WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
__TITLE__ LeninPROGRESS PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
[1]Translated from the Russian
Designed by Vadim Gorin
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
This translation has been made from the Russian text prepared by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. CC CPSU.
BAA4HMMP MAbMH AEHHH Ha amjiuucxoM n3UKe __COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1965Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
, 0103020000--343 , „„ J\------------------- -- J - oJ 014(01)- 83 [2] C O N T E N T S PREFACE Chapter One CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. THE BEGINNING OF REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY 11 Chapter 7 m> LEADER OK THE REVOLUTIONARY PROLETARIAT OF RUSSIA 28 Chapter Three SIBERIAN EXILE 51 Chapter l''mir FOR A PROLETARIAN PARTY OF A NEW TYPE 69 Chapter Five THE FIRST ASSAULT ON THE TSARIST AUTOCRACY 111 Chapter .V?.v ``NOT FOR NOTHING DO THEY SAY WE ARE AS HARD AS ROCK" 144 Chapter Seven THE NEW RISE OF THE REVOLUTION 171 Chapter Eight FIDELITY TO PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM 196 Chapter Sine INSPIRF.R AND LEADER OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 237 Chapter Ten THE GREAT FOUNDER OF THE SOVIET STATE 285 Chapter Eleven LENIN HEADS DEFENCE OF THE SOCIALIST COUNTRY 324 Chapter Twelve THE MAKER OF THE NEW, SOCIALIST SOCIETY 382 3 Chapter Thirteen LAST YEAR OF LENIN'S LIFE AND WORK 444 Chapter Fourteen THE TRIUMPH OF THE GREAT IDEAS OF LENINISM Notes Name Index Index of Periodicals 472 493 503 523 [4] __ALPHA_LVL1__ PREFACELenin's name has come to symbolise the victory of the Great October Revolution and those immense revolutionary advances which have radically changed the face of society on earth and signify the turning of mankind to socialism and communism.
From the Address of the International
Meeting of Communist and Workers
Parties, Moscow, 1669
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His name is infinitely dear to hundreds of millions. This name, known in the remotest corners of the globe, has become a guiding star to the working folk of all lands. It will live on in the hearts and minds of all progressive people, inspiring them to strive ceaselessly for a radiant future, for a free and happy life, for peace, national independence, social progress, democracy, socialism and communism.
Lenin's life was a constant, daily feat to achieve a great aim the liberation of the working class and all the working people from exploitation and oppression, the transformation of society on communist principles.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the great continuer of the cause and teaching of the founders of scientific communism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Lenin's theoretical and political activities heralded a new age in the development of Marxism, the international liberation movement of the working people. In his activity Lenin based himself on the theory and method of Marx and Engels. While resolutely thwarting all attempts under the pretext of discussing ``dogmatism'' to subject Marxism to revision and declare it `` inadequate and obsolete'', he always fought for a creative approach to the theory and practice of the revolutionary movement, maintaining that one must be guided by the principles and method of Marxism in elaborating current problems.
He was fond of repeating that Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action; all his theoretical and organising activity confirms this idea. In all his works he approaches Marxism in a creative spirit, as an undying, developing doctrine which demands 5 fidelity to principles but rejects all that is dogmatic and stereotyped, a doctrine which always demands that the actual historical conditions be taken into account. Marxism demands a most precise and objectively verifiable analysis of the balance of class forces. Lenin saw ``a concrete analysis of a concrete situation" as the very essence, the heart and soul of Marxism.^^*^^
A brilliant thinker and great revolutionary, Lenin fought hard against bourgeois ideology, the right and ``left'' opportunists and revisionists, to defend the revolutionary principles of Marxist theory, developed Marxism in relation to the new historical conditions, and raised it to a higher level. Lenin's contribution to the teaching of Marx and Kngels Marxist philosophy, political economy, and the theory and practice of scientific communism is of inestimable importance.
Russia is the birthplace of Leninism. But Leninism is not an exclusively Russian teaching, not a Russian interpretation of Marxism, as bourgeois ideologists and revisionists maintain. It is an international teaching rooted in the world development. Lenin generalised the experience and gave correct expression to the objective needs of the whole liberation movement of the working people in the age of the collapse of capitalism and the transition of mankind to socialism and communism.
In the late 19th and early 20th century world capitalism entered its last, imperialist stage of development. Free competition in capitalist society was replaced by the rule of the monopolies and finance capital. The exploitation of the working people and social inequality were greatly increased. In the capitalist countries there was a turning to reaction on all lines-in home and foreign policy and in ideology and culture. The world began to be carved up between international cartels, trusts, and syndicates, the dividing up of world territories by the leading capitalist countries was completed, and the colonial system of imperialism developed. Together with the overt forms of colonial exploitation of countries that lost their political independence, there appeared many forms of semi-- colonial dependence and financial enslavement of many countries and peoples by the imperialist powers. The contradictions of capitalism between labour and capital, between the colonies and dependent countries, on the one hand, and the metropolis, on the other became extremely acute; the increasingly uneven economic development of the main capitalist powers aggravated the struggle _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, Progress Publishers, Moscow, p. 16(>.
6 between them for markets and sources of raw materials, spheres of the export of capital and re-partition of their plunder. International conflicts and military clashes became more frequent, which led to imperialist wars.The new age posed new problems of social development and the international liberation movement, on the solution of which depended the fate of mankind. The leaders of the Second International, alien to the revolutionary, creative spirit of Marxism, proved incapable of solving these problems. The West European Social-- Democratic parties were dominated by opportunists who wanted to revise the teaching of Marx and Engels and denied the need for a revolutionary struggle against capitalism. Lenin's great service lies in the fact that he provided an answer to the basic questions raised by the new, revolutionary age and worked out fundamental philosophical, economic and political problems of the revolutionary theory, and the strategy and tactics of the international proletariat.
Bourgeois ideologists, social reformists and revisionists argue that the emergence and content of Leninism were determined by the ``special'' conditions of Russian reality, the "economic and cultural backwardness" of Russia. Historical facts refute these assertions completely.
Russia was a country with an average level of development of capitalism, which was growing intensively into the monopoly phase. Lenin noted that Russia held fourth place in the world in industrial production. He placed Russia in the same group of countries as France and Japan, rating it above Italy and Austria-Hungary in terms of level of development and role in world politics.^^*^^ Russia had a highly concentrated industry and a strong working class. The Russian proletariat had been tempered by long years of class struggle. Its consciousness was growing steadily, as were its experience and determination. In Russia, too, Lenin wrote in 1899, ``we see the same basic processes of the development of capitalism, the same basic tasks for the socialists and the working class''.^^**^^ The working-class movement rose to a new level when the revolutionary Marxists led by Lenin created a proletarian party in Russia.
Lenin skilfully applied Marxism to the solution of questions confronting the Russian proletariat. This not only does not provide _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 39, p. 202.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 4, p. 235.
7 grounds for limiting the importance of Leninism to Russia, but, quite the reverse, confirms its international nature.The main laws of the world revolutionary process manifested themselves most strongly in the three Russian revolutions. The Revolution of 1905--1907 was the first people's revolution in the age of imperialism, bourgeois-democratic in socio-economic content and at the same time proletarian, both in the sense that its leader was the working class and in terms of its means of struggle. It had an enormous influence on the international revolutionary movement. The February revolution of 1917 led to the overthrow of tsarism---one of the main bulwarks of world reaction. The short period from February to October 1917 provided the first example in world history of the development of a bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. The Great October Socialist Revolution opened up a new era in the history of mankind and laid the foundations for the transition from capitalism to socialism on a worldwide scale. ``Stages like that of October 1905, February and October 1917 are of world-historic significance,''^^*^^ wrote Lenin. The problems put forward by the working-class movement and the revolutions in Russia were at the same time the basic problems of world revolution. This is why Lenin's elaboration of the questions of Russia's socio-political development acquired international significance.
In pre-revolutionary Russia all manner of socio-economic orders were represented: ``the latest capitalist imperialism'', as Lenin defined it, was combined with strong feudal survivals, areas with a more or less developed capitalism existed side by side with areas where pre-capitalist, semi-feudal social relations still predominated, and some peoples were on the level of patriarchal-gentile society. In fact one can say that on the eve of the October Revolution Russia was a kind of vast ``model'' of the whole capitalist system. Lenin wrote that in no other country was there such a variety of forms, shades, and methods of struggle of all the classes of modern society as in Russia; he stressed the tremendous importance of the experience of Bolshevism and considered it his duty to make this experience the property of Marxists of all lands.
The leader of the Russian proletariat, Lenin was a great internationalist. He regarded the working class of Russia and its party as a detachment of the world army of labour, a detachment of the international working-class and communist movement. Lenin _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 271.
8 considered the basic questions of the revolution and the building of socialism in Russia from the viewpoint of the interests of the international liberation movement of the working people.It is particularly important to stress that Leninism arose and developed as a generalisation of the experience not only of the Russian, but also of the world working-class movement, and also of the democratic and national liberation movements.
In Lenin's works we find a profound analysis of the economic and socio-political development and the revolutionary movement in such countries as France, Germany, Italy, Britain, the United States of America, and Japan. Many pages in his works are devoted to the national liberation and revolutionary movements in China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, the Middle East and the Latin American and African countries. In a number of his works Lenin studied the general laws of social development and of the liberation movement of the working people in the age of imperialism and socialist revolutions, the transition from capitalism to socialism. A considerable place is also taken up by problems of the world revolutionary process in works by Lenin devoted mainly to Russia, the Russian revolutionary movement and the building of socialism in the USSR.
Proceeding from the teaching of Marx and Engels and developing it further, Lenin rose to heights from which he was able to survey the whole course and perspectives of social development, to detect the main revolutionary streams of the present day and to determine the alignment of forces in the main sectors of struggle.
``Leninism is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, the epoch of the collapse of colonialism and the victory of the national-liberation movements, the epoch of mankind's transition from capitalism to socialism and the building of communist society.''~^^*^^
The most important feature of Leninism is the indissoluble unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice.
``The purpose of our theoretical views,'' said Lenin, ``is to guide us in our revolutionary activity. The best place to test them is the revolutionary battlefield. For a communist the true test is his understanding of [how], where and when to put his Marxism into action.''^^**^^ Lenin's activity was aimed at putting into effect the _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin's Ideas and Cause Are Immortal. Theses of the CC CPSU on the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Moscow, 1970, p. 5.
^^**^^ Lenin Miscellany XXXVII, p. 249 (Russ. ed.).
9 conclusions of revolutionary theory, at making communist ideals come true.Lenin's great service to the international working class is the creation of the world's first proletarian party of a new type -the Bolshevik, communist party, which became a model for the Marxists of other countries. Lenin's life and activity are inseparable from the history and struggle of the party.
Lenin wisely led the Bolshevik Party, the proletariat and all the working people of Russia through the furnace of three revolutions. Lenin was the first world's Marxist statesman, the leader of the working class who stood at the head of the victorious socialist revolution and took the helm of the proletarian state. Under his leadership the foundation stones of the new social order were laid, and the plan for the building of socialism began to be put into effect. Lenin inspired the formation of the mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Lenin is the teacher and leader of the international proletariat and the working people of the whole world. The founder of the proletarian party of a new type, already at the beginning of the 20th century he was an eminent figure in the international socialist movement. By then Lenin had already been waging a resolute struggle against opportunism on the world arena, rallying the revolutionary, truly internationalist forces in the international working-class movement. On Lenin's initiative in 1919 the communist parties created the Third Communist International-the international communist organisation. Under Lenin's guidance the programme principles, the strategy and tactics of the international communist movement were formulated.
The truly inestimable wealth of Lenin's ideological legacy and the experience of Lenin's practical activity have become and remain the property and a mighty weapon of our Party and of Communists the world over.
Each year the great vital strength and the all-triumphant nature of Lenin's teaching are revealed more fully and clearly. "The ideas of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin are embodied in the activities of the Communists, in the struggle of the working class and all working people, in the onward march of socialism and communism, in the irreversible social progress of mankind.''~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Lenin's Ideas and Came Are Immortal. Theses of the CC CPSU on the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, p. 63.
[10] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter One __ALPHA_LVL1__ CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.We take our stand entirely on the Marxist theoretical position: Marxism was the first to transform socialism from a Utopia into a science.
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was born on April 10 (22),^^*^^ 1870, in the town of Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), situated on the great Russian river, the Volga. He was brought up in a Russian progressive intellectual family. His parents were raznochintsi.^^1^^ Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, came from a lower middle-class family in Astrakhan.
Recently discovered documents contain important information about V. I. Lenin's grandfather. N. V. Ulyanov. He came from a family of serf peasants in the Nizhegorodskaya gubernia and was himself a serf. Later he was listed as a state peasant, but having taken up tailoring, was eventually transferred to the estate of townspeople. He died in extreme poverty.
Lenin's father got to know how difficult it was for one of the common people to receive an education in tsarist Russia. He lost his father at an early age and only his elder brother's support enabled him to receive an education.
Struggling against poverty, he succeeded by dint of hard work and sheer ability in taking his degree at the University of Kazan, after which he became a teacher of mathematics and physics in the secondary schools of Penza and Nizhni Novgorod.
Ilya Ulyanov was a man of progressive views that were close to the ideas of the Russian enlighteners of the sixties of the nineteenth century. Moved by lofty ideals, he devoted his life to serving the common people and spreading knowledge among them. He gave up work as a teacher in 1869 and became inspector, and then director, _-_-_
^^*^^ New Style.
11 of elementary schools in Simbirsk Gubernia. For his work he was awarded orders and medals.An ardent believer in education for the people and himself a teacher by calling, he was in love with his work and devoted himself to it entirely. He had a profound faith in the people and the powers concealed in it.
Ilya Ulyanov's work involved regular tours of the province. He spent weeks and months away from home, travelling from village to village. At all seasons-in the freezing cold of winter, in spring with its slushy roads, and in foul autumn weather-he was to be found at the most out-of-the-way places, setting up schools and helping the teachers to organise instruction for the peasants' children. It was no easy job, and it took a heavy toll of his strength and health. He had to break down the resistance of government officials, landowners and kulaks, who tried to prevent such schools from being set up. No less hard was it to overcome the ignorance and prejudices of backward peasants, to make them see the necessity and usefulness of learning to read and write.
Ilya Ulyanov devoted a good deal of his time and energy to the task of bringing learning within the reach of the non-Russian peoples inhabiting the Volga region. These peoples inspired his deep respect and sympathy, and he spared no effort to organise schools for them. His efforts bore fruit. During his almost twenty years' work in Simbirsk Gubernia the number of schools there increased considerably. He had a large following of progressive-minded school-teachers, who were known as ``Ulyanovites''.
Lenin's mother, Maria Alexandrovna, was the daughter of Alexander Dmitrievich Blank, an educated, talented physician and a pioneer in physiotherapy. She was born and bred in the country. Owing to straitened circumstances, she was educated at home under the tutorship of her aunt, who was a mother to the children. Being a highly gifted person, however, she mastered several foreign languages, which she afterwards taught to her children; she played the piano very well, and read a good deal. Later, by studying on her own, Maria Alexandrovna passed her examinations for elementary school-teacher. Like her husband, she was drawn to educational work, but she did not have a chance to do school work. The cares of a large family, bringing up the children, and the housekeeping in which she had to be very frugal took up the whole of her time.
The Ulyanovs were a close-knit, friendly family. There were eight children in the family (two of them died in early childhood). 12 Vladimir was the fourth child. Anna, Alexander, Vladimir, Olga, Dmitry and Maria grew up in pairs, according to their age. Their parents did their best to give them an all-round education, to bring them up to be honest, industrious and responsive to the needs of the people. All the Ulyanov children except Olga who died in her early teens grew up to be revolutionaries.
The personal example set by their parents had a great influence on the children. They saw how much their father was doing for public education, how self-exacting he was, how seriously he took his responsibilities, and what happiness the opening of every new rural school gave him. Their father's whole life, his energy, his ability to throw himself wholeheartedly into the work he loved, his considerate attitude towards the common people, and his unassuming modesty in all things had a tremendous educative impact upon the children. Very simple in his dealings with people and in his needs, he had exerted a most beneficial influence in this respect also. Lenin's strict attitude to himself and to his obligations, the high sense of duty which always distinguished him was to a large extent implanted in him from early childhood by his father: His father enjoyed great authority and love in the family. He was greatly respected and loved by them.
Ilya Ulyanov brought up his children according to the pedagogic views of the Russian revolutionary democrat N. Dobrolyubov. He cultivated in them a strong will and an urge towards knowledge; he taught them to understand life, to be self-demanding, and responsible for their own actions. He inculcated sincerity and truthfulness upon his children.
Pleased though he was with the steady progress his children made at school, Lenin's father hated boastfulness and instilled the aversion to it into his children. He spent all his leisure with his family. He paid great attention to his children's studies, developing their literary and artistic taste and took an active part in their plays and walks. The children felt at ease in their father's presence; he never waved aside their questions, and carefully explained things to them. He was an interesting and entertaining storyteller.
Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, too, had a rare gift for bringing up children. A woman of cheerful, equable temper, she never imposed unnecessary restraints upon the children, and yet contrived to maintain discipline. Always neat, methodical, thrifty and modest, especially in everything that concerned her own person, she was able to pass all these qualities on to her children. This frail-looking woman possessed great courage, fortitude and selfless devotion, 13 which she was often to display in later years when bitter trials fell to the lot of the Ulyanov family.
The Ulyanovs took care to develop work habits in their children. They were taught at an early age to serve themselves and help their elders; the girls saw to it that the boys' clothes and their own were always in good condition. The Ulyanovs' house- stood in a small garden which was lovingly tended by the mother, and all the children helped her with it. In the summer their job was to fill two big water-butts from the well. One of the boys would do the pumping while the rest carried the water round in buckets, watering-pots and pitchers. It was good teamwork which went with a gay swing. They also loved the family tea drinking in the garden. Alexander would carry the samovar, while the rest followed with chairs and the tea things. The tea over, the girls would help their mother to wash up, while the boys carried the chairs back into the house. The work was easy and everyone did his chores gladly.
Volodya grew up a lively, healthy, fun-loving boy. He took after his father in looks, and inherited from him his jovial and sociable disposition. He was a tireless leader in all children's games and pastimes. From the reminiscences of relatives we know that he had a very keen sense of fair play and hated fights. "This is not playing, it's disgusting. You can count me out,'' he would say when a game ended up in a fight. Of an inquiring nature, he learned to read when he was five, and spent a good deal of time over books.
From the age of nine to seventeen Vladimir attended the classical Gymnasium ^^3^^ in Simbirsk. Already at that age he displayed the selfdiscipline and orderly habits that had been cultivated in him at home. Every morning, at seven sharp, he would leap out of bed without anyone wakening him, run out and wash, stripped to the waist, then make his bed. He always managed to repeat his lessons before breakfast, and half past eight found him at school, to which he had to walk several blocks. And so every day. He kept to this system throughout his eight years of school studies.
Vladimir's abilities and industry revealed themselves immediately in school. A nimble, inquisitive mind, and a serious attitude towards his studies made him top scholar. He passed up from form to form with honours. He attracted notice by his orderly habits, his ability to go through with any job he had started, his genial character, and the sincere, simple way he treated his class-mates, whom he was always ready to help with a difficult lesson. He also had a reputation of being a good swimmer, skater, and chess-player.
14 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Shaping of Revolutionary ViewsVladimir Ulyanov's childhood and youth coincided with a period when reaction in Russia reigned supreme. People were persecuted for every manifestation of free thinking.
Lenin's outlook during that early period of his youth crystallised under the influence of his upbringing at home and of his parents' example, under the influence of revolutionary-democratic literature and contact with the life of the people. He was also greatly influenced by his elder brother Alexander, who was an incontestable authority to him. Young Vladimir took after his brother, and whenever asked to take a decision he answered: ``I'd do what Alexander would do.'' This desire to model his conduct on his elder brother did not wear off but rather gained greater depth and meaning as time went on. It was from Alexander that Vladimir first learned about Marxist literature. And it was in Alexander's hands that he first saw Marx's Capital.
Alexander Ulyanov was an extremely gifted youth. He was distinguished from childhood for his strong will and moral fibre. ``Alexander,'' Anna Ilyinichna recalls, ``was an exceptionally serious and thoughtful boy, with a very strong sense of duty. Not only firm but just, sensitive and kind-hearted, he was the favourite of the younger children. Vladimir tried to imitate his brother....''~^^*^^
Observing life with a keen eye, Vladimir saw the poverty the people were living in, and the oppression and exploitation the workers and peasants were undergoing. He listened attentively to his father's stories about the ignorance that reigned in the countryside, about the tyranny of the authorities, and the squalor and misery of the peasantry. Coming into contact as he did with working people, he could not help noticing the humiliating condition of the Chuvashes, Mordvinians, Tatars, Udmurts and other disfranchised non-Russian nationalities. All this aroused in him burning hatred for the oppressors of the people.
His sympathy for the peoples oppressed by tsarism is seen from the following fact. In his senior forms at the Gymnasium, he coached the teacher of a Chuvash school by the name of N. Okhotnikov, who wanted to take his examination for a school-leaving certificate. A Chuvash by nationality and a man endowed with considerable mathematical gifts, Okhotnikov longed to receive a higher education but was unable to prepare on his own for the _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Lenin by His Relative), Moscow, 1956, p. 18.
15 examination, which included the ancient languages, and he could not afford to hire a teacher. On hearing of the man's predicament, Vladimir undertook to coach him free of charge, and did so regularly, three times a week, for eighteen months. Okhotnikov passed his examination and received his certificate, which enabled him to enter the university.In his quest of solutions to the problems besetting him, Vladimir did a great deal of reading. Among his favourite authors were Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Saltykov-- Shchedrin and Tolstoy. He absorbed the revolutionary spirit of the writings of Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and Pisarev. The writings of these revolutionary democrats roused in him hatred for the social and political system of tsarist Russia, and helped to form his revolutionary convictions. Young Lenin was a great admirer of the poets who contributed to the satirical magazine Iskra (The Spark), one of the leading publications of the revolutionary-- democratic trend, which came out against feudal-minded reactionaries and the liberalism of the nobility and the bourgeoisie.
Life dealt Vladimir severe blows when he was still very young. His father died suddenly in January 1886 of a stroke at the age of 54. (The family was left without any means of subsistence.) Maria Alexandrovna applied for a pension and several months passed before it was granted.
Scarcely had the family recovered from this blow when another struck them-Alexander was arrested in St. Petersburg on March 1, 1887, for his part in the attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Shortly afterwards Anna, who was studying in St. Petersburg, was arrested too.
No one in the family had known about Alexander's revolutionary activities. He graduated from the Simbirsk Gymnasium with a gold medal, and was a brilliant student at the St. Petersburg University, where his researches in zoology and chemistry had attracted the attention of eminent scientists, such as N. P. Wagner and A. M. Butlerov, each of whom wanted him to study in his faculty. One of his papers in zoology, written in his third year, was awarded a gold medal. He gave promise of becoming a professor. On his last summer holiday at home he spent all his time on his thesis and seemed to be completely absorbed in his studies. No one knew that he was a member of the study-circles of the revolutionary youth in St. Petersburg and conducted political propaganda among the workers. Ideologically, he stood midway between the Narodnaya Volya^^4^^ and Marxism. His comrades loved him for his fine 16 The Ulyanov family. Maria Alexandrovna, Ilya Nikolaycvich and (heir children: Oljra, Maria. Alexander, Dmitry, Anna, Vladimir 1'hntii. 187') On Vacation Drawing by A. Zjm Nadc/.hda Konstantmovna Krupskaya Photo, i/i!>r> First Leaflet I'fom [tainting by 1'. ( Ivan Balmshkin I'hnlo Lenin with a group of prominent members of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the (''.mancipation of the Working Class I'hoto, 1897 Vasily Sholgunov Photo The house in Shushenskoye V'il where Lenin lived in exile Photo brain, moral purity, loyalty to the cause and extreme modesty.
The news spread swiftly in Simbirsk. The town's liberal ``society'', all their acquaintances, were quick to shun the Ulyanov family. That was when young Lenin had his first real glimpse of the cowardly face of the liberal intellectual.
