of large groups of people. In further developing Marxist social psychology, Soviet psychologists have based themselves on Marx's assertion that mental activity depends on the material conditions of life, on the established system of economic relations: 'Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of different and distinctly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life.'^^***^^
Lenin based his studies in psychology on this _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'A Great Beginning', Collected Works, Vol. 29, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p. 411.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Against Boycott', Collected Works, Vol. 13, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1967, p. 36.
^^***^^ Karl Marx, 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 11, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1979, p. 128.
42 proposition, and it has remained fundamental for Marxist social psychologists to this day, viewed as the only theoretical stance which is 'compatible with scientific psychology'.^^*^^ It is also vital to an understanding of the constructive role of human activity, the source and support of manifestations of the group psyche at all levels of society.Lenin introduced dialectics to Marxist social psychology, employed it in the service of the working people, of the coming revolution. His statement that 'we must learn to approach the masses with particular patience and caution so as to be able to understand the distinctive features in the mentality of each stratum, calling, etc., of these masses'^^**^^ is still a basic methodological tenet of Marxist social psychology.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 3. Lenin and Economic Theory __ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin's View In Lenin's view, Marx's
economic doctrine was 'the most
profound, comprehensive and
detailed confirmation and
application of his theory'.^^***^^ He extended the theory
by applying it to the new stage of history---the period
of transition from capitalism to socialism the world
over.
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats', Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 140.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Second Congress of the Communist International', Collected Works, Vol. 31, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 192.
^^***^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Karl Marx', Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 59.
43He held that the study of political economy was essential to an understanding of the social structure of production, that is, of the operation of production relations in society. Production relations and the economic laws which reflect them are objective phenomena---that is, they do not depend on the human consciousness and will. The scientific verification of that fact was, to Lenin's mind, the keystone of the revolution which Marx and Engels brought about in political economy.
Lenin viewed the discipline in its historical perspective, asserting that only if it went beyond the limits of capitalism to cover other forms of production could it be considered political economy in the fullest sense of the word.
Lenin criticised Pyotr Struve, the Russian economist and philosopher, who attempted to employ certain aspects of Marxism to justify the development of capitalism in Russia while at the same time rejecting such indispensable Marxist tenets as the theory of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Struve abandoned the study of social relations and class conflicts, claiming that political economy should be concerned only with strictly economic phenomena, and that economic laws could never be objective. Lenin explained the motives behind these assertions by the fact that the bourgeoisie and its ideologues, in their hour of crisis, were naturally in 'dread of scientific analysis of the modern economy'.^^*^^ The fall of capitalism and rise of socialism were _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Socialism Demolished Again', Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 197.
44 objcctive facts which the bourgeoisie preferred not to think about.Lenin also opposed bourgeois attempts to claim that economic laws and categories, such as the institution of private property, would forever be part of the natural order of things.
Lenin used dialectical and historical materialism, the tools of economic theory, to supplement the Marxist theories of the modes of production, and the socioeconomic formations with which they are linked, of the development and decline of successive socio-- economic formations.
The Marxist view was that economic theory was a partisan issue; Lenin therefore proceeded to imbue a strictly objective intellectual discipline with party commitment, with an outspokenly critical and revolutionary attitude, since no discipline can remain impartial in a society based on the class struggle, especially in view of the aggressively contentious character of capitalism itself and the sharp contradictions within it. Thus the party commitment of Marxist-Leninist political economy is a reflection of reality; it expresses and champions the interests of the working class, the most progressive class in modern society. Lenin insisted that, though bourgeois politico-economic concepts sought only to justify the status quo, the practical research that they were based on was valuable, and should be critically assessed and turned to good use.
He made short work of Eduard Bernstein's views on the peaceful evolution of bourgeois society and the social harmony it assured, and of his claims that the emergence of joint-stock companies signified a ' democratisation of capital' (since a large number of 45 people, including workers, were thus given the chance to own capital). Lenin's critique of this position is no less relevant today.
Lenin developed a thoroughgoing defence of the labour theory of value, which had originally been advanced by bourgeois classical political economists and had been substantiated and developed by Marx and Engels, who saw it as crucial to an understanding of the laws of the capitalist mode of production, the theory of surplus value and the capitalist exploitation of labour---which is why it has been roundly attacked by bourgeois economists ever since.
Marxist-Leninist political economy has shown that the value of any commodity is determined by the amount of labour expended in its production, which is measured in terms of socially necessary time spent by the worker in creating it. But, whereas the classical bourgeois political economists had viewed the issue in the light of relationships between things, Marx, Engels and Lenin revealed that the question actually hinged on social relationships---that is, relationships between people.
Lenin judged the theory of surplus value to be fundamental to Marxist economic theory. A wage labourer sells his labour power to a capitalist who owns the means of production. Under capitalism, the act of labour has a dual result: it produces commodities--- objects which satisfy some human need---and also creates value. The capitalist is more interested in creating value: the value of the commodities made by the wage labourer exceeds the value of the labour power expended upon them. The capitalist then appropriates this surplus value, although he has not 46 paid for it. It thus becomes the source of his profit and his wealth.
In his work A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism, which discussed the escalating contradictions of capitalism and its subordination to the influence of the foreign market, Lenin criticised those economists who held that capitalism's crises of overproduction were caused by a contradiction between supply and demand, that the fall in domestic demand made the pursuit of foreign markets essential. He showed that the supply and demand problem was rooted in the basic contradiction of capitalism---- between the social nature of production and the private form of capitalist accumulation---which was the real cause of capitalist economic crises.
Lenin followed Marx and Engels in paying considerable attention to the socio-economic situation of the working class and the working people under capitalism, a most vital issue of political economy. He linked his analysis closely to his study of the class struggle and the work needed to prepare the socialist revolution. Several of his publications, including `Workers' Earnings and Capitalist Profit in Russia' and ' Impoverishment in Capitalist Society', contain a concrete analysis of the situation of the workers. He refuted the claims of the bourgeois reformists and opportunists within the Social-Democratic movement that impoverishment was no threat to the working man and that the gap between the haves and the have-nots was narrowing.
The development of capitalism in agriculture also interested Lenin deeply, and inspired such works as The Agrarian Question and the 'Critics of Marx' 47 and New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Basing himself on a comprehensive analytical study of data gathered in Russia, Germany, Denmark, the USA and elsewhere, he validated the assertion of Marx and Engels that agriculture was developing on capitalist lines, that, being but another aspect of bourgeois society, it was subject to the same basic laws as industrial production. And at the same time he considerably supplemented Marxist agrarian theory.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin's Theory of Imperialism--- an Advance in Marxist Economic Doctrine Reviewing the vast scope of
Marx and Engels' studies of
economic theory, Lenin
showed that they had covered
the entire development of
capitalism, from small-scale manufacture to massive
industrial enterprises, and illustrated the way that
capital, created by the labour of the working man,
grinds him down, ruins small and middle producers
and causes mass unemployment. In the course of its
development capital increases the productivity of
labour and prompts the largest capitalists to unite,
but, while deepening the workers' dependence on
capital, the system gives birth to a unified force---the
working class, the motive force of the socialist
revolution, the 'gravediggers of capitalism'.
Marx and Engels witnessed the bourgeois system in a tranquil, relatively steady phase of development, in a period of growth; certain of the characteristics and contradictions of capitalism were yet to emerge. Though flagrant contradictions dogged every stage of capitalist development, its ultimate overthrow by the proletarian revolution was still far in the future. The 48 stance taken by Marx and Engels on the socialist revolution was limited by the evidence available in their day. But the new historical stage of social development presented new problems which demanded a scholarly approach. Lenin was there to answer the need, and did so by formulating a theory of imperialism, according to which the growth of monopoly capital constituted a specific stage in the life of bourgeois society.
Marx had asserted that the capitalist mode of production, though dominant, retained numerous vestiges of pre-capitalist economic forms; Lenin extended this concept, stating that imperialism could not exist without a broad base of pre-monopoly and even pre-- capitalist economic forms: the monopolies were destined to function alongside small-scale manufacture and individual forms of capitalist production.
There were several technical, economic and social reasons for the survival of small and middle-sized industrial enterprises in the developed capitalist countries. Foremost among these was the fact that the monopolies, being dominant in highly profitable spheres, did not want to squeeze them out completely, for it made good financial sense to leave the less profitable areas to their lesser `colleagues', whom they manipulated by various devious economic means.
The same thing holds true today in all the developed capitalist countries, and also in those developing countries where foreign monopolies use their commanding position to bolster pre-capitalist forms of exploitation.
The middle and petty bourgeoisie are the social buttress and political pawns of monopoly capital; they, __PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---2095 49 and the social strata most closely associated with them, are infiltrated by organisations set up by the monopoly bourgeoisie which preach reactionary ideas such as extreme nationalism and chauvinism and thus directly oppose the interests of the people. The small-scale and middle industrialists are the main channel along which bourgeois ideology and false promises of financial success reach the politically unsophisticated sections of the working population.
Imperialism changes neither the fundamental features of capitalism nor the established laws of its development. Yet it is, as Lenin pointed out, a new stage of capitalism---the monopoly stage, the highest stage, in which all the prerequisites for the socialist revolution come into being. Imperialism is the harbinger of socialism.
From his researches on imperialism, Lenin concluded that the root cause of transformations in the capitalist system was to be found in the sphere of production. One of these transformations was the development of the monopoly system, the economic rationale of imperialism, which had pervaded every economic sphere---industry, finance, international economic relations---in the capitalist world. And the monopolies, for their part, had been created by the concentration and centralisation of production and capital.
As capitalism develops, the contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation intensifies, provoking economic crises and proving that 'capitalism cannot develop otherwise than in leaps and zigzags, now rapidly advancing, now dropping temporarily below the previous 50 level'.^^*^^ Monopoly domination, Lenin emphasised, increases the anarchy of production and sharpens class contradictions to an unprecedented extent. At that point the socialist revolution becomes a pressing social issue.
An important aspect of Lenin's theory of imperialism is his discussion of state-monopoly capitalism, which he described as a merger between the power of the monopolies and the power of the imperialist political machine. Further, he noted that its emergence stimulates the socialisation of production to the point where its incompatibility with the private, capitalist form of appropriation becomes so glaringly obvious that the launching of the socialist revolution is only a matter of time.
Lenin's theory of imperialism shows how wrong bourgeois economists are when they claim that capitalism is continually progressing, that radical changes are occurring in the system itself and its social and class structure. Sometimes, indeed, they make baseless statements which are inconsistent with the very nature of capitalism---for example, that state investment erodes the profit motive and that state regulation, and the nationalisation of specific enterprises and branches of industry, are introducing socialism---'state socialism'---through the back door.
Lenin's theory of monopoly capitalism was formulated in the course of his conflict with the enemies of the proletariat, the apologists of imperialism. During _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Agrarian Question in Russia Towards the Close of the Nineteenth Century', Collected Works, Vol. 15, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 129.
51 these polemics, theories such as Kautsky's ultra-- imperialism (an attempt to pass off imperialism as an improved form of capitalism which would gradually evolve into socialism) came under blistering attack. State-monopoly capitalism does not evolve into socialism. It does, however, create the material prerequisites for socialism by concentrating and centralising production and finances, and promoting specialisation, co-operation, and improved methods of economic organisation, accounting and control. Lenin emphasised that 'in a revolutionary situation, during a revolution ... state-monopoly capitalism is directly transfonned into socialism'.^^*^^ Moreover, 'the ``proximity'' of such capitalism to socialism should serve genuine representatives of the proletariat as an argument proving the proximity, facility, feasibility and urgency of the socialist revolution, and not at all as an argument for tolerating the repudiation of such a revolution and the efforts to make capitalism look more attractive, something which all reformists are trying to do'.^^**^^ State-monopoly capitalism cannot abolish the class antagonisms and exploitation that are inherent in capitalism and, specifically, in imperialism: that is a task for the socialist revolution.The scholarly approach that Lenin originated to deal with the apologists of imperialism is a useful guard against the sophistry of such bourgeois theories as 'people's capitalism' and 'regulated capitalism'.
Lenin revealed that economic and political _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Revision of the Party Programme', Collected Works ,Vol. 26, p. 170.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The State and Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 25, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 443.
52 development are unavoidably uneven under imperialism. The unequal rate of growth of different countries which is typical of the capitalist commodity production system becomes increasingly unbalanced during the monopoly-capitalist phase; the disproportion between economic development and capital accumulation in a given country and that country's international influence and territorial possessions gives every sign of becoming permanent. The capitalist world turns into an arena where bitter rivalries are decided by force---a fertile ground for world war.Lenin used his observation of imperialism's uneven economic and political progress to expand the theory of the socialist revolution by showing that socialism could prevail initially in a certain number of countries or even in one country alone. We will discuss this point more closely in Chapter III.
He went on to prove that, due to the unbalanced political and economic development of imperialism, crisis is an inherent feature of this entire historical stage. The general crisis of capitalism is not merely a temporary phenomenon---it is a historical process which began when pre-monopoly capitalism passed into the monopoly stage and proceeds through the collapse of capitalism and the triumph of the socialist revolution in specific countries when the objective and subjective conditions warrant it. The process will end in the worldwide triumph of socialism.
In his theory of imperialism---an expansion of Marxist economic doctrine---Lenin established the laws which govern this historical stage and made several original scientific extrapolations. The theory was fully borne out by the course of history.
53 __ALPHA_LVL3__ The Fundamentals of Socialist Political Economy
Lenin created the foundations
of socialjst political economic
theory-a component part of
Marxist-Leninist political
economy. A series of works written in 1917, including
'The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It'
and 'Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?', set forth
the economic programme of the socialist revolution,
with all its international implications. It was the
world's first scientifically based plan for the abolition
of private ownership of land and other property and
the creation of a socialist economic system founded
on common ownership of the means of production, a
system with dual foundations: the major means of
production centralised in the hands of a socialist state
and social production placed at the service of the
working people. In 1917 the October Revolution
established, for the first time ever, the political conditions
conducive to the emergence and development of the
socialist mode of production, which initially
determined the economic structure and later permeated all
spheres of the national economy.
Lenin viewed the Revolution, the building of socialism and of a socialist economic system in the Soviet state as a working model of the proletarian revolution, which would proceed on similar lines in other countries, varying only on points of practical detail. The socialist revolution and the building of socialism in Russia, therefore, were universally significant.
After 1917 Lenin's works tended to centre on the theoretical and practical problems of building the economic structure of the socialist society. We can refer the reader, for example, to 'The Immediate Tasks of 54 the Soviet Government', '``Left-Wing'' Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality', 'A Great Beginning', 'Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat', 'The Tax in Kind', and 'On Cooperation'.
On the basis of Marxist doctrine, Lenin indicated the need for a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, in which the dictatorship of the proletariat would play a leading role, and showed how the working class should relate to the peasantry and the bourgeoisie during this period. His theory, which was verified by events, was that this transition was inevitable and would constitute a specific historical stage.
He rated the building of a socialist economy as the socialist revolution's most vital and difficult task. As he saw it, the major problems lay 'in the economic sphere, namely, the introduction of the strictest and universal accounting and control of the production and distribution of goods, raising the productivity of labour and socialising production in practice'.^^*^^ So the dictatorship of the proletariat exists not only to keep down the deposed exploiters, by violent means if necessary---it also supervises the planned transition to socialism and the creation of a new society.
Lenin considered the guidance of the Communist Party as essential to the successful creation of the socialist and communist economy, while stressing that the maximum number of working people should be actively involved in order to assure that success: ' _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government', Collected Works, Vol. 27, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p. 241.
55 Socialism cannot be decreed from above ... living, creative socialism is the product of the masses themselves.'^^*^^He set the economic role of the proletarian state--- that is, the relationship between the economic and political structures---on a scientific foundation, proving that the Marxist doctrine on the determining influence of economics on politics also holds good during the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. But he endorsed the Marxist emphasis on the primacy of the political over the economic structure in the sense that a viable socialist economic structure and a sound attitude to its development are impossible without a correct political orientation.
Lenin established that the economic structure of Soviet Russia during the transitional period consisted of five socio-economic formations: patriarchal, largely natural, peasant farming; small-scale commodity production, also mostly based on the countryside; private capitalist enterprise; state capitalism, in the form of Soviet joint-stock companies which used private capital, concessions, etc.; and socialism. The three basic and typical formations, which would be found in any country on the path from capitalism to socialism, were: socialism, small-scale commodity production, arid private capitalist enterprise. Socialism is paramount in the economy during the transitional stage because it is progressive and occupies the commanding economic positions: the major industrial _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Meeting of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, November 4 (17), 1917', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 288.
56 enterprises, the banks, transport and communications, and foreign and domestic trade. Lenin insisted that the occupation of these key points was one of the most important measures to be taken during this stage, since the basic contradiction of the transitional period would arise between socialism, weak but growing stronger, and capitalism, defeated but still potent. The conflict between them would determine the direction of the class struggle.Marx and Engels had produced sound scientific arguments to show that the new, communist society should be rooted in highly developed productive forces such as large-scale machine industries. On these same lines, Lenin formulated his plan for the building of the socialist economy, which centred on the industrialisation of Soviet Russia: 'A large-scale machine industry capable of reorganising agriculture is the only material basis that is possible for socialism.'^^*^^ Once political power and the basic means of production were in the hands of the proletarian government, the socialist transformation of agriculture---essential in building socialism---would come about through the establishment of co-operative forms of agricultural production. Lenin's detailed guidelines for the creation of the socialist system in the countryside have proved influential in the international context.
Lenin worked out the main lines of the New Economic Policy (NEP), adopted by the Communist Party and the Soviet government during the transition from capitalism to socialism: recognition of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Third Congress of the Communist International, June 22-July 12, 1921', Collected Works, Vol. 32, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 459.
57 transitional stage as necessary; extensive use of material incentives to encourage the workers who were building socialism; establishment of an economic alliance between the working class and the peasantry; transfer of state enterprises to the cost-accounting system; continued operation of commodity-money relations; and acceptance of private capital within specified limits and under government control. Lenin foresaw that NEP would also prove internationally significant: 'This task which we are working on now, for the time being on our own, seems to be a purely Russian one, but in reality it is a task which all socialists will face.'^^*^^Lenin amplified the Marxist proposition that underdeveloped countries could proceed directly to socialism, bypassing the capitalist stage. He showed that this would be possible when the international balance of power had altered to the extent that countries which had already become socialist could offer help.
Marx and Engels viewed state economic planning as an essential condition of socialism; it therefore played a key role in Lenin's thinking too. He saw the vital factors of the state economic plan as: a prescriptive role in the economy, rigorously scientific groundwork, a realistic approach, and a systematic checking procedure. Lenin was emphatic that communism would prevail only if it improved on capitalist levels of labour productivity.
Socialism and communism, Lenin held, were two phases of a single socio-economic formation, two stages _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I, Lenin, 'Ninth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, December 23--28, 1921', Collected Works, Vol. 33, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 177.
58 in the growth of communist society. He stated that socialism is in a constant state of development, and, moreover, that the expansion of the productive forces, the creation of the material and technical base of the communist society play a determining role in building communism. He made it clear that communism would remain out of reach unless the latest advances in science and technology were extensively employed to aid the transfer from socialist production relations to their communist equivalents. And it would also be vital to instil a new attitude to labour, a new approach to labour organisation and discipline: 'The communist organisation of social labour, the first step towards which is socialism, rests, and will do so more and more as time goes on, on the free and conscious discipline of the working people themselves who have thrown off the yoke both of the landowners and capitalists.'^^*^^We have seen how Lenin developed and substantiated all aspects of Marxist economic theory, made his own contribution to Marxist economic doctrines, laid the foundations of socialist political economic theory, and drew the relevant conclusions from his observation of the growth of the world's first socialist society.
There is only one criterion of truth---life itself. And the escalation of the crisis of capitalism, the flourishing of the socialist world system and the undeniable appeal exercised by the achievements of socialism put the validity, the irresistible force of the economic doctrines of Marx, Engels and Lenin beyond all doubt.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'A Great Beginning', Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 420.
59 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER II __ALPHA_LVL1__ CREATING A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. A Worldview in the Making __ALPHA_LVL3__ The Genesis of a Militant Revolutionary The views, the philosophical
convictions., of a revolutionary
are but part of the picture:
his practical achievements must also be taken into
account.
Lenin was one of those revolutionaries for whom theory and practice were one, whose revolutionary activity was both far-reaching and cohesive and whose intellectual convictions were given practical application.
At the very beginning of the twentieth century, Lenin described the revolutionary destiny of the Russian proletariat in these prophetic words: 'Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!'^^*^^ He and his colleagues were to create that organisation---a new type of revolutionary party, a party of the proletariat.
A clear picture of Lenin the revolutionary will emerge as we study his growing conviction that Russia needed a new type of party, his efforts to found and sustain it, and his views on the revolutionary _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'What Is To Be Done?', Collected Works, Vol. 5, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 467.
60 movement and the forms and methods applicable to the coming revolutionary conflict.Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov---he first began to call himself Lenin towards the end of 1901---was born in 1870 in the town of Simbirsk (now renamed Ulyanovsk). Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, his father, was from a lower middle class family; an extremely hardworking and talented man, he had not allowed his slender means to deprive him of a college education. Lenin's mother, Maria Alexandrovna, a doctor's daughter, had been educated at home. She was a capable person, however, and got a teaching qualification as an external student. She was proficient in several languages.
In the Ulyanovs' loving home, the children's intellect and character were developed through education and example. Special care was taken to foster their respect for work, their sense of justice, self-discipline and self-reliance.
Reaction was rife in Russia during Lenin's formative years. He observed the life around him closely, seeing that the people were sunk in poverty, lawlessness and ignorance, at the mercy of the tsarist authorities' arbitrary power. He read voraciously, looking for answers to the questions that troubled him.
Reading the works of the Russian revolutionary democrats of the 1860s---Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov---encouraged his hostility towards the Russian autocracy and laid the foundations of his revolutionary views. The revolutionary democrats were Utopian socialists; they cherished the hope that socialism would come through the peasant commune, which still existed in Russia and which they 61 mistakenly believed to be an embryonic form of socialism. They were correct to view the people as pivotal to social development, but they could hardly have been expected to see the working class as a motive force of social transformation.
These (men, the fathers of the Russian democratic tradition, censured the liberal bourgeoisie, who held forth on freedom and equality but saw no reason to alter the social system which weighed so heavily on the common people. The Russian Marxists accepted the heritage of the revolutionary democrats, but supplemented it with their class theories. Part of the democratic heritage adopted by the Russian proletarian revolutionaries was internationalism expressed in revolutionary action. Lenin summarised the significance of the revolutionary democrats in this way: 'Selfless devotion to the revolution and revolutionary propaganda among the people are not wasted even if long decades divide the sowing from the harvest.'^^*^^
The young Lenin was also profoundly influenced by his elder brother Alexander---indeed, it was thanks to him and his interest in Marxist works that Lenin caught his first glimpse of Marx's Capital.
Alexander, one of St. Petersburg University's best students, was active in revolutionary youth groups and did duty as a political propagandist among the workers. On 8 May 1887, at the age of 21, he was hanged for his part in the attempted assassination of the tsar. This dreadful blow steeled Lenin's revolutionary convictions, and yet, while he esteemed his brother's self-- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'In Memory of Herzen', Collected Works, Vol. 18, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968, p. 31.
62 sacrificing courage, he rejected terrorism as a viable solution. 'No, we shall not take that road,' he said. 'That is not the road to follow.'Shortly after entering Kazan University in 1887, Lenin joined a revolutionary group. He was imprisoned for his involvement in a student demonstration, and later exiled to the village of Kokushkino, where he was kept under secret police surveillance. In the autumn of 1888 he was allowed to move to Kazan, but refused permission to re-enter the University or to continue his studies abroad.
He [then joined one of the Marxist groups run by Nikolai Fedoseyev, one of Russia's first popularisers of Marxism, which was dominating the West European labour movement by the beginning of the eighties. The socialist parties there were faring well, while in Russia the capitalist system was taking root and the objective and subjective conditions for the acceptance of Marxism were rapidly maturing: the Russian proletariat was not only growing, but was becoming an increasingly influential element in society, ready to steer its own course in the revolutionary movement. The spread of Marxism in Russia owes much to Georgi Plekhanov and the Emancipation of Labour group which he founded in Geneva in 1883. A talented journalist and propagandist with a thorough knowledge of Marxism, Plekhanov was an active member of the Russian revolutionary movement and fostered its international links. Fedoseyev's circle in Kazan discussed Marx and Engels' works and debated Plekhanov's attempts to apply Marxist theories to the Russian context in the light of the coming revolution and the proletariat's revolutionary role.
63The effect of Marxism on Lenin was deep and decisive: 'The irresistible attraction of this theory, which draws to itself the socialists of all countries, lies precisely in the fact that it combines the quality of being strictly and supremely scientific (being the last word in social science) with that of being revolutionary, it does not combine them accidentally and not only because the founder of the doctrine combined in his own person the qualities of a scientist and a revolutionary, but does so intrinsically and inseparably.'^^*^^
Yet the advance of Marxism in Russia was dogged by a fierce controversy with a petty-bourgeois group called the populists---narodniki in Russian---whose views had swayed the Russian revolutionary movement and the majority of the democratic intelligentsia since the late 1860s. The populists, mostly young people, went out into the countryside, to the `people' (hence their name: the Russian word for `people' is narod), to rouse them to revolutionary action against the autocracy, but were met with a most discouraging response. The populists held that Russian capitalism was a chance phenomenon with no hope of survival, and that therefore the proletariat of Russia was not a factor to be taken seriously. The main force behind the revolution would be the peasantry; socialism would develop on the basis of the peasant commune.