Maria Alexandrovna at once went to St. Petersburg. She did her utmost to save her son from the threat of death, but all her efforts were in vain. Maria Alexandrovna attended the trial of Alexander and his comrades, and heard her son's ardent speech in which he fearlessly denounced the autocracy and spoke about the historically inevitable victory of the new social order-socialism.
``I was surprised how well Alexander spoke,'' she told her daughter Anna. "He was so convincing and eloquent. I never thought he could speak like that. But it was more than I could bear, and I had to leave the courtroom before he finished.''
On May 8, 1887, Alexander Ulyanov, at the age of 21, was executed by the tsarist hangmen in the Shlisselburg fortress.
The execution of Alexander Ulyanov disturbed all honest people who were outraged at the arbitrary behaviour of the tsarist autocracy. The newspapers of many countries wrote about his bravery. Thus, the English Daily News and Der Sozialdemokrat published in Switzerland paid special attention to his speech in court; the French newspaper Cri du Peuple described his fortitude at the execution. The Polish newspaper Przedswit published a poem entitled Ulyanov about his heroism and courage. The death of Alexander Ulyanov was also a great loss to science. The great Mendeleyev lamented that the revolution had deprived him of two outstanding pupils-Kibalchich and Ulyanov.
His brother's execution was a great shock to Vladimir, but at the same time it confirmed him in his revolutionary views. Anna Yelizarova-Ulyanova wrote these stirring words about the two brothers: ``Alexander Ulyanov died the death of a hero, and the halo of his revolutionary martyrdom lighted the path for his younger brother Vladimir.''~^^*^^
While paying tribute to the noble memory of his brother and his intrepid spirit, Lenin rejected the path of terrorism which Alexander had chosen. ``No, we won't take that path,'' he decided. "That isn't the path to take.''
In those tragic days Lenin's self-command and fortitude were revealed at their best. He saw how stoically his mother was bearing _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Lenin by His Relatives, p. 23.
__PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---826 17 her inconsolable grief. Her example could not but influence him. Numbed by sorrow, he found the strength to go on with his studies and passed his school-leaving examination brilliantly. The youngest boy in his form, he was the only one among the graduates to receive a gold medal. The school authorities were in two minds about giving a medal to the brother of an executed ``state criminal''. But Lenin's outstanding abilities and profound knowledge were too obvious to be ignored. The character given by the headmaster stated: ``Highly capable, hardworking and painstaking, Ulyanov was top scholar in all forms, and upon finishing school has been awarded a gold medal as the most deserving pupil in regard to progress, development and conduct.''~^^*^^The Ulyanov family left Simbirsk at the end of June 1887. They lived till August in the village of Kokushkino, and then moved to Kazan, where Lenin entered the university (faculty of law). Being resolved to dedicate himself to the revolutionary struggle, he wanted to make a study of the social sciences. ``These days,'' he said, ``one must study law and political economy.''
Lenin was not admitted into the university at once. The university authorities were afraid to take the responsibility of enrolling him. His application was marked as follows: ``Defer pending receipt of a character.'' And it was not until an excellent testimonial was received from the Simbirsk Gymnasium that he was enrolled in the university.
In Kazan University Lenin became an active member of the illegal Samara-Simbirsk Fraternity. The tsarist authorities banned every kind of student organisation membership of which was punishable by expulsion under the University Statutes of 1884. It was a time when spying and snooping were rife in the universities of Russia. Lenin got in touch with the progressive-minded students and took an active part in the revolutionary students' circle, which the police described as a coterie of ``an extremely pernicious trend".
Students took a resolute stand against police persecution in the universities. On December 4, 1887, the students held a meeting in the assembly hall of Kazan University. They demanded that the reactionary University Statutes be repealed, that student societies be permitted, that students who had been expelled be reinstated and those responsible for their expulsion be called to account. Lenin took an active part in the meeting. The Warden of the Kazan Educational Area afterwards reported to the _-_-_
^^*^^ Molodaya Gvardia No. 1, 1924, p. 89.
18 Department of Education that Ulyanov ``dashed into the assembly hall with the first lot'', and the University Inspector described him as ``one of the most active participants in the meeting, who was to be seen in the front rows, very excited, almost with clenched fists''. On leaving the meeting Lenin was one of the first to lay down his student's card.The revolutionary action of the students greatly alarmed the Kazan authorities. They kept a battalion of soldiers alerted in the courtyard of the building adjoining the university.
As a demonstration of protest, Lenin decided to quit the university. On December 5, he wrote the following application to the Rector: ``As I do not find it possible to continue my education at the university under the present conditions of university life, I beg to ask Your Excellency to issue the necessary order for my name to be crossed out of the list of students of the Imperial Kazan University.''~^^*^^
By. order of the Governor of Kazan, Lenin was arrested and imprisoned. In the prison cell the arrested students compared notes and discussed plans for the future. Asked by his comrades what he would do when released, Lenin answered that only one road lay before him, that of revolutionary struggle. On December 5, Lenin was expelled from the university along with other students who had played an active part in the meeting. He was forbidden to live in Kazan, and on December 7 he was banished to the village of Kokushkino under secret police surveillance. (His sister Anna, banished from St. Petersburg, also lived there.)
That was how Lenin, at the age of seventeen, took the path of revolutionary struggle.
The gendarmes did not rest content with banishing Lenin to the village. The Director of the Police Department sent an order to the Chief of the Kazan Gubernia Gendarmes Office stating: ``See to it ... that a strict and secret watch be kept on Vladimir Ulyanov banished to the village of Kokushkino, near Kazan.''
While in exile Lenin assiduously studied socio-political, economic and statistical literature. Through his relatives in Kazan he received books and periodicals from the libraries. In later recollections he wrote: I don't think I ever afterwards read so much in my life, not even during my imprisonment in St. Petersburg or exile in Siberia, as I did in the year when I was banished to the village from Kazan; I read voraciously from early morning till late at _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Complete Works, Fifth Russ. cd., Vol. 1, p. 551.
__PRINTERS_P_19_COMMENT__ 2* 19 night. Lenin pursued his studies according to a strict system. He studied university courses, read various periodicals and fiction, especially the works of Nekrasov. Lenin read his favourite authors, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, over and over again, and made precis and notes of their works. He made a profound study of the great Russian revolutionary democrat Chernyshevsky, whose writings preached the class struggle, advocated a peasant revolution, a struggle to overthrow the autocracy and end serfdom, and set forth his materialist philosophical views and socialist ideas. Lenin later often stressed the tremendous importance of the writings of Chernyshevsky, who was able even by censored articles to educate real revolutionaries.Lenin spent nearly a year in exile. In the autumn of 1888 he was permitted to return to Kazan,^^5^^ but he was not readmitted to the university. The Warden of the Kazan Educational Area objected to Lenin's returning to the university and wrote to the Department of Public Education: ``...Although he possesses outstanding abilities and is extremely well informed, he cannot at present be considered a reliable person either morally or politically.'' In the Department the following endorsement was made on this document: ``Isn't this the brother of that Ulyanov? He is from the Simbirsk Gymnasium, too, isn't he? Not to be admitted under any circumstances.'' Prevented from continuing his education in Russia, Lenin applied for permission to leave the country and continue his education abroad, but again he was refused. The Governor of Kazan received an order from the Police Department saying that ``no foreign passport ... should be issued" to Vladimir Ulyanov.
Shortly afterwards Lenin joined one of the Marxist study-circles organised by Nikolai Fedoseyev, one of the first revolutionaries who proclaimed themselves Marxists. For reasons of secrecy, the members of the study-circles which he had organised in Kazan did not associate with one another and did not mention names unless they had to. Everyone knew only the members of his own circle. That is why Lenin never met Fedoseyev, although he was a member of one of the circles. There were several illegal revolutionary circles in Kazan at the time, where the works of Marx and Engels, circulating in illegal editions and manuscript form, were studied and discussed, and where heated debates were held on the works of Plekhanov aimed against the Narodniks.
It was a time when Narodism had a strong hold on the revolutionary-minded intellectuals. The idealist and anti-historical claim of the Narodniks that capitalism in Russia was an accidental 20 development, that the country would arrive at socialism only through the peasant commune, and their advocacy of the tactics of individual terrorism as a method of political struggle were very popular among the intellectuals. ``Nearly all had in their early youth enthusiastically worshipped the terrorist heroes,'' Lenin pointed out afterwards. ``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....''^^*^^ Lenin himself never adhered to the ideas of Narodism.
The views of the Narodniks obviously clashed with realities. After the abolition of serfdom in 1861 capitalism in Russia began to develop rapidly. Factories sprang up in St. Petersburg, in the central and southern regions, and in the Urals. Railway lines were built connecting the centre with the border regions of the country. A great revolutionary force was growing and gaining strength in Russia in the shape of the proletariat. The working class, which had not yet become conscious of its own power, had already started its struggle against the bourgeois and landowner system. Strikes broke out spontaneously and the first proletarian organisations came into being.
In 1883 the first Russian Marxist organisation --- the Emancipation of Labour group headed by Plekhanov---was set up abroad. This group played a prominent part in spreading the ideas of scientific socialism in Russia, in giving a Marxist analysis of the economic situation in the country, and combating Narodism. The writings of Plekhanov were of very great importance, especially his Socialism and the Political Struggle and Our Differences, which were avidly read and discussed in the Marxist study-circles of the time. Published abroad free from censorship, they for the first time systematically expounded the ideas of Marxism as applicable to Russia. The Emancipation of Labour group, however, in the words of Lenin, only laid the theoretical foundations for the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and took the first step towards the workingclass movement.
Lenin devoted the months spent in Kazan to mastering the theory of Marxism and making personal contacts with the young _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 517--18.
21 Marxists there. He made a serious study of Marx's chief work, Capital, in which its great author revealed and scientifically substantiated the economic laws of development of capitalist society, gave a profound analysis of capitalism's contradictions, and incontestably proved the inevitability of its downfall and of the victory of socialism. Marx scientifically justified the world-historic role of the proletariat as the grave-digger of capitalism and the builder of a new, socialist society.Lenin was completely carried away by the great ideas of Marx, by the irresistible logic and profundity of his scientific conclusions. He did not merely study Capital but gave it deep thought, specifically from the angle of its application to the socio-economic conditions and the tasks of the working-class movement in Russia.
From the very beginning of his conscious life Lenin adhered to the revolutionary Marxist teaching on the remaking of the world and the great historic mission of the working class. At the age of eighteen Lenin understood that the proletariat was the most revolutionary class which was to play the part of leader in the struggle against the exploiters.
Lenin was one of the first Russian Marxists who creatively mastered the revolutionary teaching, a convinced adherent and ardent propagandist of the great ideas of scientific socialism.
Having mastered the Marxist theory, Lenin saw as no one else the great force that would be aroused in the working class of Russia when a socialist consciousness was brought into the young workingclass movement. Already at that time he was certain that neither the tsarist autocracy nor the rule of the capitalists would be able to withstand that force.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Samara PeriodEarly in May 1889 the Ulyanovs went out to a farm near the village of Alakayevka in Samara Gubernia, and in the autumn moved to Samara (now Kuibyshev)^^6^^. Meantime the secret police had succeeded in tracking down the Kazan revolutionary study-circles. In July Nikolai Fedoseyev was arrested and imprisoned along with several members of the circle which Lenin attended. It was only by a lucky chance his departure from Kazan-that Lenin escaped an arrest.
Lenin had to do something to earn a living. In the course of May and June he advertised in Samarskaya Gazeta: ``Former student seeks a lesson. Place away from home no obstacle. Write V. U., c/o 22 Yelizarov, Voznesenskaya Street, house of Saushkina.'' There was a note on the list of persons under police surveillance to the effect that Ulyanov made a livelihood in Samara by giving lessons.
Unable to enter the university either in Russia or abroad, Lenin tried to get permission to pass his university examinations without attending lectures. But it was not until the spring of 1890, after several applications had been made, that he received such permission. He began to prepare for his examinations with his customary energy. He made up his mind to take his degree simultaneously with his former Kazan fellow students. To do that, he would have to master the four-year course of university studies in eighteen months of independent work. Lenin drew up a rigid schedule of studies, and strictly adhered to it. In the summer, in Alakayevka, he set up what he called his ``work room" in a distant part of the garden, and he would come there after his morning tea, loaded with books and writing materials, and work till nightfall.
Lenin worked hard, but he knew how to relax as well. In the evenings the house in Alakayevka resounded with music and singing. Lenin often sang together with his sister Olga, who also played the piano accompaniment. He was particularly fond of the song ``Our Sea Is Friendless" to the words of ``The Swimmer" by the poet Yazykov. He sang with great feeling:
But the billows carry over
Only those whose hearts are strong!
Courage, brothers, let the tempest
Swifter bear our boat along.
Lenin's relatives pointed out that there was nothing wistful about his singing. It always had a courageous note in it and rang like a call for action. Dmitry Ulyanov recalled that one morning, when Olga was playing the Marseillaise, Lenin came into the room and suggested singing the Internationale. In those days this hymn was almost unknown in Russia. The brother and sister started to practise the tune, then sang the whole hymn in French.^^*^^ Lenin had studied music as a child, but then gave it up, a thing he always recalled with regret. He was very fond of music, for which he had an appreciative ear.
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1979, p. Ill (Russ. ed.).
23In 1891 Lenin took his examinations in law at the Petersburg University in two stages-in the spring and autumn. He was the only one of all the examinees to receive the highest marks in all subjects, and was granted a first-class diploma. While in St. Petersburg for his examinations, Lenin took the opportunity of contacting the Marxists there, and obtaining through them a supply of Marxist literature.
Lenin was given the addresses of St. Petersburg Marxists by A. A. Shukht, a close acquaintance of his who, after returning from exile in Siberia, resided in Samara.
At the close of January 1892 Lenin was called to the bar and in March he began to practise in the Samara Regional Court. He appeared for the defence in court about twenty times during 1892--93. Most of those he defended were poor peasants and artisans.
His legal practice, however, interested him least of all, his energies being wholly devoted to studying Marxism, to preparing himself for active revolutionary work. At the time of his arrival in Samara there were several illegal study-circles there of revolutionary-minded young people, mostly students. The majority of those circles adhered to the Narodnik trend.
Quite a few revolutionary Narodniks of the seventies lived in Samara, but nearly all of them had retired from politics by that time. Always eager to learn and take the best and most useful of everything, Lenin spent a good deal of time in talks with Narodnaya Volya veterans, critically assimilating the experience of the revolutionary movement of the past. He showed a keen interest in their stories about revolutionary work, secrecy techniques, and the behaviour of revolutionaries during interrogations and trials. Although he did not share their views, Lenin had a profound respect for these brave, selfless revolutionaries.
The appearance of this well-educated Marxist had a powerful impact on the revolutionary study-circles of Samara. With his characteristic ardour and ability to win others over to his way of thinking, Lenin started to advocate Marxism in Samara as well.
In the 1890s the Narodniks turned from revolutionary fighters against tsarism into moderate liberals. In Samara Lenin began an unrelenting struggle against Narodnik ideology, against liberal Narodniks.^^7^^ He delivered frequent lectures exposing the unscientific nature of the Narodnik views and showing how untenable they were and how they clashed with reality. He lectured to a study-- 24 circle, which included workers of the Samara railway depot, on the subject of ``The Village Commune, Its Destiny, and the Ways to Revolution''. In 1892--93 he wrote and then delivered in illegal studycircles lectures directed against the leading ideologists of liberal Narodism---N. Mikhailovsky, V. Vorontsov and S. Yuzhakov-and also gave talks on the works of Marx and Engels. His paper on Marx's book The Poverty of Philosophy roused great interest in the revolutionary study-circles. Lenin delivered his lectures in an atmosphere of sharp ideological struggle. He upheld the Marxist doctrine, skilfully repelling the attacks of his opponents.
In Samara Lenin translated Marx's and Engels' Manifesto of the Communist Party from German into Russian. The manuscript of his translation circulated from hand to hand, was read in the Samara circles and even found its way outside Samara. Unfortunately, this manuscript was lost.
Lenin closely followed the international events. He rejoiced when the Anti-Socialist Law introduced in Germany in 1878 was repealed under the pressure of the growing working-class movement.
In 1892 Lenin organised the first Marxist circle in Samara. The circle discussed the works of Marx and Engels - Capital, Anti-- Diihring, The Condition of the Working-Class in England, the works of Plekhanov and others. All the Marxist literature that could be obtained in Samara at the time was studied and discussed. The circle members carried on active propaganda of Marxism. Lenin often lectured in the circle on questions of Marxist theory and read articles which he wrote on the subject. During his stay in Samara he wrote several articles, among them, according to the testimony of the circle members, an article on V. Vorontsov's book The Destiny of Capitalism in Russia (a fundamental work of liberal Narodism), which has not been found.
Lenin's prestige among his followers stood very high. ``Simplicity, tactfulness, a zest for life were remarkably combined in this twentythree-year-old man with dignity, profound knowledge, ruthless logical consistency, clear judgement and precision in definitions,''~^^*^^ I. Lalayants wrote in his reminiscences.
Already at that time Lenin displayed a creative faculty of mind
in dealing with the problems he was studying. He approached the
theory of Marxism with an open mind, and accepted nothing as dogma.
He regarded theory as a key to the understanding of Russia's economic and
_-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Lenin, Part 1, Moscow, 1956, p. 102 (Russ. eel.).
Equipped with the Marxist scientific method, Lenin made a profound and thorough study of Russia's economy. He collected and analysed a vast amount of data on peasant farming, especially Zemstvo^^8^^ statistics. He set forth his analysis and conclusions first in a lecture to the study-circle and then in an article entitled "New Economic Developments in Peasant Life'', which he wrote in the spring of 1893. It was the earliest theoretical work of Lenin that has reached us. It shows that Lenin was already well versed in Marxist theory, and used it competently in his study of the life of Russia's peasants. Lenin showed that while the Narodniks denied the development of capitalism in Russia, capitalism was growing with irresistible force, and that a process of profound economic differentiation was going on among the peasantry, who were splitting up into poor, middle and rich peasants (kulaks). Data cited by Lenin proved the existence of antagonistic classes among the ``communal'' peasantry, whom the Narodniks idealised.
The sound knowledge of peasant farming which his study of the countryside had given him was to stand Lenin in good stead in his subsequent theoretical researches. It equipped him with extensive authentic factual data which gave him ample material for profound scientific generalisations and conclusions, and for a devastating criticism of Narodnik views.
Lenin's activities were not confined to Samara. He was in touch with a number of towns in the Volga region. A number of people came to Samara from Saratov, Kazan and other Volga towns to study the new, Marxist doctrine. In this manner, the Volga region began to play an important part in spreading Marxist ideas in Russia.
Lenin corresponded with Fedoseyev who was living in Vladimir at the time. They exchanged views on Marxist theory and on the economic and political development of Russia. In 1893 Lenin received from Fedoseyev, then again in prison, a manuscript dealing with the causes of the fall of serfdom in Russia. The manuscript, with Lenin's marginal notes, was read and discussed by the members of the Marxist study-circle. This correspondence between Lenin and Fedoseyev went on for a number of years but, unfortunately, it has not been found. Lenin had a deep affection for his like-minded friend. Many years later he wrote: ``Fedoseyev played a very important role in the Volga area and in certain parts of Central Russia during that period; and the turn towards Marxism at 26 that time was, undoubtedly, very largely due to the influence of this exceptionally talented and exceptionally devoted revolutionary.''^^*^^
Kazan and Samara were very important landmarks in Lenin's life and activity. It was in those years that his Marxist convictions crystallised. The Samara period was a period of mustering strength before coming out into the broad arena of revolutionary struggle. He longed to have full scope for revolutionary work. He wanted to be in a major industrial centre with a numerous proletariat.
In August 1893, with this aim in view, he left Samara for St. Petersburg.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 453.
[27] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Two __ALPHA_LVL1__ LEADER OF THE REVOLUTIONARYGive us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!
Lenin
Lenin took advantage of his trip to St. Petersburg to get in touch with Marxists in Nizhni Novgorod and Moscow. In a long talk with the comrades in Nizhni Novgorod, he particularly stressed the need for setting up a Social-Democratic organisation and establishing contacts between the Marxists of different cities. Their meeting and talk with Lenin made a strong impression on the Nizhni Novgorod Marxists. ``Young Lenin,'' wrote S. Mitskevich, who took part in the talk, "impressed one as a man of great erudition, sound judgement, and powerful intellect. It is interesting to note that already at that time one could see in him the future organiser of our Party. He devoted great attention to gathering all the available forces of the revolutionary Marxists and establishing contacts between the Marxists scattered in various towns.''~^^*^^
From Nizhni Novgorod Lenin went to Vladimir and then to Moscow, where the Ulyanov family was now living, Dmitry Ilyich having entered the university there. Lenin met the local Marxists and worked in the reading-room of the Rumyantsev Museum (now the Lenin State Library).
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Among the St. Petersburg ProletariatLenin arrived in St. Petersburg on August 31 (the tsarist secret police lost no time in notifying the Police Department about it). Two days later he was appointed assistant barrister to a St. Petersburg lawyer. This job, however, was merely an official screen for his revolutionary activities. He devoted very little time to law practice, and gave himself up entirely to revolutionary work.
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1979, p. 54 (Russ. ed.).
28The Nizhni Novgorod Marxists had given Lenin a secret address in St. Petersburg. They had also given him a letter to a countryman of theirs named M. Silvin, who was studying there and through whom he got into contact with the Marxists in the capital. Shortly afterwards Lenin joined a Marxist study-circle consisting mainly of students of the Technological Institute. It was a small group carrying on Marxist propaganda among a narrow section of advanced workers.
Before Lenin's arrival, however, none of the members of the circle knew how to apply Marxism in analysing various phenomena of Russian economy. ``None of us,'' Krzhizhanovsky wrote in his reminiscences, "was familiar to such an extent with first-hand information on this economy, with the wealth of material afforded by our Zemstvo statistics. None of us could vie with him in the breadth and depth of the class analysis of the forces in operation.''
Lenin's appearance in the circle was compared to ``a thunderburst that had a vivifying effect''. Unshakable faith in the victory of the working class, vast knowledge, a profound understanding of Marxism, and the ability to apply it in solving the problems vital to the masses earned Lenin the sincere respect of the St. Petersburg Marxists and made him their recognised leader.
Lenin was already absorbed in the cardinal task of doing away as quickly as possible with the isolation and amateurishness of the Social-Democratic circles and proceeding to found a revolutionary proletarian party. Recalling that period at a later date, he wrote: ``I used to work in a study-circle that set itself very broad, all-- embracing tasks; and all of us, members of that circle, suffered painfully and acutely from the realisation that we were acting as amateurs at a moment in history when we might have been able to say varying a well-known statement: 'Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!'\thinspace''~^^*^^ It was to the building of such an organisation that Lenin applied himself in St. Petersburg. He saw clearly the great prospect for the victory of the revolution in Russia if the working-class movement were led by a well-- organised vanguard of the proletariat-the revolutionary Marxist Party. And this organisation, the revolutionary Marxist vanguard of the working class-the Bolshevik Party-was created under Lenin's leadership.
His activities in St. Petersburg coincided with the beginning of an upswing in the mass working-class movement which gained _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 466--67.
29 particular momentum in the nineties of the nineteenth century. With the development of capitalism in Russia, the working class grew rapidly. There were already nearly three million workers employed in big factories, on the railways, and in the mining industry. Their life was a hard and wretched one. The working day was from twelve to thirteen hours, and in some industries from fifteen to sixteen. The sweated worker received low wages, and as for women and children, who were widely employed in industry, they received a mere pittance.Backbreaking labour, semi-starvation and appalling living conditions drove the proletarian masses to protest and fight back. But the workers' spontaneous, sporadic protests against grinding exploitation, oppression and poverty usually ended in their defeat. Those who dared to voice their dissatisfaction with the existing system were severely persecuted, thrown into prison, exiled or condemned to penal servitude.
If the struggle against the capitalists was to be effective, it had to be waged in an organised fashion and infused with the revolutionary ideas of scientific socialism. The tasks clearly seen by Lenin and set before the Marxists of St. Petersburg were to politically educate and organise the workers, to develop their socialist consciousness and explain to them the common aims and paths of the proletarian class struggle.