They attached no importance to the historic role of the class struggle, believing that history is made by outstanding individuals---`heroes'---who lead the passive masses---'the crowd'.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats', Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 327.
64The People's Will (Narodnaya Volya}, a group which formed in 1879, after the split in the populist underground revolutionary society called Land and Freedom (Zemlya i Volya), declared that its immediate aim was the overthrow of the autocracy and the establishment of a democratic republic. The populists were at last facing the necessity of political action; unfortunately they saw it in terms of conspiracy and individual terror, undertaken in the hope of disrupting the government and inspiring the people to rise.
The ideas and actions of the revolutionary populists made a tremendous impact on the majority of progressive young people, Lenin among them. Those who joined the revolutionary movement did so under the spell of those courageous men and women and their self-sacrificing determination to liberate the people. As Lenin put it: 'Nearly all had in their early youth enthusiastically worshipped the terrorist heroes. It required a struggle to abandon the captivating impressions of those heroic traditions, and the struggle was accompanied by the breaking off of personal relations with people who were determined to remain loyal to the Narodnaya Volya and for whom the young Social-Democrats had profound respect. The struggle compelled the youthful leaders to educate themselves, to read illegal literature of every trend.'^^*^^
But, for all its heroism and self-denial, the People'* Will was ultimately crushed because its theory and tactics were ill-founded and its links with the people limited and shallow. The movement's most influential _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'What Is To Be Done?', Collected Works, Vol. 55 pp. 517--18.
__PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 5---2095 65 group during the eighties was the terrorist faction to which Alexander Ulyanov had belonged.In 1889 Lenin moved to Samara (now renamed Kuibyshev), where he lived for some four and a half years. Refused entrance to the University, he studied for the law exams at home and passed them in the spring and autumn of 1891. As the only candidate who merited top marks in all subjects, he was awarded a diploma of the highest grade. At the end of January 1892 Lenin began to work as an assistant barrister-- atlaw, though his official occupation was but secondary to his work for the revolution.
There were several revolutionary groups in Samara at that time. Having made contact with a circle led by Alexei Sklyarenko, Lenin formed Samara's first Marxist group, which was joined by Sklyarenko and other young revolutionaries; as the central figure in this group, Lenin established links through which young people in other towns were won over to Marxism. At this stage Lenin declared open war on populist misconceptions, beginning by attacking them in the study groups.
It was in Kazan and Samara that Lenin became a committed Marxist, preparing, as it were, for his forthcoming appearance in the wider revolutionary context. He was aware that a large industrial centre with a substantial proletarian element would provide better scope for direct revolutionary activity, and in August 1893 he moved to St. Petersburg,^^*^^ the capital.
He began to practise as an assistant barrister-at-law, _-_-_
^^*^^ In August 1914 it was renamed Petrograd, and is now Leningrad.
66 to provide himself with a cover: he dedicated all his time and energy to the revolution. Soon after his arrival he joined a Marxist group which was attended largely by students from the Technological Institute, and immediately revitalised it. Even at this early stage of his revolutionary career he concentrated all his attention on the crucial issues---on overcoming the disunity among the Social-Democratic groups and on forming a revolutionary proletarian party.He established his first contacts with the Petersburg workers in the autumn of 1893: he visited their political study groups, attended meetings in their homes, took careful stock of their life-style, their feelings and desires, and himself became a group leader. When teaching, he illustrated Marxist tenets with examples drawn from the workers' lives.
One of his students, Vladimir Knyazev, recalled that everyone in the group clearly understood the essential idea---that unity would make the workers strong enough to destroy all that stood between them and a better life, and that knowledge would help them to pull themselves up out of slavery.
But populist views were still current among certain sectors of the revolutionary youth. Populism's liberal wing, which was then in a dominant position, had rejected the revolutionary tradition in favour of reform within the existing social system and had begun to attack the Russian Marxists. The populists still maintained that Russian capitalism was an artificial transplant dependent upon state subsidy and orders placed by the government with Russian industrialists, and that Marxism was therefore irrelevant to the Russian context.
67Populism curbed the spread of Marxism in Russia and held back the revolutionary movement; it had to be dealt with. Lenin was highly appreciative of Plekhanov's pioneering moves against the populist ideology, but delivered the final blow himself.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Leading Russia's Revolutionary Proletariat One of Lenin's first lengthy
works, what the'Friends of
the People' Are and How
They Fight the Social--
Democrats, published in 1894 when he was 24 years old, is
an attack on the populists' philosophical and
economic views and their political platform and tactics.
The book not only defended revolutionary Marxism
against populist distortions but also supplemented
Marxism by throwing light on the class factors
that lay at the root of the most complex and
contradictory aspects of Russian life.
In a comprehensive review of populism, Lenin traced the transformation of its views from the revolutionary positions of the 1870s to the middle-class reformist utopianism of the 1890s. The revolutionary populists of the seventies were sustained in their battle against autocracy by their belief in a peasant socialist revolution; they championed the interests of the peasantry, which at that time was still a fairly coherent segment of the population. But twenty years on, they had become moderate liberals, who, as the representatives of the rural bourgeoisie---which had emerged as a result of the stratification of village society---no longer had any desire to transform society through revolution.
Lenin's approach to Marxism was creative: he widened its revolutionary potential in several important 68 respects, including the formulation of a specific revolutionary programme. He was the first Russian Marxist to isolate the objective causes of the two wars being waged in Russian society at that time---between the peasants and the landlords, and between the working class and the capitalists---and to predict the positions that the class forces would take up in the coming bourgeois-democratic revolution.
His assertion that only the Russian working class could lead the working people---in the revolution and at other times---was particularly influential. Marx's proposition on the same lines had been pushed aside by the leaders of the Second International, and Plekhanov and other Social-Democrats were maintaining that the Russian proletariat would ally itself with the bourgeoisie in the coming democratic revolution, as the European proletariat had in the bourgeois revolutions. Lenin demolished these arguments.
Lenin supported a revolutionary alliance between the peasantry and the working class, with the latter as the leading force. He revived and broadened the teaching of Marx and Engels on this point and gave it factual backing. The conclusions which he reached crucially influenced the formulation of the theory of transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist revolution.
The attitude of the working class and its party to the petty bourgeoisie was another major issue that Lenin tackled, basing his conclusions on the dual nature of the petty bourgeoisie, a dualism which was particularly evident in Russia, where the peasantry constituted the majority of the population. Unlike the proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie owned the means of 69 production, but unlike the more powerful capitalists they actually did the work themselves. The petty bourgeoisie was progressive in its vocal opposition to the vestiges of serfdom and feudalism in Russia, but was at the same time reactionary, an obstacle to social progress, since it strove to protect its class position and the small amount of property that it possessed.
Lenin emphasised the peasantry's revolutionary potential and showed that it could be a reliable ally of the proletariat in the coming democratic revolution.
The class struggle and the role of the Russian proletariat in the liberation movement had a determining influence on the aims of the Russian revolutionaries.
Lenin argued conclusively for the creation of a revolutionary Marxist party: there was no other way of transforming the fragmented economic struggle of individual sections of the workers into a conscious and organised class struggle that would encompass the entire proletariat. The new party would help the proletariat formulate the most effective way to organise for revolution, bearing in mind past experiences in other countries and the specifics of the Russian situation.
But since the working class was to head all other democratic elements, the party would have to ensure their support also. Thus, with the backing of a mass workers' movement, the party would carry its ideas to other classes and social groups; the peasantry would be the first priority, followed by the urban and rural intelligentsia and the artisans. Ultimately a united and militant political opposition to autocracy and capitalism would emerge.
Lenin defined this new party as the class organisation of the proletariat, its high command. It should 70 be firmly rooted in Marxism, combine revolutionary spirit with high intellectual standards, and in its actions forge a close bond between theory and practice, between scientific socialism and the labour movement, between word and deed---in this way it would thrive and extend its influence among the workers, it would 'lead the RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT (side by side with the proletariat of ALL COUNTRIES) along the straight road of open political struggle to THE VICTORIOUS COMMUNIST REVOLUTION'.^^*^^
Lenin knew that such a party would not appear overnight: 'The history of socialism and democracy in Western Europe, the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, the experience of our working-class movement---such is the material we must master to elaborate a purposeful organisation and purposeful tactics for our Party.'^^**^^ But Lenin believed firmly that the Russian revolutionaries should assess and assimilate the undoubtedly valuable revolutionary experience of the past on their own terms, for 'there are no ready-made models to be found anywhere'.***
The Russian revolutionary and European socialist movements of the early twentieth century could not serve as models for the Russian revolutionaries because they had not stood up in practice. Populist activities had proved as bankrupt as the theories they rested on. The socialist parties of the Second International had _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats', Collected Works, Vol. l,p. 300.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Our Immediate Task', Collected Works, Vol. 4, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 217. *** Loc. cit.
71 shown themselves to be essentially or exclusively reformist, and their dalliance with legal forms of action within the bourgeois parliamentary system, although bringing short-term gains, had not promoted the cause of the socialist revolution in the particular historical context.Eduard Bernstein, the ideologue of revisionism, claimed that Marxism was an obsolete and dogmatic doctrine, rendered irrelevant by changing circumstances. He denied that capitalism was unavoidably doomed and rejected the scientific premises of the theory of the transition from capitalism to communism through revolution---and his views had begun to infect the Russian democratic movement.
Given that the revolution was imminent, Lenin was deeply concerned by the choice that lay before the emergent Russian workers' movement: a determined drive towards revolution or the reformist path endorsed by the Russian supporters of Bernstein, the `Economists'.^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Organisation Is Strength The Russian revolutionaries
had to dedde how to guide
the workers movement
towards political activity leading to revolution. Lenin's
book What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our
_-_-_
^^*^^ The `Economists', who represented the opportunist trend in Russian Social-Democracy over the turn of the century, joined the anti-Marxists within the Second International (Bernstein and his followers) in maintaining that the workers should limit themselves to economic demands. They dismissed political action by the working class, denied its leading role in the revolution and opposed the formation of a working-class political party.
72 Movement, published in March 1902 in Stuttgart, gave comprehensive answers to all the relevant questions.He saw that the workers' movement was in danger of falling prey to bourgeois ideology and drifting towards reformism, and that this danger was especially grave at that period of acute crisis in Russian SocialDemocracy.
In What Is To Be Done? Lenin outlined the three developmental stages of the Russian Social-- Democratic movement.
The first period, from 1884 to 1894, was characterised by the activities of Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labour group. Though the theory and programme of the Russian Social-Democratic movement were established at this point, the number of Marxists was inconsiderable, the Social-Democratic groups scattered and their links with the workers non-existent.
The second period, from 1894 to 1898, saw the emergence of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, a Social-Democratic organisation formed in St. Petersburg in 1895 and led by Lenin, which proved to be the germ of the revolutionary proletarian party. It united 20 Marxist workers' groups and had members in almost every large industrial enterprise in St. Petersburg. For the first time scientific socialism began to make headway among the workers: members of the League went out to rouse the workers and led the Petersburg strikes of 1895 and 1896, which proved that the working class was capable of leading the working people in political action---that it had become a force to be reckoned with.
73Late on 9 December 1895, four of the five leading members of the League, including Lenin, were arrested. But even in prison he kept abreast of events, and sent secret messages to advise his comrades on the outside.
In this period, the number of Marxist organisations throughout the country mushroomed, thanks to Lenin's efforts at the head of the Petersburg SocialDemocratic movement.
But during the third stage of its development, which began in 1898, Russian Social-Democracy passed into a period of crisis. On the organisational level, problems were caused by the continuing fragmentation and lack of contact between individual Marxist groups and the absence of united leadership. The ideological difficulties were caused by the `Economists' and 'Legal Marxists',^^*^^ who were pushing hard to revise scientific socialism. But despite the efforts of Bernstein's Russian sympathisers, the Social-Democratic and workers' movement, as Lenin put it, 'continued to grow, and it advanced with enormous strides'.^^**^^ Workingclass militancy was spreading through the country.
_-_-_^^*^^ 'Legal Marxism' was a bourgeois distortion of Marxism which arose in the mid-1890s. Its supporters opposed populist doctrines by accepting capitalism as an essential stage of development, but denied that capita) ism was necessarily heading for disaster. Rejecting Marxist views on the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, they held that the workers' movement should serve the ends of the bourgeoisie. Subsequently many 'Legal Marxists' joined the bourgeois Constitutional-Democratic (Cadet) Party.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'What Is To Be Done?', Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 518.
74What Is To Be Done? gave a thorough analysis of workers' organisations and revolutionary movements in Russia and Europe, justifying Marx's view that a revolutionary movement was unthinkable without revolutionary theory. The essential implication of this was that a militant working class could not fulfil its historic mission unless revolutionary theory provided it with an accurate understanding of its position in capitalist society and of the aims and methods it should apply in the confrontation with capitalism.
Socialist ideology could not be formulated haphazardly and would not spread spontaneously among the working class. As the ideology of the class struggle of the proletariat, scientific socialism would be developed by those educated members of society---intellectuals or workers---who subscribed to the working-class viewpoint. And progress within the workers' movement would be dogged by a fierce and unremitting conflict with bourgeois ideology. As Lenin wrote: 'The only choice is---either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a ``third'' ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.'^^*^^
Lenin asserted that the revolutionary party should guide the spontaneous workers' movement and instil social consciousness into it---something that only a Marxist party could do: 'The role of vanguard fighter _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 384.
75 can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory.'^^*^^Reviewing the class struggle over the turn of the century, Lenin concluded that the economic interests of the proletariat 'can be satisfied only by a political revolution that will replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by the dictatorship of the proletariat'.^^**^^
The party is an organising and leading force. In making the working class aware of its position in capitalist society, its immediate tasks in the conflict situation, its ultimate goals and the ways in which it can achieve long-term and short-term ends, the party sets before it the task of translating the doctrines of scientific communism into practice.
Lenin emphasised, however, that victory was unlikely if more general democratic aims and immediate working-class demands were neglected. Unless tsarism were overthrown and civil liberties won, the Russian proletariat would remain fragmented and incapable of carrying out a socialist revolution. It was therefore essential to unite the socialist struggle of the working class with the widely democratic movement. But in doing so 'we must bear in mind that the struggles with the government for partial demands and the gain of certain concessions are merely light skirmishes with the enemy, encounters between outposts, whereas the decisive battle is still to come'.^^***^^
So, as things then stood, the formation of a _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, p. 370.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 390--91.
^^***^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement', Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 371.
76 proletarian party was the crucial issue facing the Russian workers' movement.Lenin's guidelines for the composition of the party were based on a critical review of past experience in Russia and the West and of the current domestic situation---that is, the absence of civil liberties, the arbitrary behaviour of the autocracy, and the atmosphere of violent reaction. The party would have a central core consisting mostly of professional revolutionaries who had dedicated their lives to the revolution, who had political and organisational experience, at least a basic theoretical grounding, and the ability to cope with police persecution; they would be occupied exclusively in party work and head the party committees. The party would also require a broad network of local organisations, peripheral circles, and groups in the large factories---under the supervision of a committee which would consist of those workers who exercised the most influence and authority---and a vast number of party members throughout the country who enjoyed the support and respect of the majority of the working population. Other essential factors were a centralised structure, strict discipline, and close links with the people as a whole.
The party would arise in several stages, beginning with the formulation of the ideological platform. Supporters would rally round this platform, the party's organisational principles would be laid down and, finally, a congress would be called to establish the party's strategy and tactics, the forms and methods of its activity. In this way the ideological disarray and organisational fragmentation of the Russian Social-- Democratic movement would be overcome.
77Lenin saw that a political newspaper with a countrywide circulation would be a crucial factor in promoting ideological and organisational unity. Such a paper would popularise Marxist ideas, expand Marxist theories, expose bourgeois attempts to confuse the working class, protect Marxism from distortion, and apply it to the realities of the Russian situation. It would bring together those who worked on its preparation, publication and distribution, those who kept up contacts with it and spread its views among the workers, and those who read it regularly, moulding them into an active core which would constitute the framework of the future party.
The first edition of Iskra (The Spark), a revolutionary paper founded by Lenin, printed abroad and circulated illegally throughout Russia, appeared in January 1901. Thus began a whole new epoch in Russian Social-Democracy.
Any progressive worker who read Iskra on a regular basis would learn about Marxism through general observations backed up by factual material drawn from the lives of the workers and examples of the oppressive injustices of autocracy, the arbitrary procedures of the police and the exploitation inherent in the capitalist system. His limited local perspectives would widen as he read of class battles abroad and understood that proletarians in other countries were his class brothers, his fellow campaigners, that he was united with them in a common struggle. Iskra's firm stand for proletarian internationalism was reflected in its tremendously popular slogan, the watchword of Marx and Engels: 'Workers of All Countries, Unite!'
In the course of three years, Iskra co-ordinated the 78 work which culminated in a draft programme and rules, so that on the eve of the 1905 revolution the Russian proletariat possessed a clear and precise plan of action which was in line with the needs of the people and the demands of social development. The party organisations had consolidated around Iskra, and Lenin's plan for the creation of a revolutionary Marxist party in Russia was rapidly coming to fruition.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2. A New Type of Party __ALPHA_LVL3__ The Second RSDLP Congress Iskra had been campaigning
for a congress to consolidate,
the growing Party on the
ideological and organisational lines which the newspaper
had done so much to establish.
The Second Congress of the Russian Social-- Democratic Labour Party met in July and August 1903; its first 13 sessions were held in an abandoned warehouse in Brussels and the other 24 at various venues in London, after police harassment had forced the Congress out of Belgium. Most of the delegates were young and energetic revolutionaries: Lenin himself was only 33 and many of his colleagues were under 30.
A battle over principles split the Congress; the consistent and strong-willed Marxist revolutionaries rallied around Lenin while the waverers backed Martov.
The adoption of the programme, which would define the Party's fundamental character and its political strategy and tactics, was the most important item on the agenda. Each point had to be discussed and voted on individually, but Lenin's revolutionary line prevailed, and the Congress adopted a strictly 79 Marxist programme with a dual thrust: the maximum programme expressed the Party's prime aim---the creation of a socialist society through socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat; the minimum programme dealt with more immediate concerns---the overthrow of tsarism, the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the establishment of a democratic republic, the introduction of the eight-hour working day, the elimination of the vestiges of serfdom in the countryside, and the endorsement of national equality and self-determination.
For the first time since the death of Marx and Engels, a working-class party had espoused a revolutionary programme whose fundamental aim was the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was due entirely to Lenin's insistence.
Elections to the editorial board of Iskra, the Party's central organ and ideological bulwark, and to the Central Committee, which would guide day-to-day Party activities, were then held. The Congress divided into the Bolsheviki, the 'members of the majority', who supported Lenin, and the Mensheviki, the ' members of the minority', who followed Martov in his opposition to the Iskra line.
The formation of these two opposing groups, no mere historical accident, led to the emergence of two parties, one which was proletarian and followed a genuinely revolutionary course, and a petty-bourgeois party of compromise. Lenin wrote that 'as a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903'.^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, ' ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 24.
80Lenin championed the creation of a party which would consist of the finest, most selfless men, revolutionaries who could work day in and day out among the people. The strength and influence of Party organisations would depend on the abilities and qualities of every Party member. Lenin judged that an ideal leader for the workers would be a proletarian revolutionary, a tribune of the people, who would react to all signs of abuse or oppression, wherever they arose and whoever they involved, who would seize any opportunity to broadcast his socialist convictions and democratic aims, to spell out the universal and historic significance of the proletariat's drive for freedom. Lenin was always careful to distinguish the Party, the vanguard of the working class, from the class it sprang from.
Lenin's draft Party Rules proposed that anyone who accepted the RSDLP programme, contributed to Party funds and worked in a local Party organisation was entitled to consider himself a member. Martov's counter-formulation of this first clause which was accepted, defined a Party member as anyone who accepted the Party programme and proffered regular assistance. Participation in a Party organisation was therefore voluntary. This---seemingly the more democratic form, which would foster a large and broadlybased party---in fact robbed the Russian proletariat of their organisational strength, their major weapon against the autocracy, by opening the door to mere sympathisers, who abounded in those days of revolutionary ferment. People were able to style themselves Party members despite the fact that they had never worked in any local Party body. Such a loose __PRINTERS_P_81_COMMENT__ 6---2095 81 structure was simply not viable in the given situation: in the first serious confrontation the autocracy would mercilessly crush the sprawling, uncoordinated organisation that Martov and his followers were determined to create.
Yet the Second RSDLP Congress had achieved its major aim by bringing into being a revolutionary, Bolshevik Party, headed by Lenin---a new type of party, substantially different from those belonging to the Second International, capable of fulfilling the historic role of vanguard of the working class, of leading it to victory in the revolution. The Bolshevik Party now pointed the way to the socialist revolution, to the dictatorship of the proletariat, to communism.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Overcoming the Party Crisis The Party was a reality---yet
Lenin and hjg followers faced
enormous difficulties in
transforming it into an effectively militant and monolithic
organisation. Between 1903 and October 1917, the
Party experienced two serious crises which threatened
its very existence---the first shortly after the Second
RSDLP Congress and the second after the defeat of
the 1905 revolution. Responsibility for the first---the
split in the Party ranks---belongs entirely to the
Mensheviks.
After their defeat at the Congress, the Mensheviks began, in Martov's words, a 'revolt against Leninism', characterising their behaviour as a reaction against the 'state of siege' within the Party which, they claimed, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had declared. As self-styled crusaders against the `horrors' of centralism, they disparaged all demands that they carry out Congress decisions as `formalism' and 'red tape', and 82 dismissed the subordination of the minority to the majority as 'barrack-room discipline'. Moreover, they tried to prove that there had been no disagreement in principle between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks at the Second Congress---merely a personality clash. And they passed their version of the story on to the West European socialists.
Lenin's qualities as a revolutionary are clearly illustrated by his reaction to this situation. He thought it essential for all Party members to know the genuine reasons for the schism within the Party; he acted openly and appealed to the Party as a whole, not to small unconnected groups and foreign organisations--- even Martov had to admit that. And Lenin did so because he knew that the only correct policy is that which is rooted in principle.
In 1904, a year after the Second Congress, he published One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, which gave a precise and accurate account of the Party crisis. He cited facts to prove that the split was only to be expected as 'a direct and inevitable continuation of that division of the Social-Democrats into a revolutionary and an opportunist wing ... which did not appear only yesterday, nor in the Russian workers' party alone, and which no doubt will not disappear tomorrow'.^^*^^
Menshevism had descended from `Economism', inheriting its aim of subordinating the proletariat to the interests of the liberal bourgeoisie. The incorrect line taken by the Martov group during the Second Congress debates on the first clause of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 341.
83 Rules developed into a whole system of opportunist views which militated against a united and organised Party.In Lenin's view, the Party was the sum of the organisations within it, and should comprise 'only such elements as allow of at least a minimum of organisation'.^^*^^
The idea of optimum organisation is a motif which appears in all Lenin's written works and correspondence during this period. The concept of Party organisation implied that Party discipline apply equally to all members, be they leaders or rank and file; that all were expected to carry out their Party duties; and that the lower bodies must be subordinate to the higher.
A disorganised and undisciplined Party could not organise the proletariat. And without a united organisation, firmly based on the unity of the Marxist system of thought, the proletariat could not fulfil its historic mission.
Lenin showed that the Menshevik line led to organisational opportunism, which rejected the very idea of the revolutionary Party as the major weapon of the working class in its struggle for power, and well suited those members of the intelligentsia who were individualists at heart and feared Party discipline.
In refusing to carry out the decisions of the Second Congress, the Mensheviks had precipitated a crisis, which Lenin knew could only be overcome by consolidating the Party organisations on the lines laid down at the Second Congress and by forming new Party centres.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 256.
84Lenin recommended that the Bolsheviks meet to discuss the crisis and possible ways of handling it. Gathering on the outskirts of Geneva in August 1904, they adopted Lenin's appeal 'To the Party', which called for a Third Congress to be held as soon as possible. They then went direct from Geneva to Russia, to visit the larger Party committees and explain the reasons for issuing such a document. A Bureau of Bolshevik Committees was formed and launched its own newspaper, Vperyod (Forward).
The overwhelming majority of Party committees rallied around Lenin, whose principled political stance prevailed. Revolutionary practice convinced his followers that his views on organisation were correct, that unity and centralisation were essential to the Party. The revolution was close at hand.
[85] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER III __ALPHA_LVL1__ LENIN AND THE REVOLUTION __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.]Lenin followed Marx in dubbing revolutions 'the locomotives of history'. He also called them 'red-letter days for the oppressed and exploited', because only during revolution can the majority of the people step to the fore, participate in the creation of a new social order---and work miracles in the process.
In view of these facts, the revolutionary parties and their leaders have an enormously responsible task--- that of formulating the aims of revolutionary activity and guiding the people on the shortest and most direct way to an unqualified victory.
The first Russian revolution revealed Lenin's organisational abilities and revolutionary genius to an unprecedented extent.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. The Russian Autocracy Under Fire __ALPHA_LVL3__ Faith The revolution which began
on 9 January 1905 was a
natural outcome of the
escalating contradictions within
world capitalism and on the Russian socio-economic
and political scene.
In early January 1905 the workers at the Putilov Works, the largest of its kind in St. Petersburg, began 86 a strike which spread to other factories. The tsarist government planned to crush the threat mercilessly at its source, as it had on previous occasions. But this time the reprisals were preceded by a deliberate act of political provocation.
In 1904 a priest named Gapon had obtained police approval to found the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers---a ploy designed to divert the workers from revolutionary activity, warp their political consciousness and encourage loyalty to the autocracy. When the St. Petersburg general strike began, Gapon organised a procession of workers to carry a petition to the Winter Palace, where the tsar resided. But on the day before the demonstration, the city was divided into eight military districts and over 40,000 soldiers put on alert, on the pretext that the workers intended to storm the Palace and kill the tsar. The authorities were planning to mow down the unarmed workers in cold blood.
The Bolsheviks guessed what was afoot and tried to make the workers see the futility of approaching the tsar with a catalogue of demands that could only be satisfied through direct confrontation with him and his government. But the procession went ahead as planned, for many workers still believed in the legend of a good tsar misled by bad ministers. The workers were confused, prey to political illusions; yet the Bolsheviks marched with them.
On Sunday, 9 January 1905, more than 140,000 workers, women, children and old people made their way to the Winter Palace, carrying icons and portraits of the tsar and singing prayers, in a peaceful, unarmed demonstration which was fired on out of hand, leaving 87 over 1,000 dead and more than 2,000 wounded. The Bolsheviks on the spot made sure that the demonstrators knew who had been responsible for this atrocity, and urged the workers to hit back in like style.
Lenin, at that time a political emigre in Geneva, heard the news the next morning. He denounced the event as a wanton massacre of defenceless people--- and on Wednesday, 12 January he wrote an article entitled 'The Beginning of the Revolution in Russia', which stressed that 'the most uneducated, backward sections of the working class, who naively trusted the tsar and sincerely wished to put peacefully before "the tsar himself" the petition of a tormented people, were all taught a lesson by the troops led by the tsar.... The revolutionary education of the proletariat made more progress in one day than it could have made in months and years of drab, humdrum, wretched existence'.^^*^^
Before the day which has gone down in history as Bloody Sunday was out, barricades had appeared in St. Petersburg. More went up the next day and street fighting between police and workers began, while the dreadful news rocked the country and strikes flared up everywhere. The peasants were rising and there were signs of unrest in the army and the navy. The Russian revolution had begun.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin Mobilises the Party From the first, Lenin did all
he could to ensure that the
Party would be a guiding and
directing force in the revolution. 'Undoubtedly,' he
wrote, 'the revolution will teach us and will teach the
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 97.
88 masses of the people. But the question that now confronts a militant political party is: shall we be able to teach the revolution anything?'^^*^^ The situation was not improved by the Mensheviks' deliberately schismatic behaviour: bitter conflicts arose between them and the Bolsheviks on almost every tactical and organisational issue. Lenin and his supporters, meanwhile, were working on the preliminaries for the Third Party Congress, which would put an end to Menshevik opportunism and ratify the tactics to be adopted by the proletariat and its vanguard---the Party---during the revolution.Representatives from 21 Bolshevik committees gathered in London in April 1905 for the Third RSDLP Congress, which the Mensheviks boycotted, holding a separate meeting in Geneva, but calling it a conference, since it attracted delegates from only eight committees; Lenin saw the situation as evidence of the existence of two parties. The separate gatherings, characteristically enough, reached diametrically opposite conclusions on the selfsame issues: the Party Congress discussed the leadership of the revolution in a spirit of creative Marxism, while the Mensheviks revealed themselves as petty-bourgeois liberals, scared by the revolution and dragging along behind the bourgeoisie.
Lenin spoke on the main items on the agenda: the armed uprising, the participation of the Social-- Democrats in the interim revolutionary government, and the peasant movement.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 9, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 18.
89The Congress worked out the Party's strategy and tactics in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Later, in June and July 1905, Lenin wrote Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (published in Geneva at the end of July), placing the concept of revolutionary leadership on a comprehensively scientific basis and censuring Menshevik opportunism. This book is rightly considered one of Lenin's best theoretical works, since, though written in response to a specific event---the 1905 revolution, it extends beyond all historical confines and shows future champions of social progress, of democracy and socialism, the correct way to view the problems posed by revolution.
Two Tactics covers such vital issues as the nature of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the motive forces behind it, its leading element, and the growth of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. All its conclusions were drawn from a comparison between the Third Party Congress and the Mensheviks' Geneva conference.
Lenin's pioneering analysis of the bourgeois-- democratic revolution in the age of imperialism enriched the Marxist doctrine, and swept away the hackneyed cliches used by the opportunist parties of the Second International and by the Mensheviks. Lenin's thesis was that, though in social, economic and political terms the revolution was bourgeois-democratic and directed against the tsar and the feudalist landowning system, the fact that it was taking place in the imperialist epoch, a new historical phase, gave it a completely different complexion: the motive forces in this revolution could not be inferred from a superficial analysis 90 of its character. Under imperialism, the bourgeoisie in the capitalist countries become reactionary, hostile to the people, and unfit to guide the bourgeois-- democratic revolution. This description was especially true of the Russian bourgeoisie, who did not even want to overthrow the autocracy but sought limited reforms from above to satisfy its own class interests, wishing to retain the monarchy and the remnants of serfdom as potentially useful weapons in confrontations with the proletariat.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ The Proletariat as the Dominant Revolutionary Force In the light of the past
experience of the revolutionary
movement and the social,
economic and political situation
at the turn of the century, Lenin reached a conclusion
which had far-reaching consequences for Marxism: in
the imperialist stage, when the bourgeoisie's
progressive potential is exhausted, the proletariat becomes the
dominant revolutionary force. Things had changed
since Marx and Engels' day, when the proletariat was
expected to deliver the death blow to capitalism in the
socialist revolution; it was now, Lenin held, in a
position to lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution too.
But the Mensheviks continued to reserve that role
for the bourgeoisie, equating the Russian revolution of
the early twentieth century with the bourgeois
revolutions which took place in the West from the late
eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries and
claiming that any attempts on the part of the proletariat
to assume leadership would limit the scope of the
revolution by alienating the bourgeoisie. 'In actual
fact,' Lenin countered, 'the Russian revolution will
begin to assume its real sweep ... only when
91
the bourgeoisie recoils from it and when the masses of
the peasantry come out as active revolutionaries side
by side with the proletariat.'^^*^^ Under no other circunv
stances could the revolution succeed. 'Only the
proletariat can be a consistent fighter for democracy. It can
become a victorious fighter for democracy only if the
peasant masses join its revolutionary struggle.'^^**^^
The peasantry could not count on the bourgeoisie to support its militant campaign against the remnants of feudalism; its ancient thirst for land would be satisfied only when it united with the working class to bring down the autocracy.
The Mensheviks denied the revolutionary potential of the peasantry as a whole and doubted that the working class could lead the peasant movement. Lenin demolished these arguments too.
Thus he established that the Party's aim in the first bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia should be the overthrow of autocracy and the abolition of the vestiges of feudalism: 'The more complete, determined, and consistent the bourgeois revolution, the more assured will the proletariat's struggle be against the bourgeoisie and for socialism.'^^***^^
Lenin also threw a crucial new light on where the power would lie after the bourgeois-democratic revolution. As it was taking place in the imperialist context, the revolution would lead not to a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but to a _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 100.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 60.
^^***^^ Ibid., p. 50.
92 revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry---of those classes which had carried the revolution to a successful conclusion. The vital point is that the dictatorship would be democratic, not socialist. The 1905 revolution would bring about no radical changes in the bourgeois order and the fundamentals of capitalism; at best it would conduct a land redistribution to benefit the peasants, introduce consistent and complete democracy---maybe even a republic---and initiate considerable improvements in the workers' conditions. Yet even this would be a gigantic step forward for Russia and the world.Lenin left no one in doubt that the Mensheviks--- in calling for a run-of-the-mill bourgeois democracy and dismissing the possibility of a dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry because the two classes did not have identical aspirations---were clearly revealing their opportunist character.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ From the Bourgeois-- Democratic to the Socialist Revolution The theory of .the sodalist
revolution was given an
enormous boost by Lenin's book
Two Tactics of Social--
Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, which, taking its
cue from the writings of Marx and Engels, considered
the way that the bourgeois-democratic revolution
would grow into the socialist revolution. Revolution in
the imperialist stage, wherever it occurred, was
characterised by the convergence of the democratic and
socialist phases of the revolution, and the interaction
of diverse class movements and of democratic and
socialist aims.
The objective social and economic conditions necessary for the development of the bourgeois-democratic 93 into the socialist revolution existed in Russia: two simultaneous class battles, different in character, aims and composition, were in progress. On the one hand, survivals of feudalism and serfdom in the economic and political framework of society were provoking clashes between the people and the landlords and autocracy. On the other, the contradictions between the social character of production and the private nature of appropriation was the root cause of militant opposition to capitalist exploitation. The proletariat was, of course, in the front line of the conflict.
While a successful bourgeois-democratic revolution would solve the first set of contradictions, it would merely expose and aggravate the second social conflict further, making it essential that the revolution proceed into its socialist phase. In Lenin's words: 'The proletariat must carry the democratic revolution to completion, allying to itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush the autocracy's resistance by force and paralyse the bourgeoisie's instability. The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution, allying to itself the mass of the semi-proletarian elements of the population, so as to crush the bourgeoisie's resistance by force and paralyse the instability of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie.'^^*^^
Lenin emphasised that the subjective features of this transition were as important as the objective factors outlined above: 'From the democratic revolution we shall at once, and precisely in accordance with the measure of our strength, the strength of the class-- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 100.
94 conscious and organised proletariat, begin to pass to the socialist revolution.'^^*^^ At this stage the revolutionary Party comes into its own, organising the people and pointing the way to democracy and socialism through militant action. __ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin's Revolutionary Tactics Lenin appreciated that the
Party should not only be
aware of the aims of
revolution but should also be equipped to attain those aims;
he therefore formulated a set of tactics---that is, the
means, forms and methods relevant to the
revolutionary conflict---based on Marxist teachings.
Marxism does not commit the revolutionary movement to any specific form of action, but it does ensure that the choice ultimately made in the course of events will be a conscious one, and that the form chosen will be suitable to the given historical context---since politics, nationality, culture and other factors naturally affect the way that the economic and political struggle is conducted at any given time.
With these criteria in mind, Lenin singled out the most effective forms of action among those generated by the class struggle. He summarily dismissed Menshevik tactics as reformist in essence, and advocated an armed uprising as the surest way of overthrowing the autocracy---which does not, of course, make armed force the rule for all revolutions. In the context of 1905, however, it was the only possible response to the open war which the tsarist government was waging against the people. 'Look about you...' Lenin wrote.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Social-Democracy's Attitude Towards the Peasant Movement', Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 236--37.
95 `Has not the government itself started civil war by everywhere shooting down crowds of peaceful and unarmed citizens?. . . Those who have eyes to see can have no doubt as to how the question of an insurrection must now be presented by partisans of revolution.'^^*^^The revolutionary Party must also adopt less openly militant tactics, such as political and economic strikes, demonstrations and the take-over of factories, plants and landed estates.
Assessing the fundamental contrast between Menshevik and Bolshevik strategy and tactics, Lenin stated: 'The revolutionary period has presented new tasks, which only the totally blind can fail to see. Some Social-Democrats unhesitatingly recognise these tasks and place them on the order of the day, declaring: the armed uprising brooks no delay; prepare yourselves for it immediately and energetically; remember that it is indispensable for a decisive victory; bring forward slogans for a republic, for a provisional government, for a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Other Social-Democrats, however, draw back, mark time ... unable to determine the conditions for a decisive victory or to bring forward slogans which alone are in line with a striving to achieve full victory.'^^**^^
Lenin's writings during the first Russian revolution fill eight large volumes and cover every aspect of revolution in detail. He pursued a creative approach to _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 9 pp. 71--72.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 106--07.
96 Marxist revolutionary theory, whose basic propositions were fully confirmed in practice and have retained their validity to the present day.As Leonid Brezhnev put it: 'Summing up the experience of the masses in struggle, to counter the dogmatic schemes of the Mensheviks, Lenin pointed to the real possibility, in the conditions of imperialism, of the bourgeois-democratic revolution growing into a socialist revolution. Lenin's teaching on the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, on the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, on the attitude to other classes and parties, and on the tactics of the proletarian party in periods of revolutionary upswing and downswing---all of this even today constitutes the Bolshevik "model tactics for all" who have still to overthrow the exploiting system.'^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Organising Lenin was at once a brilliant
thinker with an outstanding
capacity for theoretical
reasoning and an iron-willed
proletarian revolutionary, able to organise vast numbers
of people. The unity of revolutionary thought and
action typical of Leninism first became a force to be
reckoned with during the first Russian revolution.
The revolution, sparked off by Bloody Sunday, swept the country, and, under Bolshevik guidance, reached its first peak in the autumn of 1905. The working class had adopted a totally new form of revolutionary action---a general political strike which _-_-_
^^*^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 256.
__PRINTERS_P_97_COMMENT__ 7---2095 97 involved over two million people. The peasant movement, also spreading apace, had encompassed more than a third of the country's administrative districts. Taking their cue from the Russian workers and peasants, the working people of other nationalities within the Empire had launched a national liberation movement. Even the army and navy were caught up in the unrest.This alarming situation forced the tsar to make some concessions. On 17 October 1905 he issued a manifesto which promised civil liberties for all and the convocation of a representative legislative body known as a Duma. Lenin saw this as the first victory, as a sign that the two sides had reached a temporary equilibrium. Though the workers and peasants could not yet overthrow the autocracy, the tsar was no longer in a position to rule as he had before--- and Lenin called for another determined effort, which would wipe tsarism from the face of the earth,
He was on his way back to Russia from Switzerland.
On 8 November he arrived in Petersburg to lead the Party in person. His first act there was to visit the Preobrazhensky Cemetery and pay his sorrowful respects to the proletarian martyrs, the victims of Bloody Sunday.
Then he threw himself into revolutionary activity, heading the Bolshevik Central Committee and the Petersburg Committee, chairing the editorial board of the Bolsheviks' first legal daily paper Novaya Zhizn (New Life), addressing meetings and conferences, talking with Party workers, and writing articles for the Bolshevik press. His major priorities were to 98 strengthen the Party and organise it to cope with the mounting demands of the revolutionary situation. His first article for Novaya Zhizn, 'The Reorganisation of the Party', recommended that the underground network be preserved intact, but that new Party organs---some completely legal, some partially so---be formed, that the elective principle and the principle of official accountability to the rank and file be introduced throughout the organisation, and that inner-Party democracy be extended. And this was done, with immediately positive results: more of the progressive workers, enthusiastic revolutionaries, joined; several young workers, able and gifted leaders, were elected to Party bodies; the Bolsheviks consolidated their links with the people and their authority was enhanced. Lenin described the growing Bolshevik influence on the course of the revolution thus: 'In the spring of 1905 our Party was a league of underground circles; in the autumn it became the party of the millions of the proletariat.'^^*^^
He fully appreciated that the revolutionary press could bring about ideological and political shifts in public attitudes. On 13 November 1905 he published 'Party Organisation and Party Literature', a remarkable article which still influences Party thinking. Its thesis is that in bourgeois society the `freedom' of the press---and of writers, artists and performers---is really no more than undeclared dependence on capital, on the bourgeois business mentality, on the profit motive. But the socialist alternative to this sham freedom and _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Some Features of the Present Collapse', Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 154.
99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1980/LR215/20080707/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2008.07.08) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ its hidden links with the bourgeoisie was genuine press freedom, openly allied with the proletariat. Lenin made a sound case for party commitment in literature, on the grounds that the socialist proletariat had no need of a literature which brought profit to individuals or groups, which was a `personal' undertaking unrelated to the cause of the proletariat. Literature should, rather, become one more of the Party's organised, planned and co-ordinated activities.Lenin accepted that in certain circumstances--- which would include a general strike and active support from the army---a revolution without violence was possible. But, given that the general political strike had proved insufficient to bring down the autocracy, an armed uprising, led by well-drilled, wellequipped and politically conscious people, was the only alternative. 'For us revolutionary Social-Democrats insurrection is not an absolute slogan, but a concrete one. We put it off in 1897, in 1902 we put it forward in the sense of general preparations, and only after January 9, 1905, did we advance it as a direct appeal.'^^*^^
The climax of the 1905 revolution was the armed uprising in Moscow, when for nine days the workers fought a heroic battle against the tsar's troops from their stronghold in Presnya, Moscow's largest proletarian quarter. About 1,000 barricades went up all over the city and armed detachments from all the Presnya factories successfully beat off assaults from the police and army. The government mobilised all available forces in Moscow, transferred two guards _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Playing at Parliamentarianism', Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 273.
100 regiments from Petersburg and laid siege to the district on three sides. But when the heavy artillery bombardment began, the Central Committee, urged by Lenin, ordered the Moscow Committee to bring the rising to an organised halt.During December 1905 and the following January, armed risings flared up elsewhere, but, being geographically isolated and unco-ordinated, they were ruthlessly put down. The proletariat's frontline forces were exhausted and the workers in the localities were just entering the battle.
Lenin had high praise for the heroism that the Russian proletariat had shown on this occasion: 'Before the armed insurrection of December 1905, the people of Russia were incapable of waging a mass armed struggle against their exploiters. After December they were no longer the same people. They had been reborn. They had received their baptism of fire. They had been steeled in revolt. They trained the fighters who were victorious in 1917. . . .'^^*^^
The Mensheviks tried to label the rising as a ' historical error', claiming that the proletariat should never have taken to arms, but Lenin made nonsense of this position. On the contrary, he maintained, the proletariat should have taken to arms in more determined fashion. His article 'The Lessons of the Moscow Events' showed why the rising had failed, and defined the principles which should guide the Party and the proletariat in the future: an extremely circumspect approach, patience to await the perfect opportunity, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Heroism of the Presnya Workers', Collected Works, Vol. 28, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 373.
101 and determined and energetic action when the time is ripe; widespread propaganda among the people to make them see that when peaceful strikes proved ineffective armed conflict was the only alternative; simultaneous armed risings throughout the country headed by the proletariat; and the mobilisation of the workers of the capital---though not necessarily at the very outset---to deal the enemy a telling blow on his own ground.The rising had also confirmed some basic Marxist tenets: that rising is an art; that once a rising has begun it must be pursued with great determination; and that the army itself is a vital objective---the reactionary officers must be removed by force and the soldiers themselves take command.
As the revolution progressed, the workers within the Social-Democratic movement began to demand the unification of the Party. This indicated that the rank and file felt the need to consolidate all the Party's forces to further the cause of revolution. The split in the Party that was hampering united proletarian action had to be healed, and other Social-Democratic parties which existed alongside the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in Russia---including the Polish and Lithuanian Social-Democratic movements and the Latvian Social-Democratic Labour Party---should be persuaded to cease functioning as independent units: the confrontation with the autocracy, especially during a revolution, made countrywide worker solidarity, regardless of nationality, essential. A Party Congress to promote unity was required without delay.
Lenin insisted that unification did not mean papering over the disagreements on matters of principle 102 which had split the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; the workers should be clearly aware of the situation. He therefore drew up a Bolshevik statement on the major issues connected with the revolution and drafted a set of Congress resolutions. The Bolsheviks were advocating a. fresh revolutionary assault on the autocracy; the Menshevik platform was essentially a retreat from revolution.
The Fourth (Unity) RSDLP Congress was held in Stockholm in April 1906. Most of the voting delegates were Menshevik, because several Bolshevik Party organisations, fully occupied in leading the revolutionary risings, had been too busy to choose representatives. Therefore the major industrial areas---the strongholds of Bolshevism---were significantly underrepresented.
Consequently, most of the Congress decisions were recognisably Menshevik in tone; the ideological dispute continued, and the `unification' achieved was but an empty formula. However, Lenin's definition of Party membership in the first clause of the Party Rules was at last accepted. The Mensheviks were forced to admit the error they had made on this point.
The Congress also brought about a partial merger between the RSDLP and the national Social-- Democratic parties in Russia. When it was all over, Lenin and his supporters launched a drive to ensure that the next congress would adopt a more correct line, a more revolutionary stance, and annul the Menshevik decisions that had gone on record in Stockholm.
Lenin continued to dedicate his inexhaustible energy to the revolution, giving lectures to propaganda workers, attending district Party committee meetings and gatherings of Party members, students, 103 intelligentsia and office workers, and making numerous speeches in Petersburg factories.
Though he was never able to live in one flat for any length of time, and had to operate under an assumed name as a precaution against police spies, Lenin was undaunted by the difficulties and dangers of life in the revolutionary underground. In the late summer of 1906, however, severe police harassment finally drove him to Finland, where he settled in a country house deep in the forest not far from Kuokkala, which he had chosen as an ideal base from which to continue his conspiratorial links with the Party. He lived there almost continually until December 1907.
After the defeat of the December 1905 rising, the revolution gradually subsided---though it had at least succeeded in forcing the government to carry out some reforms. In December 1905 it was officially announced that elections would be held to a State Duma, a representative legislative body with limited powers--- clearly a government attempt to revive the people's faith in liberal reform, to deceive the peasants (who believed that the Duma would transfer the landed estates to them), to alienate the peasantry from the working class and to suppress the revolution once and for all. Though the Bolsheviks campaigned for a boycott of the Duma, they could not halt the elections. The revolution had passed its peak.
The First Duma was a disappointment to the ruling classes, who had hoped that a few minor concessions, acceptable to tsar and landowners alike, would end the revolution. The summer of 1906 saw an increase in peasant unrest and a continuation of revolutionary activity among the soldiers and sailors, prompting the 104 tsarist authorities to take further aggressively reactionary measures. On 8 July 1906 the First Duma was dissolved and elections to the Second were announced.
Lenin later stated that the boycott of the Duma had been a mistake: the Bolsheviks had been assuming that the revolution was gathering strength for a new upswing, while in fact it was on the decline. The Party attitude to the Duma had to be reassessed.
Lenin and his supporters pointed out that those Bolsheviks who would participate in the Second Duma could use it as a platform for revolutionary agitation, for confrontation with the autocracy and the counterrevolutionary policies of the bourgeoisie. The February 1907 elections thus became a tool employed by the Bolsheviks to organise the people and advance their political education. The Mensheviks, on the other hand, had declared the Duma to be a rallying point for the forces of revolution, and were advocating close co-operation with the bourgeoisie during the election campaign and in the Duma itself. Most Party bodies rejected this conciliatory attitude, but another Party Congress was clearly in order at this stage.
Lenin began the preparations for the Fifth Congress. In March 1907, at a meeting of Bolsheviks chosen to supervise the election of delegates from the local organisations, he spoke on current events and Party tasks, dismissing out of hand the Menshevik suggestion that a `workers' congress' be convened to found a 'broad-based workers' party' consisting of SocialDemocrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries^^*^^ and anarchists.
_-_-_^^*^^ The petty-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) Party stood for the 'national unity', maintaining that there were no class distinctions between the proletariat and the __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 106. 105 The creation of such a `party' would have been a death blow to the genuinely revolutionary proletarian Party.
The Fifth Congress met in London in April and May 1907. The Bolsheviks had a firm majority, were supported on all vital issues by the Polish SocialDemocrats and most of the Latvian delegation, and carried the day on all the main points, including the principle issue, which concerned attitudes to the bourgeois parties.
Lenin had outlined the necessary procedure: first it was essential to determine the class character of the parties concerned, then to define the interests that the various classes would have in continuing or expanding the revolution, and to ascertain their role in the revolution. Only then could the Party formulate an agreed policy.
The Congress adopted Lenin's resolution, which called for unremitting opposition to the reactionary parties and active vigilance against the pseudo-- democratic phrasemongering of the Cadets.^^*^^
However, the delegates accepted that individual agreements with those parties which promoted the interests of the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie could be countenanced as part of an all-out attack on the autocracy. This approach was a natural corollary of Lenin's theory of revolution: the Bolsheviks were not blindly sectarian, and refused to ignore any slogans _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 105. ry and no contradictions within the peasantry itself. They idealised small-scale peasant farming and tried to fight the autocracy largely through individual terrorism.
^^*^^ The Constitutional Democrats (named Cadets from their Russian initials) were a bourgeois liberal-monarhist party.
106 which had the backing of large numbers of the working people. These clear-cut Bolshevik tactics were in sharp contrast to the Menshevik suggestion that alliances should be formed with the liberal bourgeoisie under any terms, a line which was motivated by a refusal to regard the proletariat as an independent force and was roundly rejected by the other Congress delegates.Meanwhile the counter-revolution was mobilising its forces. On 3 June 1907 the Second Duma was disbanded and the Social-Democratic faction arrested, in a government `coup' by which the tsar made nonsense of his own manifesto.