Lenin's work among the St. Petersburg proletariat started in the autumn of 1893. He established contacts with V. Shelgunov, I. Babushkin, and many others. He was in touch with the workers of the Putilov (now Kirov) Works, the Semyannikov (now the Lenin Nevsky Engineering) Works, the Obukhov (now Bolshevik) Works, the Thornton (now Thaelmann) Mill, the Laferme (now Uritsky) Mill, and other factories.
At that time there were several workers' political circles functioning in St. Petersburg. He began to attend them. He went to meetings held in workers' homes, often met with the organisers of the circles, and took an active part in conferences of the revolutionaryminded proletarians. He made a close study of the conditions and temper of the workers, and lent an attentive ear to what they had to say about the way things were run at the factories, about the hard lives they led, and about landowner oppression in the countryside, with which many of them were closely connected. Lenin devoted a good deal of his energy to the political education of the workers. He conducted workers' study-circles in the Nevskaya Zastava, Petersburg and Vyborg districts of the city, in Kolpino, 30 on Vasilyevsky island and helped individual workers with their studies.
Lenin spread the great doctrine of Marxism among the workers, linking it with the vital questions of the country's life and the needs of the proletariat. He helped the workers to assimilate Marxist theory. In expounding the first volume of Capital, he illustrated the economic doctrine of Marx with examples from the life of his listeners. He had a way of explaining the most complicated questions of theory in simple, comprehensible terms. The workers listened with lively interest to their circle-leader, who skilfully drew them into a discussion of the problems that he raised. I. Babushkin, a member of one of the circles, recalls with admiration the way Lenin conducted studies on political economy:
``The lecturer explained the subject to us in his own words, without reading from notes; he would try to get us to disagree with him or start a dispute, and then he would egg us on, making one of us argue his point of view with another. Our lectures, therefore, were very lively and interesting, and tended to develop a habit for public speaking; this method of study was the best way of mastering the subject. We were all very pleased with the lectures and constantly admired the intellect of our lecturer....''^^*^^
Every lecture of Lenin's left the workers richer with knowledge, broadened their horizon, moulded their class consciousness and added to their political understanding. They took to the teachings of Marx eagerly. Overworked though they were, they went without sleep or rest in order to read up for circle studies.
Lenin gave special attention to the training of organisers and instructors for the workers' circles, constantly impressed upon the workers that they should never lose sight of the political side of tilings, that they should go the revolutionary way and not swerve to the reformist sidepath of the English trade unions, because trade unionism meant the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. He taught the workers how to behave in the event of arrest, interrogation, and trial, how to help arrested and exiled comrades, and how to raise funds for that purpose. He urged that libraries should be organised and a reading programme drawn up to promote the education of the workers.
Lenin taught the circle members to do independent political work. He got them to lend a hand in collecting material for the writing of leaflets on the burning topics of the day, leaflets calling _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich l^enin, Vol. 2, pp. 34--35.
31 upon the workers to fight their oppressors. He often gave the circle members written questions, to answer which they had to make a study of factory conditions. Through one of his acquaintances Lenin succeeded in obtaining permission to visit the Putilov Works. He went over this vast establishment, familiarising himself with the work conditions of the industrial proletariat. The concrete knowledge of the condition of the working class which he thus obtained helped him to guide the growing movement of the proletariat.It was characteristic of Lenin as an instructor of the workers' circles that he not only taught the workers, but constantly learned from them, and studied their living and working conditions. His familiarity with workers' life provided Lenin with invaluable material for drawing conclusions and making generalisations in his theoretical works about the proletariat as the leading force of society, about its great revolutionary role. ``His work among the St. Petersburg workers, his talks with them, and the attention with which he listened to what they had to say, gave Lenin an understanding of Marx's great idea, the idea that the working class was the vanguard of all the toiling people, that the toiling people, and all the oppressed, followed its lead, that herein lay its strength and the pledge of its victory. Only as a leader of all the toiling people could the working class be victorious. Lenin realised this when he was active among the St. Petersburg workers,''~^^*^^ N. K. Krupskaya remarked. Lenin enjoyed the deep affection and respect of the workers, to whom he was a teacher and friend. More and more workers flocked to his circle.
In the winter of 1894--95 Lenin often met Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, whose acquaintance he made in February 1894. At the time of their first meeting she had been working free of charge for over three years as a teacher at an evening Sunday school for workers in the Nevskaya Zastava district. This school was attended by workers from many factories. Lenin and Krupskaya were drawn together by the common cause, and it formed the basis of their lifelong friendship.
Krupskaya was brought up in a revolutionary environment; her father, Konstantin Krupsky, was a typical representative of the revolutionary intellectuals of the sixties of the nineteenth century. She dedicated herself to revolutionary activities from her early youth. In the nineties she joined a Marxist circle. She was an ardent revolutionary, devoted to the cause of the working class.
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 591.
32On his way home from the lectures, Lenin would drop in on Krupskaya, who lived together with her mother. ``I was in love with my school work,'' Krupskaya wrote in her reminiscences, ``and could talk about it for hours if you did not stop me---talk about the school, the pupils, the Semyannikov, Thornton, Maxwell and other factories and mills along the Neva River. Vladimir llyich was interested in every little detail that could help him to piece together a picture of the life and conditions of the workers, to find some sort of avenue of approach to them in the matter of revolutionary propaganda.''~^^*^^
Lenin put before the Russian Social-Democrats the task of changing over from the propaganda of Marxism in small circles of advanced workers to political agitation among the broad mass of the workers. This was an important step forward in the activities of Russia's Marxists. This change-over was first made by the St. Petersburg Social-- Democrats during the disturbances at the Semyannikov Works at the end of 1894, caused by systematic delays in paying out wages. In connection with those disturbances, Lenin wrote a leaflet, addressed to the Semyannikov workers. According to Lenin, Babushkin helped to draw up this first agitation leaflet and, moreover, took part in distributing it.
When the workers of Novy Port went on strike, the St. Petersburg Social-Democrats issued a leaflet entitled ``What the Dock Workers Should Fight For''. It was distributed among the dockers and elsewhere in the city, and helped the dock workers to win the strike.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Ideological Defeat of NarodismAlong with organising and propaganda activities, Lenin devoted himself to an extensive study of theoretical problems. His profound understanding of Marxism and creative approach to it were here revealed with striking force.
In the nineties the Russian Marxists were faced four-square with the problem of completely defeating Narodism ideologically. There could be no progress until this still influential political trend, hostile to Marxism, was exposed.
From the very outset of his revolutionary activities in St. Petersburg Lenin waged an unremitting struggle against the Narodnik _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 1, pp. 218--19.
33 ideology. In the autumn of 1893, Lenin at a Marxist circle meeting sharply criticised the views of the liberal Narodniks on the future of capitalism in Russia. Subsequently Lenin set forth his views in a paper ``On the So-Called Market Question'', which he then read at a meeting of the circle. This was the second important work of the young Lenin which has come down to us. He showed in it a profound understanding of the economic relations that were developing in the country and gave a brilliant Marxist analysis of the economic conditions prevailing in Russia in the late nineteenth century.It would seem at first sight that the market question had no bearing on the revolutionary movement of the working class. But it was precisely this question that gave rise to serious controversy at the time, and a proper understanding of it was highly important for combating Narodism effectively. To prove their assertion that capitalism could not develop in Russia, the Narodniks pointed to the absence in the country of a wide home market which was essential for capitalism. They believed that no such market could exist in Russia, where the growing impoverishment of the people, they alleged, made it impossible.
Lenin showed how untenable these arguments were. On the basis of numerous statistical data covering various gubernias, he proved that with the development of capitalism the peasantry was being differentiated into bourgeoisie and proletariat, that simultaneously with the ruining of the small producers' farms the formation of large capitalist farms was going on. He showed that capitalism had become the main background of the economic life of Russia.
Lenin's paper played an important role in the theoretical development of Marxists, and strengthened their ideological positions in the struggle against Narodism. It was distributed among the Social-Democratic circles in St. Petersburg and other cities. For a long time Lenin's manuscript was considered lost; it was found as late as 1937 and published then for the first time in the Soviet press.
Early in January 1894 Lenin visited Moscow. It was vacation time, when young people got together at evening parties that often served as a screen for illegal meetings. At one of these meetings, Lenin came out against V. Vorontsov, one of the Narodnik leaders. This was reported to the authorities by a police spy. From his report we know that some other Marxist had spoken before Lenin, but the Narodnik Vorontsov had out-argued him, and ``someone by the name of Ulyanov (supposed to be a brother of the hanged 34 revolutionary) took up the cudgels and defended the man's views with skill and knowledge''.^^*^^
Lenin's speech was a great help to the Moscow Marxists. According to Anna Yelizarova-Ulyanova "it opened the eyes of the young Marxists to many things, uplifted and acted as a spur to them''. Lenin subsequently read a lecture on Vorontsov's book The Destiny of Capitalism in Russia to the Marxists of Nizhni Novgorod.
At the end of 1893, the Narodniks started a veritable crusade against Marxism in their legally published magazine Russkqye Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth) in which they grossly distorted the views of the Russian Marxists. The need to repel the furious attacks of the Narodniks against Marxism became all the more urgent, among other things, because their views still found sympathy with a certain section of the revolutionary youth and because the Narodniks were trying to influence the workers as well. It was necessary to expose the Narodniks, show their departure from the revolutionary traditions of the Narodniks of the seventies, their backsliding to liberalism, and the theoretical and political indefencibility of their world outlook. This task was brilliantly performed by Lenin.
During the spring and summer of 1894 he wrote his well-known book What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats (A Reply to Articles in Russkqye Bogatstvo Opposing the Marxists). This book was written on the basis of Lenin's Samara lectures criticising the liberal Narodniks and of his subsequent speeches in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In this book Lenin widely used works by Marx and Engels: Capital, Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Poverty of Philosophy, The German Ideology, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Anti-Duhring, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
In his work What the ``Friends of the People" Are Lenin characterised these works for the first time, revealing their essence and historical significance. He paid special attention to Capital. It is discussed on scores of pages. Lenin greatly admired Marx's brilliant work and in his hands it became a mighty weapon in the struggle for communist ideals. ``Capital'' wrote Lenin, is ``the chief and basic work in which scientific socialism is expounded.''^^**^^ In this work, imbued with a creative understanding of Marxism and its masterly application to the analysis of the economic and political situation in Russia, Lenin gave a profound critique of the philosophical and _-_-_
^^*^^ Krasny Arkhiv No. 1 (62), 1934, p. 76.
^^**^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 185.
35 economic views, and the political programme and tactics of Narodism in the 1890s. While sparing the revolutionary experience of the Narodniks of the 1870s, whom he deeply respected for their courage, heroism and revolutionary tempering, Lenin exposed the liberal Narodniks and revealed the class origins and class essence of their ideology. He showed that the liberal Narodniks were the political opponents of Social-Democracy, the ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie, and the mouthpieces of the interests of the wealthy, kulak section of the peasantry, not the ``friends of the people'', as they called themselves.In his criticism of the reactionary nature of the liberal Narodniks' petty-bourgeois theories, Lenin showed that they tried to conceal the existing contradictions in socio-economic relations in Russia, that they denied the historical role of the Russian working class as the champion for the emancipation of all the toiling people of the country, and played down the grievous condition of the peasantry, the class struggle in the countryside, and the exploitation of the poor by the kulaks. Lenin developed and concretised a number of most important problems and propositions of historical materialism, Marxist sociology, and scientific communism-on socio-economic formations, on the relationship of the objective and subjective factors in social life, on the role of the popular masses and the individual in history, on the world-historic mission of the proletariat, and on the driving forces and development of social revolutions.
Lenin exposed the idealistic views of the Narodniks regarding the history of society's development. The makers of history, they claimed, were individual ``heroes''. As for the people, or ``the crowd'', to use their own term, they could only blindly follow the ``heroes''. Lenin exploded these unscientific views. To the ideology of the liberal Narodniks, penetrated by subjectivism he opposed the materialist understanding of history. He showed that the real maker of history was the people. Outstanding individuals could play an important role only insofar as they adhered to the same position as the foremost class, and took a correct view of the growing needs of social development.
In What the ``Friends of the People" Are Lenin criticised pseudo-- socialist theories from the standpoint of principle, and showed himself to be a staunch champion of the working-class cause. In setting forth the essence of the Marxist doctrine, he stressed the tremendous importance of Marxism as the ideological weapon of the proletariat in its struggle for political and social emancipation. The object of Marxist science, he stressed, was to lay bare all the forms 36 of social contradictions under capitalism and show the proletariat the way out of capitalist wage-slavery.
In this work Lenin showed that one could not be a leader of the proletariat without spreading the ideas of Marxism among the mass of the workers, just as one could not direct the proletarian class struggle without systematic organising work among the working class. Study, propaganda, organisation - this was how Lenin pithily defined the task of the Russian Marxists. Theoretical and practical activities must be inseparably linked together. Theory must serve practice, meet the needs of life and be verified by practical experience.
One of the most important ideas expounded by Lenin in What the ``Friends of the People" Are was the idea of founding a Marxist workers' party. Lenin put this cardinal task before the Russian Marxists, and fought over many years to achieve it. He gave to this struggle all his political and organising genius, all the energy and passion of a Communist.
In his ``What the `Friends of the People' Are'', Lenin was the first Marxist in Russia theoretically to substantiate the historical role of the Russian working class as the leader, the leading revolutionary force of society, as the consistent fighter against tsarism and capitalism for the emancipation of all the working and exploited people, for the victorious socialist revolution. ``The political activity of the Social-Democrats,'' he wrote, ``lies in promoting the development and organisation of the working-class movement in Russia, in transforming this movement from its present state of sporadic attempts at protest, 'riots' and strikes devoid of a guiding idea, into an organised struggle of the WHOLE Russian working CLASS directed against the bourgeois regime and working for the expropriation of the expropriators and the abolition of the social system based on the oppression of the working people. Underlying these activities is the common conviction of Marxists that the Russian worker is the sole and natural representative of Russia's entire working and exploited population.''~^^*^^
Lenin developed the idea of the guiding role, the leadership of the proletariat in a democratic revolution, showing that without it the people's victory over autocracy and the growth of the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution would be impossible.
Lenin considered that the immediate task of the Russian working class on the way towards abolishing the capitalist system was to overthrow the autocracy. In its struggle against autocratic-police _-_-_
^^*^^ V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 298--99.
37 tyranny, the working class would rally all the democratic elements of the country, first and foremost the peasantry, which was vitally concerned in abolishing the survivals of serfdom and would, therefore, be a reliable ally of the working class in the revolutionary movement. Creatively developing Marx's proposition, expressed in 1856, on the possibility of combining a proletarian revolution with a ``peasant war'',^^11^^ Lenin made a most important theoretical and political discovery: he showed that the alliance of the revolutionary proletariat with the toiling peasantry was the main condition for the victory of the democratic and socialist revolutions. This alliance enhanced the revolutionary forces of the popular masses immeasurably in their struggle against autocracy and capitalism.In ``What the `Friends of the People' Are'', Lenin for the first time advanced the idea of a revolutionary alliance, of the workers and the peasants as the decisive force, as the chief condition for overthrowing tsansm, the landowners and the bourgeoisie and building a communist society. This great idea, which has become one of the fundamental, unshakable principles of Leninism, was upheld and elaborated by Lenin throughout his life. It has become one of the most important principles of the strategy and tactics of the Communist Party and of Lenin's theory of the socialist revolution.
The book ends with an inspired prophecy concerning the great historic mission of the working class of Russia: ``...it is on the working class that the Social-Democrats concentrate all their attention and all their activities. When its advanced representatives have mastered the ideas of scientific socialism, the idea of the historical role of the Russian worker, when these ideas become widespread, and when stable organisations are formed among the workers to transform the workers' present sporadic economic war into conscious class struggle--- then the Russian WORKER, rising at the head of all the democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and 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's work What the ``Friends of the People" Are consisted of three parts published illegally.^^**^^
The book had a stimulating effect upon the whole activity of the Russian Marxists. M. Kalinin wrote that it ``was a huge success in the underground and was distributed widely among the young _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 300.
^^**^^ Part~II is still missing.
38 people, especially the students. It served for a long time as an effective weapon in underground propaganda''.^^*^^ The book was a real manifesto of revolutionary Social-Democracy. It contains the principal ideas of Leninism. __ALPHA_LVL2__ ExposingDuring the years of preparation for the founding of a proletarian party Lenin had to wage a stubborn struggle not only against the Narodniks, but against the so-called ``legal Marxists" as well. As Marxism began to spread widely throughout Russia it found transient fellow travellers among the bourgeois intellectuals. They declared themselves to be adherents of this doctrine and expounded their views in the legal organs of the press, whence their name of ``legal Marxists''. The ``legal Marxists" criticised the Narodniks in their own way. They recognised the progressive character of capitalism compared with feudalism, which had outlived itself, and argued that bourgeois economic relations were developing in Russia. But they took only one aspect of Marx's doctrine-his postulate that capitalism was progressive compared with the social formations that had preceded it. As to the quintessence of Marxism its doctrine of the exploiting nature of capitalism, its antagonistic contradictions and inevitable collapse, of the class struggle, the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat they rejected it. They extolled the capitalist system, which they made out to be better than it was. Thus the ``legal Marxists" sought to rob Marxism of its revolutionary content and distorted it in the liberal-bourgeois spirit. Covering up their views with theoretical postulates which they quoted at random from Marx's doctrine and to which they gave a false and one-sided interpretation, they sought to subordinate the working-class movement to the ideology and interests of the bourgeoisie. Many of them subsequently became Cadets^^10^^ (Constitutional Democrats - the chief party of the Russian liberalmonarchist bourgeoisie), and after the Great October Socialist Revolution, whiteguards.''
_-_-_^^*^^ M. Kalinin. On Lenin's Book ``What the `Friends of the People' Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats", Moscow, 1952, p. 20 (Russ. ed.).
39At the very birth of ``legal Marxism" Lenin saw this liberal-- bourgeois trend for what it was -a defence of the class interests of the bourgeoisie-and realised that its spokesmen were disguised enemies of Marxism, advocates of capitalism.
In the autumn of 1894, at a meeting of a St. Petersburg Marxist circle, Lenin read a paper entitled ``The Reflection of Marxism in Bourgeois Literature'', concerning Struve's book Critical Remarks on the Subject of Russia's Economic Development. In this paper Lenin sharply criticised the views of the ``legal Marxists''. ``They were bourgeois democrats for whom the break with Narodism signified transition from petty-bourgeois (or peasant) socialism to bourgeois liberalism, and not to proletarian socialism as was the case with us.''^^*^^
Inasmuch, however, as the ``legal Marxists" opposed the Narodniks, Lenin considered it possible to enter into a temporary agreement with them for a joint struggle against Narodism, provided the Marxists were absolutely free to criticise the "legal Marxists'" political and theoretical views. Already in those years Lenin gave evidence of the flexibility of his tactics, of his ability to use even temporary and unreliable fellow travellers in the interest of the class struggle of the proletariat.
Afterwards, speaking of that agreement with the "legal Marxists'', Lenin maintained that the question of the Marxists' attitude to temporary political alliances was fundamentally important. He pointed out that "only those who are not sure of themselves can fear to enter into temporary alliances even with unreliable people; not a single political party could exist without such alliances. The combination with the legal Marxists was in its way the first really political alliance entered into by Russian Social-Democrats. Thanks to this alliance, an astonishingly rapid victory was obtained over Narodism, and Marxist ideas ... became very widespread.''^^**^^
In the spring of 1895 in the collection Material for a Characterisation of Our Economic Development Lenin's article ``The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve's Book" was published (under the pseudonym of K. Tulin). It gave a sweeping criticism of Narodism and ``legal Marxism'', contrasting them to the revolutionary class stand of Marxism. Lenin showed that the views of the ``legal Marxists'' boiled down to a laudation of capitalism, a desire to perpetuate it, to adapt Marxism and the working-- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 97.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 362.
40 class movement to the interests of the bourgeoisie. It was no accident that Struve urged that ``we acknowledge our lack of culture and go and learn from capitalism".Lenin showed that Struve's line of argument was essentially antirevolutionary, which was evident from Struve's bourgeois objectivism and his effort to obscure social contradictions and the struggle of the classes. ``The main feature of the author's arguments,'' Lenin pointed out, ``...is his narrow objectivism, which is confined to proving the inevitability and necessity of the process and makes no effort to reveal at each specific stage of this process the form of class contradiction inherent in it-an objectivism that describes the process in general, and not each of the antagonistic classes whose conflict makes up the process.''~^^*^^
In contrast to bourgeois objectivism, Lenin developed the principle of partisanship and the class character of social sciences, philosophy and sociology among them. Unlike the objectivist, who confined himself to talking dispassionately ``about the paths and fortunes of humanity'', the materialist, Lenin wrote, must give an accurate characterisation of the course of social development, indicating which classes in particular promote that development and whose interests it serves.
The so-called objectivism in science in bourgeois society serves to conceal the class interests of the exploiters. Marxist science, which is openly and indissolubly linked with the working class, serves the cause of the revolutionary transformation of society and is interested in revealing the laws of social development. Therefore its party commitment coincides with being truly scientific. Lenin explained that materialism includes party commitment, obliging us in any assessment of events to adopt the standpoint of a definite class directly and openly.
Lenin stressed the necessity of adopting an uncompromising attitude towards all deviations from Marxism, of treasuring the theory of scientific socialism, elaborating it in a creative spirit and defending it against distortion and vulgarisation on the part of the opportunists and reformists. In the struggle with the ``legal Marxists'', he not only defended the revolutionary essence of Marxism-the teaching on the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat-but also developed this teaching further. He elaborated a revolutionary theory which took into account the new historical experience and the new requirements of the proletarian movement.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1, p. 499.
41The ``legal Marxists'' were the first revisionists of Marxism on Russian soil. But ``legal Marxism'', or Struveism. which Lenin described as a reflection of Marxism in bourgeois literature, was an international as well as a Russian phenomenon. Lenin's struggle against it in Russia was also a struggle against international revisionism. Struveism, as Lenin put it, sought to ``take from Marxism all that is acceptable to the liberal bourgeoisie, including the struggle for reforms, the class struggle (without the proletarian dictatorship), the 'general' recognition of'socialist ideals' and the substitution of a 'new order' for capitalism; they cast aside 'only' the living soul of Marxism, `only' its revolutionary content.''~^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The League of Struggle for the EmancipationIn the middle of February 1895 Lenin attended a conference in St. Petersburg of members of the Social-Democratic groups of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and Vilno. The conference discussed the question of changing over from the propaganda of Marxism in narrow circles to mass political agitation, and of publishing popular literature for the workers and establishing close contact with the Emancipation of Labour group. It was decided to send a representative abroad, but owing to differences on matters of principle no agreement was reached on sending one person representing all the groups. Two men were therefore sent abroad Lenin from the St. Petersburg Social-Democrats, and Y. Sponti from the Moscow group.
The question of changing over to mass agitation was discussed also at a joint conference of the St. Petersburg Social-Democrats and workers. The pamphlet On Agitation, issued by the Vilno Social-Democrats, was read out and discussed. Some of those who attended the conference considered the transition to new forms of political activity premature. But the workers unanimously supported Lenin, and his motion was carried by a majority vote. Agitation by the Social-Democrats of St. Petersburg stimulated the growth of a mass working-class movement.
The trip abroad was delayed, as Lenin fell ill with pneumonia and could not leave until the end of April. Ostensibly the object of this trip was to take a convalescent holiday. All frontier points were _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 222.
42 notified by a special police circular of Lenin's intended trip, and agents abroad were instructed ``to keep a careful watch of Lenin's activities and foreign connections''. Secret police documents stressed the ``exceptional circumstances" in which his family found itself, and constantly referred to the fact that he was the ``brother of the executed state criminal Alexander Ulyanov".Lenin's first meeting with Plekhanov took place in Geneva. After their talk Plekhanov said that he had never met such an outstanding representative of the revolutionary youth before. In one of his letters he wrote that he had seen many people from Russia during the many years he had been living abroad, but that none of them had inspired such hopes in him as did young Ulyanov. Lenin, for his part, had the greatest respect and liking for Plekhanov, the first outstanding Russian Marxist.