The Bolshevik reaction was swift: the central Party paper, edited by Lenin, was transferred abroad, and Lenin left in December 1907 for his second period of enforced emigration.
The revolution of 1905 to 1907 had been defeated---but it had taught the people a lot, had strengthened their resolve, had initiated the working class, the working peasantry and the Party into revolutionary conflict. In Lenin's apposite metaphor, it was the dress rehearsal for the Great October Socialist Revolution. And, most important of all, 1905 gave the working class tremendous confidence in itself as leader of the people in the struggle to transform the life of society. As Lenin put it: '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 in a fight for really great aims, and one waged in a really revolutionary manner!'^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Lecture on the 1905 Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 23, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 240.
107 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 2. Lenin in the Years of Reaction __ALPHA_LVL3__ New Tactics for a New Situation The years of reaction---from
1907 to 1910---were among
the most difficult the Party
ever experienced. The revolution was in abeyance,
police terror raged unchecked, and the internal Party
crisis had taken a grave turn---but even from this
situation the Bolsheviks gained experience which was to
prove invaluable in future confrontations. Lenin
helped them to formulate a new tactical line, new ways
of training, educating and uniting the proletariat. The
lessons learned by those consistent revolutionaries in
their theoretical, political and practical controversies
with all manner of opportunists have not been lost
on later generations.
In many works written during and after this period Lenin gave a deep and scientific analysis of the postrevolutionary situation in Russia and brought to light the less obvious features of economic development, of the balance of class forces and of infighting on the political scene. His studies led him to the optimistic conclusion that a successful revolution was imminent.
In those difficult years, Lenin made fundamentally important contributions to Marxist philosophy, agrarian theory, and views on the role of the workingclass party, its strategy and tactics. In this he helped protect Marxism's revolutionary theory from distortion and revision. The Party found comprehensive answers in Lenin's writings to all the problems facing it during the period when the revolution was on the decline and reaction in the ascendent.
108Later, in 1920, Lenin characterised the period of reaction as follows: 'Tsarism was victorious. All the revolutionary and opposition parties were smashed. Depression, demoralisation, splits, discord, defection, and pornography took the place of politics. There was an ever greater drift towards philosophical idealism; mysticism became the garb of counter-revolutionary sentiments. At the same time, however, it was this great defeat that taught the revolutionary parties and the revolutionary class a real and very useful lesson, a lesson in historical dialectics, a lesson in an understanding of the political struggle, and in the art and science of waging that struggle. It is at moments of need that one learns who one's friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson.'^^*^^
Aware that the objective course of history made revolution inevitable, Lenin asserted that the Bolsheviks' basic political aims remained the same as in 1905: to overthrow tsarism, carry the bourgeois-democratic revolution to its conclusion and proceed to the socialist revolution, but he also called for flexibility. Revolutionary parties should not be satisfied with learning how to attack: they must know also how to beat an organised retreat. Yet at the same time Lenin and his followers within the Party were sure that a new revolutionary upsurge would not be long in coming.
The economic base of the future revolution was also unchanged: the proletariat and peasantry would push to eliminate the remnants of feudalism in the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, ' ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder', Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 27--28.
109 countryside and the Russian social structure, and therefore the slogans used in the previous revolution, which demanded a democratic republic, confiscation of all landed estates, and an eight-hour working day, were still vitally important. But since the conditions of the conflict had changed, the Party would have to adapt its approach to leadership in the class struggle to suit the new situation.Lenin came to the conclusion that reverting from the offensive to the defensive tactics would make recuperation easier---the Party should go underground, to continue its work while retaining its links with the network of legal workers' organisations. Indeed, a truly Marxist party could never countenance breaking its contact with the people, even when circumstances made open collaboration impossible. The Party lost no chance of making its presence felt through an intensive use of legal, semilegal and illegal bodies, such as the Duma, the trade unions, the insurance system and the co-operative societies. Lenin reminded the Bolsheviks working in those organisations that they should be flexible but forthright, following a consistent ideological and political line, ensuring that their programme was widely understood, and explaining the new demands that the changed situation would make on the working people. He emphasised that the Party's place was at the head of the popular revolutionary movement, whatever form it took.
The theme of these new tactics was one of an organised retreat, in order to preserve the Party, its trained personnel and its local organisations, especially in the factories.
110 __ALPHA_LVL3__ The Agrarian Question Lenin devoted a lot of
attention to the agrarian question
because Russia was at that time largely an
agricultural country---indeed, the bourgeois-democratic
revolution itself was based on social and economic issues
raised by the situation in the countryside. Lenin
backed up Marxist agrarian theory and expanded it
by applying it to the Russian situation and the
changed historical conditions.
He wrote a lot on this topic, prepared the relevant section of the Bolshevik Party Programme accepted by the Second RSDLP Congress, and was firm in his support of revolutionary attitudes to the peasant question at the Fourth Congress, at which the Mensheviks forced through a reactionary programme of land municipalisation.^^*^^
After the defeat of the revolution, Lenin saw that a thorough analysis of previous peasant unrest, of the demands they themselves had made, was essential. Experience had shown that it was time to review the Fourth Congress' agrarian policy, which had proved unworkable, and to bring theory to bear in support of the Bolshevik agrarian programme.
This Lenin did in The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905--1907, a fundamentally important work which covered the underlying scientific premises and the methodological approach of the Bolshevik agrarian programme, and established its basic principles through a study of agrarian relations, of the current _-_-_
^^*^^ Land municipalisation involved the transfer of the right to own or dispose of land to the local bodies of self-- government. (Editor's note.)
111 revolutionary situation and the level of the peasantry's revolutionary experience and consciousness. Lenin analysed the forms of landownership and the development of the productive forces in Russian agriculture, proving that revolution was objectively essential if the relics of feudal relationships were to be abolished, and showing that the peasants had supported the revolution largely because 10 million peasant households owned 73 million dessiatins of land (approximately 200 million acres), while 28,000 private individuals, the vast majority of whom were nobles, owned 62 million dessiatins (approximately 170 million acres).^^*^^In a devastating critique of the Menshevik programme of land municipalisation Lenin demonstrated that it would help to shore up mediaeval forms of landownership, thus obstructing their abolition, which was economically necessary and, indeed, inevitable.
Lenin's view was that the agrarian question could not be solved without sweeping political changes: the working peasantry's demands for land would remain unsatisfied until the revolution had removed both tsar and landlords from the scene.
He formulated the main points of the Bolshevik agrarian programme based on the most recent data and an assessment of the peasantry's past performance. Lenin called for the confiscation of all landowners' holdings and the nationalisation of all the land in Russia because he knew that such steps were vital if the revolution was to overcome the survivals of feudalism in the economic and political structure, if the peasantry as a whole were to be drawn into the revolution _-_-_
^^*^^ See: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 224.
112 and, most important of all, if the ground was to be cleared so that the bourgeois-democratic revolution could grow into the socialist revolution. It was the only viable means of bringing the peasantry to socialism. __ALPHA_LVL3__ Defending and Strengthening the Party The grave organisational and
ideological crisis in the Party
concerned Lenin greatly
during the years of reaction. He
dedicated a number of speeches, articles and brochures
to the nature and causes of the crisis and the means
of overcoming it.
Lenin was convinced that it was within the power of Russian Social-Democracy to continue as the party of the working class, its vanguard, to stay close to the people in their extremity. The Party had to be prepared to lead a fresh confrontation with tsarism and capitalism and should meanwhile concentrate on influencing every aspect of proletarian life. The Party would carry the day, whatever the cost.
Bolshevik efforts to protect and strengthen the Party and reinforce its links with the people were severely hindered by opportunist attempts to disorganise it.
The Menshevik extreme right wing had taken up an openly reformist posture, opposing the principles on which the revolutionary Marxist Party functioned and calling for its liquidation---for which they became known as `liquidators'.
Among the Bolsheviks themselves, left-wing opportunist groups, known as `recallists' (otzovists) and `ultimatumists' had formed.
The recallists believed that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was over and that preparation for the 'purely proletarian" revolution should begin---in the __PRINTERS_P_113_COMMENT__ 8---2095 113 first instance with the recall of the Social-Democratic faction from the Duma (hence their name) and the withdrawal of the Bolsheviks from legal and semi-legal workers' organisations (the trade unions, the co-operative societies, and so on). In fact, in those years of reaction such a withdrawal would have driven a wedge between the Party and the people. After continuing for a while as an introverted sectarian group, the Party would cease to exist.
The ultimatumists also supported recall unless the Social-Democratic Duma faction submitted itself unquestioningly to the decisions of the Central Committee: this, in essence, was their `ultimatum'. But the faction was largely Menshevik, and would undoubtedly have turned down the demand, so that the SocialDemocrats would no longer have been able to use the Duma to further proletarian interests.
Both these groups, for all their `left-wing' formulas, were reneging on the principles of revolutionary theory and tactics and thus threatening the very existence of the Party as an underground organisation.
The Menshevik liquidators, however, represented the greatest danger. They had launched the idea of a 'broad-based workers' party'---an opportunist grouping, in fact---at the Fifth Party Congress in London. When the revolution began to lose ground, they again raised their arguments for a party that could conform to the reactionary climate.
All this suited the liberal bourgeoisie very well---the liquidators were providing them with the chance to split the working class, destroy the Party, deflect the workers from revolutionary activity and bring them under the influence of bourgeois ideology. The 114 liquidators in Russia, like the revisionists in the West, were vehicles of bourgeois influence on the proletariat.
Lenin wrote that the outcome of this struggle against liquidationism would vitally affect the very existence of the Party and the political and ideological independence of the workers' movement. But his efforts on behalf of the Party and commitment to it were continually obstructed by Trotsky and his supporters--- liquidators of an even more dangerous stripe. Trotsky camouflaged his brand of liquidationism as `centrism': it involved, he claimed, commitment to neither Bolshevism nor Menshevism; it was born of a desire to reconcile them, to 'unify all the factions', including those hostile to the Party. The ultimate intention was obviously to use this politically unprincipled bloc against the Bolsheviks and their followers. Lenin saw Trotsky's move for what it was: a drive to bring together the enemies of Marxism and revel in the resultant ideological chaos. 'He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists,'^^*^^ Lenin wrote in exasperation.
It was an uncommonly fierce and prolonged
ideological controversy: the opponents of the workers'
movement aimed to destroy the entire Marxist worldview
and thus smash the proletariat's ideological defences,
and therefore directed their major onslaught against
Marxism's theoretical core---dialectical and historical
materialism. Lenin made a firm stand against all
attempts to revise Marxism; on the philosophical front
his major counter-attack was the seminal work
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'To G. Y. Zinoviev', Collected Works,
Vol. 34, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 400.
Liquidationism, recallism and
Trotskyism were not purely
Russian phenomena: they
were closely related to opportunist trends in Western
Europe, which explains why the advocates of
opportunism in the West---the leading figures in the
German Social-Democratic movement and in the Second
International---supported the Mensheviks and allowed
them to use the Social-Democratic press to spread their
libellous attacks against the Bolsheviks. It also explains
why Lenin's critique of Russian opportunism was
relevant outside the immediate Russian context.
The most outstanding of his numerous works on opportunism and revisionism in the international arena is an article called 'Marxism and Revisionism', which he wrote in 1908 for the anthology Karl Marx, published to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Marx's death. Lenin emphasised that revisionism was dangerous in that, under the pretext of re-examining and correcting Marxism, it in fact revived the hoary dogmas of the bourgeois ideologists, attempting to undermine Marxism from within. In class terms, this unscientific doctrine was one of the weapons used by the liberal-bourgeoisie against the proletariat. It implied a rejection of the goals of the working class, of its strivings towards socialism: 'In every capitalist country, side by side with the proletariat, there are always broad strata of the petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors.'^^*^^ As victims of the development of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Marxism and Revisionism', Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 39.
116 capitalist system, these small-scale manufacturers often find themselves forced to join the proletariat, and therefore 'it is quite natural that the petty-bourgeois world-outlook should again and again crop up in the ranks of the broad workers' parties'.^^*^^ Revisionism is most liable to appear---and is most dangerous---where the petty bourgeoisie is particularly numerous.Lenin foresaw that the conflict with revisionism would escalate as scientific socialism consolidated its position---and that Marxism would certainly triumph. He closed the article with the following prophetic statement: 'The ideological struggle waged by revolutionary Marxism against revisionism at the end of the nineteenth century is but the prelude to the great revolutionary battles of the proletariat, which is marching forward to the complete victory of its cause despite all the waverings and weaknesses of the petty bourgeoisie.'^^**^^
The revolutionary Party was safe---thanks to Lenin's uncompromising efforts on its behalf, on behalf of the revolutionary heritage. It outstripped its timeserving petty-bourgeois camp followers and made firm strides towards new class conflicts. In the spring of 1908 Lenin was confident that, concerning the Party crisis, 'the worst is over, that the right road has already been found and that the Party is once again entering the straight road of consistent and sustained guidance of the revolutionary struggle of the socialist proletariat'.^^***^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Loc. cit.
^^**^^ Loc. cit.
^^***^^ V. I. Lenin, 'On to the Straight Road', Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 17.
117 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 3. The Revolutionary Upsurge __ALPHA_LVL3__ The End of the Party Crisis Events bore out Lenin's
prediction that the triumph of
reaction would be short-lived
and that the revolution would inevitably gather
momentum once more. The first signs that the
revolutionary and democratic forces were reviving came in the
summer of 1910; the revival proceeded steadily until
the working class rose again, powerful as ever.
Lenin continued his intense activity on the political, organisational and intellectual fronts, aware that the Party should respond to the rising revolutionary mood by extending its influence among the working people. The tactics of combining underground and legal activities had fully justified itself, and the position of the Bolsheviks in the local Party organisations and among the working class had been considerably strengthened as a result. The drift away from the RSDLP had been halted and its social composition had been much improved by the enlistment of politically conscious and revolutionary workers, and various organs of the legal Marxist press had been established. But, since the crisis had not completely relinquished its hold, Lenin's writings during this period revolve around need to isolate and destroy all the sectarian tendencies within the Party, to call an All-Russia Party Conference to clear the opportunists from its ranks and thus ensure that it would continue to develop as a new type of party. He saw that tremendous efforts would be required to achieve this.
The Sixth All-Russia RSDLP Conference, which met in Prague in January 1912, fully appreciated the 118 crucial importance of the hard-fought battles for the Party waged by Lenin and his supporters.
The documents issued by the Conference are more than usually important, since they were written and edited by Lenin himself. On his recommendation the Conference declared itself to be the supreme Party body, charged with the responsibility of reinvigorating the Party through the creation of new plenipotentiary central bodies to guide its activity.
The Conference's major accomplishment was to eject the liquidators from the Party. It adopted a resolution entitled 'Liquidationism and the Group of Liquidators', which stated that by rejecting the programme and tactics of the revolutionary Social-- Democratic movement and violating its organisational principles, the liquidators and their allies had effectively repudiated their Party membership. It remained for the Conference to confirm that fact.
The Bolsheviks, under Lenin's determined leadership, and with the overwhelming majority of the politically conscious workers behind them, thus carried the day against the opportunist deviations that had come to infect the Russian Social-Democratic movement.
As the revolution went into an upswing, Lenin continued to insist on the co-ordination of underground Party activity with the fullest possible exploitation of all legal openings. And in particular he still viewed the Duma not as a place to consort with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, but as a means of furthering the cause of the coming revolution, in which the proletariat, leading the peasantry, would certainly triumph.
119 __ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin and the National Immediately before the First
World War, when the
revolution was again in an
upturn, Lenin devoted much of
his attention to the national question, which objective
circumstances---the existing relations between the
nationalities in the Russian Empire combined with the
growing contradictions in the imperialist world---had
brought to the fore.
A firm stand had to be taken against Great Russian chauvinism and against the escalation of local nationalism; nationalistic tendencies among the Social-- Democrats had to be denounced; and the Marxist stance on the national question had to be protected against `revision'. The Party had to work out its political programme and plan of action on this issue in order to meet these dangers head on.
Between May 1913 and May 1914 Lenin produced 18 articles, resolutions and pamphlets which presented a comprehensive, well-founded and fully developed theory and practical programme for the Bolshevik Party on the national issue. He spoke on the national question in Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne and Berne; in the autumn of 1913 he gave a detailed report on it to a conference of the Central Committee with Party functionaries in Poronin in Poland; and he laid the issue several times before the International Socialist Bureau of the Second International.
Marx and Engels had made various statements on nationhood, on the social basis of national movements and the link between the drive for national liberation and the working class' fight for freedom. Lenin, in such works as 'Critical Remarks on the National 120 Question' and 'The Right of Nations to Self-- Determination', applied these guidelines to the new historical situation, defining the attitude of the proletariat and its Party to the national liberation movement and formulating a Bolshevik revolutionary programme on the national question which depended for its full implementation on a successful socialist revolution. The fundamental demands in Lenin's programme were: the right of nations to self-determination, including the right to secede and form independent states; full equality of all nations and nationalities before the law; the solidarity of workers and working people, whatever their nationality, in the fight for democracy and socialism; a close political, military and economic alliance between those nations which had chosen the socialist way; and real equality between nations, based on equal economic, political and cultural development.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 4. Proletarian Internationalism on the Line __ALPHA_LVL3__ Lenin and Bolshevik The war that broke out in the
summer of 1914 and brought
such incalculable loss and
suffering to mankind was a
predatory war, a direct result of
the imperialist lust for conquest. It prompted yet
fiercer controversies within the international socialist
movement, in the course of which it became clear that
only the Bolshevik Party, under Lenin's guidance,
could be counted on to stand by the proletariat in
Russia and elsewhere. The Bolsheviks took up a
consistently internationalist position on the war, remained
121
true to their socialist principles and led the proletariat
in its opposition to imperialism and the imperialist
war. Most of the leaders of parties in the Second
International betrayed the working class, discarding
proletarian internationalism and supporting their own
imperialist governments, with calls for a civil peace, an
end to class strife. The Second International, in
ideological and political disarray, split into separate parties
and effectively ceased to exist.
It thus remained for consistently revolutionary Marxists to defend the high ideals of socialism and proletarian internationalism---and Lenin pointed the way. His manifold talents---as theorist, revolutionary, and champion of the working class and all working people---were displayed more strikingly than ever during the First World War.
Even under such difficult conditions, Lenin continued his intense revolutionary and political activity, giving it theoretical backing at every step. He explained the Bolsheviks' political programme and tactics at workers' gatherings in towns throughout Switzerland. His theses on the Party's attitude to the war, presented to a meeting of local Bolsheviks in Berne in September 1914, were put before a socialist conference in Lugano, and many were incorporated into a conference resolution. When the theses were approved in Russia, Lenin reworked them into an RSDLP Central Committee Manifesto entitled 'The War and Russian Social-Democracy', thanks to which the RSDLP stance on the war became known throughout the European Social-Democratic movement.
In numerous countries, the Bolsheviks distributed newspapers, separate issues of Lenin's articles and 122 other literature in translation. Bolshevik groups abroad formed internationalist clubs, gave talks, and arranged political debates to spell out the predatory nature of the war and show how the social-chauvinists and centrists had betrayed the proletariat. Personal contact and correspondence with Lenin considerably influenced the opinions of several of the leading figures in the international labour movement.
The Bolshevik groups outside Russia used international conferences of women and young people, and the socialist conferences in Zimmerwald and Kienthal in Switzerland, to rally genuine internationalists. At the Zimmerwald Conference a group of Left-wing delegates came together, forming a nucleus that united internationalists from all countries.
In later years Lenin often underlined that the Party had at no time reneged on its internationalist duty during the First World War.
Of his published works in that period, which contributed considerably to all aspects of Marxism---- economic theory, philosophy and scientific communism--- we would single out especially 'The Collapse of the Second International', 'Socialism and War', 'On the Slogan for a United States of Europe', Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 'Imperialism and the Split in Socialism', and 'The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution'.
The Social-Democratic leaders were maintaining that their bourgeois governments were righting a defensive and patriotic war. In his thoroughgoing analysis of imperialist wars, Lenin exposed this view as sheer hypocrisy. He emphasised that socialists had always opposed war, but, since it was one of the 123 inherent features of the antagonistic class society, Marxists were duty bound to study its causes and develop a working-class plan of action against imperialist war.
Lenin proved that war as a social and historical phenomenon was rooted in the social and economic structure of society, a continuation of the policy of the dominant classes by force of arms: 'All wars are inseparable from the political systems that engender them. The policy which a given state, a given class within that state, pursued for a long time before the war is inevitably continued by that same class during the war, the form of action alone being changed.'^^*^^ Class policy can be just, progressive, and liberating or unjust, reactionary, and predatory; the wars that continue that class policy must be classified in the same way.
Lenin could see from the outset that this was a predatory imperialist war. In the Central Committee Manifesto entitled 'The War and Russian Social-- Democracy' he wrote: 'Seizure of territory and subjugation of other nations, the ruining of competing nations and the plunder of their wealth, distracting the attention of the working masses from the internal political crises in Russia, Germany, Britain and other countries, disuniting and nationalist stultification of the workers, and the extermination of their vanguard so as to weaken the revolutionary movement of the proletariat---these comprise the sole actual content, importance and significance of the present war.'^^**^^
This analytic approach enabled the Party to work _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'War and Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 24, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 400.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 27.
124 out a correct and scientifically based view of war. Lenin made it clear that Communists do not oppose all wars on principle: a war waged by an exploiting class to strengthen its dominant position is corrupt and participation in it is a foul betrayal of socialism, but a war waged by the proletariat to defend, strengthen and further socialism is just and legitimate.As the conflict raged on, Lenin provided the Party with a revolutionary policy which included the following formulations: to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, into a revolution against the ruling classes; to ensure the defeat of the tsarist government on the battle-field (socialists in the other combatant nations would apply this to their own governments, of course); and to break completely with what was left of the Second International.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Imperialism--- the Forerunner of the Socialist Revolution The call to bring an end to
Russia's participation in the
war through revolution was a
natural offshoot of overall
Bolshevik strategy, which hinged
on the development of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution into its socialist phase. Lenin held that a
revolution in wartime was nothing less than a civil
war, a war born of class antagonism. The
revolutionary forces in the other combatant nations should
interpret this Bolshevik position as an encouragement
either to oust the bourgeoisie and carry the socialist
revolution to a succesful conclusion (in the developed
capitalist countries) or to establish a republic (in the
backward countries ruled by a monarchy).
The old Social-Democratic parties of Western Europe, corroded by revisionism and hampered by an 125 ineffectual leadership, were simply not capable of a scientific analysis of the economic and political specifics of imperialism. Only Lenin and the Bolshevik Party---the militant, revolutionary vanguard of the Russian proletariat---could produce an integral and coherent theory of imperialism which gave a clear and concrete understanding of its determining features and was accepted as a guide by all the revolutionary elements in the international labour movement (see Chaper I for a wider discussion).
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Expanding the Theory of the Socialist Revolution __FIX__ Global: sometimes 2nd line is missing first BR tag. Lenin's close study of the
contemporary historical situation
brought new depth to the
Marxist stance on the socialist
revolution: since capitalism makes uneven economic
and political progress under imperialism, the socialist
revolution could succeed initially in only a few
capitalist countries---or even in one country alone. Lenin's
theory of imperialism had led him naturally to this
conclusion.
Further, given that the chain of world capitalism had links of different strength, the break was likely to occur at the weakest point---which would probably not be the most highly developed country. The 'weak link', rather, would be one or more countries where the economic and political contradictions of capitalism had become critical, where the ruling classes could not cope with the revolutionary movement, and the revolutionary forces themselves were powerful and organised enough to wipe capitalism out entirely.
The articles 'On the Slogan for a United States of Europe' and 'The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution' established that socialism could 126 triumph in one country. In putting forward this view Lenin substantially expanded classic Marxist theory^^*^^--- not because the original propositions had been faulty, but because times had changed---and helped to clarify the future for the proletariat in its fight against imperialism in Russia and elsewhere, to boost its revolutionary initiative and inspire belief in victory^
A hue and cry against Lenin's bold and constructive approach to Marxist theory was immediately raised by the opportunists and hard-liners, who resolutely closed their eyes to the changed revolutionary circumstances. Lenin's fiercest critic on this issue was Trotsky, who denied that the socialist revolution could triumph in one country and insisted that socialism in Russia was out of the question until the proletariat was in power in Europe.
After the October Revolution, in May 1918, Lenin said: 'I know that there are, of course, wiseacres with a high opinion of themselves and even calling themselves socialists, who assert that power should not have been taken until the revolution broke out in all countries. They do not realise that in saying this they are deserting the revolution and going over to the side of the bourgeoisie. To wait until the working classes carry out a revolution on an international scale means _-_-_
^^*^^ Marx and Engels had stated that the socialist revolution would first triumph only in the few highly developed capitalist countries, and that only if successful revolutions took place simultaneously in the leading capitalist countries could the proletarian governments make a stand against the combined forces of reaction. Thus the world socialist revolution would begin. (Editor's note.)
127 that everyone will remain suspended in mid-air. This is senseless.'^^*^^Historical and social reality---the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia and revolutions in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, in Asia and America--- proved Lenin right.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Assessing the Revolutionary Situation The correct assessment of the
revolutionary situation, and of
the objective and subjective
prerequisites of revolution,
was given considerable attention in Lenin's theory of
the socialist revolution. Revolution cannot be 'made
to order' on the whim of some party or other; it
cannot be `exported'. The motives which prompt the
whole people to rise in revolution are rooted deep in
the conditions of their lives, in the objective changes
brought about by evolution in society. But the
revolutionary Party cannot sit passively waiting until the
people spontaneously rise: it must show them, on their
own terms, that determined revolutionary action is
essential. What Lenin had to say about the right
moment for the revolution is an invaluable practical
guide, essential to any soundly-based revolutionary
policy, as it enables the revolutionary Party to pinpoint
the moment of revolutionary crisis, thus avoiding the
danger of either falling behind the revolutionary
enthusiasm of the people or rushing ahead in '
leftwing' excitement and losing touch with them
altogether.
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Report on Foreign Policy Delivered at a Joint Meeting of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Moscow Soviet, May 14, 1918', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 372.
128In 'The Collapse of the Second International', Lenin wrote that the revolution would fail unless undertaken when the revolutionary situation had matured, '(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.
'Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even of individual classes, a revolution, as a general rule, is impossible. The totality of all these objective changes is called a revolutionary situation.'^^*^^
And yet, for the revolutionary situation to mature into revolution, objective factors would have to merge with the subjective element. Revolutions are made by people, by the downtrodden classes, and are _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 213--14.
__PRINTERS_P_129_COMMENT__ 9--2095 129 successful only insofar as the people are organised, united and fired with revolutionary initiative. And thus the revolution to a large extent depends on the existence of a Marxist party, armed with revolutionary theory and capable of leading the working people in their fight. Such a party bears the heavy responsibility of recognising the ideal moment to make a decisive move, and will discover that the revolutionary situation tests its political insight, fighting form, and ability to analyse the state of affairs accurately.While insisting on Party guidance as essential to the revolution, Lenin warned that isolated action by the Party would be futile. Alone, the vanguard was powerless: only the people, rising together in revolution, would assure victory.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ The International Implications of Socialist Revolution in One Country Lenin held that the socialist
revolution, wherever it first
came about, would not be an
isolated event but an integral
part of the world
revolutionary process. Once the revolution had triumphed in one
country, 'after expropriating the capitalists and
organising their own socialist production, the victorious
proletariat of that country will arise against the rest of
the world---the capitalist world---attracting to its cause
the oppressed classes of other countries'.^^*^^
Therefore, the proletariat of any country that defeated its own national bourgeoisie would simultaneously be fulfilling its internationalist obligations to the proletarian movement as a whole, by weakening _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'On the Slogan for a United States of Europe', Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 342.
130 the worldwide imperialist front and encouraging the growth of the revolutionary labour movement in other countries. Thus the establishment of socialism in one country through revolution would shake the imperialist system and underpin the future world socialist revolution.In this way Lenin demonstrated that in the contemporary context---the transitional stage between capitalism and socialism---the national and international interests of the international labour movement were inseparable.
Lenin's theory of the socialist revolution provided scientific framework for the Party's continued drive towards the socialist revolution in Russia.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Toppling the Autocracy The imperialist war, imposed
on the people by the autocracy
and the ruling classes of
Russia, had brought the country to the brink of disaster.
In the face of military defeat, economic chaos, and a
death-toll of millions, the people came to see that the
Bolshevik viewpoints were correct. Early in 1917 there
was a sharp expansion of the Russian workers'
movement, some army units at the fronts mutinied, peasant
revolts flared up, and the national liberation
movement grew. Another revolutionary cataclysm was
imminent.
The revolutionary crisis was escalating at such a rate that an armed rising against the autocracy again became a major priority. Responding to a Central Committee directive, the Bolsheviks in the factories formed military detachments and took steps to arm the workers.
On 23 February (8 March, New Style) 50 131 industrial enterprises in Petrograd went on strike. Prompted by the Petrograd Bolshevik Committee, the women workers took to the streets in protest against the autocracy, the war, and the famine. The strike spread throughout the capital, the workers began to appropriate police weapons and ammunition. Certain army units refused to fire on the workers and went over to the proletarian side. What had begun as a strike was becoming an armed rising.
On 27 February (12 March) a mass defection of army units to the ranks of the revolutionaries began; Petrograd was in the hands of the insurgent workers and revolutionary soldiers, a victory which prompted countrywide risings, in which the workers and soldiers ousted tsarist officials. Autocracy breathed its last.
On the evening of the same day the first session of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opened in the Taurida Palace. Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies were springing up in Moscow and other administrative and industrial centres---a direct result of the solidarity that had grown as the wofkers and the soldiers, the majority of whom came of peasant stock, fought side by side. The unified revolutionary network of Soviets that thus emerged embodied the power of the classes which had carried out the revolution. The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry had become a reality. But at the same time there appeared the Provisional Government, the tool of the bourgeoisie and landlords. The victory of the second Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution ended in an anomaly which could never have been foreseen---the establishment of dual power.
132 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 5. Lenin's Leading RoleIt sometimes happens that a man accomplishes more in a brief period than he might in many years during another stage of his life; for Lenin, February to October 1917 was just such a period, the culmination of all his intellectual and practical activity in the service of revolution. His astute intellect and striking talent for revolutionary strategy were never more in evidence than during the complex and contradictory time when the bourgeois-democratic revolution was growing into the socialist revolution.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Every Day Counts... Lenin learned about the
February revolution, the end of
the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty, from the Swiss
newspapers on 2 (15) March 1917, and his first
thought was to get back to his revolutionary homeland
with all speed. Delay was inevitable, however, because,
although Switzerland was neutral, Russia was still
at war---and the routes between were held by the
French and the British. As allies of the tsarist
government, they would not be eager to allow
internationalist Bolsheviks back into Russia.
Lenin kept a close eye on events in Russia, and began a series of articles entitled 'Letters from Afar' to help the Party determine its problems and positions in the nascent conflict. He analysed the factors that had ensured the success of the February revolution and discussed its prospects.
The first of the five `Letters' observed that 'the first revolution engendered by the imperialist world war 133 has broken out. The first revolution but certainly not the last.'^^*^^
Lenin considered the new state of affairs, the alignment of class forces and the specifics of the current situation, and concluded that it was time the :working class and its Party began moves to transform the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution.
The main peculiarity of the February revolution was the establishment of dual power, in which the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship represented by the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies coexisted with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and landlords represented by the Provisional Government.
Lenin saw that the Provisional Government was ready to compromise with the autocracy and remained faithful to tsarist policies, and therefore deserved no support from the workers. Freedom would be guaranteed and the autocratic system utterly overthrown when the revolutionary Soviets were stabilised and their influence extended to the maximum.
Lenin's 'Letters from Afar' recommended the basic lines of action appropriate to the transitional period between the two stages of revolution, characterised the new power structure, discussed the creation of a proletarian militia, and suggested a plan for withdrawal from the war. But the fifth letter, which covered the establishment of a revolutionary proletarian _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Letters from Afar', Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 297.
134 government, remained unfinished. Lenin had left Switzerland for home.Choosing a route proved no easy matter. The only feasible alternative turned out to be a dangerous trip across Germany, at that time still at war with Russia.
The return of the political emigres became common knowledge when a group of political celebrities from various countries---Friedrich Flatten, Paul Levi (Hartstein), Ferdinand Loriot, Henri Guilbeaux and Mieczyslaw Bronski---published a statement in Berne which assured their Russian colleagues that return was not only their right but their duty.
The German authorities received Lenin's conditions for the arrangements of the journey through Flatten, the leader of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party's Left wing, a man well known for his internationalist and anti-militarist views. The conditions were accepted.
Lenin was all eagerness to be back: 'The most important thing for us is to arrive in Russia as soon as possible.. .. Every day counts.'^^*^^
On the evening of 3 (16) April the train carrying Lenin and his comrades arrived in Petrbgrad's Finland station. Despite the late hour, the whole city turned out to greet him. He gave a stirring speech from an armoured car in front of the station, saluting the Russian proletariat and army, the revolutioriary forces which had freed their country from despotism and thus lit the fuse of an international social _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin^ 'Replies to a Correspondent of the Newspaper Politiken, March 31 (April 13), 1917', Collected Works, Vol. 41, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, p. 396.
135 revolution, and reminding them that the eyes of the world's proletariat were resting hopefully on them. And he ended with these rousing words: 'Long live the socialist revolution!' __ALPHA_LVL3__ The April Theses Late on 3 (16) April
Lenin gave a ninety-minute
speech to a Bolshevik meeting outlining the Party's
aims and tactics and formulating a practical
programme of action in the period of transition between
the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions.
These were his famous April Theses, which he laid
before the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies at the Taurida Palace on
the following day.
The April Theses (properly known as 'The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution'), together with works written during the same period such as 'Letters on Tactics' and 'The Dual Power', laid down the Bolsheviks' new political line: 'The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution--- which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie---to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.'^^*^^
In other words, the new strategy, which hinged on a successful socialist revolution, presented the working class with the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 22.
136 Moreover, while the proletariat had allied itself with the peasantry as a whole to lead the bourgeois-- democratic revolution, it would join forces with only the poorest peasants to carry through the socialist revolution.The Soviets, created by the people in their hour of victory, would be one of the channels through which the socialist revolution would triumph: they would be the political expression of the power of the proletariat. 'All Power to the Soviets' became the Bolshevik political watchword. Its obvious implications were the peaceful abolition of dual power and the concentration of all power in the hands of the Soviets---the embodiment of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, which would subsequently develop into the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The time was not yet ripe to call for the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government, for it enjoyed the trust of the people to a certain extent and the support of those Soviets that were dominated by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. The first step would therefore be to make sure the people understood just how counter-revolutionary the bourgeois government was. The April Theses provided a slogan which clearly expressed the Bolshevik attitude: 'No support for the Provisional Government.'
While appreciating this rare and exceedingly valuable opportunity to conduct a peaceful revolution, Lenin kept alive the possibility of armed action as an alternative path which would be taken if circumstances changed abruptly. But the workers must be armed in either case, in order to assure success.
137The April Theses also covered the Bolshevik line on economic action during the last push towards the socialist revolution: the confiscation of the landed estates, and the total nationalisation of land, which would then be put at the disposal of the local Soviets; the merger of all banks into one national concern under the control of the Soviets; and the establishment of Soviet control over social production and food distribution.
The idea behind these measures was not to ' introduce' socialism but to move towards it by undermining the social and economic structure of capitalism and creating an economic climate suitable for the transition to socialism.
Throughout the country Party organisations came out in support of Lenin's recommendations. The Seventh All-Russia Party Conference, which met in April 1917, based its decisions on the April Theses, thus adopting Lenin's course towards the socialist revolution as the official Party line.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Winning Over the Whole People The Bolsheviks had to adapt
their methods to meet the
changed situation. In the
spring of 1917 Lenin wrote: 'Russia at present is
seething. Millions and tens of millions of people, who
had been politically dormant for ten years and
politically crushed by the terrible oppression of tsarism
and by inhuman toil for the landowners and
capitalists, have awakened and taken eagerly to politics.'^^*^^
The petty-bourgeois tide was running high; the
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution', Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 61.
138 politically conscious proletariat temporarily went under, overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers and ideological contamination. The Mensheviks and SRs, conciliators to the last, floated to the surface, took control of the Soviets and other mass organisations and charmed people for a time with their ultrarevolutionary verbiage and fine promises, considerably aided by the fact that the Bolshevik leaders, viciously hounded by the tsarist government, were still either abroad, in exile or in prison.The Bolsheviks had to fill the people's need for systematic political education. 'This seems to be " nothing more" than propaganda work/ Lenin commented, 'but in reality it is most practical revolutionary work; for there is no advancing a revolution that has come to a standstill, that has choked itself with phrases, and that keeps "marking time'', not because of external obstacles, not because of the violence of the bourgeoisie ... but because of the unreasoning trust of the people.'^^*^^
Lenin's articles on the immediately important issues ---the political situation, the theoretical and practical bases of further revolutionary activity---appeared in the Bolshevik press almost daily. He grasped every opportunity of speaking to the workers and soldiers, of winning the people over to the revolution, of preparing them for the take-over.
In this period of peaceful revolutionary development, the slogan 'All Power to the Soviets' showed that the Bolsheviks were ready to compromise in order to win over the people to the side of the consciously _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 63.
139 revolutionary workers, and thus, by achieving unity, to assure the success of the socialist revolution. 'In April and May 1917,' Lenin wrote, '[the Bolsheviks] pursued what was in fact a policy of compromise, when they declared that the Provisional Government (Lvov, Milyukov, Kerensky and the rest) could not be overthrown at once, since in the Soviets, they still had the backing of the workers and it was first of all necessary to bring about a change in views in the majority, or a considerable part, of those workers.'^^*^^The Bolsheviks were particularly active in the factory committees and the trade unions, whose numbers rose from 500,000 in March and April 1917 to around 1.5 million at the end of June. Trade union commissions were formed and attached to the Bolshevik Central Committee and the local committees, and Bolshevik factions grew up within the trade unions. When Lenin addressed the First Conference of Petrograd Factory Committees, which met at the end of May, he linked the establishment of worker control in industry with the exercise of power throughout the country.
A Central Council of Factory Committees was elected, which included 19 Bolsheviks---76 per cent of the total number of members. Though based in Petrograd it was to establish overall control and serve as a channel for Bolshevik influence on the committees countrywide.
The fate of the revolution would ultimately depend on where peasant sympathies lay. When the First All-- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, `Kommunismus', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 166.
140 Russia Congress ol Peasants' Deputies met in May, the vast majority of the 1,115 delegates at first showed petty-bourgeois tendencies and supported the SRs. Lenin, present in a consultative capacity, spoke on the agrarian question, explaining Bolshevik policy on the issues of land, war, and the state structure. He put forward a resolution which demanded that all the estates, private holdings, church lands, etc. be handed over immediately and without compensation to the people, bringing private landownership to an end; but he reminded the Congress that this would be impossible unless the peasants acted in close co-operation with the urban workers, unless the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies were in complete control.Though the Congress was nominally a triumph for the SRs, the Bolsheviks had used it to increase their influence on the peasantry. They joined peasant organisations, sent groups of workers into the countryside, laid before the peasants the basic issues of the revolution, and publicised the Bolshevik agrarian programme. Their aim was to unite the rural proletariat into an independent class organisation, to strengthen their relations with the agricultural workers and hired hands, and to encourage the trade unions and factory workers to give the rural proletariat all the help it needed.
The peasantry as a whole tended to support the SRs in the early stages of the revolution; yet the working peasantry, especially the extremely poor peasants, actively backed the Bolsheviks on the land issue. The revolutionary union between the proletariat and the poorest peasants was making headway.
Lenin stressed that the revolution would not succeed 141 without the participation of the army. In an address to the soldiers, he wrote:
'The peasants, soldiers, and workers constitute the overwhelming majority of the population. This majority wants all the land to pass immediately into the hands of the Soviets of Peasants' Deputies. No one can stop the majority, if it is well organised (solidly united), if it is class-conscious, if it is armed.
'Soldiers! Help to unite and arm all the workers and the peasants!
'Soldiers! You, too, unite more solidly, and form closer ties with the workers and the peasants! Do not allow your armed power to be taken away from you!
'Then, and only then, will the people get all the land, and free themselves from their bondage to the landowners.'^^*^^
Bolshevik organisations were formed in the army to work with the soldiers.
Lenin's view that the revolution hinged on the transfer of state power to the Soviets was gaining wider currency. In the elections of May and June 1917, the Bolsheviks had a firm majority on several Soviets. But certain of them still backed the Provisional Government, despite the fact that it openly supported the bourgeoisie and landowners.
The First All-Russia Congress of Soviets opened on 3 (16) June 1917. The leaders of the Menshevik and SR majority spoke against the transfer of power to the Soviets and the formation of a Soviet government, on the grounds that there was no political party in the country capable of assuming all power. At which, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Soldiers and the Land', Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 137--38.
142 Lenin called out: 'There is such a party!' Then he mounted the platform to counter this cowardice with typical Bolshevik straightforwardness and determination: 'No party can refuse this, and our Party certainly doesn't. It is ready to take over full power at any moment.'^^*^^But, under Menshevik and SR pressure, the Congress rejected the Bolshevik insistence on vesting all power in the Soviets and threw in its lot with the Provisional Government. Though it criticised the imperialist war at great length, it was not willing to seize power and take steps to end that war. The Menshevik and SR leaders had turned their backs on the revolution.
Meanwhile the people as a whole were becoming increasingly discontented with the policy of the Provisional Government and the conciliatory line of the SRs and Mensheviks. And Bolshevik prestige was steadily growing.
The political crises of the period between February and October 1917 were particularly indicative. On 18 June (1 July) there was a crucial demonstration in Petrograd which involved some 500,000 workers and soldiers and employed Bolshevik slogans---'All Power to the Soviets', 'Down with the Ten Minister-- Capitalists', 'End the War', and 'Bread! Peace! Freedom!' There were also demonstrations in Moscow, Kiev, Riga, Ivanovo-Voznesensk and elsewhere. As Lenin put it: 'The demonstration in a few hours scattered to the winds, like a handful of dust, the empty talk about _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies', Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 20.
143 Bolshevik conspirators and showed with the utmost clarity that the vanguard of the working people of Russia, the industrial proletariat of the capital, and the overwhelming majority of the troops support slogans that our Party has always advocated.'^^*^^Lenin was now calling the Party bodies to ready themselves for a new phase in the revolution, while at the same time warning against any premature moves. The events of July 1917 justified him completely.
The people were in a state of growing unrest fuelled by the continuing dislocation, the war, the Provisional Government's recent Western Front offensive, the growing counter-revolution and the inertia of those Soviets which were under Menshevik and SR control. The offensive, a deliberate act of political provocation, had ended in a debacle which roused a howl of protest all over Russia. A spontaneous demonstration took place on 3 (16) July in Petrograd, where thousands of workers and soldiers voiced urgent demands for the establishment of Soviet power, for a curb on the counter-revolution. As the demonstration was already under way, the Bolsheviks decided to take part in it, to transform it from a spontaneous outburst into a peaceful and organised expression of opinion.
But the counter-revolution now had an excuse to fall on the revolutionary workers, soldiers and sailors and whip them into line. Troops opened fire on the demonstrators, leaving 400 dead and wounded on the streets of Petrograd. The Party called for an orderly _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Eighteenth of June', Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 110.
144 retreat, so as not to sacrifice the revolution's main forces needlessly.The counter-revolution was in the ascendant: there were searches, arrests and pogroms; the workers and the revolutionary regiments were disarmed; Lenin became a hunted man, his life endangered by false accusations of treason, of spying for Germany.
The Party decided that he should go underground without delay.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ In the Underground For several days Lenin hid
from the Provisional
Government in the homes of Petrograd workers; on 10 July
he left secretly for Razliv, where he lived for a time
with Nikolai Yemelyanov, a worker; finally he went to
Finland.
Even in these difficult circumstances, Lenin worked as hard as ever, directing the Party and formulating a new set of tactics.
The events of July had shown that counter-- revolution, a strong and organised force, reigned supreme. Under Menshevik and SR tutelage, the Soviets no longer wielded any effective power; they had become mere adjuncts of the Provisional Government. The hope that the revolution could develop peacefully, with a non-violent transfer of power to the Soviets, was gone.
Lenin wrote a pamphlet entitled 'On Slogans', which recommended that the slogan 'All Power to the Soviets' be abandoned until a new upsurge of revolutionary enthusiasm again made the Soviets fit to exercise revolutionary power.
On 26 July (8 August) the Sixth Party Congress met in Petrograd, taking special precautions against __PRINTERS_P_145_COMMENT__ 10---2095 145 government persecution. Lenin directed its proceedings, prepared the major documents, and drafted numerous resolutions.
The Congress decisions were based on Lenin's assessment of current developments, given in such works as 'The Political Situation', 'On Slogans', and 'Lessons of the Revolution'. The Party's sights were set on an armed uprising.
Then the Russian bourgeoisie, obviously feeling the need to consolidate its position, launched a coup designed to instal General Kornilov as military dictator. The people, directly supervised by the Bolsheviks through the Soviets, the factory committees, the revolutionary committees, the workers' volunteer military commands, and other mass organisations, rose to meet this grave threat. The struggle against Kornilov dispelled the illusions of the workers, peasants, soldiers and urban poor and helped them to appreciate political reality, on the evidence of their own eyes. And by the time it was all over the Soviets had revived, clear proof that Bolshevik influence among the people was expanding.
A majority on the Petrograd Soviet approved a Bolshevik resolution calling for the transfer of all power to the Soviets and outlining a programme of revolutionary transformation. The Moscow Soviet and others followed suit.
The counter-revolution had lost ground; the bourgeoisie was incapable of serious opposition; the revolutionary camp had rallied its forces. A peaceful takeover again became a possibility, if only the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and SRs could reach a voluntary agreement. On behalf of the Bolsheviks, Lenin wrote: 'We 146 may offer a compromise to these parties. ... And I think we should do so.'^^*^^
As their part of the bargain, the Bolsheviks would again have brought forward the slogan 'All Power to the Soviets', knowing full well that this would result in the formation of a Menshevik-SR government under Soviet control. Though not asking for any role in that government, the Bolsheviks did demand the right to influence the formation and activity of the Soviets through all normal channels, which would have enabled them to alter the composition of the Soviets, and thus attain their aims by peaceful means. Meanwhile the people would have had the opportunity to discover what the various party programmes meant in practice. 'For the sake of such a possibility at such a difficult time,' Lenin wrote, 'it would be worth compromising with the present majority in the Soviets. We have nothing to fear from real democracy, for reality is on our side, and even the course of development of trends within the SR and Menshevik parties, which are hostile to us, proves us right.'^^**^^
But the compromise was stillborn, because the conciliatory Mensheviks and SRs would not abandon their attitude to the Provisional Government and the bourgeoisie.
The government was increasingly proving itself incapable of coping with the mounting national crisis. Economic and financial dislocation, the shortage of raw materials, the cut-back in industry, the collapse _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'On Compromises', Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 310.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 312.
__PRINTERS_P_147_COMMENT__ 10* 147 of the transport system, and growing unemployment had brought the workers to the final extremity.In mid-September 1917, Lenin wrote 'The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It', outlining the Bolshevik economic platform, and stressing that only a proletarian revolution could drag the country from the brink of disaster, by nationalising the banks, syndicates, capitalist monopolies, by forcibly uniting separate capitalist concerns into syndicates (as a preliminary to placing them under revolutionary supervision), organising the people into consumer societies in order to share out fairly the burdens of war, abolishing the guarantee of confidentiality in commercial dealings, and establishing worker-peasant control over production and consumption---measures which, if implemented in a revolutionary-- democratic spirit, would hasten the country forward, to socialism.
But Lenin emphasised that such a revolutionary step was beyond the capacities of the Provisional Government and could be taken only by a government of workers and peasants. The revolutionarydemocratic transformation of the economy thus hinged on the assumption of power by the working class and poorest peasantry.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ The Bolsheviks and the Take-Over of Power Once he was convinced that
the revolution could no longer
develop on peaceful lines,
Lenin wrote to the RSDLP(B)
Central Committee and the Petrograd and Moscow
Party committees that since the Bolsheviks were in the
majority on both city Soviets, they could---and
should---take power into their own hands.
An uprising, in his assessment, was merely one of the forms of political struggle---one in which the revolutionary people decided the power issue by strength of arms. He emphasised that any political party---and especially a working-class party---would have no justification for existing if it refused to take power when the opportunity arose. The success of the rising would entirely depend on the Party's organisational abilities: the Bolsheviks had always been aware that the creation of a revolutionary army---made up of the armed proletariat and peasantry and those soldiers who had gone over to the side of the people---was one of the prime conditions of victory.
The objective factors that won the soldiers and sailors over to the side of the revolution between February and October 1917 were: the spread of the revolutionary movement, the Provisional Government's use of the army against the people, and the war itself---an exercise in naked greed whose whole weight fell upon the people, including the workers and peasants involved in the general mobilisation.
By the autumn of 1917 the army was, in Lenin's words, half-Bolshevik; this did much to enhance the revolution's military potential, which essentially hinged on the Red Guard---detachments of armed workers which formed in 1917 in almost all the large towns and industrial centres.
In putting forward the question of an armed uprising, Lenin was not demanding immediate action, but rather urging that the matter be laid before the people at large and that a detailed plan of campaign be formulated. The date of the rising should be decided by those who were directly involved with the people 149 and were thus in a position to pinpoint the right moment. This was a vital responsibility, since premature or belated action could end in disaster.
Lenin expanded the position formulated by Marx and Engels on uprisings in 'Marxism and Insurrection', a letter addressed to the Bolshevik Central Committee. In order to succeed, the rising would need the support of the most politically sophisticated class, a revolutionary upsurge among the people as a whole, and a moment when the politically conscious elements were at their most active and the enemy forces and their weaker allies at their most uncertain.
Such was precisely the case at the end of September 1917. 'The crisis,' Lenin declared, 'has matured.'