But already at that time Lenin and Plekhanov differed on a number of fundamental issues. Lenin upheld and developed the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat, and of the proletariat's alliance with the peasantry. He regarded this alliance as the main force guaranteeing the overthrow of tsarism and capitalism. As for Plekhanov, he had no faith in the strength of the working class or its ability to lead the peasants. He denied the revolutionary character of the peasantry, and holding the Russian liberal bourgeoisie to be revolutionary, he assigned it the role of leader and motive force of the coming bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia.
Lenin's trip abroad was of great importance not only for the activities of the Social-Democrats in Russia, but also for the Emancipation of Labour group, which from that time established closer contacts with the Social-Democrats working in Russia. It was at that time, too, that Lenin's proposal to publish popular collections of articles for the workers was adopted and the decision taken to publish abroad a miscellany entitled Rabotnik (Worker).
After a stay of about three weeks in Switzerland Lenin left for Paris. There he met Paul Lafargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx and a prominent leader of the French and the international working-class movement. Lafargue was a close friend and disciple of Marx and Engels, and one of the founders of the French Workers' Party.
Taking advantage of his stay in Paris, Lenin proceeded to study the history of the Paris Commune. He made a precis of Part One of G. Lefrancais's book An Essay on the Movement of the Pans C.ommunards in 1871.
After nearly six weeks in Paris, Lenin went back to Switzerland. He spent several days in a sanatorium, then left for Germany, 43 where he rented a room in a Berlin suburb. He spent much of his time in the Berlin Imperial Library, where he studied foreign Marxist literature, and made notes and abstracts. At that time Lenin made a precis of the book The Holy Family or Critique oj Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer & Co. by Marx and Engels. He studied the life and conditions of the German people and, as in Paris, attended workers' meetings. In Berlin he met Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the leaders of the German Social-Democrats for whom he had a letter of recommendation from G. V. Plekhanov. Lenin had looked forward to meeting Frederick Engels, who was living in London at the time. But Engels was seriously ill and the meeting did not take place.
Lenin returned to Russia early in September 1895. He succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the secret police, who had strict orders to search his luggage carefully at the frontier. He brought illegal Marxist literature from abroad concealed between the double lining of his suitcase. According to a report submitted to the Police Department, ``nothing reprehensible was discovered despite the most careful examination of his luggage''. Before going back to St. Petersburg Lenin visited Vilno, Moscow and Orekhovo-Zuyevo, where he met members of the local Social-Democratic groups and made arrangements for contributions to the foreign publication of the Rabotnik miscellany. On his return to St. Petersburg the literature which he had brought with him from abroad was distributed among the Social-Democrats of St. Petersburg and other cities.
In St. Petersburg Lenin was under secret surveillance of the police, but being well up in secrecy techniques, he was able to elude detection. In a number of workers' circles he was known as Nikolai Petrovich, and in the Narvskaya Zastava district as Fyodor Petrovich. He was familiar with the through yards of many residential blocks in St. Petersburg and was able to throw the spies off his track; he repeatedly changed his address to keep his whereabouts a secret.
Owing to lack of funds, Lenin was obliged to rent a cheap room. In a letter home he complained: ``... the next room is separated from mine by only a thin partition, so that everything can be heard and sometimes I have to run away from the balalaika with which my neighbour amuses himself right in my ear.''~^^*^^ Under these conditions he could do no work at home. And so he used to go to the library, where he often had meetings with Social-Democrats. Lenin _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 37, p. 81.
44 regularly visited the Public and other libraries and reading-rooms in St. Petersburg. He closely followed the Russian and foreign press and all the latest books and magazines.In private life Lenin was a man of very simple habits. The following fact is highly characteristic of him. On his arrival in St. Petersburg he started an account-book in which he made regular entries in the course of a month in order to plan his budget. On adding up his expenses, Lenin was annoyed to find them so high. In a letter to his mother he wrote: ``I am spending too much---for example, I spent 1 ruble 36 kopeks on tram fares alone.''
On his return from abroad Lenin found himself under special surveillance. The tsar's spies said boastfully: ``We've now tracked down Ulyanov, a dangerous state criminal whose brother was hanged. He's arrived from abroad and he won't get away from us.'' Lenin knew of the danger threatening him. But while taking all possible precautions, he stepped up his revolutionary work among the St. Petersburg proletariat.
In the autumn of 1895 a historic event took place in the life of the Russian Social-Democrats-all the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united, under Lenin's leadership, into a single political organisation. In December this organisation adopted the name of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
The League of Struggle was led by a central group under Lenin. Among its members were A. Vaneyev, P. Zaporozhets, G. Krzhizhanovsky, N. Krupskaya, L. Martov (Y. Tsederbaum), A. Potresov, S. Radchenko and V. Starkov. It based its activities on the workers' factory study-circles, which united into district groups. The League adhered to the principle of centralism, and maintained strict discipline and close ties with the workers. It led the activities of Marxist circles and the strike movement, and published leaflets. All its publications were edited by Lenin.
Early in November the League organised a strike at the Thornton Factory involving 500 weavers. It issued and distributed a leaflet ``What the Weavers Are Demanding''. A joint meeting of delegates of Social-Democratic groups and advanced workers of St. Petersburg was called in connection with the strike to ascertain what the situation was in the different districts and to draw up a plan of action. The meeting was attended by Lenin. Soon the League issued another leaflet ``To the Working Men and Women of the Thornton Factory'', written by Lenin. It called upon all the factory hands to support the striking weavers. ``Let us, then, comrades, stand firm and steadfast and carry on to the very end, let us 45 remember that we can improve our conditions only by our common and concerted efforts,''~^^*^^ it said. The leaflet made a strong impression on the workers, and strengthened their solidarity and staunchness. They won the strike. Their example inspired the workers in many other industrial establishments of St. Petersburg to fight.
The activities of the League of Struggle, as Lenin pointed out, showed that the proletariat, led by the Social-Democrats, was a powerful political factor which the government could no longer ignore.
It had always been a cherished dream of Lenin's to write for the workers. "There is nothing I would like so much as to write for the workers,'' he pointed out afterwards. In the autumn of 1895 he wrote the pamphlet Explanation of the Law on Fines Imposed on Factory Workers. The question of fines agitated all workers at the time. The pamphlet gave a popular account of how the employers exploited the workers and by what means the proletariat should fight its oppressors.
Lenin cited striking examples from the life of the workers to show that the government, which sided with the employers, would always pass laws that benefited the latter. The workers had only one way of fighting oppression by the government and the capitalists, and that was to take a common stand against the capitalists and the unfair conditions established by the law. The pamphlet was printed in 3,000 copies in the illegal printing plant of the Narodnaya Volya group and was widely circulated among the workers. In February 1896 the central organ of the German Social-Democratic Party, the newspaper Vorwarts, published an announcement of the pamphlet's publication in Russia. The announcement stressed its importance for the working-class movement.
Lenin's League of Struggle linked up the struggle of the workers for pressing economic demands with the political struggle against tsarism and capitalist exploitation. It fulfilled a historical mission, for it was the first organisation in Russia to begin combining the ideas of scientific socialism with the working-class movement. From then on the working-class movement in Russia developed under the banner of Marxism.
In these conditions it became imperative to create a party capable of consistently and staunchly defending the interests of the working class, a party that, relying on the mass working-class movement, could lead the political struggle against autocracy and capitalism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 81.
46The St. Petersburg League of Struggle served as a model for the amalgamation of workers' groups in similar leagues in other cities and regions of Russia. It was essential to establish solid ties among them. With this aim in view, the St. Petersburg League of Struggle decided to publish an illegal newspaper called Rabocheye Dyelo. The question of publishing an illegal newspaper had already been decided abroad when Lenin came there. Lenin collected material for the newspaper among the workers. All the more important articles for the first issue of Rabocheye Dyelo were written by Lenin, among them ``To the Russian Workers" (editorial), ``What Are Our Ministers Thinking About?'', and ``The Yaroslavl Strike in 1895''. The editorial explained the historic tasks of the working class in Russia, chief among which was the winning of political liberty. The first number of the newspaper was edited entirely byLenin. He also edited letters about the working-class movement in Russia for Rabotnik, a non-periodical miscellany, whose publication was being prepared abroad by the Emancipation of Labour group.
Upon Engels's death, Lenin wrote an article for this miscellany entitled ``Frederick Engels'', in which he described the great services which Engels had rendered the international proletariat. After Karl Marx, wrote Lenin, Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the proletariat in the whole civilised world. The article gave a profound and comprehensive characterisation of Engels's role. It stressed the importance of his writings, and told about the remarkable friendship of the two founders of scientific socialism.
At a meeting of the leading group of the League of Struggle, held in Krupskaya's flat on December 8. 1895, the copy for number one of Rabocheve Dyelo was discussed. This, in Lenin's words, was the first attempt of the Russian Social-Democrats of the nineties to set up an illegal Social-Democratic workers' newspaper. The issue was prepared in duplicate. Vaneyev took one copy for a final perusal before it went to press, and the other remained with Krupskaya.
But Rabocheye Dyelo did not see the light of day. On the night of December 8 Lenin and a large group of his St. Petersburg League associates were arrested in connection with the ``cause of the St. Petersburg circle of Social-Democrats''; they were accused of ``crime against the state''. At Vaneyev's flat, the police seized the manuscript of the first issue. Lenin was sent to a house of detention where he was placed in a solitary cell. The workers reacted to the arrest of Lenin and his associates by issuing on their own initiative a leaflet that was purely political in character. They mimeographed it and distributed it at the factories in St. Petersburg.
47Even in prison Lenin carried on his revolutionary work. He quickly found ways and means of establishing contacts with comrades who were not arrested and through them directing the activities of the League. He wrote a pamphlet for workers entitled On Strikes and two leaflets, one for the May Day and the other ``To the Tsarist Government'', which he managed to smuggle out.
In his letters Lenin insisted on holding a Party congress. In preparation for it he wrote a draft programme for the Party. As we know, the congress did not take place until 1898, when Lenin was in exile in Siberia. But in prison he not only worked on the draft programme, but also wrote explanatory notes to it. He gave a profound Marxist analysis of capitalism in Russia and defined the basic tasks of the class struggle of the proletariat. He formulated in precise and clear terms the necessity for overthrowing the autocracy, to be followed by the overthrow of the rule of the capitalists, and by the transfer of power to the working class. He also set the task of abolishing private ownership of the means of production, and of building a socialist society.
Lenin wrote these illegal documents with lemon juice or milk out of little ``ink-wells'' made of bread. Whenever he heard his jailers at the peep-hole he would immediately eat up his ink-well. ``I have eaten six ink-wells today,'' he wrote jokingly in one of his letters. The recipients of this secret correspondence would warm the invisible writing or dip the sheets in hot water to bring out the lines.
While in prison Lenin continued his researches in the economic development of the country, and began to write his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In one of his letters he wrote: ``I have a plan that has occupied my mind ever since I was arrested, and the more I think of it the more interested I become. I have long been engaged on a certain economic problem (on the sale of manufactured goods on the home market). I had gathered some literature on the subject, drawn up a plan of operations, and had even written something, expecting to publish it as a book if the size exceeds that of an article for a journal.''~^^*^^ Lenin sent his comrades a list of the books he needed and his plan of work, and asked them to send him the books. With the help of relatives and friends, he began to receive the necessary literature from various libraries in St. Petersburg (those of the Academy of Sciences, the University, the Free Economic Society,^^1^^' etc.). It was in prison that Lenin wrote the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 37, p. 82.
48 work Essays on Political Economy in the Early Nineteenth Century, which has so far not been found.Imprisoned though he was himself, Lenin was always thinking about his comrades in the same plight. Every letter he sent out contained some request concerning a fellow-prisoner. Now it was for a fictitious ``fiancee'' to be sent to visit a lonely comrade who had no relatives in town, now it was for somebody to be told through visiting relatives to look for letters on such-and-such a page, of such-and-such a book in the prison library, now it was for warm clothes to be sent to so-and-so. Lenin corresponded with imprisoned comrades through prison library books in which he used dots to mark off the letters forming the message. Krzhizhanovsky wrote that receiving and reading a letter of Lenin's ``was like taking a bracing, refreshing drink, it bucked one up immediately and was a moral tonic. This man possessed such vast reserves of moral strength, such an ability to raise the spirits of any person who stood in need of it, that these qualities alone under any sort of conditions, and particularly prison conditions, made him an indispensable comrade.''~^^*^^
Lenin established for himself in prison a rigid regime which helped him bear the hardships of a prisoner's life. He spent most of the day working, and before bedtime he never missed doing his physical exercises.
Several more League members were arrested early in January 1896, among them Babushkin; and in August Krupskaya was arrested. As soon as Lenin heard of this he got in touch with the arrested comrades. He continued to give advice and directions to those outside.
Despite its heavy losses, the League of Struggle weathered the storm, because it had by that time become deeply rooted in the working-class movement. The advanced workers educated by Lenin's League formed new contacts, organised new study-circles, and extended agitation, propaganda and organising work among the masses.
The summer of 1896 saw major strikes in St. Petersburg that subsequently spread to Moscow. The St. Petersburg League of Struggle launched agitation work on a large scale. It published as many as thirteen leaflets in the course of one month. The strikes of 1896, Lenin later wrote, ``...ushered in an era of steadily mounting workers' movement-the most potent factor in the whole of our _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 18.
__PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---826 49 revolution''.^^*^^ ``The inception of a mass working-class movement, with the participation of Social-Democrats, dates from 1895--96, the time of the famous St. Petersburg strikes,''^^**^^ he pointed out. At the turn of the century the proletariat of St. Petersburg took the lead of the working-class movement in Russia.More than anyone else, Lenin realised what colossal force lay in the awakening mass working-class movement in Russia and what objective prerequisites existed for the victory of the socialist revolution in our country. He attached exceptional importance to the high degree of concentration of the working class in Russia at large enterprises and in large industrial areas. He noted that the Russian proletariat had been "brought up for decades by a very young, but nevertheless modern large-scale machine industry''.^^***^^
The St. Petersburg period was a very important one in the life and work of Lenin. It was there that he established close contact with the working elass and its foremost representatives.
Lenin's activity in St. Petersburg, particularly his work in the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, played a decisive role in his development as leader of the revolutionary proletariat in Russia. Lenin was a most active leader of the great process of combining Marxism with the mass working-class movement in Russia. At that time the Russian Social-Democrats, led by Lenin, changed over from circle propaganda to mass political agitation.
It was in St. Petersburg that Lenin formed the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, the first embryo of a revolutionary Marxist party basing its activity on a mass workingclass movement.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 94.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 20, pp. 247--48.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 32, p. 455.
[50] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Three __ALPHA_LVL1__ SIBERIAN EXILE __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.] __NOTE__ Quote is between LVL1 and LVL2 in original.Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.
Lenin
After more than fourteen months' imprisonment Lenin was sentenced to three years' exile in Eastern Siberia under open police surveillance. The sentence was announced to him on February 13, 1897.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ In ShushenskoyeLenin's mother got permission for him to travel at his own expense instead of being transported in the usual way. This relieved Lenin of the distressing experiences of travelling by stages from prison to prison. On his way to exile he visited his relatives in Moscow, where he stayed for a few days. He used this opportunity to do some work in the Rumyantsev Museum reading-room, where he collected material on the development of capitalism in Russia.
Lenin arrived at the village of Shushenskoye in the Minusinsk District, Yenisei Gubernia on the evening of May 8. The small room which Lenin occupied contained a wooden bed, a table and four chairs. Lenin received an exile's allowance of eight rubles a month, and he lived mainly on this money during his period of exile. A man of simple tastes and habits, he could make do with very little when he had to.
In those days Shushenskoye was an out-of-the-way village,^^13^^ over 600 versts from the railway. It was a trying ordeal for Lenin to be in exile; the worst thing about it was his forced dissociation from direct work among the proletariat.
Lenin made a profound study of the history of philosophy and frequently corresponded on this subject with F. Lengnik, who was also in exile. Unfortunately, this correspondence has not been __PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__ 4* 51 found. According to Lengnik, Lenin, in these letters, came out sharply against idealism, which he opposed by the materialist philosophy of Marx and Engels. In those days Lenin spoke about his philosophical knowledge with characteristic modesty: ``...I am only too well aware of my lack of philosophical education and I do not intend to write on these subjects until I have learned more. That is just what I am now doing-I have started with Holbach and Helvetius, and am now taking up Kant. I have got hold of the chief works of the chief classical philosophers.''~^^*^^ He also studied Hegel's philosophy. On Lenin's initiative, an exchange of literature was organised among the exiles.
Lenin maintained contacts with the centres of the working-class movement in Russia-St. Petersburg and Moscow, and with Marxists in Nizhni Novgorod, Voronezh and other cities. Through his sister Anna Yelizarova-Ulyanova he arranged a regular correspondence with the Emancipation of Labour group. His main concern was to unite all the isolated organisations to build up a Marxist party, a genuine leader of the working people.
Lenin carried on a regular and frequent correspondence with his relatives, especially his mother. His letters to her were full of tender love and care. He was concerned about her health and begged her not to worry about him. He wrote her long letters describing his life, his thoughts and plans. He tried as hard as he could to reassure her and cheer her up. Lenin's mother shared her children's ideas and appreciated their revolutionary aspirations. She tried to help them bear the hardships of imprisonment or exile. She never complained about the fact that she lived in a state of constant anxiety for their safety. This remarkable woman steadfastly endured all tribulations. In trying to obtain permission to visit her children, she waited patiently in the reception-rooms of the police authorities and took long walks round the prison in the hope of catching a glimpse of a dear face through one of the barred windows. During one of her numerous visits to the Police Department, the Director there threw cynically into her face:
``You can be proud of your offspring --- one of them was hanged and another one is also asking for the rope.''
To which Lenin's mother answered with dignity:
``Yes, I am proud of my children!''
The whole Ulyanov family helped Lenin in his work. Through his relatives and friends he obtained the literature he needed. They _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 41.
52 sent him statistical handbooks, catalogues, books on political economy and philosophy. At the same time he continued to study the works of Marx and Engels. In a letter to his elder sister he asked her to send him the following books, published in French: The Poverty of Philosophy and The Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law by Karl Marx and chapters from Anti-Diihring by Frederick Engels published as pamphlets. Lenin followed the latest publications of Marxist literature in foreign languages, as well as the Russian and foreign press. He was interested to read the report of the Stuttgart Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party in a German newspaper, and asked his relatives to send him verbatim reports of parliamentary debates, and literature on the economics of agriculture in Western Europe and on the history of forms of industry.Lenin subscribed to many newspapers and periodicals. All this enabled him to keep abreast of events and follow the working-class movement and economic development in Russia and Western Europe.
While in exile Lenin continued his study of agrarian relations in Russia. He now made a careful study of Siberian rural life and conditions of the peasantry. In this he was helped by his close ties with the peasants of Shushenskoye. The villagers had great respect for Lenin and sought his help. Being a political exile, he had no right to engage in legal practice, but unofficially he gave the peasants advice and taught them how to protect themselves against the arbitrary actions of the local authorities and the rich. On one occasion he helped a worker to win his suit against his employer, the owner of a gold mine who had sacked him without paying him his wages. After this Lenin's prestige with the local population rose still higher. People from other neighbourhoods started coming to him for advice. Often the offended person had only to threaten to complain to Lenin for the offender to give way.
Two other exiles lived in Shushenskoye besides Lenin. They were I. Prominsky, a Polish worker, who was exiled for taking part in the Social-Democratic movement in Poland, and a Putilov worker, a Finn named Oscar Engberg, who was exiled for taking part in a strike and with whom Lenin became a close friend.
Krupskaya was sentenced to three years' exile in connection with the League of Struggle case and was banished to Ufa Gubernia. She asked for permission to go to the village of Shushenskoye instead, on the grounds of being Lenin's fiancee. Lenin, for his part, wrote to the Director of the Police Department asking for his fiancee to be 53 allowed to move to Shushenskoye. Their request was granted. Lenin looked forward eagerly to Krupskaya's arrival. He had declared his love to her in an invisible ink letter when she was still in prison in St. Petersburg. Afterwards he wrote to her from Shushenskoye, asking her to join him there and become his wife. Krupskaya loved Lenin deeply and tenderly, and in reply 10 his letter wrote half-banteringly: ``Well, if wife, then wife let it be.'' Lenin often remembered this reply in later years.
Krupskaya arrived in Shushenskoye early in May 1898 together with her mother Yelizaveta Vasilyevna. Lenin and Krupskaya were married on July 10. They set up house together, started a small kitchen garden, planted flowers and hops in the yard. The young couple lived in peace and harmony.
From Krupskaya Lenin learned of the First Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., held in Minsk in March 1898. The news of the Congress, which announced the founding of the Russian Social-- Democratic Labour Party, rejoiced Lenin, who identified himself with the main propositions of the Congress ``Manifesto'' to which he attached great importance as an open ``public declaration of the aims towards which our Party should strive''.^^*^^
As already mentioned, the idea of convoking an All-Russia Congress with the aim of forming a working-class party was first expressed by Lenin. He directed all his efforts to the formation of a strong party fighting under the united banner of revolutionary Social-Democracy. Already in his letters from the St. Petersburg prison Lenin urged that the party be organised as a matter of urgency and that preparations be made for a Party congress. He himself worked on the programme documents.
Proceeding from Lenin's instructions, the St. Petersburg League of Struggle took some practical steps towards calling a congress. For this purpose Krupskaya was sent to Poltava in the summer of 1896. There, at a meeting with Kiev Marxists, she reached agreement on the preparation for a congress and the publication of a joint illegal newspaper. However, the calling of the congress was prevented at that time by the arrest and exile to Siberia of Lenin and other leaders of the League of Struggle.
Not until eighteen months later were the representatives of the major Social-Democratic organisations in Russia able to convene a congress. The First Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. was of great _-_-_
^^*^^ V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 323.
54 historical significance. It officially announced the formation of the party, crowning the ``period of childhood and adolescence" of Russian Social-Democracy. The founding of the Russian Social-- Democratic Labour Party was "the biggest step taken by the Russian working-class movement in its fusion with the Russian revolutionary movement''.^^*^^Shortly after the Congress the Central Committee of the Party was arrested. The tsar's government also struck out at many local Party organisations. The Marxist organisations found themselves disunited again and there began ideological vacillation. This meant, in effect, that no party in the sense of a single centralised organisation had been created.
Lenin and Krupskaya worked hard in exile. They translated foreign books into Russian together, and copied out Lenin's writings. In Shushenskoye, Krupskaya wrote her first pamphlet entitled The Working Woman. When they were not working they took long walks in the woods, on the river and in the fields. Lenin loved the great Siberian wilds and the mighty Yenisei. Krzhizhanovsky wrote that Lenin was a great lover of clean frosty air, brisk walking, ice skating, chess and hunting. Lenin went in for sports a good deal. He attached great importance to physical exercise, and believed that a revolutionary whose life was dedicated to struggle and was full of hardships and adversities should be physically fit, strong and tough.
In the evenings Krupskaya and Lenin often enjoyed rereading Pushkin, Lermontov, and Nekrasov. Lenin's album, which he took with him into exile, contained, in addition to the photographs of Marx and Engels, those of Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Herzen and Zola. He thought very highly of the latter, both as a writer and a progressive public figure.
In that period there were many Social-Democrat exiles in Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk, former associates of Lenin in St. Petersburg. Visits by comrades and trips to see them were festive, if rare events for Lenin and Krupskaya in a life devoted entirely to work.
Many revolutionaries took their exile very hard. Many of them ruined their health and quite a few of them died in exile. Fedoseyev committed suicide in Verkholensk in the summer of 1898. Constant persecutions by the police, the slanderous attacks upon him by one of the exiles, and the dire poverty which sapped his strength and made him unfit for work was more than he could bear. Lenin was deeply upset by the news of Fcdoseyev's death. While in exile Lenin _-_-_
^^*^^ V. 1. Lenin, Callecieil Works, Vol. 4, p. 256.