In early October Lenin returned to Petrograd,^^*^^ and there, in conditions of the strictest secrecy, took direct control of preparations for the rising.
The certainty of victory, he insisted, would depend on the observance of the rules laid down by Marx and Engels:
' (1) Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it realise firmly that you must go all the way.
' (2) Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point and at the decisive moment, otherwise the enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and organisation, will destroy the insurgents.
'(3) Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with the greatest determination, and by all means, without fail, take the offensive. "The defensive is the death of every armed rising.''
_-_-_^^*^^ Locomotive No. 293, which brought him to Petrograd, was presented to the Soviet Union by the Finnish Government in 1957.
'(4) You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.
150'(5) You must strive for daily successes, however small (one might say hourly, if it is the case of one town), and at all costs retain "moral superiority".'^^*^^
Lenin's detailed plan of action specified the direction of the main thrust and the need to stay on the offensive. A key operation would be an attack on Petrograd, mounted by the revolution's three major sources of strength---the workers, the sailors, and the revolutionary soldiers---which would be swift and closely co-ordinated and exploit the element of surprise to the full. The revolutionary forces would 'occupy without fail and . . . hold at any cost: a) the telephone exchange; (b) the telegraph; (c) the railway stations; (d) and above all, the bridges'.^^**^^
Thus the Red Guard, the 150,000 revolutionary soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, the war ships of the Baltic Fleet, and the detachments of revolutionary workers would decide the fate of the revolution.
In addition, the Bolsheviks were preparing revolutionaries throughout the country to establish the power of the Soviets.
On 10 (23) October, for the first time after his three months in the underground, Lenin attended a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee. Speaking on the current situation, he concluded that the time was ripe for the Soviets to seize power. The matter was _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Advice of an Onlooker', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 180.
^^**^^ Loc. fit.
151 decided: the Central Committee directed all Party bodies to concentrate on organising and carrying out the rising. The sole dissenting voices belonged to Lev Kamenev and Grigori Zinoviev, who felt that, as revolutionary forces were still significantly under strength, this was a premature move. But the Central Committee resolution proposed by Lenin won overall Party support.One of the more important preliminaries was the formation of the Revolutionary Military Committee (RMC), a legally constituted body responsible for directing the rising, deploying the forces necessary to defend Petrograd, supervising the Petrograd garrison, allocating military supplies and provisions, assuring the security of the capital, and so on. The RMC was a non-party body, in contact with the workers and soldiers at large, and united all the sources of revolutionary strength. Though attached to the Petrograd Soviet, it exercised its authority countrywide, under the supervision of the Bolshevik Central Committee and of Lenin, who was himself one of its members.
The preparations were well under way.
On 16 (29) October the Central Committee held a special meeting, inviting the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Party Committee, the Central Committee's Military Organisation, the Petrograd Council of Factory Committees, and representatives of the major trade unions, to review what had been accomplished and define the current situation more precisely. Lenin insisted that the rising be launched without delay; his resolution to that effect was again carried by an absolute majority. The Central Committee and the Petrograd Soviet were to give the signal and 152 operations were to be directed by a Revolutionary Military Centre appointed at a closed session of the Central Committee and subordinated to the Revolutionary Military Committee.
Zinoviev and Kamenev again strongly disapproved but, as Lenin's 'Letter to Comrades' pointed out, their objections were simply un-Marxist: their belief that the current balance of power lessened the chances of a successful outcome of the revolution, their lack of faith in the potential of the revolutionary proletariat were generated by their own confusion, fear and ignorance of the development of the class struggle, the political realities,in Russiaand on the world scene. Conversely, Lenin's conviction that the moment had arrived was rooted in a comprehensive analysis of the situation. Only through revolution could the country be rescued from its dire economic straits; most of the people were behind the Bolsheviks, who also had the majority voice in the Soviets; the army had turned against the Provisional Government; there was countrywide support of the motives behind the rising; preparations for the rising were well advanced; the peasant movement was gathering force; and the politically conscious workers were certain of victory. All this showed clearly that a Bolshevik-led uprising would certainly succeed.
Kamenev and Zinoviev then leaked the confidential CC resolution to the enemy, by publishing a critique of it in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn---a stunning act of treachery, given the circumstances. Lenin turned to the CC and the Party as a whole, demanding that the two 'revolutionary blacklegs' be expelled. Matters were further complicated when Trotsky also 153 opposed Lenin's line and advised postponement, which would have placed the rising yet deeper in jeopardy.
The Provisional Government, once alerted, began hurried counter-preparations: the revolutionary soldiers in the Petrograd garrison were sent to the front, loyal troops were recalled, and members of the Cadet Corps were armed and posted in working-class districts of the capital. On the night of 23 October (5 November) 1917 the Provisional Government tried to take the offensive, carrying out an armed raid on the printshop which produced Rabochi Put (The Workers' Path), a leading Party newspaper.
Further deferment was out of the question. The following morning the CC held an extraordinary session to hear the RMC report on the latest events and allocate specific responsibilities for the days ahead. The armed struggle for Soviet power had begun.
Lenin, whose life was still under threat, wrote to the CC from his hiding place in Petrograd on 24 October. He advised them to launch the rising and overthrow the Provisional Government immediately; in waiting for the opening of the Second Congress of Soviets on the following day they would waste their chance of a pre-emptive strike: 'History will not forgive revolutionaries for procrastinating when they could be victorious today (and they certainly will be victorious today), while they risk losing much tomorrow, in fact, they risk losing everything .... To delay action is fatal.'^^*^^
He could no longer stay in hiding. Disguising himself in an old overcoat and cap, his face bandaged as _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Letter to Central Committee Members', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 235,
154 if he had toothache, he went to the Smolny Institute with Eino Rahja, a worker who had served as his contact with the outside world. Formerly a college for the daughters of the nobility, Smolny now housed the All-Russia Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, the Petrograd Soviet and the RMC---the high command of the 1917 Revolution. On their way there Lenin and Rahja were stopped twice by Provisional Government military patrols, but arrived safely. Lenin immediately took his place at the head of the armed uprising.By the morning of 25 October (7 November) the insurgents had control of the entire city, except the Winter Palace, the former tsarist residence, where the Provisional Government still sat in futile debate.
Lenin sent out a general communique in the name of the RMC: 'The Provisional Government has been deposed. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies---the Revolutionary Military Committee, which heads the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison.'^^*^^
An extraordinary session of the Petrograd Soviet was held in the Smolny auditorium. Lenin's entrance was greeted by an ovation; it was his first appearance in public since the events of July had sent him underground. He had come with a historic message: ' Comrades, the workers' and peasants' revolution, about the necessity of which the Bolsheviks have always spoken, has been accomplished. . . .
'From now on, a new phase in the history of Russia _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'To the Citizens of Russia!', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 236.
155 begins, and this, the third Russian revolution, should in the end lead to the victory of socialism.'^^*^^The Winter Palace was stormed and taken, and the ministers of the Provisional Government arrested, that very night---25 October (7 November) 1917.
While the Palace was still under siege, the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opened in Smolny, with a preponderance of Bolshevik delegates. It approved Lenin's appeal 'To the Workers, Soldiers and Peasants', which called for the transfer of all power throughout the country to the Soviets as the revolutionary framework essential to the victory of socialism.
Thus the world's first socialist state was born.
Of all the parties in Russia, only the Bolsheviks, under Lenin's guidance, had understood the real issues of the Revolution and, in becoming its motive force, had assured its development and ultimate success.
But in the final analysis, the Revolution had been the work of the people. Albert Rhys Williams, an American author and journalist, gives us the judgement of an eyewitness: 'In the masses themselves lies the fate of the Russian Revolution---in their discipline and devotion. Fortune, indeed, has been very kind to them. It gave them for guide and interpreter a man with a giant mind and an iron will, a man of vast learning and fearless action, a man of the loftiest idealism and the most stern practical sagacity.'^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Meeting of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, October 25 (November 7), 1917,' Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 239.
^^**^^ Albert R. Williams, Through the Russian Revolution, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 58.
156 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER IV __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE ARCHITECT Lenin's life took a new turn
after the October Revolution.
Previously his relationship
with the revolutionary people
had been threefold: leader of the Party he had
created, guiding force in the proletariat's bid for power,
and master of revolutionary strategy and tactics. From
October 1917, at the head of the world's first socialist
state, Lenin manifested his statesmanship and
organisational genius to an unprecedented degree.
A new stage in the history of Russia---the transition from capitalism to socialism---had begun.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. Creating a New State System __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction.]The Revolution had placed power squarely in the hands of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The world's first Soviet government of workers and peasants---the Council of People's Commissars, chaired by Lenin---was formed.
But victory would not be certain until Soviet power was consolidated and the gains of the Revolution made secure against the restoration of capitalism by counter-revolution from whatever source---internal or external---until private ownership of the instruments 157 and means of production was eliminated, the material and technical base of socialism created, agriculture transformed on socialist lines, a cultural revolution carried through on a wide front, national oppression abolished, and full equality between all nations and nationalities achieved. When all this---and more---had been done, socialist relations would develop, and the way be cleared for socialism.
The first requirement, however, was the building of a stable socialist proletarian state, under the guiding hand of the Party. The Soviet people were setting out on the uncharted road to socialism alone; they would have to build socialism, create a new society, without the benefit of previous experience.
But none of this subdued Lenin's revolutionary enthusiasm. He accepted that the way ahead would necessarily involve 'a period of violent ``rocking'', shocks, struggle and storm ... a period of uncertain steps, experiments, wavering, hesitation....'^^*^^
At the Second AlJ-Russia Congress of Soviets,^^**^^ the Council of People's Commissars was constituted under Lenin's chairmanship. The Congress also ratified his decrees on peace and land.
The Decree on Peace, addressed to all peoples and governments, called for a universal peace treaty with no annexations or indemnities. This document, whose _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 261.
^^**^^ Of the 650 delegates at the Second Congress, there were 390 Bolsheviks, 179 Socialist-Revolutionaries, 72 Menshe viks; the rest represented minority groups. The Central Executive Committee had 62 Bolsheviks among its 101 members.
158 substance affected countless millions of lives, became a cornerstone of Soviet foreign policy.The Decree on Land abolished private landownership without compensation; all land would henceforth Ire state property and belong to the whole people. Subsequent legislation on land followed the lines indicated in such works as 'The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It', 'Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?' and The State and Revolution.
During the formation of the Council of People's Commissars (CPC), the Party Central Committee, on Lenin's recommendation, offered places in the government to the Left SRs,^^*^^ but the offer was refused. The CPC was thus exclusively Bolshevik, made up for the most part of devoted Party members, imprisoned or exiled prior to 1917 for their political activity.
Among the many important documents adopted by the Soviet government in those early days were: The Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia, decrees on the enactment and promulgation of laws and the abolition of social estates and civil ranks, on raising workers' pensions, on measures against counter-revolution and speculation, and on workers' control, an order defining the relationship between the CPC and the CEC---the supreme organ of Soviet power in the intervals between congresses of Soviets--- and a decree on the recall of delegates. Taken together, these measures outlined the procedures to be followed by the organs of Soviet power, allowed for _-_-_
^^*^^ After the October Revolution the Socialist-- Revolutionary Party split, and in December 1917 its `Left' wing formed a separate party.
159 constructive initiatives on the part of the people, and strengthened the new central government apparatus.The Party offered its most competent members for government service: Communists headed Soviet bodies in the centre and the localities, became People's Commissars and led government institutions. Lenin had presented them with the task of involving the maximum number of workers and peasants in building socialism and creating the new state system. It was time to dispel the bourgeois myth that the working people were incapable of running a country.
Lenin worked tremendously hard, studying all the briefing materials issued by the CPC, editing and supplementing draft decrees and resolutions, and preparing many of the more important documents himself. He often continued far into the night, sometimes not quitting his desk before dawn. There were even periods when he did not leave his office for days on end. At last the Party Central Committee and the CPC had to issue a special order to make him take a short break---but even on leave he continued working. . ..
It was a critical time for the Revolution. The Soviet Government, still in its infancy, had to cope with vicious attacks from the dispossessed classes, who were doing all they could to seize power from the working people. At the end of November 1917 a counter-- revolutionary plot involving the bourgeois Cadet Party was unearthed in Petrograd, and rebellions were put down in the Don area and the Southern Urals. Intrigues like these were relatively easy to deal with, as they lacked popular support.
The Mensheviks and SRs, meanwhile, were calling for a 'government of socialist unity', which would 160 comprise representatives of various parties and organisations---hoping to take up an influential position in it and use it as a weapon against proletarian power. Their gambit was upheld by Zinoviev, by Kamenev, the Chairman of the CEC, by Rykov, the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, and others, who also supported the Menshevik demand that Lenin should be removed from the chairmanship of the CPC. And when the Central Committee expressed its disapproval of their action, they resigned their positions in the CC and the Government. Their places were filled by people known for their dedication to the Revolution.
The CC, which had enjoyed grass-roots Party support throughout this controversy, now issued an appeal to all its members and to the working population as a whole: 'There must be no government in Russia other than the Soviet Government. . . . The majority at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets belonged to the Bolshevik Party. Therefore the only Soviet Government is the one formed by that Party.'^^*^^
The problem of creating a government apparatus that would operate countrywide was complicated by the fact that---as Lenin often pointed out---the proletarian Revolution, unlike all previous revolutions, aimed to smash the old government machinery, not improve it. But he rejected anarchist claims that the Marxist doctrine of the destruction of the bourgeois state in the course of the socialist revolution actually implied that no form of government---including the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'From the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)} Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 303.
__PRINTERS_P_161_COMMENT__ 11---2095 161 government of workers and peasants---had a right to exist.The state system that grew up under Lenin's supervision consisted of a worker-peasant army to defend the gains of the Revolution and protect the country, a judicial network, and an economic management apparatus; vast numbers of people were drawn into the day-to-day running of the country. And Lenin, at the centre of the government apparatus, kept a close eye on every aspect of its progress.
In his view, its strength lay in the support of the people, in their invaluable advice and controlling hand. 'We have created a Soviet type of state,' he wrote, 'and by that we have ushered in a new era in world history, the era of the political rule of the proletariat.'^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Dictatorship and Democracy The proletarian take-over, therefore, marked not
the end of the socialist revolution but its beginning;
the destruction of the old
governmental framework and
creation of the new signalled
the emergence of a completely different kind of social
system. The dictatorship of the proletariat was
essential if the Revolution was to culminate as it should---
in the building of socialism.
Lenin made it clear that the dictatorship of the proletariat, far from slotting new faces into the old framework, was an altogether new type of government, which differed from all that had gone before in its class content, format, historical mission, role in the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Notes of a Publicist', Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 206.
162 development of society and, consequently, in its functions. In Lenin's definition: 'Soviet power is nothing but an organisational form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.'^^*^^One of the first acts of the new Government had been to abolish the private ownership of landed estates and large business concerns. The landowners and more powerful members of the bourgeoisie put up violent resistance which sharpened the class struggle and increased the need for a strong proletarian powerbase. As Lenin put it: 'The dictatorship of the proletariat means a persistent struggle---bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative---against the forces and traditions of the old society.'^^**^^
This was just one of his definitions of what emerged as a profoundly complex phenomenon, and it showed that the dictatorship's main thrust was not mere coercion, but a constructive approach to socialist economy and culture.
The dictatorship of the working class is supported by other social strata, notably the working peasantry. 'The dictatorship of the proletariat,' Lenin wrote, 'is a specific form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the working people, and the numerous non-proletarian strata of the working people (petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc.), or the majority of these strata, an _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 265.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, ' ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 44.
163 alliance against capital, an alliance whose aim is the complete overthrow of capital, complete suppression of the resistance offered by the bourgeoisie as well as of attempts at restoration on its part, an alliance for the final establishment and consolidation of socialism.'^^*^^The historical role of the dictatorship is over once the developed socialist society is a viable entity, and the Soviet state has become a state of the whole people, representing the will and interests of the peasantry and intelligentsia as well as the working class.
Lenin solved the intricate question of how the dictatorship was to operate. It would be an interconnected system involving government bodies, public organisations and the Party. The Soviets---the government organs---would be the key factor. Public organisations include, for example, trade unions, co-operative societies and youth groups. And the dictatorship would be guided and organised by the Communist Party, the political nucleus of the Soviet social system.
At the Seventh Party Congress in March 1918 it was decided to remove the outdated designation ' Social-Democratic' from the Party's title, renaming it the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). (It is now the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.) 'As we begin socialist reforms,' Lenin wrote, 'we must have a clear conception of the goal towards which these reforms are in the final analysis directed, that is, the creation _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Foreword to the Published Speech " Dec,eption of the People with Slogans of Freedom and Equality" ', Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 381.
164 of a communist society.'^^*^^ This move also served to publicise the fact that the Party had formally severed all ties with Social-Democracy, whose leaders had betrayed the working class and begun to consort with the bourgeoisie.All references to 'equal partnership' between the, Communist Party and public organisations are irrelevant to Leninist theory, because the Party of the proletariat is not just one organisation among many, but a higher form of working-class political organisation. This does not, of course, diminish the role of other bodies---as Lenin pointed out, the Party offers them political guidance, unifies and directs their efforts towards the common aim---the creation of a new society---but does not duplicate their functions or render them superfluous. What the Party can---and does--- provide are scientifically-based guidelines for the drive towards communism.
Realising that the creation of a new social structure would be a long, hard and complex task, Lenin held that 'the dictatorship of the proletariat would not work except through the Communist Party'.^^**^^'To govern,' he wrote, 'you need an army of steeled revolutionary Communists. We have it, and it is called the Party.'^^***^^
One common criticism of Leninism is that democracy is impossible in a one-party system. Yet clearly a _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 127.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 199.
^^***^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Second All-Russia Congress of Miners', Vol. 32, p. 62.
165 multi-party system is no guarantee of democracy; Lenin himself named several countries where despite an apparently flourishing multi-party system, the institution of democracy was subject to the most atrocious treatment. And moreover, Lenin and his supporters had never claimed that the dictatorship of the proletariat presupposed the existence of only one party: the Party and the Soviet Government were ready to reach an agreement with any political party that was not hostile to Soviet power, would accept the programme of the Soviet Government and declare the Second Congress of Soviets to be the sole source of power.On 17 November 1917, after holding talks with the Bolsheviks, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries decided to join the GPC and agreed to subordinate themselves to Bolshevik leadership. Lenin did not view this merger as a mere matter of form: 'Any party that really wanted to be a people's party would have to state clearly and decisively that the revolution was a socialist revolution.
'And only in the event of the Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries stating that clearly and unambiguously would the Bolsheviks' alliance with them grow and become stronger.'^^*^^
However, the Left SRs shortly resigned from the CPC in protest against the ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which brought peace between Russia and Germany (see page 179). They tried every method at their command to subvert the peace and thus _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Extraordinary All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Deputies', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 332.
166 fundamentally vitiated their prestige in the eyes of the people. The end came in July 1918, following an attempted Left SR revolt against Soviet power which turned the peasantry against them completely and led the Fifth Congress of Soviets which was then meeting in Moscow to expel them from the Soviets.Thus the one-Party system was born following the collapse of the petty-bourgeois parties, which, as Lenin noted, considerably aided the development of socialist democracy.
The democratic nature of the Soviet system was evident from the outset, in the measures taken to satisfy the most basic demands of the workers and peasants and in the earliest socialist transformations. The land issue was urgently tackled; the large landowners were dispossessed; the old social estates, legal inequality between the sexes and national oppression were swept away; church and state were separated; education was taken out of the hands of the church. It was clear from the beginning that proletarian democracy was democracy for the whole people---a system in which the entire population enjoyed an active and wide-ranging role in the political, social, and economic spheres.
Worker control was introduced in enterprises, owned by capitalists, and was operating in almost every factory by early 1918, proving an ideal defence against bourgeois sabotage and attempts to use industry to bolster the counter-revolution. At the same time, by acquainting themselves with the whole industrial process, the workers developed the expertise necessary to assume the management role. Worker control was supervised by the factory committees, which increasingly 167 took over the administrative and economic functions of the former owners.
Through its earliest legislative moves, the Soviet government had broken the hold of the bourgeoisie. the landlords, the reactionary bureaucracy and the counter-revolutionary parties, had begun to unify the working people and had considerably furthered the advance of Soviet power in the localities. By February 1918, some three months after the Revolution, the Soviets were in unchallenged control throughout the land---and the building of socialism was launched.
But the counter-revolution was not completely routed: its next foray against the Soviet system was made through the Constituent Assembly.
The idea of a Constituent Assembly had arisen long before the Revolution; Lenin's attitude to it was far from dismissive; he stated that 'the relation between bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy here confronted the revolution in a practical form'.^^*^^ Most of the peasants looked to the Assembly to take decisive measures on issues such as land and peace.
The Bolsheviks did not oppose the Assembly. Lenin felt that, by bringing together representatives from the people, it might serve to unite the Soviets. But the creation of a republic of Soviets---the supremely democratic form of government---through a socialist revolution---always took precedence in his mind over the idea of a bourgeois-democratic republic complete with Constituent Assembly.
The establishment of the Soviets and the CEC and _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky', Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 263.
168 CPC, the highest organs of power, made the idea of a Constituent Assembly obsolete. Yet large numbers of people, mainly members of the petty bourgeoisie, still harboured the illusion of bourgeois parliamentarianism. But Bolsheviks had to be careful not to 'regard what is obsolete to us as something obsolete to a class, to the masses'^^*^^ The people must be given the opportunity to compare the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly. So the elections were held.At the final count, the Right SRs had a majority; the Bolsheviks received 25 per cent of the votes, and the Cadets---who represented powerful bourgeois interests---and others, 13 per cent.
Such an apparently surprising result is easily explained: the elections were largely conducted by the counter-revolutionary parties because the Bolsheviks, occupied in creating a new state apparatus and in combating counter-revolutionary revolts, simply did not have time for electioneering. No one told the peasants exactly what to do. The voters were faced with a bewildering array of candidate-lists which had been drawn up before the Revolution, when the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and conciliatory pettybourgeois parties were in the ascendant, and reflected the former balance of political power---enough to confuse anyone. Moreover, 50 per cent of those eligible did not vote, for various reasons. And finally, as Lenin observed, the elections were held before the scope and significance of the Revolution could have become clear to the bulk of the people.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, ' ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 58.
169The Bolsheviks tried to avoid any confrontation with the Assembly. Lenin's view was that if it recognised Soviet power there would be no problem in overcoming the discrepancies between the election results and the will of the majority of workers expressed by the Soviets; if it proved counter-revolutionary, the resultant crisis would call for stern measures.
On 5 (18) January 1918 Yakov Sverdlov, Chairman of the CEC, opened the first session of the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd's Taurida Palace by reading Lenin's Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People,^^*^^ a document which had already been endorsed by the CEC. The Right SRs, who were in the majority, refused to discuss the Declaration, launching instead into a criticism of Soviet power. The Bolsheviks read out a counter-- statement composed by Lenin, to the effect that the Constituent Assembly, in turning its back on the achievements of the Revolution---the decrees on land, peace and worker control---and the authority of the Soviets, had rejected the wishes of the overwhelming majority---had, in effect, chosen to confront the working people of Russia. Then they left the hall.
Shortly after the Bolshevik walkout, the Left SRs, who were still uncertain of their attitude to the Assembly, proposed a debate on the Soviet government's _-_-_
^^*^^ The Declaration, the basis of the Soviet Constitution, gave legislative endorsement to the achievements of the Revolution and set forth the fundamental principles and aims of the socialist state. It declared Russia to be a Republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The Soviets were to wield all power, in the centre and the localities.
170 peace policy---but the gathering rejected that suggestion too. Late that night the Left SRs made a formal protest and withdrew, leaving the Right SRs and Mensheviks alone in the hall. Lenin sent out an order: 'The soldier and sailor comrades on guard duty within the precincts of the Taurida Palace are instructed not to allow any violence towards the counter-- revolutionary part of the Constituent Assembly and, while permitting all to freely leave the Taurida Palace, not to let anyone in without special orders.'^^*^^On the following day, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by order of the CEC. Lenin summed up the situation thus: 'The people wanted the Constituent Assembly summoned, and we summoned it. But they sensed immediately what this famous Constituent Assembly really was. And now we have carried out the will of the people, which is---All power to the Soviets.'^^**^^
The episode was thus closed in a democratic way, in the way which protected the interests of the people and their Revolution.
The rehabilitation of the economy and the development of the socialist economic system owes everything to Lenin. The new system was topped by the Supreme Economic Council (SEC), constituted in December 1917, which was to exercise overall economic control. Subordinate councils were formed in the localities.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, `Instruction', Collected Works, Vol. 44, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1970, pp. 53--54.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Speech on the Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly Delivered to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee; January 6(19), 1918', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 440.
171The Soviet government's nationalisation of the banks proved to be the keystone of the nationalisation of industry. By the spring of 1918 several large and particularly vital concerns had been nationalised, as had those enterprises whose owners were using sabotage in their fight against Soviet power. Local government bodies were especially active in the nationalisation of industry. Transport, the merchant fleet and foreign trade also came under public ownership.
The economic power base of the leading members of the bourgeoisie had been demolished; the workers' government held the commanding heights of the economy. Work on the new, socialist economic system could now begin.