55 corresponded with Fedoseyev on cardinal questions of Marxist theory. Fedoseyev left all his manuscripts to Krzhizhanovsky, with whom he was very friendly, and asked him to tell Lenin that he was dying ``with complete and supreme faith in life and not from disillusionment''. The death of Fedoseyev was a great loss to the Russian Social-Democratic movement.About a year later the exiled Social-Democrats made a collection for a tombstone for Fedoseyev. One day the gendarmes intercepted the receipt of a letter which the exile Lyakhovsky had written to Lenin. The letter was about collecting money for a tombstone, but this was a good enough excuse for the gendarmes to come down on Lenin and make a house-search. It happened on May 2, 1899. Luckily for Lenin and Krupskaya, everything went off well. The gendarmes never found Lenin's illegal correspondence. Lenin pushed a chair up for the gendarmes to stand on, and they began their search from the top shelves of his bookcase. They got so tired examining the statistical handbooks, which were Greek to them, that they did not even look at the lower shelves, where they would have found the illegal correspondence the tsarist secret police was so interested in. Had the gendarmes discovered that correspondence, Lenin and Krupskaya would certainly have had their term of exile extended by several years. Only Lenin's quick thinking helped to avert this misfortune.
The Russian Social-Democrats sustained another loss in September 1899 when Vaneyev, a wonderful Russian revolutionary died of consumption in the village of Yermakovskoye. Prison and exile had killed him. Lenin attended the funeral of his comrade and made a speech over his grave.
Great courage, great moral and physical strength were required to bear all the hardships of exile and return to one's place in the revolutionary battle ranks.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Tasks of the Russian Social-DemocratsIn difficult conditions of exile in the Siberian wilds Lenin did a tremendous amount of theoretical work.
Among the works written by Lenin in exile, special mention should be made of his pamphlet The Tasks of the Russian Social-- Democrats (1897), one of the main programme documents of the Party. In the prefaces to the second and third editions of the pamphlet, Lenin stressed that he had ``summed up only the 'early experience' of my party activity" and that the pamphlet ``gives only a general 56 outline of the tasks of the Social-Democracy'', which were consistently elaborated in the subsequent period. Lenin propounded the important thesis that an indissoluble connection existed between the socialist and democratic tasks of a Marxist party and that they must not be treated as opposites. A proper understanding of their connection and interrelation was particularly important in the conditions prevailing in Russia, where a struggle had to be carried on both against tsarism and against capitalism. Hence, the object of the Social-Democrats' activity was to organise the class struggle of the proletariat and guide it in both its manifestations: the democratic (struggle against the autocracy and the landowners, and establishment of a democratic republic), and the socialist (struggle against the capitalists, for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and building up of a socialist society).
The pamphlet The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats substantiated the leading role of the proletariat in the revolutionary movement, and upheld the idea of the hegemony of the working class in the forthcoming revolution in Russia. Lenin pointed out that the working class exercised its leadership under the guidance of the Marxist proletarian party. He emphasised that the working class was the only thoroughly consistent revolutionary force, a force rallying behind it the peasant masses, who were hostile to tsarism, and that the overthrow of tsarism was the first step on the path of struggle for socialism. "The proletariat alone can be the vanguard fighter for political liberty and for democratic institutions. Firstly, this is because political tyranny bears most heavily upon the proletariat.... Secondly, the proletariat alone is capable of bringing about the complete democratisation of the political and social system, since this would place the system in the hands of the workers.''~^^*^^ Lenin laid particular emphasis on the importance of adherence to the party principle and the independent position of the Social-Democrats. The Social-Democrats, he said, supported all the political opposition elements, but this support did not imply any concessions of principle in programmes and theories that were alien to Marxism.
In this pamphlet Lenin pointed out how essential revolutionary theory was for the emancipation struggle of the proletariat, and advanced the well-known thesis, which became a guiding principle for all Marxists, that ``without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement''.^^**^^ Lenin consistently developed this _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 336.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 343.
57 thesis in his later works, in which he stressed the extreme importance of revolutionary theory for a proletarian party. Marxists, Lenin pointed out, should draw all their convictions from revolutionary theory, and should proceed from it in their practical activities.Lenin called upon the Social-Democratic groups and workers' circles scattered throughout Russia to found ``a single Social-- Democratic Labour Party".
The pamphlet was first published in Geneva in 1898 by the Emancipation of Labour group and was widely read by the SocialDemocrats and foremost workers of Russia. It was found during house-searches and arrests in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Smolensk, Kazan, Orel, Kiev, Vilno, Feodosia, Irkutsk, Archangel, Sormovo, Kovno and other towns. It did much to promote the political and economic struggle of the working class and disseminate the ideas of Marxism, and helped to create a proletarian party.
While upholding the purity of revolutionary theory, Lenin constantly stressed the need to carry forward Marxist theory.
``We do not regard Marx's theory,'' he wrote, "as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life. We think that an independent elaboration of Marx's theory is especially essential for Russian socialists; for this theory provides only general guiding principles, which, in particular, are applied in England differently than in France, in France differently than in Germany, and in Germany differently than in Russia.''~^^*^^
Lenin's early writings were a further independent elaboration of Marx's theory. They constituted a guide in the struggle for building up a Social-Democratic Party in Russia, the party of a new type, the party of revolutionaries.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Development of CapitalismIn exile Lenin completed his classical work The Development oj ( Capitalism in Russia, which dealt the final blow to Narodism and defeated "legal Marxism''. The draft of the book (originally entitled The Process of the Formation of a Home Market for Large-Scale Industry] was ready early in August 1898. After that Lenin proceeded _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 4. pp. 211--12.
58 to give it the finishing touches. Krupskaya wrote to Lenin's mother in October 1898 that Lenin was up to his ears in his markets and was writing from morning till night.Lenin finished the last two chapters and the appendices at the end of January 1899. He wanted his book on the development of capitalism in Russia to be understood not only by learned specialists, but also by the wide circles of the revolutionary intellectuals and the advanced workers.
The Development of Capitalism in Russia (The Process of the Formation of a Home Market for Large-Scale Industry) appeared in St. Petersburg in March 1899 under the pen-name of ``Vladimir Ilyin''. The 2,400 edition sold out very quickly. The book was the result of over three years' research. In this important work Lenin drew on his profound knowledge of life and used hundreds of books and ample statistical evidence to trace the general objective laws of the capitalist mode of production in the course of Russia's capitalist development. Lenin's analysis of the problem of the formation of a home market was an important contribution to Marx's economic doctrine. Lenin examined the Narodniks' theoretical errors on the question of the home market and the development of capitalism in Russia, and showed that the problem of the home market was inseparable from that of the development of capitalism, that the formation of a home market in capitalist production was based on a process of small farmers splitting up into agricultural employers and hired proletarians. ``The `home market' for capitalism is created by developing capitalism itself, which deepens the social division of labour and resolves the direct producers into capitalists and workers.''~^^*^^
On the basis of carefully studied and verified statistical data, Lenin gave a true picture of Russia's economic development, and a Marxist scientific analysis of the process of differentiation among the peasantry. The peasant, he showed, was more and more subordinated to the market, and was dependent on it as regards both his personal consumption and his farming.
Lenin disclosed in the socio-economic relations of the Russian countryside all those contradictions which are inherent in every commodity economy and every kind of capitalism, namely, competition, a tendency towards the concentration of production in the hands of a minority, the transition of the mass of small producers, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lcnin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 69.
59 the peasants, into the ranks of the proletariat and semi-proletariat, and their exploitation by the capitalists and the kulaks.The continuous and rapid differentiation of the peasantry (``depeasantising'') created two new diametrically opposite types of rural population - the bourgeoisie, or kulaks, on the one hand, and the rural proletariat, the class of hired labourers having allotments, on the other. It was this differentiation of the peasantry that created a home market for capitalism.
Lenin examined the inner economic structure of peasant and landowner farming, showed the changes that were taking place in agricultural production, and revealed the process of gradual transition of the landowners from the corvee ^^14^^ to capitalist economy based on the wide use of agricultural machines and hired labour.
In this book Lenin gave a vivid picture of how and in what direction the various aspects of the Russian economy were developing, including industrial production, of their interconnection and interdependence.
Lenin came to the conclusion that there were two possible ways for the capitalist development of Russia's agriculture. One was slow transformation of the old landowner economy, bound as it was by thousands of threads to serfdom, into a capitalist economy. The other was revolutionary destruction of every vestige of serfdom, primarily the landed estates. This alternative path offered an opportunity for the speediest and freest development of the productive forces on a capitalist basis, and created favourable conditions for the working class subsequently accomplishing its fundamental taskthe overthrow of capitalism and the transformation of the country's economy on socialist lines.
It was important for the theory and practice of the revolutionary struggle to take a correct view of the destiny of capitalism. The question was, which class must and could accomplish a radical transformation of society, what social force the revolutionaries should rely on and what were the prospects and conditions for the victory of the coming revolution?
Lenin focussed his attention on these points, and showed that a great people's revolution under the leadership of the proletariat was maturing in Russia.
The Development of Capitalism in Russia builds up a well-reasoned exhaustive economic argument in support of the idea of an alliance of the working class and the peasantry, the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat in the coming revolution. Lenin showed that the ranks of the proletariat were growing swiftly and steadily in town and country alike, that 60 the working class of Russia was becoming a tremendous political force. In his preface to the second edition Lenin, on the basis of the experience of the first Russian revolution, laid special emphasis on the leading role of the working class. ``The strength of the proletariat in the process of history,'' he wrote, ``is immeasurably greater than its share of the total population.''~^^*^^ He showed that it was not only a question of the proletariat's growing numerical strength, but of its concentration in large factories and major industrial centres, as well as of its alliance with the peasantry, together with whom it constituted the majority of the population. This important thesis of Leninism was proved correct by the subsequent revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat, which scored epoch-making victories despite the fact that it made up a comparatively small proportion of the country's total population. It was on the basis of Lenin's scientific analysis of Russia's socioeconomic system and class structure that the Bolsheviks elaborated their strategy and tactics in the first Russian revolution.
His analysis of the economic development of Russia enabled Lenin, in the first place, to deal the final blow both to Narodism and to the ``legal Marxists'' and to show that their views were utterly untenable; secondly, to prove on the basis of economic data the historical role of the working class as the leading political force in society; and thirdly, to demonstrate the role of the peasantry as an ally of the proletariat. Lenin's book is an outstanding scientific research, every conclusion of which is documented by a wealth of factual material. It is an example of the use of theory to substantiate revolutionary practice. Lenin's book is of great general theoretical and international importance. The fundamental propositions of the paths for the development of capitalism and class struggle examined in it are starting-points for the peoples of all capitalist and colonial countries fighting for their liberation and independence. Lenin deepened Marxist analysis of the development and essence of capitalism, throwing light, inter alia, on problems of the development of capitalism in countries where there are vestiges of serfdom, the development of agrarian relations under capitalism, and the social structure of capitalist society.
Lenin's political and economic substantiation of the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution dealt a blow at the opportunists all over the world, who asserted that the proletariat could not and should not fight for power and for socialism so long as it constituted _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 31.
61 a minority in the country. Lenin smashed these false allegations of the opportunists.During his three years in exile Lenin wrote over thirty books and articles, in which he outlined the paths of revolutionary struggle of the working class, elaborated the programme and tactics of the Party, and fought against the Economists. Skilfully evading the tsarist censorship, he used the legal journals of the day for the propaganda of revolutionary Marxism.
The idea of publishing his articles in book form had occupied Lenin's thoughts since the beginning of 1898. He was able to realise his plan. His first book of collected articles appeared in St. Petersburg in October 1898, under the title of Economic Studies and Essays, signed ``Vladimir Ilyin".
Against the Revisionist Critics of Marxism
Lenin expressed deep concern for the historical destiny of Marxism and followed the growth of opportunism in the Social-- Democratic parties of Western Europe, and the opportunists' attempts to rob Marxism of its revolutionary essence. By their vulgar misinterpretation of Marxism, the opportunists depreciated the role of the Party in the working-class movement, extolled trade-unionism, reduced to naught the importance of political struggle, and also belittled the role of theory. In 1896--98 the German Social-- Democrat Eduard Bernstein published a series of articles under the general title Problems of Socialism, later (in 1899) published in book form under the title The Prerequisites of Socialism and the Tasks of Social-- Democrats, in which he frankly revised the basic tenets of Marxism and sought to substitute a liberal reformist doctrine for Marxism. Bernstein proclaimed the opportunist slogan "The movement is everything, the final aim is nothing'', thereby advocating rejection of revolutionary struggle by the working class, and renunciation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under cover of pseudo-socialist phrases, the revisionists were fighting against Marxism, against the doctrine of the proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the victory of socialism.
Bernstein's book and the statements of his fellow thinkers in the press angered Lenin. He understood that "a regular war will have to be waged" against the revisionists. It was with great satisfaction that he read Plekhanov's Essays on the History of Materialism and his articles against Bernstein's revisionism published in Die Neue Zeit, 62 the journal of the German Social-Democrats. Lenin was strongly opposed to neo-Kantianism, which was reviving the most reactionary and idealistic postulates of Kant's philosophy. Neo-Kantian views were upheld by Bernstein, who, taking his cue from bourgeois professors, proclaimed ``back to Kant".
On receiving Kautsky's book against Bernstein entitled Bernstein and the Social-Democratic Programme. Anti-Criticism, Lenin and Krupskaya translated it into Russian in the course of a fortnight. The manuscript of this translation circulated from hand to hand. It was read by exiled Social-Democrats both in the Minusinsk District and elsewhere.
Lenin also sharply criticised the Russian distorters of Marxism, who, like Bernstein, attacked the revolutionary content of the theory of scientific communism. He showed ``...the limitless confusion of ideas, the absence of anything like independent views, the tremendous step backwards as compared with the views of Russian Social-Democracy which 'our' Bernsteinism represents''.^^*^^ He considered that the revolutionary Social-Democrats must wage a relentless struggle against the revision of Marxism and staunchly uphold the purity of revolutionary theory.
Lenin also resolutely attacked attempts to revise the teaching of Marx by the ``legal Marxists'' who praised Bernstein for his struggle against Marxism and regarded this struggle as a ``great service''. Lenin revealed the total groundlessness of the ``criticism'' in which Bernstein's Russian followers (Struve, Bulgakov and others) engaged.
Lenin was concerned about a problem of paramount political importance at the time, namely, the path which the young Russian working-class movement would take. Lenin concentrated all his energies on instilling a socialist consciousness into the working-class movement and directing its development into a revolutionary channel, the only one that was correct.
While in exile in Shushenskoye Lenin received from Anna Yelizarova-Ulyanova in St. Petersburg a copy of the Economists' ``Credo''. He immediately subjected this programme of Russian Bernsteinism, this ``quintessence of Social-Democratic opportunism'', to a detailed criticism. He wrote a sharply denunciatory article, "A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats'', against the ``Credo'', and called upon the Russian Social-Democrats to declare war on the opportunist ideas of the Economists, who wanted to _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 277.
63 revise the fundamental tenets of Marxism and denied the necessity of founding a Marxist revolutionary proletarian party in Russia. Lenin showed that Bernsteinism was ``an attempt to narrow the theory of Marxism, to convert the revolutionary workers' party into a reformist party'',^^*^^ and urged people to resolutely oppose the transmitting of these opportunist ideas to Russia.The ``Protest'' stated that the programme of the Economists boiled down to the idea that the working class of Russia should confine itself to the economic struggle while the ``liberal opposition elements" fight, with the ``participation'' of the Marxists, for ``legal forms''. Lenin wrote indignantly that ``the application of such a programme would be tantamount to the political suicide of Russian Social-Democracy''.^^**^^
The ``Protest'' emphatically opposed the views of the Economists and warned all Marxists against the danger of the Russian SocialDemocracy being diverted from the path it had already mapped out for itself, namely, the formation of an independent political workers' party inseparable from the class struggle of the proletariat and having as its immediate aim the winning of political liberty.
Stating that only the theory of revolutionary Marxism could be the banner of the workers, the ``Protest'' defined the aims of the Russian Social-Democrats. It stressed the tremendous importance of a proletarian party in the struggle for the emancipation of the working people. ``Only an independent working-class party can serve as a strong bulwark in the fight against the autocracy, and only in alliance with such a party, only by supporting it, can all the other fighters for political liberty play an effective part.''^^***^^
Thus Lenin gave decisive battle to the manifestations of Bernsteinism on Russian soil and dealt a blow at West European opportunism, which had begun to corrode the Social-Democratic parties in Germany, France and other countries.
Lenin sent the ``Protest'' to the Emancipation of Labour group, who had it published in Plekhanov's ``Vademecum for the Editors of Rabocheye Delo", a collection of articles against the Economists. ``A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats" played an outstanding part in the struggle against the Economists. It contributed to the development of Marxist thinking and to the organisation of a revolutionary party of the working class in Russia.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 176.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 178.
^^***^^ Ibid., p. 181.
64 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Plan for a Marxist PartyThe idea of creating a single Marxist party in Russia occupied a central place in all of Lenin's writings at that period. He resumed his work on a draft programme for the party which he had begun in prison in St. Petersburg. His draft analysed the development of capitalism in Russia and defined the principal aims and tasks of the class struggle of the proletariat. Lenin specified the ultimate goal of the proletariat, which was to win political power, abolish private ownership of the means of production and establish a socialist society. The draft included practical demands of the Social-- Democrats: demands concerning the whole country, demands of the working class and those of the peasants. It laid down the principles of the Russian Marxists' agrarian programme, and formulated the immediate aim of the proletarian class struggle-the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy.
In 1897 Lenin wrote an article entitled ``The Heritage We Renounce'', which defined the attitude of the proletarian party to the revolutionary traditions of its country. Lenin forcefully and convincingly refuted the falsehood spread by the liberal Narodnik press to the effect that the Marxists "abjure the 'heritage', break with the best traditions of the best section of Russian society, and so forth''. He compared the views of the Russian enlighteners of the sixties, the Narodniks and the Social-Democrats and showed that the Marxists ``are much more consistent and faithful guardians of the heritage than the Narodniks''.^^*^^ Lenin considered the Marxist party to be the legitimate heir to all the progressive gains and revolutionary democratic traditions of the peoples of Russia. But it goes without saying, Lenin pointed out, that the Russian Marxists did not want to guard the heritage in the way an archivist guards an old document. To guard the heritage did not mean confining oneself to the heritage received; it was necessary to go further, to independently determine, on the basis of Marxism, the ways and means for the revolutionary struggle of the working classes for their emancipation.
While in exile Lenin gave much thought to the plan of founding a Marxist party. He expounded it in his articles ``Our Programme'', ``Our Immediate Task" and "An Urgent Question" written for Rahochaya Gazeta (Workers' Gazette). In the autumn of 1899, Lenin accepted an offer to be the editor of this newspaper and then to contribute to it. The paper was recognised by the First Congress of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 526.
__PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 5---826 65 the R.S.D.L.P. as the official organ of the Party, but the police closed it shortly after. In 1899, an attempt was made to resume publication. But the attempt failed and Lenin's articles remained unpublished. They first saw light of day in 1925.Exposing Bernstein and his followers who advocated the theory of concessions to the proletariat's bitter enemies, to the governments and parties of the bourgeoisie, Lenin pointed out in his article ``Our Programme": ``We take our stand entirely on the Marxist theoretical position: Marxism was the first to transform socialism from a Utopia into a science, to lay a firm foundation for this science, and to indicate the path that must be followed in further development and elaborating it in all its parts.''^^*^^ He stressed that only the theory of Marx mapped out the right path and task of the revolutionary socialist party, namely, the organisation of the class struggle of the proletariat and the leadership of that struggle the ultimate aim of which was the conquest of political power by the proletariat and the building up of socialist society.
Lenin became the organiser of a revolutionary Marxist party, in founding which a new path different from any other had to be followed. He was the first Marxist to put the question of the workingclass party as party of a new type.
All Lenin's previous struggle against Narodism, ``legal Marxism'', Bernsteinism and ``economism'' as its variety was a necessary condition for the solution of the historic task set by him-the creation in Russia of a revolutionary Marxist party. Lenin conceived of this party only as a party of a new type, fundamentally different from the West European parties which tolerated opportunists and reformists in their ranks. The party for the creation of which Lenin fought was to be irreconcilable to any manifestation of opportunism, revisionism and compromise. The parties of the old typethe Socialist parties of Western Europe-had formed and developed in the conditions of legality and parliamentary struggle. They were gradually losing their revolutionary character, refusing to train the working class for revolutionary battles to overthrow bourgeois rule and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. They were sliding to opportunism, to the path of compromise with the bourgeoisie. Nor did the type of organisation created by the Russian revolutionary Narodniks of the seventies accord with Lenin's principles of building up a proletarian party. The Narodniks were isolated from the people. They proceeded from an erroneous theory and resorted _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 210.
66 to terroristic conspiracies as a method of struggle. Thereby they did great harm to the revolutionary movement.Lenin regarded the inadequate organisation of the Russian Social-Democratic movement as an urgent issue, a ``sore point''. His article ``An Urgent Question" stressed the imperative need to improve revolutionary organisation and discipline and to perfect secrecy techniques. ``...All the sound and developing sections of our society,'' he wrote, ``are in favour of democracy and socialism; but, in order to conduct a systematic struggle against the government, we must raise revolutionary organisation, discipline, and the technique of underground work to the highest degree of perfection.''^^*^^ It was indispensable to link together the numerous Marxist study-- circles and organisations scattered all over the country, get rid of amateurish methods and found a Marxist party that would be the political leader and guide of the working class.
But to achieve that, Lenin wrote, ``we must have as our immediate aim the founding of a Party organ that will appear regularly and be closely connected with all the local groups".^^**^^ Without such a press organ no broad organisation of the working-class movement would be possible, since only a common party organ consistently applying the principles of political struggle and holding high the banner of democracy could win over to its side all the militant democratic elements and use all the progressive forces of Russia in the struggle for political liberty. Lenin believed that only an all-Russia illegal political newspaper could, under the existing conditions, serve as an important means of rallying the Social-Democrats ideologically and organisationally. Owing to police persecution, it was impossible to publish such a paper in Russia, and Lenin therefore decided to have it published abroad.
At the end of his exile Lenin's thoughts were occupied with the problem of putting into effect his plan for creating a revolutionary proletarian party. Lenin looked forward eagerly to the day when his term of exile would be over, fearing that the tsarist authorities, as often happened, might prolong his term. He became nervous, slept poorly and lost weight. He longed to be doing active work.
Luckily, Lenin's apprehensions proved groundless-his term was not prolonged. Early in January 1900, the Police Department sent Lenin a notice to the effect that the Minister of the Interior had forbidden him to reside in the capital and university cities and _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 222.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 218.
__PRINTERS_P_67_COMMENT__ 5* 67 large industrial centres after the completion of his term of exile. Lenin chose Pskov as his place of domicile to be nearer to St. Petersburg.At last came the long-awaited day. Lenin and his family left Shushenskoye on the morning of January 29, 1900. Friends--- peasants and exiles --- pressed round the sledge fitted out for the long journey. The parting with Shushenskoye was warm and moving. The peasants had become truly attached to Lenin during his exile in the village. They saw the family off with good wishes and words of gratitude.
Lenin's exile in Siberia was at an end. His life and work entered a new period.
[68] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Four __ALPHA_LVL1__ FOR A PROLETARIAN PARTY OF A NEW TYPE __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.] __NOTE__ Quote is between LVL1 and LVL2 in original.As a current of political thought and as a political party, Bolshevism has existed since 1903.
Lenin
Lenin rejoiced that he could now devote himself wholly to his cherished aim. Only one thing shadowed the joy of complete freedom for revolutionary activity: the necessity of separation from his wife, who had still a year to spend in exile in Ufa Gubernia. How would she live this year, in what conditions? On the way back from Siberia Lenin stopped off in Ufa with his wife and mother-in-law and helped them to get settled.
Before leaving for abroad, Lenin had much to do in Russia. Connections with the Social-Democratic organisations had to be established, their support assured, and funds procured for the printing of the paper. With the energy and insistence that always characterised him, Lenin set at once to work to carry out the plan he had so thoroughly elaborated.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Preparations for Founding an All-RussiaOn his first day in Ufa Lenin met with A. Tsyurupa, V. Krokhmal and A. Svidersky, Social-Democrats living in exile in that city, and acquainted them with his plan for setting up a revolutionary newspaper which opened up broad possibilities for the activities of the Russian Marxists.