The planning of socialist construction, a colossal undertaking, fell largely to Lenin. On 28 March 1918 he began to dictate the first draft of the article 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government', his first lengthy work since October 1917, which was published in April. It covered the fundamental problems of the transition from capitalism to socialism, the basic features of Soviet economic policy and the concrete means by which Russia would be transformed into a socialist state. The major problem to be faced by Soviet power after the take-over, he emphasised, was the administration of the country.
But the Civil War and the intervention of foreign powers disrupted the peaceful course of socialist construction. The birth pangs of the transition phase were all the sharper because the Revolution had dealt a telling blow to the imperialist system, and the dictatorship of the proletariat had emerged during a world war. As Lenin put it: 'A revolution that follows and 172 is connected with a war ... is a particularly severe case of childbirth.'^^*^^ And in addition the proletariat, establishing their dictatorship in a primarily pettybourgeois country, had been faced by particularly virulent opposition from the dispossessed classes and their supporters abroad.
The Revolution was immediately vulnerable to internal enemies: the fight against counter-revolution and sabotage was headed by the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission (usually known as the Cheka, from its Russian initials---Tr.) under Felix Dzerzhinsky.
The Cheka, staffed by experienced Communists, leading workers and revolutionary sailors, did sterling service in tracking down and neutralising enemies of the Revolution and foreign agents. Its responsibilities also included care of the four million or so orphans who were roaming the country.
From the outset Lenin saw that the country needed a breathing-space in which the economy could be rescued from the ravages of world war, the economic life of Russia could be normalised and the problems born of Revolution solved.
The Soviet authorities behaved generously towards the enemies of the Revolution. For example, on 27 October 1917 the Revolutionary Military Committee ordered the Commandant of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd to free all the ministers of the Provisional Government confined there, on promise of good behaviour. The counter-revolutionaries, however, betrayed this trust. Shortly after the Revolution, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Prophetic Words', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 498.
173 Vladimir Purishkevich, a powerful landowner and monarchist, returned to Petrograd---and in early November 1917 was discovered to be the mastermind of a counter-revolutionary organisation called the Russian Assemblies (Russkiye Sobraniya).On 1 January 1918 the Whiteguards and Right SRs staged an attempt on Lenin's life. His car was fired on, the bullets penetrating the bodywork in several places and even smashing the windscreen, but he escaped unharmed.
In June 1918 V. Volodarsky, a leading Bolshevik, was murdered, and on the morning of 30 August Moisei Uritsky, Chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, was assassinated at his desk.
During 1918 numerous savage reprisals against Communists and Soviet functionaries in the countryside were organised by the rural rich. The counterrevolution had resorted to terror---and was obviously following a coherent plan. Investigations into several plots brought certain foreign embassies under direct suspicion.
The Soviet government's anti-terrorist measures immediately aroused strident and baseless complaints about Bolshevik terror, assertions that civilisation itself was in danger, and so on, as if the Revolution was expected not to defend itself. In Lenin's estimation: 'Our only fault, if any, is that we were much too humane, much too kind-hearted, towards the monstrously treacherous representatives of the bourgeois-- imperialist system.'^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 476.
174The dictatorship of the proletariat, which should have been busy with constructive activity in the economic and cultural fields, was forced to become a coercive tool against the enemies of the Soviet system.
But, as Lenin said, one had to be realistic. 'When a revolutionary class is fighting the propertied classes that offer resistance, the resistance must be crushed. And we shall crush the resistance of the propertied classes, using the same means as they used to crush the proletariat---no other means have been invented.'^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2. Working for Peace The Decree on Peace,
adopted by the Second Congress of
Soviets, one of the first
documents promulgated after the Revolution, called for a
truce during which negotiations towards a universal
democratic peace without annexations or indemnities
would be conducted.
But the governments of England, France and the USA turned down several such Soviet initiatives. This naturally prompted the Soviet Government to open unilateral negotiations with Germany---who offered extortionate terms, including the annexation of over 150,000 square kilometres of Russian soil.
The following days were tense and dramatic. Lenin _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Meeting of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, December 1 (14), 1917', Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 354.
175 was in favour of accepting the terms in order to save the Soviet Republic. The people were bleeding, were suffering all kinds of deprivation; hardly any of the working peasantry supported the war; the exhausted troops wanted to come home; the old army was in disarray---a new Red Army of workers and peasants must be created to defend the Revolution. Everyone was longing for peace.Trotsky and the 'Left Communists'---Bukharin, Bubnov> Lomov, Osinsky, Preobrazhensky, Pyatakov, Radek and others---opposed the peace negotiations, calling, from their influential positions in the Party and government, for a 'revolutionary war' with Germany.
On 8 (21) January Lenin told a joint meeting of the CC and the Bolshevik delegates to the Third Congress of Soviets that the situation was too grave to brook further delay. But only 15 of the 60 Bolsheviks present agreed; several local Party committees subsequently came out in favour of the majority opinion. Many Bolsheviks, fired by the early successes of Soviet power and their victories over internal counter-- revolution, had convinced themselves that world imperialism would be an easy target. The idea of signing a treaty with imperialist powers, therefore, went completely counter to their principles.
Lenin held courageously to his position, convinced that the working class was behind him and that those who did not see his point would ultimately understand their mistake. He showed how reckless and potentially disastrous the Trotskyist and 'Left Communist' line was. The 'revolutionary war' was supposed to spark off a revolution in Germany---but revolutions cannot 176 be produced to order in that way. They follow their own internal logic, developing with the growth of class contradictions; there was no justification for attempting to 'spark off revolution and make policy on that basis, jeopardising the Russian Revolution in the process.
Lenin pointed out that the continuation of the war would suit the enemies of the Soviet state very well. The negotiations should be spun out as long as possible but in the face of a German ultimatum the treaty would have to be signed.
On 27 January (9 February) the ultimatum was delivered. Trotsky, ignoring Lenin's directions, announced that the Soviet Government would neither sign the peace nor continue the war: the army was to be demobilised. The talks were broken off.
On 18 February^^*^^ Germany launched an offensive along its entire Eastern Front and Soviet Russia was dragged back into war. In the absence of serious resistance, the German troops rapidly overran Latvia, Estonia and a large part of the Ukraine, occupied Dvinsk, Minsk, Polotsk, Pskov and other towns, and directly threatened Petrograd.
Lenin clearly saw what was at stake. That same
evening there was a stormy CG session at which, in
the face of open criticism from Trotsky, Bukharin and
others, he carried by seven votes to five his motion ao
cepting the peace terms. Five days later the German
Government responded by producing even tougher
conditions. On 23 February, the day that the CG
discussed this new turn of events, Lenin stated in a
_-_-_
^^*^^ Here and henceforth dates are given in New Style.
12---2095
177
The terms offered had to be accepted quickly: 'These terms must be signed. If you don't sign them, you will sign the Soviet power's death warrant within three weeks. These terms do not infringe on the Soviet power. I have not the slightest hesitation. I put the ultimatum not in order to withdraw it. I don't want revolutionary phrases.'^^**^^
After lengthy deliberations, the CC agreed. This defeat drove the opposition to undisguisedly divisive tactics: Trotsky resigned the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, followed by Bubnov, Bukharin and other members of the opposition who had held positions in Party and government bodies.
Lenin and the Party, seeing no reason to conceal the serious disaccord over the issue of war or peace, put out an explanatory internal communique: though the CC was divided, Party members must support the CC until the question was resolved at the next Party Congress, to be held in March 1918. All Communists were responsible for organising resistance to the continuing enemy advance.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Peace or War?', Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 41.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Speeches at a Meeting of the G.C. of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.), February 23, 1918', Collected Works, Vol. 36, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 479.
178On the night of 23 February a majority of CEC members accepted Lenin's resolution on the peace.
Bukharin and his supporters were trying to turn the local Party organisations against the Central Committee, maintaining that it was worth setting Soviet power---which was in any case becoming a 'mere formality'---at risk in the interests of international revolution.
In Lenin's eyes this idea was a monstrous aberration, a sign of profound pessimism, confusion, fear and lack of faith in the revolutionary potential of the people. The world revolutionary movement could only gain from the existence of a strong Soviet Republic: the working people of Soviet Russia must defend the world's first socialist republic, in the name of workers everywhere.
On 3 March the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, and ratified on 14 March by the Extraordinary Fourth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, held in Moscow, which had become the seat of the Soviet Government three days previously.
Lenin described the Brest Treaty as a brave and wise step, a rational political compromise with the imperialist powers which took into account the military and political situation and the future development of international relations. The Soviet Government was able to annul the Treaty in 1918, during the German revolution.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Defending the Revolution In their attempts to stifle the
socialist revolution, the
impenalist governments of
England, France, America, Japan and Germany
interfered openly and blatantly in internal Soviet affairs, not
__PRINTERS_P_179_COMMENT__
12*
179
even balking at armed intervention. Internal
counterrevolution and foreign intervention joined hands: the
Civil War itself, in Lenin's estimation, was fomented
and prolonged by the imperialist powers.
The defence of the Revolution began.
Lenin's military activity was at one with his intellectual and practical contribution to the drive to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and build a socialist society. He formulated a comprehensive military programme for the proletarian revolution, and a cohesive theoretical base for the defence of socialist society, outlined the structure of the Soviet Government's military apparatus, and laid the foundations of Soviet military theory and practice.
Lenin was well-versed in military matters. He supervised the armed proletarian risings in 1905 to 1907 and in 1917, created the Soviet Republic's armed forces, played a major part in the Civil War and directed the victory over the interventionist forces.
Immediately after the Revolution it became clear that the defence of socialism hinged on the creation of a new military framework, a problem which Lenin laid before the Revolutionary Military Committee on 25 October 1917. As he put it two years later: 'Unless we defended the socialist republic by force of arms, we could not exist. ... If the ruling class, the proletariat, wants to hold power, it must, therefore, prove its ability to do so by its military organisation.'^^*^^
On 28 January 1918 the government officially _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)', Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 153.
180 launched the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. Recruitment began in Petrograd three days later, and on 23 February a joint action of Red Guards and Red Army units halted the German advance which had been resumed after Trotsky had wrecked the BrestLitovsk negotiations. The date of the Red Army's first victory is celebrated in the USSR as Soviet Army Day.Lenin's position was that neither the old army nor a `classless' new army would be able to cope with the escalating Civil War and foreign intervention. The Red Army, the military arm of the dictatorship of the proletariat, must be formed on class lines, be recruited from the proletariat and the working peasantry; it must be a professional, highly disciplined body, operating under the aegis of the Communist Party. 'The experience of the Soviet government in army organisation must not be regarded as something isolated. War embraces all forms of organisation in all spheres. The development of our army led to successful results only because it was carried on in the spirit of general Soviet organisation, on the basis of class relations that affect all development.'^^*^^ And finally, the Red Army must represent the many nationalities within the Soviet Republic in a fraternal unity that would be a living embodiment of proletarian internationalism.
Lenin's plan indicated three formative stages: a complete and rapid democratisation of the army and navy which would nullify the power and influence of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Speech Delivered at the Third All-Russia Congress of Economic Councils, January 27, 1920', Collected Works, Vol. 30, Progress Publishers Moscow, 1965, pp. 309--10.
181 reactionary commanders and officers; the abolition of all undemocratic procedures in the armed forces; and the gradual demobilisation of the old army. Simultaneously the central Soviet military organs would be formed.The supreme military organ was the Revolutionary Military Council of the Soviet Republic, a collegiate body whose members were appointed by the Council of People's Commissars.
The Party and Government involved the revolutionary soldiers, sailors and workers in the creation of the new army; the higher posts were filled by officers of the old army who expressed themselves willing to serve the people. In the spring of 1918 it was agreed to appoint military commissars who would exercise political control over the former tsarist specialists, organise the soldiers and advance their political education, and liaise with the local Party bodies. The Army was to be a volunteer force, made up of those workers and peasants whose political orientation and dedication to the Revolution were beyond question. This principle continued to operate until the summer of 1918, and resulted in the formation of a conscious proletarian core on which the Red Army would centre.
But interventionist troops and armed counter-- revolutionaries were ranging freely over three-quarters of Soviet territory. In July 1918 the volunteer principle was dropped and compulsory military service introduced.
The Mensheviks, disparaging Lenin and the Communist Party as 'red war-mongers', demanded that the class approach be abandoned, that an 'army of national unity' be formed. Lenin countered this by showing 182 that since the class struggle had developed into open civil war, all such appeals simply served the ends of the counter-revolution.
On the military issue too Lenin and the Communists had to counter some determined attacks from Trotsky and his supporters. Trotsky contrived to deform the Party's military policy: he was unnecessarily repressive, especially towards the military commissars, and had unreasonable faith in the specialists from the old army. The CC more than once had to block his attempts to interfere with the Party's political activity in the army by diminishing the role of the political organisations and Party bodies, to turn the Communists in uniform against the Central Committee, and to weaken Party control over the military departments. The Eighth Party Congress, meeting in March 1919, censured his actions severely, and it was agreed at the plenary CC session and the CC Politbureau meeting held shortly afterwards that the Congress line on military affairs should have given him cause to question his own actions seriously. He was further criticised at the Tenth and Eleventh Party congresses.
Trotsky's activities went counter to Soviet military policy: in defiance of Lenin's contention that military theory was essential to the creation of a contemporary army, he denied its usefulness, and further maintained that the social and political colouration of the state need not in any way influence its armed forces.
As the debate over Soviet military theory continued, several army luminaries---including Kliment Voroshilov, Mikhail Frunze and Mikhail Tukhachevsky---- rejected Trotsky's claims that the proletariat had made no contribution to military science during the Civil 183 War. The lessons of that war, they held, must be researched and exploited to the full.
The outcome of the debate was defeat for Trotsky and his followers. The constructive attitude to Soviet military theory that Lenin had called for was endorsed. Later, in January 1925, army personnel requested that the Central Committee remove Trotsky from his post of responsibility for army affairs. A plenary CC session announced that 'Trotsky's violation of Party principles on military issues and the lack of discipline in the army make it necessary to remove him from the Soviet Revolutionary Military Council'.
Lenin summarised the particularly problematic nature of the military issue thus: 'We were often obliged to feel our way. . .. We undertook a task which nobody in the world has ever attempted on so large a scale.'^^*^^
The matter was further complicated by the intervention and Civil War: the slogan 'Death or Victory' accurately summarised the situation. By the end of 1918 .the Red Army was about a million strong. Reviewing those early days, Lenin wrote: 'We have surmounted all difficulties, even though it was hard to declare martial law again in a country where the people themselves had suppressed the war and smashed the old army, and even though it was hard to form an army in the midst of acute civil war. The army has been formed, and victory ... is assured.'^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Eighth Congress of the R.G.P.(B.)', Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 152.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Speech at the First All-Russia Congress on Education, August 26, 1918', Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 86.
184The Red Army smashed the counter-revolutionary and interventionist forces, and defended the Soviet state's right to freedom and independence.
The Civil War dragged on for nearly three years, though, as Lenin pointed out, the counter-revolution would never have survived so long without the support and leadership from abroad. The people's ultimate victory showed that the October Revolution was indeed invincible. 'The class that can lead the mass of the population,' Lenin wrote, 'must triumph historically.'^^*^^
The Soviet social and political system was such that all the available means and manpower could be mobilised against the enemy. The heroism of the Soviet people, the backing of the international proletariat,^^**^^ and the leadership of the Party and Lenin himself were the major factors which ensured success and brought the Soviet Republic through its baptism of fire.
It was, however, a costly victory: some eight million perished during those years---one million on the battle-field and the rest of disease and starvation. Losses to the economy amounted to 50 thousand million gold roubles.
As head of the national defence effort, Lenin _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Eighth All-Russia Conference of the R.C.P.(B.), December 2-4, 1919', Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 177.
^^**^^ When the intervention and counter-revolution were at their height, the Red Army contained over 200,000 Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Bulgarian, Korean, Chinese, Finnish and German officers and men, in international units. Workers in the capitalist countries showed their solidarity through the 'Hands Off Russia' campaign.
185 studied the military reports and political briefing papers from the fronts, was in daily contact with the Revolutionary Military Council and the commanders of the armies and the fronts, and directed their actions. All the important moves were decided with his active cooperation; his office was the nerve centre of the entire operation.We learn a lot about Lenin as an expert in national defence, a military strategist and leader from his wartime correspondence with the commanding officers, which shows that he took note of every detail while directing and co-ordinating activities at the fronts and formulating the basic strategic issues. He had a high regard for meticulous planning and personally followed every operation through to the end, demanding that the Revolutionary Military Council keep a strict eye on the execution of its orders. He also wrote all the crucial Party documents on military affairs.
Professional soldiers were impressed by his grasp of the most intricate and specialised points of military theory, by his eminently competent handling of the national defence effort, the creation of the military apparatus and the conduct of war.
When the Civil War was over he turned his mind to strengthening the country's defence capacity, emphasising that 'any attempt to start a war against us will mean, to the states involved, that the terms they will get following such a war will be worse than those they could have obtained without a war or prior to it'.^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 490.
186 __ALPHA_LVL2__ 3. Pointing the Way to Socialism __ALPHA_LVL3__ The Revolutionary The enemies, internal and
external, had been repulsed: a
time of peace lay ahead.
Lenin wrote that 'we shall defend this peace even at
the price of considerable sacrifice'.^^*^^
Early in 1919 the Eighth Party Congress adopted a Programme for this period of peaceful construction. Drawn up by a commission headed by Lenin, it outlined the Party's aims during the transition from capitalism to socialism. It was the first such programmatic document put out by a Communist Party in a position of power and about to undertake the building of socialism.
Once the Civil War and foreign intervention were dealt with, the leaders of the state and Party were able to turn their attention to the economic situation. In 1920 the output of the major industrial concerns was seven times less than before World War I. Agriculture was in an equally parlous state.
There were those who tried to blame the Party for the economic decline, although the real causes---- devastation and disruption---were not far to seek. The workers and peasants were so firmly behind the Soviet Government that attacks on the Soviet system itself were futile, so the opposition launched the catchphrase 'Soviets without Communists'---nothing more than an attempt at mass deception designed to _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Speech at a Plenary Meeting of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, February 28, 1921', Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 149.
187 reestablish the power of the bourgeoisie through ' nonparty' Soviets. The call for freedom for all political parties was similarly intended to remove the Bolsheviks from their leading role in the Soviets.Lenin was convinced that the working people, their constructive energies aroused and political self-- confidence bolstered by the Revolution and their subsequent successes against counter-revolution---both imported from abroad and fomented internally---would press on undeterred to strengthen the Soviet state and build socialism.
Economic rehabilitation was but a beginning; ultimately a new economic structure would be created, based on large-scale machine production and backed by all the latest advances of science and technology--- above all by electrical power, a factor which Lenin rated so highly as to coin the slogan 'Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country'.^^*^^ Lenin's views on the material and technical basis necessary for socialism lay at the heart of the first Soviet economic development plan, which provided economic guidelines for 10 to 15 years ahead.
Real progress was out of the question, of course, while the economy was in chaos. During the Civil War all the country's resources had been diverted to the defence effort; all industrial units, large and small, had been nationalised and brought under central control; the peasants had been obliged to sell their surplus grain and fodder to the state at fixed prices, to meet the needs of the army and the workers; private _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 516.
188 trade had been forbidden and all private shops and trading establishments transferred to public ownership. A system of labour conscription was applied without exception, on the principle of 'he who does not work neither shall he eat'. This, in brief, was 'War Communism', an economic policy which, from the summer of 1918, had gradually spread throughout the country and remained in operation until the spring of 1921.'War Communism' was not an inevitable stage in the history of the socialist revolution. Indeed, 'it was the war and the ruin that forced us into War Communism. It was not, and could not be, a policy that corresponded to the economic tasks of the proletariat. It was a makeshift.'^^*^^
And as such its weak points became clear as soon as the economic upturn began. Therefore Lenin developed the programme known as the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was introduced in the spring of 1921 and brought new forms and methods of economic union, new ways of dealing with the petty bourgeoisie.
'From the military alliance we must pass to an economic alliance, and, theoretically, the only basis for the latter is the introduction of the tax in kind,'^^**^^ Lenin wrote. This tax in kind, which replaced the surplus food appropriation system, allowed the peasants to sell their surplus product on the open market if _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Tax in Kind', Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 343.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Third Congress of the Communist International', Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 490.
189 they so wished. Free trade was reintroduced, along with various forms of 'state capitalism', such as concessions and joint companies, and a limited form of private enterprise.NEP's basic rationale was class-based. The working class could only build socialism with the active support of the peasantry, the largest social stratum in the country. Expropriation, a valid weapon against the big landowners and capitalists, could not be used against the small producers---that is, the working peasantry, the potential ally of the working class. 'They cannot be ousted, or crushed: we must learn to live with them. They can (and must) be transformed and re-educated only by means of very prolonged, slow, and cautious organisational work.'^^*^^
The New Economic Policy marked the transition from capitalism to socialism, and was instrumental in fighting economic dislocation, in creating the foundations of the socialist economic structure, in developing large-scale industry, in establishing an economic link between town and country, in strengthening the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, in ousting the last traces of capitalism and assuring the victory of socialism.
The dual nature of NEP was, apparently, lost on Lenin's opponents, who maligned it as an inglorious retreat, a return to capitalism, a working-class capitulation to the petty bourgeoisie.
Western assessments were similar: in 1921 Lenin and the Communist Party, so the theory ran, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, ' ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 44.
190 retreated from Marxism and `introduced' state capitalism, as the only way of emerging from the country's dreadful economic straits. Seen in this light, NEP signalled a return to capitalism, a `liberalisation' of the Soviet political system.Lenin never denied that freedom of trade and free enterprise would boost capitalism to a certain extent--- but the effect, he emphasised, would be temporary. The introduction of NEP would stimulate a life-- anddeath battle between capitalism and socialism, in which either the working class would carry the day by joining hands with the peasantry, or the capitalists would shore up their defences by winning the peasants over to their side and thus do untold damage to the power of the proletariat. NEP therefore provided a new framework for the continuing class struggle.
Lenin pointed out that under NEP the proletariat's political position was as strong as ever, despite the minor economic concessions made to capitalism. NEP was a planned retreat, during which the forces of the Revolution would regroup for a fresh offensive. And he knew that the progress already made towards socialism---the take-over of political power, the nationalisation of industry, the banks, the land, the railways and water transport, the monopoly of foreign trade, and other factors---would stand the proletariat in good stead during the coming conflict with capitalism.
Lenin held that, though specifically Russian in many respects, NEP was an internationally relevant phenomenon. As he told the Ninth Congress of Soviets in December 1921, 'this task which we are working on now, for the time being on our own, seems to be a purely Russian one, but in reality it is a task which 191 all socialists will face... . The new society, which will be based on the alliance of the workers and peasants, is inevitable. Sooner or later it will come---twenty years earlier or twenty years later---and when we work on the implementation of our New Economic Policy, we are helping to work out for this society the forms of alliance between the workers and peasants.'^^*^^
Lenin paid meticulous attention to every aspect of the national economic revival; he had a hand in every advance made in the economic and cultural fields. He visited the more important building sites, planned the revival of agriculture and the coal and oil industries, talked to workers, economic specialists and academics, and did much to streamline the operations of government departments.
The Soviet people, in the face of the most incredible difficulties, had conquered economic chaos, destitution and starvation, rehabilitated the economy and launched the building of socialism on a wide front, following the plan which Lenin developed in 1922 and 1923.
This working model, based on the early experiences in socialist transformation, the results of NEP and an analysis of the current world revolutionary situation, was the culmination of all Lenin's efforts to free the working people from exploitation.
It was his firm belief that here was no universally applicable recipe for socialism; in all cases, however, the first principles of scientific socialism would have to be fully implemented.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Ninth All-Russia Congress of Soviets', Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 177.
192In 1920 Lenin advised the other Communist parties to learn all they could from the experiences of the world's first socialist society, to take note of 'the Russian model that reveals to all countries something--- and something highly significant---of their near and inevitable future'.^^*^^
Though Lenin was a great visionary, he had no illusions about Russia's future: he clearly saw the gigantic obstacles on the road to communism. Yet he knew that his plan was feasible, because it rested on sober judgement, the superiority of the socialist system, and the tremendous creative power of the people.
His writings of that period---which included 'Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of the World Revolution', 'Our Revolution', 'On Cooperation', 'Letter to the Congress', 'Granting Legislative Functions to the State Planning Commission', 'How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection', and 'Better Fewer, But Better' ---are models of optimism and revolutionary common sense, and cover a wide gamut of theoretical and practical issues, detailing the future of the Revolution and the building of socialism.
These were Lenin's last works, his political testament to the Communist Party and the international communist movement.
Reviewing the favourable position of the Soviet Republic---in which political power and the commanding heights of the economy were held by the people, an active alliance existed between the working class _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, ' ``Left-Wing'' Communism---an Infantile Disorder' Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 22.