Lenin spent only a few days in Ufa. His work called him on. ``It was a pity we had to part just when the 'real' work was starting,'' Krupskaya afterwards recalled, ``but it did not even enter our heads that Vladimir Ilyich could remain in Ufa when he had a chance to move nearer to St. Petersburg.''~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes. Vol. 1, Moscow, 1979, p. 238 (Russ. cd.).'
69First place, as always, went not to personal desires or convenience, but to the revolutionary work to which Lenin and Krupskaya devoted their whole lives.
Disregarding the police ban, Lenin went to Moscow. He had talks there with several Moscow comrades. After a brief stay in Moscow he made a secret visit to St. Petersburg, where he met Vera Zasulich, just arrived from abroad, and proposed to her that the Emancipation of Labour group participate in the publication abroad of an all-Russia Marxist newspaper and of a theoretical and political magazine.
Lenin arrived in Pskov only at the end of February 1900 and was immediately placed under secret police surveillance.
As a means of livelihood, and to screen his revolutionary activities, Lenin took work to do for the gubernia statistical office. He associated with the local statisticians, frequented the city library and met with the local Social-Democrats. From Pskov Lenin carried on far-reaching activities, establishing contacts with Social-Democratic groups and individual Social-Democrats in different cities and arranging for their co-operation with the newspaper. He arranged a meeting which discussed his draft of an editorial board declaration of Iskra (The Spark) and J^arya (The Dawn) on the programme and tasks of the newspaper and magazine, in which he emphasised that the time had come for the Russian Social-Democrats ``to come out on the road of open advocacy of socialism, on the road of open political struggle. The establishment of an all-Russia organ of Social-- Democracy must be the first step on this road''.^^*^^
Early in April Lenin made a trip to Riga to establish contact with the Lettish Social-Democrats. On his return to Pskov, he took an active part in meetings of the local revolutionary and radical intellectuals. Some of the Social-Democrats undertook to set up an Iskra assistance group in Pskov.
Lenin applied to the authorities for permission to travel abroad.
Permission was granted, and early in May he was issued a
passport; but at the same time the St. Petersburg secret police instructed
the Pskov police ``to intensify surveillance over
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 330.
70 second illegal trip to St. Petersburg. This time, however, the police tracked him out, and he was arrested for visiting the capital without permission. The arrest took place in the street, and Lenin was unable to destroy or get rid of his list of contacts abroad, written in invisible ink on a sheet of paper, outwardly an ordinary bill. In prison, Lenin worried constantly over that sheet of paper. Were its true nature discovered, there would be no going abroad for him, no carrying out of his plan for an all-Russia newspaper. Only just free, after three years of exile; only just getting down to work-and, the work hardly begun, back in prison again!But the gendarmes noticed nothing suspicious about the sheet of paper. After ten days' detention, Lenin was released for lack of evidence. A secret police official escorted him to Podolsk, in Moscow Gubernia, where his mother was then living. Permission for. a visit here had been received before his arrest. The official turned Lenin over to the police officer of Podolsk Uyezd. Learning that Lenin was in possession of a passport for travel abroad, this officer arbitrarily decided to confiscate it. Lenin declared that he would complain to the Police Department. And the threat worked (at which, later, Lenin had a hearty laugh). The officer got cold feet and respectfully returned the passport.
The week Lenin spent in Podolsk was a busy time of meetings with comrades. Social-Democrats from many districts came to Podolsk to see him. Lenin arranged with each of them for the details of code, and got their agreement to write for the newspaper and to support it.
In June, accompanied by his mother and his elder sister, Lenin visited Nadezhda Krupskaya. On the way to Ufa he stopped off at Nizhni Novgorod, where he arranged a conference of Social-- Democrats to discuss their participation in the publication of the newspaper. From Nizhni Novgorod the trip continued by steamboat along the Volga, Kama and Belaya rivers. Lenin spent long hours on deck, in the happiest of moods, breathing deep of the pure air that floated down from the woods along the river banks.
In Ufa, where he spent over two weeks, Lenin arranged with the local Social-Democrats for their collaboration with the newspaper. On his return trip he visited Samara and Syzran and enlisted the support of the Social-Democrats for the all-Russia organ.
To discuss the plan for the organisation of the paper with Ivan Babushkin, Lenin on his way abroad went to Smolensk, where Babushkin was then staying. Later, Lenin noted that Babushkin had fervently approved the idea of a political newspaper 71 published abroad, which would help to unite and consolidate the Social-Democratic Party.
The support of the Social-Democrats secured, and a reliable base for the newspaper within Russia thus provided, Lenin in July 1900 left for abroad.
Lenin went to Switzerland, where the members of the Emancipation of Labour group had settled. After a visit to P. Axelrod, in Zurich, he went on to Geneva to discuss the publication of newspaper and magazine with G. Plekhanov. Plekhanov, like the other members of his group, approved the idea of such Marxist periodicals. But he considered himself entitled to a privileged position on the editorial board, and his arrogance was such as to exclude the possibility of normal collective work. Lenin, who stood always for collective effort, could not accept this stand. The programme of the newspaper and magazine and the problems of publication and of joint editorial work were discussed at conferences held in Belrive and Corsier (near Geneva). The disagreement with Plekhanov came out with particular force during the conference at Corsier, attended by Lenin, Plekhanov, Zasulich, Axelrod and Potresov. The discussion here was very heated, and relations were strained almost to the breaking point.
Obviously, collective work under such conditions would be impossible. The plan for an all-Russia newspaper was in danger of collapse. Lenin took this very keenly to heart. ``It was a real drama; the complete abandonment of the thing which for years we had tended like a favourite child, and with which we had inseparably linked the whole of our life's work,''~^^*^^ he wrote in a detailed record of his meetings and talks with Plekhanov on the publication of Iskra which he entitled ``How the Spark Was Nearly Extinguished"--- a dramatic and profoundly moving document, bearing vivid witness to the pain it caused Lenin that Plekhanov, whom he so sincerely admired and liked, should behave in this pettish, supercilious manner.
The negotiations with the Emancipation of Labour group finally ended in agreement that until some system of formal relationships could be worked out Lenin, Plekhanov, Zasulich, Axelrod, Martov and Potresov would be co-editors, Plekhanov having two votes. It was decided that Iskra be put out in Germany, though Plekhanov and Axelrod, who wanted the newspaper to be under their direct management, and all contacts with Russia to be handled by them, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 341.
72 had insisted on Switzerland. Lenin considered it essential that the newspaper be kept at a distance from the emigrant centre, and thoroughly secretised. That was of tremendous importance for security of communication with Russia.Agreement reached, Lenin went to Munich, where the main editorial work was to be centred. Here, for purposes of secrecy, he lived for some time without a passport, under the name of Meyer. Later, Bulgarian Social-Democrats supplied him with a passport made out to a Bulgarian named Jordanov. For secrecy, again, he carried on his correspondence with Russia through the Czech Social-Democrat F. Modracek, who lived in Prague.
Lenin's life in Munich, at the beginning, was very unsettled. The room he rented was inconvenient, and meals were a problem. Morning and evening he would make shift with tea, which he drank from a tin mug. This continued until Nadezhda Krupskaya arrived, in April 1901. To arrange for her coming Lenin had to go to Prague (which he first visited in the autumn of 1900 and where he established contacts with Czech Social-Democrats) and then to Vienna, to a Russian consulate which could certify his signature on his application for a passport for his wife.
After Krupskaya's arrival Lenin's life in Munich became easier. By advertisement they found a room in a worker's home. Here Krupskaya had the use of the kitchen, but only for the actual cooking of meals. All the preparatory work had to be done in the room in which they lived-and it had to be done as quietly as possible, in order not to disturb Lenin during his work. After a month they moved to a little flat in the Schwabing suburb. They bought some second-hand furnishings, which they resold when leaving Munich for twelve marks.
While living in Munich Lenin and Krupskaya strictly observed the rules of secrecy, meeting almost no one but the members of the editorial staff. Only once did Lenin break these rules. When Rosa Luxemburg arrived in Munich, he went to see her.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ ``The Spark Will Kindle a Flame''Lenin's thoughts were concentrated wholly upon the newspaper. Its organisation was a very difficult matter. Printing premises had to be found, and Russian type- unobtainable through ordinary, legitimate channels had to be procured. Clara Zetkin, an outstanding leader of the German and the international working-class 73 movement and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Germany, was of great assistance in the organisation of the paper, as were also the German Social-Democrat Adolf Braun (stopping off at Nuremberg on his way to Munich, Lenin had met Braun and arranged with him for organisational and technical assistance in the publication of Iskra), the Polish revolutionary Julian Marchlewski, who was living in Munich at that period, and a group of printing workers who procured the needed type. The magazine £arya and later Lenin's work What Is To Be Done? were printed in Stuttgart in the printing-house of the German Social-Democrat Dietz, who was in charge of his party's publishing house which brought out works by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Later, remembering Dietz's valuable assistance with publication of Iskra and £arya, Lenin wrote to him in 1913 that the R.S.D.L.P. ``will never forget the fraternal assistance you gave it during this vital period of its upbuilding''.^^*^^
In October 1900 a Declaration of the Editorial Board of ``Iskra'', written by Lenin, came out in leaflet form. Noting the urgent necessity for building a revolutionary party that would be inseparably bound up with the working-class movement, the Declaration at the same time pointed out that this could be achieved only in resolute struggle against amateurishness, against ideological vacillation, against every manifestation of opportunism; that before uniting, and in order to unite, it was necessary first of all to draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. The Declaration emphasised the great role of the working class in Russia, and of the party of that class. Only if organised in a revolutionary party, it explained, could the proletariat carry out its immediate historical task -that of uniting all the democratic elements in the country under its banner, and overthrowing the autocracy.
Through the latter half of November Lenin was occupied with the preparation and publication of the first issue of the magazine £arya. In the latter half of December he went to Leipzig to complete the final editing of the first issue of Iskra (the first issue was printed in Leipzig,^^15^^ the following issues in Munich). This first issue appeared in December 1900. As its motto, the newspaper carried a line from the Decembrists' reply to Pushkin: ``The spark will kindle a flame.'' Lenin's titanic work proved successful: an all-- Russia illegal political newspaper was organised, the militant organ of the Russian Marxists.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 43, pp. 360--61.
74Both in organisational matters and in matters of ideology, it was Lenin who headed Iskra. He wrote articles and entered, literally, into every question concerning its content and publication. He indicated topics, edited articles, found contributors, kept in touch with the paper's correspondents, procured funds, arranged for ways and means of having the paper smuggled into Russia, and saw to it that Iskra came out regularly. Krupskaya, acting as secretary of the editorial board, was of tremendous assistance to Lenin in this work.
Potresov, later to become a bitter enemy of Lenin's, described the tremendous work which Lenin did on the paper. He wrote that all valued Lenin not only for his knowledge, intellect and industry, but also for his exceptional devotion to the cause, his constant readiness to give himself up to it entirely, taking on an excessive amount of the most thankless functions and invariably performing them most conscientiously.
Iskra commented on all current economic and political questions, the working-class movement, and the position of popular masses. The newspaper began publication at a time when the revolutionary movement was growing in Russia and when mighty demonstrations under the banner of ``Down with autocracy" were held in the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kazan, Tomsk and other cities.
In 1900--03 the world was hit by economic crisis. In every issue, Iskra carried materials on the crisis and its grievous consequences for the people. Lenin had predicted as early as 1897, in the writings of his period of exile, that the production boom must inevitably be followed by crisis. Crises, he had pointed out, are a fearful chronic disease of every capitalist society, and this will continue inevitably, until the working class overthrows capital and destroys private property in the means of production.
In Russia the economic crisis led to industrial stagnation and mass unemployment in the cities, as a result of which, Lenin wrote, thousands of workers were sacked. The situation was aggravated by famine in the countryside, the result of a serious crop failure. Unemployment, famine, and the intensifying severities of police oppression fanned the flame of the people's hatred for the autocracy, and aroused them to political struggle. Throughout the land, the breath of revolutionary storm was rising. This brought forward with particular force and urgency the need for a party that would act as political leader of the working class, that would take the leadership in the approaching revolution. Iskra fought for the organisation of such 75 a party; and this gained it tremendous popularity among the workers.
The building of a revolutionary Marxist party in Russia began in a period when capitalism had entered its highest, final phaseimperialism; a period when proletarian revolution was becoming a matter of immediate perspective. In Russia, at this time, revolution was maturing.
In an editorial entitled, ``The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement'', in the first issue of Iskra, Lenin singled out as the cardinal task the creation of a strong, well-organised Marxist party, inseparably linked with the working-class movement; for without such a party ``the working class will never be able to fulfil its great historical mission --- to emancipate itself and the whole of the Russian people from political and economic slavery''.^^*^^
No. 4 of Iskra (May 1901) carried an editorial entitled ``Where To Begin'', in which Lenin discussed questions of the most vital importance, at that period, to the Social-Democratic movement in Russia: that of the character and the content of political agitation, and that of organisational tasks. The article outlined a concrete plan for the building of a Marxist party, and discussed in every aspect the role of an all-Russia political newspaper in the accomplishment of this plan. ``A newspaper,'' Lenin wrote, ``is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser.''~^^**^^ This thesis became a guiding principle not only for Iskra, but for all future revolutionary Marxist organs.
``Where To Begin" was extensively circulated in Russia. After its appearance in Iskra it was republished in pamphlet form by various local Social-Democratic organisations and distributed in many cities. It was particularly appreciated by working-class readers.
``I have shown Iskra to many comrades. It's almost in shreds, yet it is precious,'' a weaver wrote in a letter to the paper. ``It tells all about our cause, all about our Russian cause, which you can't price in kopeks or count in hours. When you read it, you understand why the gendarmes and the police are afraid of us workers and of the intellectuals whose lead we follow. Yes, they are truly terrifying to the tsar, and the bosses, and all, and not only the bosses' pockets. Of course, I am only a plain worker, and not much educated, but I feel very well where the truth lies. I know what the workers need. The working folk today can catch fire very easily. Underneath, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 370.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 22.
76 everything is smouldering already. It needs only a spark, and the fire will break out. How true, those words, that the spark will kindle a flame!... Every strike used to be an event. But now everyone can see that one strike is nothing. Now we must fight for freedom, we must fight for it might and main. Everyone would read now, old and young, but there's our trouble-we can't get the books. Last Sunday I got eleven friends together and read them `Where To Begin' and we sat over it till nightfall. How true it all is, and how it gets down to everything!"^^*^^Babushkin wrote from Orekhovo-Zuyevo: ``Iskra is eagerly read here, and all the copies received are in circulation. Thanks to the paper, we note a great rise of enthusiasm among the workers. There is particularly much talk of the article on the peasant question^^16^^ in No. 3, so that there is demand for more copies of that issue.''~^^**^^
Lenin's Iskra was the first all-Russia illegal Marxist newspaper, a militant revolutionary publication that became a decisive factor in the creation of a Marxist party of the working class. Lenin particularly emphasised the importance of Iskra as the chief instrument by which all the Social-Democratic committees could be united both ideologically and organisationally, and by which the party cadres and the advanced workers could be trained in the spirit of scientific socialism and of irreconcilable struggle against all manifestations of revisionism.
Iskra awoke the political discontent of the popular masses in Russia. There were articles by Lenin in almost every issue, over sixty articles in all - classical examples of revolutionary Marxist journalism, dealing with all the basic problems of party building and of the class struggle of the proletariat, and also with important developments in international affairs. Relentlessly, with militant party spirit, Lenin laid bare the reactionary policy of tsarism, attacked the bourgeois liberals, unmasked the nationalists and the SocialistRevolutionaries, and sharply criticised the opportunism of the Economists. Lenin's articles gave the working class of Russia new faith in its own strength and in the inevitable overthrow first of tsarism, and then of capitalism.
The Russian revolutionaries had to build the party in struggle against numerous foes, overcoming tremendous difficulties, under the fire of savage persecution. They were constantly in danger of _-_-_
^^*^^ Iskra No. 7, August 1901.
^^**^^ Iskra No. 9, October 1901.
77 prison, penal servitude, or exile. Many paid with their lives for their revolutionary activities. ``We are marching,'' Lenin wrote, ``in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire.''^^*^^The tsarist authorities made every effort to do away with Lenin. Colonel Zubatov, chief of the Moscow secret police, wrote in a secret letter to the head of the Police Department in December 1900 that ``there is nobody bigger than Ulyanov in the revolution today''. He recommended Lenin's immediate assassination.
It was at the end of 1901 that Vladimir llyich began to use the pseudonym ``Lenin'' in some of his writings. People often ask what lay behind the choice of name. Pure chance, most probably, as was the case with the other names,^^17^^ Lenin's associates would reply. The first work to appear over this signature was the beginning of the article, ``The Agrarian Question and the `Critics of Marx'" (Chapters I to IV) in %arya for December 1901.
Lenin's Iskra built up a strong organisational backbone for the Party. In the beginning of 1901, at Lenin's initiative and under his guidance, Iskra assistance groups were organised in Russia, and Iskra agents set energetically to work. These agents distributed Iskra, which was delivered to them from abroad; arranged for the reprinting of Iskra articles at illegal printshops within Russia; sent in articles, reports and funds, and kept the paper informed on all developments in Party life and in the revolutionary movement within the country. Lenin's Iskra rallied and united leading cadres for the Party-professional revolutionaries, advanced workers, daring and devoted fighters for the cause of the working class. Lenin attached tremendous importance to the part that Iskra played in their training and development. G. Krzhizhanovsky has written of Iskra, in this connection: ``In Russia it became a banner, rallying forces which were destined to demonstrate on a scale unexampled in history the all-conquering might of Lenin's tactics, of Lenin's 'Marxism in action'.''^^**^^
Staunchly, courageously, undaunted by constant police persecution, by the threat of prison or exile, the Iskra agents carried on their work in different parts of Russia. Lenin corresponded regularly with the Iskra agents and groups in Russia. In accordance _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 355.
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 23.
78 with the plan he had worked out, a Russian Iskra organisation was set up, with the Iskra agents as its core.Lenin guided the work of the Iskra organisation in Russia, helping it to overcome parochial tendencies and to further unity among the Party organisations on the principles of revolutionary Marxism. The organisation functioned up to the Second Party Congress, and played an important part in the preparations for the Congress and its convocation.
Under Lenin's guidance, L. Goldman organised a secret Iskra printshop in Kishinev. This shop reprinted Iskra articles, and whole issues of the paper, from matrices received from abroad. The reprinting of certain issues of Iskra was organised in Yekaterinoslav and in Baku as well. The underground printshop in Baku was known in coded correspondence as ``Nina''.
Iskra was sent into Russia by various routes-via London, Stockholm, Geneva, and also via Marseilles, Alexandria (Egypt), and it was transported through Persia. Then arrangements were made to transport it via Kamenets-Podolsky and Lvov. All this required a great deal of money, energy, and work, and was a very risky business. Iskra was smuggled across the border hidden in double-- bottomed suitcases, in the bindings of books, and by various other methods. For convenience of transportation, it was printed on thin, but strong paper.
The atmosphere on the Iskra editorial board was very strained. Lenin had to wage a continuous fight against opportunist vacillations, and grave differences arose on many cardinal questions. Particularly heated was the discussion of the article, ``The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism'', in which Lenin sharply criticised the pseudo-revolutionism of the Russian liberals, their policy of grandiloquence and shameful flabbiness. The debate dragged on for almost six weeks. Plekhanov, Axelrod and Vera Zasulich took issue with the political trenchancy of Lenin's appraisal of the liberals; but Lenin firmly refused to alter the general tone of his article, to depart from principle in his attitude to the liberals.
Thus once more Lenin's and Plekhanov's views on the liberal bourgeoisie and its ideologists radically diverged.
The differences on the editorial board came out still more sharply in the process of working out the Party Programme. At Lenin's proposal, the board had commissioned Plekhanov to draw up the first draft of the theoretical section of the programme, while Lenin wrote the agrarian section and the conclusion of the draft. In 79 January 1902, Lenin presented critical remarks on Plekhanov's draft. He strongly criticised, also, the second draft that Plekhanov submitted. The ideas presented, Lenin pointed out, were formulated far too abstractly, particularly in the parts dealing with Russian capitalism. Further, the second draft omitted ``reference to the dictatorship of the proletariat''; it failed to stress the leading role of the working class as the only truly revolutionary class; it spoke, not of the class struggle of the proletariat, but of the common struggle of all the toiling and exploited; it did not sufficiently bring out the proletarian nature of the Party. Lenin wrote a draft of his own (what is known as the ``Frey draft"^^18^^),
Krupskaya, in her reminiscences, has vividly described the atmosphere in which Lenin had to carry on his work on the editorial board, and to champion his stand. Here is her description of one of the meetings of the editorial board. "Plekhanov attacked parts of the draft programme which Lenin had drawn up. Vera Ivanovna^^19^^ did not agree with Lenin on all points, but neither did she agree entirely with Plekhanov. Axelrod also agreed with Lenin on some points. The meeting was a painful one. Vera Zasulich wanted to argue with Plekhanov, but he looked so forbidding, staring at her with his arms folded on his chest, that she was thrown off her balance. The discussion had reached the voting stage. Before the voting took place, Axelrod, who agreed with Lenin on this point, said he had a headache and wanted to go for a walk.
``Vladimir Ilyich was terribly upset. To work like that was impossible. The discussion was so unbusinesslike.''~^^*^^
To draw up a single draft programme for the R.S.D.L.P. on the basis of the drafts submitted by Lenin and Plekhanov, the hkra editorial board set up a ``co-ordinating'' committee. This committee presented a final draft, which was approved at a conference of the editorial board held in Zurich, in Lenin's absence. Lenin submitted remarks on the committee's draft, and also additions to it.
Materials that have now been made public bear witness to the tremendous amount of work Lenin devoted to the preparation of the programme. Besides such documents as Lenin's draft programme and his remarks on Plekhanov's first and second drafts and on the draft submitted by the co-ordinating committee, time has preserved materials accumulated in the preparation of the programme, materials reflecting the high points in the work of the hkra editorial board on the draft programme of the R.S.D.L.P.
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 252.
80Lenin attached great importance to the Party's agrarian programme. He was the first of the Marxists to work out for the proletariat a scientifically grounded policy towards the peasantry in the new historical conditions. He had set forth the hkra position on this question in his article ``The Workers' Party and the Peasantry'', actually a rough outline for the agrarian programme of the proletarian party. And in February and early March of 1902 he wrote the article ``The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-- Democracy'', in which he commented on the agrarian section of the draft programme of the R.S.D.L.P. In these articles Lenin formulated the basic demands of the Social-Democratic Labour Party in the agrarian field, going thoroughly into the class content of each demand and its fitness in the current historical period. As the central point of the agrarian programme, he pointed to the demand for the return of the lands cut off from the peasants^^20^^ by the reform of 1861.^^21^^ ``When the revolutionary moment comes'', however, he pointed out, this demand should be replaced by the demand for nationalisation of the land. ``Our principal immediate aim,'' he wrote, ``is to clear the way for the free development of the class struggle in the countryside, the class struggle of the proletariat, which is directed towards attainment of the ultimate aim of the international Social-Democratic movement, the conquest of political power by the proletariat, and the laying of the foundations of a socialist society.''~^^*^^
When Lenin's article ``The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy" came up for discussion, debate once more flared up on the hkra editorial board. Plekhanov, supported by Axelrod, made his remarks in an offensive tone, objected to basic propositions set forth in the article, and demanded that its attacks on the enemies of Marxism be toned down. After protracted and heated argument the editorial board deleted all passages dealing with nationalisation of the land.
Lenin took the differences on the editorial board to heart. He was compelled to battle so persistently in defence of Marxist principles, that he himself confessed: ``My nerves are worn thin, and I feel absolutely ill.''
Repeated discussion finally brought the draft programme of the R.S.D.L.P. to completion, and it was published in hkra No. 21, June 1902. Thanks to Lenin's determined struggle the draft included a clear-cut statement of the leading role of the working class _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 148.
__PRINTERS_P_81_COMMENT__ 6---826 81 in the revolution, and also that cardinal point the dictatorship of the proletariat. In these points, above all others, lay the fundamental difference between the consistently revolutionary programme of the working-class party in Russia and the programmes of the parties of the Second International. __ALPHA_LVL2__ What Is To Be Done?Of the most outstanding importance in the process of founding the Communist Party was Lenin's book, What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. His manner of work has been vividly described by his wife. ``When writing,'' we read in her reminiscences, ``he would usually pace swiftly up and down the room, whispering what he was going to write.''
In What Is To Be Done?, as Lenin wrote in his preface, he made "an attempt ... in the simplest possible style, illustrated by numerous and concrete examples, systematically to `clarify' all our basic points of difference with all the Economists''.^^*^^
In this work Lenin presented a thorough analysis of the state of international Social-Democracy, demonstrating that two trends had formed within it, and that an irreconcilable struggle was going on between them. One of these trends, consistently revolutionary, upheld the ideas of Marxism; the other-the ``new'', opportunist, trend - distorted the fundamental principles of Marxist theory. The true essence of the ``new'' trend, which proclaimed its ``critical'' attitude towards what it called ``outdated, dogmatic" Marxism, but in reality came out against the revolutionary content of the Marxist doctrine, fully revealed itself in Bernstein's opportunist, revisionist views. Bernsteinism vulgarised Marxism and corrupted the political consciousness of the working class by its preaching of the theory of the toning down of social contradictions, by its denial of the idea of social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, by its confining of the working-class movement and the class struggle to narrow trade-unionism and bourgeois-liberal reformism. Demagogically demanding ``freedom of criticism'', the adherents of Bernsteinism in reality advocated freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas into the working-class movement, freedom to transform Social-Democracy from a revolutionary party into a reformist party. Freedom is a fine word, but under the slogan of freedom and development of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 350.
82 industry most predatory wars were waged and ``freedom of labour" was used to rob the working people. ``He who does not deliberately close his eyes,'' Lenin wrote, ``cannot fail to see that the new ' critical' trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism".^^*^^Thus, in the first years of the twentieth century, Lenin exposed the opportunist trend in Social-Democracy and the harm it brought the international working-class movement. In this lay one of his great services to the movement.
Disclosing the international nature of opportunism, Lenin showed that, while assuming different forms in different countries, in its content opportunism remained everywhere the same. In France it found expression in Millerandism; in England, in trade-unionism; in Germany, in Bernsteinism; in Russian Social-Democracy, in Economism. Under cover of the false slogan of ``freedom of criticism'', the Economists, like the Bernsteinists, were ideologically corrupting Social-Democracy. They minimised the importance of revolutionary theory, of the programme and tactics of the party; sought to convert the working-class movement into a passive appendage of bourgeois liberalism; denied the leading role of the party in the working-class movement. The struggle against the Economists was at the same time a struggle against international opportunism.
In What Is To Be Done?, further, Lenin dealt thoroughly with the cardinal ideological and organisational problems with which Russian Social-Democracy was concerned at that period of its activities. He laid bare the ideological sources of opportunism, demonstrated the vast importance of revolutionary theory and socialist consciousness, showed the role of the party as a revolutionising and guiding force in the working-class movement, and substantiated the basic Marxist thesis that the proletarian party is called upon to unite the working-class movement with socialism.
Lenin showed that behind the Economists' fine talk of ``freedom of criticism" lay utter disregard for theory, lack of principle, the struggle against the revolutionary essence of Marxism. '''The role of vanguard fighter" he declared emphatically, ``can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory."~^^**^^ In confirmation of this thought he cited Engels, who recognised three forms of the great struggle of Social-Democracy-political, economic and theoretical.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 354.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 370.
83An important point at issue between the revolutionary SocialDemocrats and the Economists was the question of the relation between spontaneity and socialist consciousness in the working-class movement. The proper solution of this question was of tremendous importance.
The Economists were worshippers of spontaneity in the workingclass movement, and belittled the role of socialist consciousness. They tried even to lay down a theoretical basis for their worship of spontaneity, declaring that socialist ideology arose spontaneously, that its elements gradually accumulated within the working-class movement in the course of its development. Actually, however---as Lenin showed --- socialist ideology is introduced into the working-class movement by the revolutionary Marxist party.
In society, torn by class antagonism, Lenin explained, there can be no such thing as non-class or above-class ideology. The only alternatives are, bourgeois ideology or socialist ideology. The working class gravitates towards socialism. This gravitation is a natural outcome of its position in society, of the very conditions of its life. By its entire environment, it is best prepared for acceptance of the socialist ideology. ``The working class,'' Lenin wrote, ``spontaneously gravitates towards socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory reveals the causes of the misery of the working class more profoundly and more correctly than any other theory, and for that reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily.''~^^*^^ The bourgeoisie, however, as the ruling class, having at its disposal a vast apparatus for the spiritual enslavement of the masses, strives by all the means in its power to spread its own ideology and implant it among the proletariat. Therefore ``all worship of the spontaneity of the working-class movement, all belittling of the role of 'the conscious element', of the role of Social-Democracy, means, quite independently of whether he who belittles that role desires it or not, a strengthening of the influence of bourgeois ideology upon the workers''.^^**^^
To protect the working class from the influence of bourgeois ideas and to implant socialist ideas in its consciousness, a determined struggle must be waged against bourgeois ideology.
As a result of their worship of spontaneity, the Economists belittled not only revolutionary theory, but also the political tasks of the party and of the working class. They confined the tasks of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 386.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 382--383.
84 working-class movement to a purely trade union, economic struggle against the employers and the government, for better conditions of labour within the framework of bourgeois society. Such reformist policy, Lenin demonstrated, would lead to the preservation of capitalist wage slavery for long years to come. Going no further than the struggle of the workers for better terms in the sale of their labour power, was essentially not a revolutionary, but a purely trade union policy. The activities of the proletarian party, in contrast, were directed not only towards winning better terms in the sale of labour power, but towards the destruction of the social system which compelled the poor to sell their labour power to the rich. To counteract the opportunist line Lenin advanced the most important proposition of the prime importance of political struggle in the great battle for socialism: ``...the most essential, the ' decisive' interests of classes can be satisfied only by radical political changes in general. In particular the fundamental 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.''~^^*^^Hence Lenin concluded that the Social-Democrats must set actively about the political education of the working class, must ``utilise the sparks of political consciousness which the economic struggle generates among the workers, for the purpose of raising the workers to the level of Social-Democratic political consciousness''.^^**^^ It was not enough to propagandise the idea of hostility of the working class towards the autocracy, the idea that the interests of the workers were opposed to the interests of the employers. It was necessary to expose all and every kind of autocratic, police and capitalist oppression, as manifested in the most diverse fields of life and activitiesprofessional, civic, personal, family, religious, scientific, etc.
``The Social-Democrat's ideal,'' Lenin wrote, ``should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 390--91.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 416.
85 historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.''~^^*^^A considerable part of What Is To Be Done? was devoted to organisational questions, on which, too, Lenin gave battle to the Economists. Restricting the concept of the political tasks of the proletariat, the Economists belittled the leading role of the party in the working-class movement, depreciated its organisational tasks. They justified the amateurish methods, petty practicality, and lack of unity of the local organisations. Lenin once more comprehensively substantiated the necessity for building up a centralised, united organisation of revolutionaries. To achieve that, he pointed out, it was necessary that every attempt to depreciate the political tasks and restrict the scope of organisational work be denounced by the mass of the party's practical workers. ``Our task is not to champion the degrading of the revolutionary to the level of an amateur,'' he wrote, ``but to raise the amateurs to the level of revolutionaries.''~^^**^^
Exposing the Economists' opportunism in questions of organisation, Lenin elaborated a plan for the organisational structure of the Party. According to this plan, the Party was to consist of two sections: a narrow circle of leading functionaries, in the main professional revolutionaries, and a broad network of local Party organisations, which would have the sympathy and support of the toiling masses.
The following words by Lenin had a prophetic ring: ``History has now confronted us with an immediate task which is the most revolutionary of all the immediate tasks confronting the proletariat of any country. The fulfilment of this task, the destruction of the most powerful bulwark, not only of European, but (it may now be said) of Asiatic reaction, would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat.''^^***^^
Developing further the ideas of Marx and Engels on the proletarian party, Lenin in What Is To Be Done? laid the ideological foundations for a party of a new type. These ideas were eagerly accepted by the Social-Democratic organisations in Russia.
Lenin was particularly interested in the workers' reaction to his book. To I. Radchenko, in St. Petersburg, he wrote in July 1902: ``I was very glad indeed to have your report of a talk with the workers. Such letters are a great rarity for us, and they really invigorate us. Be sure to pass this on to your workers, with our request _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, p. 423.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 467.
^^***^^ Ibid., p. 373.
86 that they themselves should write to us not only for publication, but simply to exchange ideas and not to lose contact and mutual understanding. I personally am particularly interested, in this connection, in what the workers will think of What Is To Be Done?, because I have not yet had any views from workers.''~^^*^^This book greatly helped to build up a party and to rally the Social-Democratic committees in Russia around Iskra, and played a signal role in the preparations for the Second Congress of the R.STXL.P.
Lenin's activities abroad had as their aim the solution of the problems of Party work in Russia, the development of the workingclass and peasant movement. Lenin maintained close contact with the Party organisations in Russia. The letters that have come down to us reveal his thorough, detailed knowledge of the practical activities of the St. Petersburg, Moscow, Astrakhan, Nizhni Novgorod, Tver, Samara, Kiev, Odessa and other local committees. The instructions and advice he sent them helped to correct mistakes and shortcomings in their work. In September 1902, in reply to a letter received from a St. Petersburg Social-Democrat, Lenin wrote his ``A Letter to a Comrade on Our Organisational Tasks'', in which he explained in detail the Iskra principles on building a party of a new type-the principles which he had already set forth in the article Where To Begin and the book What Is To Be Done? ``A Letter to a Comrade" played an important part in the fight the revolutionary Marxists had to wage against the primitive methods of work fostered by the Economists, to establish the Iskra organisational principles.
Lenin attached particular importance to the bigger factories, where large numbers of workers were concentrated. Emphasising the significance of factory Party organisations as the basis of the Social-Democratic movement, he wrote: ``Every factory must be our fortress.'' Hectographed copies of the ``Letter'', passed from hand to hand, were widely circulated not only in St. Petersburg, but in Moscow, Riga, Rostov-on-Don, Nakhichevan, Nikolayev, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and other cities. In January 1904, the `` Letter" was published by the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. in Russia in pamphlet form, with a foreword and afterword written by Lenin.
Meetings with worker Iskra agents from Russia were very joyful occasions for Lenin. Coming to him for advice, the agents would receive exhaustive replies to all their urgent problems, and a clear _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 36, p. 119.
87 explanation of their immediate tasks. Their talks with Lenin, Iskra agents declared, were to them a true Marxist political schooling.Lenin's intensive, tireless activities towards the building of the Party bore their fruit. Lenin's Iskra was a centre uniting the Party's forces, training the Social-Democratic organisations and consolidating them into a militant, centralised, all-Russia proletarian party with a Marxist programme, revolutionary tactics, a single will and iron discipline. The Iskra organisations headed the struggle of the working class against the autocracy. Under Iskra's influence, the revolutionary movement became more and more a mass movement, as witness the wave of strikes and demonstrations that swept city after city. ``The finest elements in the class-conscious proletariat,'' Lenin was later to write, with pride, of this period, "sided with Iskra.''~^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ London, Paris, GenevaIn the spring of 1902 Iskra was to shift its publication to London. On March 30 (April 12), 1902, Lenin and Krupskaya left Munich for England. On their way they stopped off at Cologne, then at Liege, and for a short time at Brussels.
In London, the British Social-Democrats helped to organise the printing of Iskra, hospitably offering it the facilities of their own printshop. Lenin later recalled that Harry Quelch, editor of the progressive Justice, ``had to `squeeze up'. A corner was boarded off at the printing-works by a thin partition to serve him as editorial room. This corner contained a very small writing-table, a bookshelf above it, and a chair. When the present writer visited Quelch in this 'editorial office' there was no room for another chair....''^^**^^
In London Lenin and Krupskaya took the name of Richter. They lived at first in furnished rooms, but later rented two rooms in a little house not far from the British Museum. Mornings, Lenin would work in the Museum library, where Karl Marx had worked before him; afternoons, he would write at home. In his free time he studied London life. Its crying contrasts of wealth and poverty made him say, through clenched teeth, ``Two separate nations!" He made an attentive study, too, of the British working-class _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 332.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 19, p. 371.
88 movement, frequently visiting working-class districts and attending workers' meetings.While in London Lenin and Krupskaya continued to improve their knowledge of English. Through an advertisement they found people who agreed to give them English lessons in return for lessons in Russian.
At the end of June 1902 Lenin went to France to meet his mother and elder sister and to take a brief rest away from the strained atmosphere of the editorial office. He spent a few weeks with his relatives, in the little town of Loguivie on the north coast of France. His meeting with mother brought him great pleasure. He wanted fervently to have her always with him; but she stayed invariably with whichever of her children needed her most at the given moment. And her help was very often needed, for back in Russia now one, now another of the family-and sometimes two or three at once-was either in prison or in exile.
At this period, both in his articles for the press and in his speeches, Lenin devoted much attention to propaganda of the Marxist agrarian programme and to criticism of the programme and tactics of the petty-bourgeois party of the Socialist-- Revolutionaries,-^^2^^ who propagated the reactionary views of the liberal Narodniks. While declaring themselves socialists, the Socialist-- Revolutionaries, as Lenin showed, degraded their so-called socialism to the level of the most banal petty-bourgeois reformism,^^*^^ and by their agrarian programme misled the peasants.
Exposing the harm the Socialist-Revolutionaries brought to the Russian revolutionary movement, Lenin read a paper against them at a meeting of Russian political emigrants in Paris. Later in the autumn of 1902, he read similar papers in a number of Swiss towns (Lausanne, Geneva, Berne, Zurich), and also in London and Liege.
In February 1903, at the Russian Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris, Lenin delivered a series of lectures on ``Marxist Views on the Agrarian Question in Europe and in Russia''. This school was a legally functioning institution which had been set up for Russian students resident abroad. Its administrators were openly hostile to the revolutionary Marxists, taking the side of the Narodniks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. But such was Lenin's reputation as a theoretician in the field of the agrarian question that under pressure from a group of Social-Democratic students of the school, who acted in concert with the Paris Iskra group, the faculty _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 6, p. 174.
89 council resolved to invite ``the well-known Marxist V. Ilyin, author of the legally published books The Development of Capitalism in Russia and Economic Studies", to deliver a course of lectures on the agrarian question. What, then, were the professors' amazement and dismay when they discovered that Ilyin was Lenin! The school authorities attempted to call off the lectures, but to no avail. The students responded to Lenin's lectures with stormy applause, and declared afterwards that the course had been a red-letter event for them.On his return to London, Lenin on March 18 addressed a huge workers' meeting in Whitechapel on the occasion of the anniversary of the Paris Commune. Several Communards were present, and one of them, Louise Michel, also addressed the meeting.
In March and April 1903 Lenin wrote the pamphlet To the Rural Poor. An Explanation for the Peasants of What the Social-Democrats Want. The need for such a pamphlet had been suggested to him by the peasant disturbances of 1902. Lenin wrote this pamphlet with great care, trying to make it as comprehensible to the peasants as possible. To Plekhanov he wrote that he was very anxious, in explaining to the peasants the Marxist ideas on the class struggle in the countryside, to use real, factual material concerning the four strata of the rural population: the landowners, the peasant bourgeoisie, the middle peasantry, and the semi-proletarian and proletarian stratum. In his pamphlet Lenin explained to the peasants, what it was the workers' party was striving to attain, and why the rural poor should join forces with the workers. This pamphlet was a splendid model of popular Marxist literature.
Addressing himself to the rural poor, Lenin wrote: ``We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called socialism.''^^*^^ Further, he wrote: ``That is a great cause, and to that cause it is worth devoting one's whole life.''^^**^^
In the pamphlet To the Rural Poor Lenin developed the Marxist ideas on the leadership of the proletariat, the alliance of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 366.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 413.
90 working class with the peasantry, and the growth of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution into a socialist revolution. Addressing the rural poor, Lenin said that they must take the first step in the struggle against bondage to the landowners together with all the peasants, including the rural bourgeoisie, whereas it would take the final, main step only in firm alliance with the proletariat. And this final step both in the town and in the countryside would be the same: ``we shall take away all the land and all the factories from the landlords and the bourgeoisie and build a socialist society.''~^^*^^The pamphlet came out in Geneva in May 1903, with an appendix containing the text of the draft programme of the R.S.D.L.P. and an introduction to it written by Lenin. Smuggled into Russia, the pamphlet was widely circulated there. It was studied in underground Social-Democratic and workers' circles, and found its way to the countryside, to the army, to the navy. By December 1905, according to incomplete data now available, the pamphlet had been received in 75 towns and villages. It was reprinted abroad in 1904, in 10,000 copies, and was repeatedly reprinted in Russia. In 1905, a legal edition appeared in Russia. Lenin was later told by a worker who came from a poor peasant family that the pamphlet To the Rural Poor had made him a Bolshevik.
In the spring of 1903, at the insistence of the Emancipation of Labour group, the printing of Iskra was shifted to Geneva. Lenin and Krupskaya left London for Switzerland.
On their arrival in Geneva Lenin and his wife rented first rooms and then a little house in the working-class settlement of Secheron, where they lived until June 1904. The house consisted of a roomy, stone-floored kitchen and, on the upper floor, reached by a wooden staircase, three rooms, each furnished with a desk, a simple iron bed, spread with a steamer rug, several chairs, and crude bookshelves. In the kitchen, much of the furniture consisted of boxes that had held books or dishes. Occupying the whole of the ground floor, this kitchen served also as dining-room and drawingroom. Here Lenin-often sat talking with his comrades, who liked to visit this hospitable and friendly home. Iskra agent C. Bobrovskaya, recalling a visit to Lenin, noted his simplicity, cordiality, modesty and buoyancy. Of his appearance she wrote, ``Vladimir Ilyich wore a dark-blue Russian blouse, which gave his stocky figure a truly Russian look.''^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 419.
^^**^^ Reminiscences oj Vladimir llyiclt Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 100.
91Lenin was solicitous for the welfare of every comrade, and particularly of new arrivals, many of whom escaped from prison or from place of exile, reached Geneva without any means, lacking, often, even decent clothing and footwear. He knew no rest until such comrades had been provided with lodging, food, clothing and all else that was needed. Lenin was a responsive and attentive comrade, a cordial and charming companion. His tremendous tact, his constant readiness to render assistance to all who needed it, made him a lodestone to human hearts.
Lenin's energy was inexhaustible. He was fond of a good joke, fond of a song, of music, of popular festivities. A tireless worker, he nonetheless found time for pleasant relaxation among his friends. Not infrequently, he together with Nadezhda Krupskaya and other comrades, would bicycle out into the countryside, sometimes for a whole Sunday. Of one such holiday he wrote: ``We had a long walk, the air went to our heads as if we were children and afterwards I had to lie down and rest, as I did after a shooting trip in Siberia. In general, we do not miss a chance to go on outings. We are the only people among the comrades here who are exploring every bit of the surrounding country. We discover various 'rural' paths, we know all the places nearby and intend to go further afield. I have been feeling very well lately, I work regularly and do not worry about the commotion around me''.^^*^^
Of an evening, now and again, Lenin's comrades would gather at his home. They would sing together-the Internationale, the Marseillaise, Whirlwinds of Danger, Victim of Dire Bondage, the Song of the Volga Boatmen, The Storm Was Roaring, Sacred Baikal, the Volga Cliff, and other songs; and Lenin would join in the singing, forgetful of all else. During their walks, the evening tea, in conversation with his friends Lenin spoke with lively interest of literature, and in particular of such favourite writers as Chernyshevsky, Saltykov-- Shchedrin, Nekrasov. His knowledge in this field was broad and varied. He could recite many of Nekrasov's poems by heart, conveying to his listeners not only the poet's ideas, but the true beauty of his verse. He had an excellent knowledge of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy.
Living abroad, Lenin sorely missed his homeland. This feeling is often to be sensed in his letters to his mother. In Munich, on a wet evening, his thoughts turned to winter as it is in Russia-real winter, with its crisp sleigh-roads and its keen, frosty air. From _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 37, p. 358.
92 London, he wrote: ``If we could spend the summer on the Volga!" In the mountains of Switzerland, sun, snow and toboggans reminded him of ``a fine winter day in Russia''. He often spoke of Russia's open spaces, of his native Volga region, of the rugged beauty of Siberia. A newspaper item on the production of Chekhov's Three Sisters at the Art Theatre aroused his lively interest, and, in writing to his people, he asked about their impressions of the play. ``They act well at the Moscow Art Theatre-I still remember with pleasure my visit to that theatre last year...''.^^*^^ In another letter he wrote that he would like to see Gorky's Lower Depths at the Art Theatre. Again, he wrote to his mother of the pleasure it had given him to hear Tchaikovsky's Symphonic Pathetique at a concert that he had attended. Always, wherever he might be, Lenin remembered Russia. __ALPHA_LVL2__ At the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.Three years gained Iskra tremendous influence among the R.S.D.L.P. committees in Russia. Economism was routed ideologically. The period of confusion and vacillation approached its end.
Having united the Party organisations in Russia around Iskra, Lenin proposed the calling of the Party's Second Congress and launched a far-reaching preparatory campaign. Both the preparations for the Congress and the Congress itself, he realised, would be attended by sharp ideological struggle; and he pointed out repeatedly to the Russian Marxists the importance of the coming Congress and the vital necessity that it adopt the Iskra programme and organisational principles. He made thorough preparations, further, to combat Iskra's opponents and all opportunist elements.
On August 15, 1902, in London, Lenin conferred with representatives from the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., the Russian Iskra organisation, and the Northern League of the R.S.D.L.P. This conference set up an Iskrist nucleus for the Organising Committee (O.C.) that was to convene the Second Party Congress. In November, at Lenin's proposal, a conference of representatives of Social-Democratic committees held in Pskov set up the actual Organising Committee, made up in its overwhelming majority of Iskra supporters. Under Lenin's leadership, the Organising Committee set about extensive preparations for the Congress. _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 320. In February 1900 Lenin was at a performance G. Hauptmann's Fulmnann Henschel.
93 Lenin worked out a draft agenda and rules of procedure for the Congress; drew up a draft of the Party Rules, which he presented to the members of the Iskra editorial board and to delegates arriving in Geneva before the date set for the opening of the Congress; and attended meetings of these delegates, in order to work out a common stand. He drew up the plan for the report to the Congress on the activities of the Iskra organisation and drafted resolutions on the following questions: on demonstrations; on the status of the Bund^^23^^ in the R.S.D.L.P.; on the attitude to be taken towards the student youth; on Party literature; on the economic struggle; on May Day; on the international congress; on terrorism; on propaganda; on the distribution of forces.Shortly before the Congress Lenin wrote an article entitled, ``Reply to Criticism of Our Draft Programme'', explaining the agrarian section of the Party Programme. This article was published in the pamphlet, On X's Agrarian Programme. N. Lenin's Reply to Criticism of Our Draft Programme, which was distributed to the Congress delegates in lieu of a report on the agrarian question.
The Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. opened on July 17 (30), and sat until August 10 (23), 1903. It was with the most eager impatience that Lenin had awaited this Congress, of which he had so ardently dreamed, and which he saw as an event of historic significance. The Congress began its deliberations in Brussels, but after some days persecution by the Belgian police compelled a shift to London. In Brussels, for purposes of secrecy, the Congress sittings were held on the premises of a flour warehouse. The big warehouse window was curtained with red. Mounting to the makeshift platform, Plekhanov, with deep emotion, delivered his opening address. Elation filled all hearts in this historic hour.