193 and the peasantry, and prodigious natural resources were at hand---Lenin concluded that 'it is still not the building of socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for it'.^^*^^ The victory of socialism, however, would hinge on complete industrialisation, the introduction of the co-operative system in agriculture and a revolution in culture and science.Industrialisation would make the Soviet state economically independent and militarily unassailable. The material and technical base of socialism would include heavy industry---that is, the production of the means of production, and electrification would be a vital factor. 'Only when the country has been electrified, and industry, agriculture and transport have been placed on the technical basis of modern largescale industry, only then shall we be fully victorious.'^^**^^
The socialist transformation of agriculture was another pivotal feature of Lenin's plan. Drawing millions of peasants into socialist construction was a most daunting problem faced by the working class after 1917.
Lenin saw reform on co-operative lines as the solution. Under capitalism, co-operation is no more than a capitalist form of collectivism. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, when the workerpeasant alliance is nourishing and all the basic means of production, including the land, are in the hands of the state, co-operation takes on a socialist character--- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'On Co-operation', Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 468.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets', Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 516.
194 indeed, is the only means of establishing socialist production relations in the countryside, of uniting the peasants into large collective groupings, of reconciling the peasant interest and the interests of society. Cooperative property comes to rank alongside state property as an economic pillar of socialist society.Lenin made it quite clear that the socialist reform of agriculture was an undertaking of historic proportions, an enormously complex task which would cause social upheaval: 'We fully realise that such tremendous changes in the lives of tens of millions of people as the transition from small individual peasant farming to collective farming, affecting as they do the most deep-going roots of the peasants' way of life and their mores, can only be accomplished by long effort.'^^*^^
The active participation of the peasantry, encouraged by direct state aid, was essential; the peasants must unite into collectives voluntarily, convinced by sound argument---not coerced by any kind of administrative pressure.
Another keystone of socialism would be the cultural and scientific revolution, a lengthy and involved phase which would eliminate all forms of spiritual repression by eradicating national chauvinism and the exploitative mentality, and would root the scientific worldview and the socialist ideology firmly in the mass consciousness. The first blows against the outdated prejudices of society would be struck by eradicating illiteracy, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Speech to the First All-Russia Congress of Land Departments, Poor Peasants' Committees and Communes, December 11, 1918', Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 342.
__PRINTERS_P_195_COMMENT__ 13* 195 creating a people's intelligentsia, re-educating the prerevolutionary intelligentsia, making palpable progress in all forms of intellectual endeavour, and guaranteeing the working people free access to the world of knowledge, culture, and artistic excellence.After 1917 a bourgeois-inspired piece of nonsense went the rounds to the effect that world culture was doomed to perish at the hands of the 'red vandals'. Lenin established beyond doubt, however, that proletarian culture was not inimical in principle to the achievements of the past---though there was a fundamental distinction to be made between bourgeois and socialist culture.
Only Communists, he maintained, can truly appreciate the progressive aspects of mankind's cultural activity through the ages. Their rejection of the culturally reactionary would help the workers, peasants and intelligentsia focus their efforts to develop the cultural base on which communism would grow.
Political and social revolution had opened up the world's cultural treasures to the ordinary man, had brought him spiritual emancipation and a fundamental change of attitudes. As Lenin put it: 'In the old days, human genius, the brain of man, created only to give some the benefits of technology and culture, and to deprive others of the bare necessities, education and development. From now on all the marvels of science and the gains of culture belong to the nation as a whole, and never again will man's brain and human genius be used for oppression and exploitation.'^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies', Collected Works, Vol. 26; pp. 481--82.
196Lenin's last speeches and articles contain a detailed analysis of factors essential to the building of socialism: greater emphasis on the leading role of the Communist Party and on the constructive contribution of the working people; the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat; a closer worker-peasant alliance and firmer ties between the peoples of the Soviet Republic; a sound foreign policy founded primarily on proletarian internationalism; and an expansion in Soviet military capacity.
He showed great concern for the ideological and organisational unity of the Party, and felt that the stability and solidarity of its leading organ---the Central Committee---was crucial. In his 'Letter to the Congress' he recommended that the CC be increased to 100 members through the enlistment of workers. This would enhance its status as a collective body, give more Party personnel the chance to serve in the higher Party echelons, and generally improve the functioning of the Party apparatus.
He then went on to discuss the personal qualities of certain CC members---Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Bukharin, Pyatakov and Stalin---in some detail. Western political commentators have tried to show that this section of the `Letter' is the aberration of a gravely ill man; others claim that it sprang from personal dislike---and neither argument carries the slightest weight. While it is true that Lenin had been very ill since May 1922, his mental adroitness and discernment were unimpaired. He had had severe political disagreements with the people he mentioned and had criticised them, but felt that, despite the unpromising signs, they should be given the chance to understand 197 and correct their own mistakes in the course of their Party work. But all the same he underlined the ideological instability of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin and Pyatakov, and expressed his lack of faith in Trotsky's political intentions. Trotsky had often opposed the Bolshevik line and defied the Central Committee; Lenin judged him to be an overly self-confident person, fascinated by bureaucratic procedure.
Lenin was afraid that Stalin, once in a position of power, would fall victim to the grave flaws in his character and wield his authority recklessly. The Congress should consider replacing him as General Secretary of the Central Committee by someone who 'in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc.'^^*^^
Lenin's letter came before the 13th Party Congress, which met in 1924. Since Stalin was a reliable opponent of Trotsky and the opportunist line and assured the Congress that he would correct the faults that Lenin had spoken of, he was kept on as General Secretary. He took the criticism to heart, was pivotal during the confrontation with Trotsky and the Rightwing opportunists after Lenin's death, and made a valuable contribution to the drive towards socialism.
But in time Lenin's words began to lose their power over him: he made some serious mistakes, violating the Leninist norms of Party life and socialist legality. _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Letter to the Congress', Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 596.
198 The Communist Party, it will be remembered, censured his errors and took determined measures to rectify the harm done by the Stalin personality cult and ensure that a similar situation would not arise in the future.Lenin believed that the strength of the Soviet state would hinge on the Party's ability to apply Marxist theory creatively in the ever-changing conditions of the drive towards socialism and communism, to take a firm stand against bourgeois attitudes, against opportunism and revisionism. Ideological and organisational unity was imperative.
To retain its leading role, the Party would have to remain undeviatingly faithful in all its dealings to the principle of collectivism---which did not, of course, absolve the individual from personal responsibility. Party policy should, of course, be well-formulated. Its correct implementation, however, would depend on the grass-roots Party bodies and on every single Party member. Therefore a sound approach to selection, training and allocation of personnel was also vital to the Party's future as the guiding force in a socialist state. Lenin enjoined that Party recruitment should be carried out mostly among the workers, and that each applicant should be carefully vetted to exclude those who were not totally committed.
Mistakes were likely to occur from time to time, but they should be corrected quickly, not swept under carpet: a frank confession would only increase the people's respect for the Party, and a mature application of criticism and self-criticism would help reveal and guard against shortcomings.
The building of socialism was sure to proceed 199 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1980/LR215/20080707/215.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2008.07.09) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ smoothly if the Party maintained its close links with the working people, not only teaching them but also learning from them: in this alone lay the strength of the Party. And those links would flourish while the Party continued to represent the interest of the working people and show concern for their well-being. The Party's credibility would hinge on convincing the people that its political line was the correct one.
Lenin held that a Marxist-Leninist Party should set itself increasingly high practical standards, and meet them by extending inner-Party democracy and encouraging initiative, conducting its internal affairs on strict and principled lines, making high ideological and political demands on its members and improving its guidance of governmental and social organisations.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ A Voluntary Union of Republics After the October Revolution,
the national question became
crucial to the future of the
young socialist state. Lenin established that the aim
was to eliminate all traces of national inequality. 'To
the old world, the world of national oppression,
national bickering, and national isolation the workers
counterpose a new world, a world of the unity of the
working people of all nations, a world in which there
is no place for any privileges or for the slightest degree
of oppression of man by man.'^^*^^ If Soviet Russia could
tear down tsarisrn's 'prison of peoples' through a
wellfounded national policy, the world would see that any
nation, not just the 'chosen few', could enjoy an active
and independent historical role. Relations between the
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I Lenin, 'The Working Class and the National Question', Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 92.
200 Russian people and their neighbours should be based 'on the human principle of equality, and not on the feudalist principle of privilege, which is so degrading to a great nation.'^^*^^Following these precepts, the Russian people helped the former colonial borderlands of the tsarist empire attain national independence and statehood.
Lenin set great store on winning the trust of the peoples of the borderlands and would not countenance even the slightest hint of the patronising and disrespectful attitude known as Great Russian chauvinism. He insisted that they be treated with the maximum delicacy, courtesy, and consideration.
Great Russian chauvinism is reprehensible, but no more so, he maintained, than local nationalism, national egoism, isolationism and attempts to break or weaken the links between the Russian people and their non-Russian neighbours.
A correct decision on the national question taken by a multinational state like Soviet Russia would help create and strengthen a future union of republics, would have repercussions throughout the international revolutionary movement and within the colonies and dependent nations, whose peoples would ultimately be taking their place on the international scene. 'The morrow of world history,' Lenin wrote, 'will be a day when the awakening peoples oppressed by imperialism are finally aroused and the decisive long and hard struggle for their liberation begins.'^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'On the National Pride of the Great Russians', Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 104.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, 'The Question of Nationalities or `` Autonomisation'' ', Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 611.
__PRINTERS_P_201_COMMENT__ 14---2095 201Soviet Russia immediately recognised the independence of each emergent Soviet Republic, and a close friendship quickly formed and grew under the influence of agreements on co-operation, a system of mutual assistance, and synchronised economic planning.
The establishment of the Soviet system, the correspondence of the social, economic, political and ideological interests and the problems and goals of the Soviet republics made a closer union essential. Public opinion in the republics called insistently for a united state: by 1922 conditions were such that the idea could be considered seriously.
Lenin championed a voluntary federation as the only feasible form: federation would promote the economic cohesion which was essential if the economy was to be restored and the quality of life improved. A solid front was the only guarantee of survival in the prevailing conditions of capitalist encirclement. And finally, a single economic plan could be universally applied in a union of republics.
As the discussions on the formation of the USSR proceeded, other suggestions which arose included that of confederation---a temporary form of union with no central organs---which would bring the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics and the Soviet Republics of Transcaucasia into the Russian Federation on an autonomous footing.
Lenin not only advanced the form of union which was ultimately accepted, but also worked out its moral and practical implications. The union must be voluntary and based on absolute equality; each republic would retain the right of secession, and the 202 sovereignty of the member-states would be protected at all costs. National progress would thus be encouraged, not obstructed.
On 30 December 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was born in a decree of the First All-Union Congress of Soviets, which elected Lenin to the post of Chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars. In January 1924 the first USSR Constitution was adopted. The mutual respect and close co-- operation between the Soviet republics thus entered a new phase, through a historic act which united the working people of over 100 nations and nationalities into one family---a triumph for proletarian internationalism and for the national policy of Lenin and the Communist Party, and a major landmark in the social progress of mankind.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ In the Name of Peace, of Workers and Communists the World Over Lenin held that the
fundamental issue of war and peace
should be approached from
the standpoint of the working
class, of the workers as a whole, in the interests of
social progress. Foreign policy, he stated, reflected the
social character of the government which
formulated it.
One of the first Soviet documents, the Decree on Peace, illustrated the principles of his foreign policy: the signing of a democratic peace, practical support for the principle of national equality, and non-- interference in the internal affairs of other states. Soviet foreign policy was to become one of the building blocks of the socialist society.
Lenin directed the Soviet state towards a policy of peaceful coexistence between states with differing 203 social systems: any friction should be resolved by peaceful negotiation, not by armed conflict. This principle was based on respect for the sovereign rights of other states and for the inviolability of their territory, and on the development of mutually beneficial ties in economic, scientific, cultural, and other spheres. Yet peaceful coexistence did not imply reconciliation with the capitalist world and would not influence the conduct of the class struggle or the fight for national liberation in the capitalist countries or the colonies.
But Lenin warned that war would never be eliminated while imperialism, its root cause, continued to exist. A strong defence capacity would be needed to protect the gains of the Revolution.
Lenin kept a close eye on the development of the national liberation movement, which had made tremendous headway in the East since the October Revolution had shaken the very foundations of imperialism and had made the colonial system look suddenly vulnerable. In Lenin's words, 'a revolutionary war waged by oppressed peoples, if it really succeeds in arousing the millions of working and exploited people, harbours such potentialities, such miracles, that the emancipation of the peoples of the East is now quite practicable.'^^*^^
The Revolution had broken imperialism's stranglehold on the world; the peoples of the East could now count on the help of the new socialist states and the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, 'Address to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organisations of the Peoples of the East, November 22, 1919', Collected Works, Vol. 30, pp. 153--54.
204 international proletariat. The national liberation movement began to merge with the revolutionary forces all over the world.The Soviet Government, under Lenin's leadership, was to be the loyal and selfless friend and ally of those peoples who were fighting for economic and political independence. The peoples of the East, for their part, could fruitfully apply communist doctrines to their own situation and learn from the experiences of other nations already on the socialist path. Lenin made a detailed analysis of the situation, and concluded that, with the support of the socialist countries, the economically and socially backward parts of the world could proceed directly to socialism, by-passing the capitalist phase altogether.
As a result of a revival in the labour movement, new Communist parties were forming in several countries. International working-class solidarity had become a realistic goal in a world which had witnessed the October Revolution and the emergence of the Soviet state.
For several years Lenin had firmly endorsed the formation of a Third International to unite the Left wing of the socialist movement. In March 1919 the First Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) met in Moscow.
Lenin urged the Congress to take as its starting point the inevitability of the socialist revolution and the replacement of bourgeois democracy by a new type of government---the dictatorship of the proletariat, the only road from capitalism to socialism. He spoke on the significance of Soviet power, subjected bourgeois democracy to a critical analysis, and outlined the 205 major practical tasks facing the international communist movement.
Lenin headed the Executive Committee which was formed to guide Comintern affairs, and, in response to the need increasingly felt within the world communist movement for a theoretical summary of past experience, produced a pamphlet entitled `Left-Wing' Communism---an Infantile Disorder.
Conceived primarily as an attack on the errors of the `Left-wing' hardliners and schismatics who held sway in certain recently formed Communist parties, the pamphlet drew its strength from Lenin's past confrontations with opportunism in various guises. It underlined the international significance of the October Revolution and showed that the revolutionary experience of the Bolshevik Party, correctly interpreted, was universally applicable. And finally, it indicated that the major responsibility of the Communist parties in capitalist countries was to counteract bourgeois influence over the people and win them for communism.
All the delegates to the Second Comintern Congress, which met in July 1920, received a copy of the pamphlet. Lenin prepared the programme paper---on the international situation and the basic tasks of the Comintern---and contributed to almost every point on the agenda. He took an active part in the Third Comintern Congress, speaking on NEP, and addressed the Fourth Congress in November 1922 on 'Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of the World Revolution'.
He was in direct contact with communist leaders, and often met with them to exchange views on the 206 current situation; these active links helped consolidate the emergent Communist parties and the international revolutionary movement as a whole.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ Always with UsBy 1922 the building of socialism was well under way; the Soviet state had strengthened its position at home and abroad; the Party and the people had good cause to celebrate. But that same year was overshadowed by Lenin's illness. His health had long been failing almost imperceptibly, undermined by the deprivation he experienced in prison and exile, in the underground and abroad, by the near-fatal attempt on his life on 30 August 1918, when Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist-- Revolutionary terrorist, had shot him at point-blank range, by his superhuman service to the Party, the Soviet government and the international communist movement, and by long hours of study and intense mental effort. -
He fell gravely ill in May 1922, but continued to work as hard as severe headaches and sleepless nights would allow. The doctors, finding nothing organically wrong, prescribed an extended period of rest, but Lenin refused to take their advice. There was no way of preventing him from working.
His powerful constitution came to grips with the illness, and by mid-July 1922 he was back at his desk, but under strict orders to limit his working day to eight hours. From October of the same year he was again chairing meetings of the Council of People's Commissars and participating in CC activities; he addressed the Fourth Comintern Congress on 13 November and the plenary session of the Moscow Soviet a week later. It was the last time he spoke in public.
207In early December he suffered a serious reverse, recovering slightly in January and February of the following year. Between December 1922 and 5 March 1923 he dictated his last articles and letters---a remarkable achievement for a man in his condition. In early March his health declined sharply and from 14 March the government began to issue regular progress reports.
Every day the GG and CPG, and Lenin himself, received countless letters and telegrams full of affection and concern, the work of hands unaccustomed to wielding a pen. Meeting of workers, peasants and soldiers invariably began with the latest news about Lenin's health.
On 15 May he was removed to Gorki, a village near Moscow where he had often spent his holidays. Around the end of July he began to improve and by autumn it seemed that he might recover altogether. On 18 October he made a visit to Moscow: he went to his flat in the Kremlin, stood thoughtfully in the GPC assembly hall, dropped into his office for a moment, took a few books from the library, and left. The doctors allowed him, while in Gorki, to see worker and peasant delegations for between five and ten minutes at a time; his Party and government colleagues made frequent visits.
He fought his deteriorating condition so resolutely that he was even able to attend the 1924 New Year celebrations given for the local children. In January he followed the proceedings of the 13th Party Conference---which branded Trotsky's position as a petty-bourgeois deviation, a revision of Leninism--- with such interest that a full recovery seemed likely.
208On 19 January Mikhail Kalinin brought the llth All-Russia Congress of Soviets to its feet with his opening address: the doctors had expressed the hope that Lenin would ultimately return to his Party and government work.
But those hopes were dashed.... Lenin had an abrupt relapse, and died on 21 January 1924, at 6:50 p.m., the untimely victim of tremendous, ceaseless effort for the benefit of mankind. His published works run to a staggering 55 volumes, with some five or six volumes still in preparation---a worthy monument to a great scholar, revolutionary and statesman who for 30 years had taught and guided the workers of the world.
On the night of his death a plenary session of the Central Committee approved a document entitled 'To the Party. To All the Working People', which ran: 'The man has died who built a Party of steel, built it up year upon year, led it under the lash of tsarism, taught it, tempered it in a bitter struggle with the betrayers of the working class, with the undecided, the waverers, the deserters.... The man has died under whose militant leadership our Party, amidst the smoke of battle, raised in its mighty hand the red banner of October throughout the land, swept the enemy from its path, championed unswervingly the supremacy of the working people in what had once been tsarist Russia....
'All the proletariat's truly great and heroic qualities---its fearless intellect, its unbending, determined, all-conquering iron will, its holy, undying hatred for slavery and oppression, its revolutionary passion, capable of moving mountains, its unlimited faith in the 209 creative force of the masses, its immense genius for organisation---all this was magnificently embodied in Lenin, the man whose name has become the symbol of a new world from West to East, from North to South. . . .'^^*^^
On 23 January Lenin's coffin was brought to Moscow in a special train, and placed in the Hall of Columns in the House of Trade Unions.
An endless and silent stream flowed past the bier--- a grief-stricken throng of men and women from all walks of life and every corner of the world. Party veterans and Communists from abroad formed the guard of honour: hundreds of them carried out that sorrowful duty during those days.
On 26 January the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets met to mourn their loss, composed an address to the working people of the world and agreed that mass editions of Lenin's works, aimed at the widest possible readership, would be a worthy tribute to his memory. The workers of Petrograd, the cradle of the Revolution, petitioned the Congress to rename their city Leningrad, and, in response to the tens of thousands of workers who had applied to join the Party, the Central Committee announced a memorial recruitment drive to enlist workers from the factory floor. The Party welcomed over 240,000 new members in a matter of weeks.
_-_-_^^*^^ KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh syezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK (The CPSU in the Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee), Part I, Politizdat, Moscow, 1953, pp. 804--05 (in Russian).
210On 27 January Lenin's coffin was set on a raised dais in Red Square. The workers of Moscow and delegations from all parts of the country began to file past. At four o'clock the sound of cannon and factory sirens announced that the coffin had entered the Mausoleum : all traffic stopped and all factories stood silent for five minutes, while workers in many lands downed tools to bid farewell to their teacher and leader, their best friend.
Lenin is dead, but his cause lives on---his ideas, his plans are part of the fabric of reality. The developed socialist society in the USSR, the triumph of socialism in several countries, the formation of the world socialist system, the advances made by the labour and communist movements in the strongholds of capitalism, the emergence of the former colonies and semi-- colonies as independent forces on the world scene, the growing challenge to imperialism---all these are nothing less than Lenin's ideas in action.
The revolutionary movement will never falter while it holds fast to the great, universal doctrine we call Marxism-Leninism. Lenin is with us still, alive in the hearts and minds of all mankind, in the spirit of every Communist.
[211] __ALPHA_LVL1__ CONCLUSIONIt is almost 90 years since Lenin's first works appeared, almost 80 years since the Communist Party began life under his guiding hand, over 60 years since the world's first socialist state was born in the fires of Revolution, and over half a century since Lenin died. What lessons has time taught us? Did Lenin correctly foresee the lines of human development? Do his views on social progress and revolutionary perspectives have meaning for us today, or have we outgrown them?
Let the facts speak for themselves. The world has indeed seen some breathtaking changes during this century, especially since 1917---but revolution is at the root of them all. One country after another has left the capitalist camp to join the serried ranks of socialism. The socialist community, an epoch-making phenomenon, is the most dynamic economic force in the world today, and a foremost political influence. And all this has happened because Lenin's ideas have been put into practice, because the revolutionary movement was guided by Marxism-Leninism. Surely this is compelling evidence.
The disintegration of the imperialist world continues. The colonial system collapsed under pressure from a burgeoning national liberation movement that was put into motion by the October Revolution and further stimulated by the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War and the emergence of the world socialist 212 system. The liberated peoples, some 2,000 million strong, are now a great progressive force and a power to be reckoned with in world politics. All this has taken place as Lenin said it would.
Lenin's analysis of imperialism has been borne out by developments in the capitalist world. Only Marxism-Leninism, in fact, can adequately explain capitalism's changes of direction and the tremendous upheavals it periodically suffers.
The Soviet people have followed Lenin's precepts in building the developed socialist society---a society based on true democracy and social justice, a society for which the national question, history's most vexing social problem, is no longer an issue, a society permeated with national accord.
The developed socialist society can be defined in terms of an advanced and vigorous industrial sector, highly mechanised agriculture, a high standard of living which satisfies both material and spiritual needs, the affirmation of the socialist lifestyle, the creation of the Soviet man---a qualitatively new kind of person---and a growth in social homogeneity. And as a result there now exists a new type of community---the Soviet people.
As Leonid Brezhnev has pointed out, the developed socialist society gives 'full scope for the functioning of the laws of socialism, for the manifestation of its advantages in all spheres of social life'.^^*^^
The emergence of the developed socialist society, now taking place in the other socialist countries, is _-_-_
^^*^^ L. I. Brezhnev, World Marxist Review, Vol. 20, No. 12, 1977, p. 6.
213 cogent confirmation of the validity of MarxismLeninism, of the vitality of Lenin's ideas.A study of world development shows that Lenin's assessment of war as the offspring of imperialism was correct. History has borne out his view that peaceful coexistence between states with differing social and political systems is the only real hope for mankind, and that the socialist countries must join hands with the revolutionary working class and the national liberation movement to bring peace to our world. The ever-increasing prestige of the Soviet Union, of the socialist community of nations, of all peace-loving forces is the surest guarantee of world peace, the most reliable curb on the aggressive impulses of imperialism.
Lenin warned that proletarian internationalism would be a crucial factor in the worldwide conflict with capitalism, a fact illustrated time and again in the revolutionary annals of the twentienth century, not least by 1917 itself. In Leonid Brezhnev's words: 'There is every justification for stating that the victory of the October Revolution was a triumph of the internationalist fraternity of working people, a triumph of proletarian internationalism.'^^*^^ And those factors will be equally important in the future, will be vital to the advance of socialism, the growth of the world socialist system and the elimination of the last traces of colonialism.
In sum, Marxism-Leninism has been confirmed by the course of history. And it is not only a scientifically verifiable explanation of the world around us but a _-_-_
^^*^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Moscow, 1972, pp. 13--14.
214 means of changing it to the good. It is a handbook of revolution.Through its close and constant contact with the working-class experience of revolutionary confrontation, with the building of socialism and communism, Marxism-Leninism grows, reflecting changing realities and looking fearlessly towards the future, while rival theories lose contact with life and slip into obscurity. As Leonid Brezhnev told the 25th Party Congress, 'Marxism-Leninism is the only reliable basis for formulating the right strategy and tactics. It gives us an uderstanding of the historical perspective, helps us to determine the lines of our socio-economic and political development for years ahead, and correctly to find our orientation in international developments. Marxism-Leninism derives its power from its constant and creative development. That is what Marx taught. That is what Lenin taught.'^^*^^
And this, of course, is why Marxism-Leninism is criticised so viciously by the opponents of socialism, of the working-class revolutionary movement, of national liberation---the opponents of peace and social progress. Their aim is to belittle Lenin's ideas, to prove them irrelevant and obsolete---but what a futile aim it is!
Lenin's ideas and deeds are immortal; his life and work will always bring inspiration and hope to the working people of the world. His genius guides our revolutionary steps, our every meaningful action. Lenin's name, Lenin's cause are with us forever.
_-_-_^^*^^ Documents and Resolutions. XXVth Congress of the CPSU, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1976, p. 87.
215 __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END]REQUEST TO READERS ~
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