Whereas at the First Congress there had been only nine delegates, at the Second there were forty-three delegates with fifty-one votes, and fourteen with consultative votes. The delegates represented twenty-six Party organisations. The Congress agenda included twenty items, the most important of these being: the Party Programme; the organisation of the Party (adoption of the Party Rules); and election of the Central Committee and of the editorial board of the Central Organ. To direct the work of the Congress, a bureau (presidium) was elected, with Plekhanov as chairman and Lenin and P. Krasikov as vice-chairmen. Lenin was elected, also, to the credentials committee and to the committees on the Party Programme and the Party Rules. From the opening of the Congress and to its conclusion, he kept a detailed record of its proceedings 94 which is of great interest. Lenin vividly described the work of the Congress and pithily characterised the delegates' speeches.
It was a hard-fought struggle that Lenin and his adherents, the firm Iskrists, had to wage at the Congress against the Economists, the Bundists, the Centrists^^24^^ and the inconsistent or ``mild'' Iskrists. who supported Martov.
Lenin, and with him the firm Iskrists, fought at the Congress for the building of the Party on the basis of ideological and organisational principles advocated by Iskra, for a solid and militant party, closely bound up with the mass working-class movement-a party of a new type, differing fundamentally from the reformist parties of the Second International. Lenin and the Iskrists sought to found a party that would be the vanguard, class-conscious, organised detachment of the working class, armed with revolutionary theory, with a knowledge of the laws of development of society and of the class struggle, with the experience gained in the revolutionary movement. At the Congress, Lenin and Plekhanov drew closer together. Plekhanov supported Lenin, though not without vacillation. He came out against the Economists, as he had before the Congress, and firmly supported the propositions Lenin had advanced in the book What Is To Be Done?
The discussion and adoption of the Party Programme aroused sharp struggle at the Congress. The opportunists attacked the basic principles of the Marxist programme. In particular, the Bundist Lieber and the Economists Akimov and Martynov opposed the inclusion in the Programme of the clause on the dictatorship of the proletariat. They were virtually supported by Trotsky, too. Not daring to protest openly against the inclusion in the Programme of the clause on the dictatorship of the proletariat, Trotsky announced that the implementation of this dictatorship would be possible only when the Party and the working class were ``close to identification" and when the proletariat constituted "the majority of the nation''.^^*^^ This was essentially a denial of the possibility of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The firm Iskrists, headed by Lenin, battled for a revolutionary programme, for the clauses on the dictatorship of the proletariat, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, the right of nations to self-determination, and proletarian internationalism. ``In this Programme,'' wrote Lenin later, ``the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is stated in clear and definite _-_-_
^^*^^ Minutes of the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., Moscow, 1959, p. 136 (Russ. ed.).
95 terms, and, moreover, is linked up with the struggle against Bernstein, against opportunism.''^^*^^ Lenin's uncompromising struggle ended in victory. The Congress adopted the Iskra programme. For the first time in the history of the international working-class movement since the death of Marx and Engels, a revolutionary programme had been adopted, a programme in which the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat was set down as the fundamental task of the party of the working class.The Programme stated:
``By replacing private ownership of the means of production and exchange by public ownership and by introducing the planned organisation of the socio-production process for ensuring the wellbeing and all-round development of all members of society, the social revolution of the proletariat will destroy the division of society into classes and thereby free all oppressed mankind, since it will put an end to all types of exploitation of one part of society by the other.
``An essential condition of this social revolution is the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the winning by the proletariat of political power which will enable it to put down any resistance by the exploiters.''~^^**^^
Reporting to the Congress on the Party Rules, Lenin visualised the Party as a militant organisation and its members as devoted fighters, ready equally for humdrum daily work or for battle with arms in hand. Every member of the Party, Lenin felt, must answer for the Party as a whole; and the Party as a whole for its every member.
The draft Rules aroused heated debate, particularly in connection with their first clause, which defined Party membership. Essentially, it was a question of what sort of organisation the Party was to be: opportunist or militant; amorphous and liberal, or consistently proletarian.
The first clause of the Rules as Lenin formulated it defined a Party member as one who accepted the Party Programme and who supported the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of its organisations. This formulation was designed to hinder admittance to the Party for unstable and non-proletarian elements and thus to help make the Party a strong, well-organised and disciplined body.
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 340.
^^**^^ Minutes of the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., pp. 419--20.
96Arguing for his formulation of the first clause of the Rules, Lenin said: ``It would be better if ten who do work should not call themselves Party members (real workers don't hunt after titles!) than that one who only talks should have the right and opportunity to be a Party member.''^^*^^ ``It is our task,'' he pointed out, ``to safeguard the firmness, consistency and purity of our Party. We must strive to raise the calling and importance of a Party member higher, higher and still higher.''~^^**^^
He inseparably bound up the formulation of the first clause of the Rules with the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin's principle of Party membership was opposed by Martov, and with him by all the opportunist and vacillating elements among the delegates. As formulated by Martov, the first clause of the Rules did not require for Party membership that a person belong to one of the Party's organisations. It demanded only that he afford the Party regular personal assistance under the guidance of one of the Party organisations. With membership so defined, the Party would become an amorphous body, open to opportunist elements. Such a party could not lead the workers to victory, to the seizure of power. Martov's formulation minimised the significance of Party membership; its tendency would be to create not a revolutionary, but a reformist party.
In the struggle of the two trends on the question of the principles of organisation of the R.S.D.L.P. Trotsky sided with Martov and other opportunists. At the Congress he announced that ``Comrade Lenin's formula must be rejected''.^^***^^ Trotsky opposed not only Lenin's draft of the first clause of the Rules, but Lenin's organisational plan of building the party, the party of a new type, as a whole.
At the Second Congress and later, in the years of the First Russian Revolution, Lenin waged an irreconcilable struggle against Trotsky's opportunist views. In 1908 Lenin wrote to Gorky: ``I personally, for example, had had a big fight with Trotsky, a regular fierce battle in 1903--05....''^^****^^
Martov's formulation of the first clause and the speeches of his adherents, reflected their views on the main Programme question --- that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. To them, the victory of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 503.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 504.
^^***^^ Minutes of the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., p. 275.
^^****^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 385.
97 the dictatorship of the proletariat was a matter of the distant future. Like the Western opportunists, they considered that the proletariat ought not to fight for power until it comprised a majority in the population of its country. They therefore felt no need for the militant, revolutionary type of party without which there could be no hegemony of the working class, no victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. By a narrow majority, the Congress accepted Martov's formulation.Plekhanov defended Lenin's formulation of the first clause, declaring that Martov's formulation opened the door to the opportunists. ``The truth is on Lenin's side,'' Plekhanov insisted.
An important question was that of the organisational principles on which the Party was to be built. Lenin sharply condemned the separatist stand of the Bundists, who attempted to split the Party into nationality groups. The party of a new type, he emphasised, was to be founded on the principle of proletarian internationalism. The Congress firmly repulsed the Bundists on this point.
A bitter struggle flared at the Congress when it came to the election of the Party's directing centres-the Central Committee and the editorial board of the Central Organ. This was a matter of paramount importance. Lenin maintained that only firm and consistent revolutionaries should be elected to the Central Committee and to the editorial board. The opportunists, for their part, tried to get their own followers into the Party centres. In the election of the editorial board of the Central Organ the Congress minority, headed by Martov, insisted that the old board (made up of six members) be retained in its entirety. Lenin proposed that the new editorial board be made up of only three members. The old board of six, as a body, had proved altogether incapable. In three years it had never once met in full strength. Obviously, the editorial board could not continue in this way. The proposal that the Congress endorse the old composition of the board, Lenin declared, was an open attempt to provoke a clash. Lenin had the support of the delegates from the biggest of the Party committees. In view of the fact that a section of the opportunists, the Bundists among them, had left the Congress when their proposals were defeated, the balance of forces had altered in favour of the firm Iskrists, who were now in the majority at the Congress. On this question, then, it was Lenin's adherents who won the day.
As the supreme Party institution, the Rules adopted at the Second Congress set up the Council of the Party, whose function it was to coordinate and unify the activities of the Central Committee 98 and the editorial board of the Central Organ, and also to renew these bodies should their membership go out of commission. The Council was to have five members: two from the editorial board of the Central Organ, two from the Central Committee, and the fifth member Plekhanov was elected at the Congress. He was the Council chairman. Lenin became one of the Council members representing the editorial board of Iskra.
Lenin's supporters, consistent revolutionaries, who had received the majority of votes in the election of the Party's central institutions, began to be known as Bolsheviks [from the Russian word bolshinstvo, which means, majority-Ed.]; and the opportunists, now in the minority, became known as Mensheviks [from menshinstvo, or minority -Ed.]. This split among the Iskrists was one of the most important political results of the Second Congress. The majority supported the principles and tactics advocated by Iskra, while the minority swerved to opportunism.
The struggle at the Congress was open and determined. Lenin afterwards wrote, recalling a conversation he had had at the Congress with one of the ``Centre'' delegates: ``\thinspace`How oppressive the atmosphere is at our Congress!' he complained. 'This bitter fighting, this agitation one against the other, this biting controversy, this uncomradely attitude!...' 'What a splendid thing our Congress is!' I replied. 'A free and open struggle. Opinions have been stated. The shades have been revealed. The groups have taken shape. Hands have been raised. A decision has been taken. A stage has been passed. Forward! That's the stuff for me! That's life! That's not like the endless, tedious word-chopping of your intellectuals, which stops not because the question has been settled, but because they are too tired to talk any more...'
``The comrade of the `Centre' stared at me in perplexity and shrugged his shoulders. We were talking different languages.''~^^*^^
The Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. was a turning point not only in the Russian but also in the world working-class movement. It crowned with victory Lenin's titanic struggle for the creation in Russia of a revolutionary proletarian party, a party of a new type, differing fundamentally from the reformist parties of the Second International.
``The world-historic importance of the Congress lies in the fact that at this Congress the process of the unification of revolutionary Marxist organisations was completed and a party of the Russian _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 347.
99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1983/LB525/20070119/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.01.19) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ working class was formed on the ideological, political and organisational principles which were elaborated by V.I. Lenin.''^^*^^``As a current of political thought and as a political party,'' Lenin subsequently wrote, ``Bolshevism has existed since 1903.''^^**^^
At the time of the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. the trends of development of the working-class movement in Russia had brought to the fore a vital political question-namely, whether this movement was to accept the ideology of revolutionary Marxism, or to fall under the sway of bourgeois ideology. Thanks to the efforts of Lenin and his adherents, this question was settled in favour of revolutionary Marxism. The victory of Lenin's brilliant plan for the creation of a revolutionary Marxist party, a party of social revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, showed that in Lenin the Russian and the international proletariat had a great theoretician and organiser who would carry further the cause and the teachings of Marx and Engels, an outstanding strategist of the revolution.
After the closing of the Second Congress Lenin, with the other Bolshevik delegates, visited the grave of Marx in Highgate Cemetery. Soon afterwards he left London to resume his work in Geneva.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ One Step Forward, Two Steps BackAfter the Congress the struggle within the Party flared up with renewed force. Defeated at the Congress, the Mensheviks did everything in their power to sabotage its decisions, to disorganise Party work, and to gain control of the Party's central bodies. The old opportunists-the Economists - had been routed; but, as Lenin clearly realised, the Party now had to deal with a new brand of opportunists, the Mensheviks. And Plekhanov now sided with the Mensheviks. Flouting the will of the Party Congress, Plekhanov decided to coopt to the editorial board all the former editors of Iskra. Lenin demanded that the Congress decisions be observed. He could not agree to their violation in factional interests. He therefore decided to resign from the Iskra editorial board and to entrench himself in the Central Committee, thence to campaign against the opportunists.
_-_-_^^*^^ The 70th Anniversary of the Second Party Congress. Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of April 4, 1973, Moscow, 1973, p. 3 (Russ. ed.).
^^**^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 24.
100Beginning with its 52nd issue Iskra came under Menshevik control. On the pages of this new, opportunist Iskra, the Mensheviks launched a venomous campaign against Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
In the latter half of November Lenin was co-opted to the Central Committee, to which he soon submitted a draft statement of protest against Plekhanov's co-optation of the Menshevik former editors to the editorial board of Iskra. In early December Lenin wrote an open letter to the editorial board of the Menshevik Iskra, under the heading, Why I Resigned from the ``Iskra'' Editorial Board; but, as the editors were too cowardly to publish it, he was compelled to get it out himself and sent it to Russia as a separate leaflet, where it was reprinted illegally; the letter was later found by the police during house-searches in different towns. It played an important part in exposing the opportunist tactics of the Mensheviks, their disrupting activity at the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. and in the period after the Congress.
In mid-January 1904, Lenin drafted an appeal ``To the Party Membership'', in which he criticised the opportunist views of the Menshevik Iskra. In the Council of the Party, too, where he now represented the Central Committee, he had to carry on a persistent struggle against the Mensheviks. This struggle grew so strained that he was compelled temporarily to leave the Council. Obviously, the Mensheviks aimed to gain control of the Central Committee as well; and of this Lenin warned the Bolsheviks in Russia, demanding that the local Party committees begin preparations for convening the Third Party Congress. Lenin was firm and resolute no matter how hard the situation was at the time: ``We are optimists as regards our victory.''~^^*^^
Deprived of so important a means for communicating with the Party as the newspaper had been, Lenin maintained close contact with the Party organisations by personal correspondence, writing and receiving, at this period, as many as 300 letters monthly. Thus, in his determined struggle against the splitting, disorganising activities launched by the Mensheviks, Lenin was always backed by the mass of the Party functionaries.
The Bolsheviks were faced with the urgent necessity of exposing the Mensheviks' anti-Party activities, their distortion of the facts of the struggle within the Party both at the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. and after the Congress. This Lenin did in his book One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (The Crisis in Our Party], written in _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 243.
101 February to May 1904 and published in Geneva in May 1904. In writing this book, Lenin thoroughly reviewed the minutes and resolutions of the Second Congress, the political groupings which had taken shape at the Congress, and the documents of the Central Committee and the Council of the Party.^^25^^ The split that took place at the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. was ``extremely painful" for Lenin, to quote Nadezhda Krupskaya. Working on the book One Step Forward, Two Steps Back he kept going over in his mind all the details of the struggle at the Congress. This is why the book ``cost him many a sleepless night and many a bad mood''.^^*^^One Step Forward, Two Steps Back presents a detailed analysis of the struggle during and after the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., focussing the attention of the Party membership on two central points: the political significance of the division of the Party into a ``majority'' and a ``minority'', and the significance in point of principle of the stand taken by the new Iskra on questions of organisation. By his analysis of these two questions Lenin demonstrated incontrovertibly that the ``majority'' was the revolutionary, and the ``minority'' the opportunist wing of the R.S.D.L.P. The ``minority'' had manifested their opportunism as early as in the debate on the first clause of the Party Rules. The principal task of the Congress, Lenin pointed out, had been ``to create a real party on the basis of the principles and organisational ideas that had been advanced and elaborated by Iskra ... Iskra's programme and trend were to become the programme and trend of the Party; Iskra's organisational plans were to be embodied in the Rules of Organisation of the Party''.^^**^^
This was not to be attained without a struggle. Step by step, Lenin exposed the opportunist vacillations, the political spinelessness of the anti-Iskrists and the unstable, ``marsh'' elements at the Congress. He took up in particular detail their views on the Rules. Examining the different formulations of the first clause of the Party Rules, which had aroused such heated debates at the Congress, Lenin stressed the necessity of understanding the true character of the shadings of opinion which had come out in this debate: essentially different understanding of the nature of the proletarian party and of its role in the working-class movement.
The debate on the Rules at the Second Congress, Lenin noted, was a clash between the adherents of bourgeois-intellectual _-_-_
^^*^^ N. K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, 1979, p. 128 (Russ. ed.).
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 211.
102 individualism, whose views and interests were expressed by the opportunist wing of the Congress, led by Martov, and the adherents of proletarian organisation and discipline.Ridiculing Martov's proposition that ``every striker should have the right to proclaim himself a Party member", Lenin showed that by this proposition Martov at once carried his error to the point of absurdity. It was the direct and unquestionable duty of Social-- Democracy to direct all manifestations of the class struggle of the proletariat, including strikes. But that did not mean that every striker was a member of the Party. ``This example of the `striker' brings out with particular clarity the difference between the revolutionary striving to direct every strike in a Social-Democratic way and the opportunist phrase-mongering which proclaims every striker a Party member.''~^^*^^
Lenin exposed the shameful conduct of the Mensheviks after the Congress, condemning their use of such unworthy methods of struggle as disorganisation of the Party's activities, disruption of Party work. Describing the position of the new, Menshevik, Iskra as opportunism in matters of organisation, Lenin demonstrated that this stand was hostile to centralism and strict proletarian discipline, that it defended anarchism and organisational looseness and opened wide the doors of the Party to petty-bourgeois, opportunist elements.
As a result of the work of the old Iskra and of the Second Party Congress the Social-Democratic movement had made a great forward stride: it had attained ideological unity, as formulated in the Party Programme and the Party resolutions; it had broken away from the narrow circle outlook and isolation, and had brought together dozens of scattered groups to form a party. And after that, Lenin wrote, attempts were being made to drag the movement back, to destroy the Party, to disorganise the Party's work. The old Iskra had taught people to wage revolutionary struggle, had been an organ of militant Marxism. The new Iskra taught the worldly wisdom of yielding and getting on with opportunists. The old Iskra had earned the honour of being detested by the opportunists, both Russian and West European. The new Iskra, for its disorganising line, was praised by the most extreme opportunists.
The division of the R.S.D.L.P. into ``majority'' and ``minority'', Lenin showed, was a direct and inevitable continuation of the division of the Social-Democrats into a revolutionary and an opportunist wing which had long since made its appearance in other _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 262.
103 countries. A characteristic feature of opportunism is its vagueness, diffuseness, elusiveness. ``An opportunist, by his very nature, will always evade taking a clear and decisive stand, he will always seek a middle course, he will always wriggle like a snake between two mutually exclusive points of view and try to 'agree' with both and reduce his differences of opinion to petty amendments, doubts, innocent and pious suggestions, and so on and so forth.''~^^*^^The Party, Lenin taught, is a part of the working class, its vanguard, class-conscious and organised detachment, the highest form of its organisation, its political leader, without whose guiding activities it is impossible to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and to build a socialist society. Insistently, Lenin pointed out that ``the stronger our Party organisations, consisting of real SocialDemocrats, the less wavering and instability there is within the Party, the broader, more varied, richer, and more fruitful will be the Party's influence on the elements of the working-class masses surrounding it and guided by it. The Party, as the vanguard of the working class, must not be confused, after all, with the entire class.''^^**^^ The Party, Lenin pointed out, is the amalgamation of scientific socialism with the working-class movement.
In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Lenin worked out very definite standards for Party life, standards which became law for all the Party's subsequent activities. Of these standards, the most important are: strict observance of the Party Rules and a common Party discipline by all Party members without exception; consistent application of the principles of democratic centralism and innerParty democracy; utmost development of the independent activity of the broad masses of the Party membership; development of criticism and self-criticism. Further, Lenin considered that Party organisations, and the Party as a whole, could function normally only on the condition of strict observance of the principle of collective leadership, which would secure the Party against the adoption of chance or biased decisions.
The ideas set forth in the book form the basis of the organisational structure and activities of the C.P.S.U. and all the fraternal Communist parties.
The concluding passage of One Step Forward, Two Steps Back vividly demonstrates the tremendous importance Lenin attached to the organisation of the working class, the great guiding force he saw _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 404.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 260.
104 in the revolutionary proletarian party: ``In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the 'lower depths' of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither the senile rule of the Russian autocracy nor the senescent rule of international capital will be able to withstand this army.''~^^*^^The Mensheviks were infuriated by One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Plekhanov demanded that the Central Committee dissociate itself from Lenin's book. The conciliators^^21^^' on the Central Committee attempted to hold up its printing and distribution. But these efforts failed. In Russia, the Party organisations hailed the book with the warmest approval. It was widely circulated among the advanced workers. Armed with Lenin's ideas, the Bolsheviks united more closely than ever, and set to work to improve their forms of organisation.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Campaign for the Convocation of the ThirdThe bitter struggle against the Mensheviks undermined Lenin's health. From the opening day of the Second Congress, his nerves had been strained to breaking point. Constantly agitated, taking deeply to heart the Mensheviks' intrigues, he became a victim of complete insomnia. Over-fatigue compelled him, in the end, to drop everything for a time. After a week of rest in Lausanne, he and Krupskaya, knapsack on back, set out into the mountains, following wild trails into the most remote retreats.
``The changing impessions, the mountain air, solitude, healthy tiredness and healthy sleep,'' Krupskaya later recalled, ``were a real cure for Vladimir Ilyich. His strength and vivacity and high spirits returned to him.''^^**^^
After their trip through the mountains, Lenin and Krupskaya spent August in a little village by Lac de Bre (in the vicinity of Lausanne). Lenin took great pleasure in digging in the kitchen-- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 415.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 37, p. 659.
105 garden with the Swiss peasant in whose home they lodged. This outdoor labour rested him splendidly. With A. Bogdanov and M. Olminsky, who were also summering here, Lenin discussed plans for further work. It was decided to start publication of a Bolshevik organ abroad, and to launch extensive agitation in Russia for the calling of the Third Congress. On his return to Geneva, in early autumn, Lenin moved from the suburbs to new quarters, closer to the central part of the city, to David Dufur St., 3, where he lived until his departure to Russia in November 1905.^^27^^ He now spent much time at the library of the Societe de lecture, which provided excellent working conditions. The members of the Society were rare visitors at the library, and Lenin had a room entirely to himself. He could pace up and down, as he was accustomed, when thinking out an article, and take books from the shelves at pleasure. There was nothing and no one to interrupt or hinder his work.In Russia, at this time, a revolutionary crisis was brewing. For many months now the country had been plunged into the RussoJapanese War, which had laid bare all the vice, all the rotten core, of the tsarist autocracy. Lenin wrote that the shameful end of this shameful war was not far off; that it would intensify the revolutionary unrest in the country and would call for the most determined offensive measures on the part of the party of the proletariat. And he worked to prepare the Party for the approaching revolution.
In view of the tasks facing the Party, it became more and more urgent that the Third Party Congress be called without delay. The Mensheviks persisted in their disruptive activities. Taking advantage of the vacillations of some members of the Central Committee, the Mensheviks gained control of the Party centres. They were actively supported by the leaders of the Second International.
Lenin exposed the true, opportunist nature of the Russian and West European renegades from Marxism. The blow thus dealt to international revisionism was of tremendous assistance towards the development of the revolutionary working-class movement the world over.
Although formally united with the Mensheviks in a single party, the R.S.D.L.P., the Bolsheviks, in fact, constituted an independent party and followed an independent, consistently revolutionary line that accorded with the fundamental interests of the proletariat, the peasantry, and all the different peoples inhabiting Russia. In August 1904, a conference of twenty-two Bolsheviks held under Lenin's guidance in the vicinity of Geneva discussed the question of the Party crisis and how to end it. The conference adopted an 106 appeal ``To the Party'', written by Lenin, which called upon the Party organisations to campaign for the immediate convening of the Third Congress, as the one possible way out of the crisis. This appeal became the Bolsheviks' fighting programme for Party unity.
In this most critical period of struggle within the Party Lenin had the support of the majority of the Party committees within Russia, which launched an active campaign for the Congress. In September to December, three regional conferences of Bolshevik committees (Southern, Caucasian and Northern) elected a Bureau of Majority Committees, which, under Lenin's leadership, began practical preparations for the Third Party Congress. In the autumn of 1904 Lenin drafted an ``Announcement of the Formation of a Bureau of Majority Committees'', which was sent to the Bolshevik Committees in Russia. Lenin wrote: ``Our slogan is the fight for the Party spirit against the circle spirit, the fight for the consistent revolutionary line against zigzags, confusion, and a reversion to Rabocheye Dyelo-ism, a fight in the name of proletarian organisation and discipline against the disrupters of organisation.''~^^*^^
As the immediate tasks of the Party, Lenin listed the establishment of ideological and organisational unity among the Bolsheviks, both in Russia and abroad; support of the publishing house for mass Party literature organised abroad; the struggle against the opportunism of the Mensheviks, who had seized control of the central bodies of the Party; preparations for the Third Party Congress, and assistance to the local Party committees. Lenin drew the Bolsheviks' attention to the danger of the position that had arisen in the Party and the need for the most resolute struggle against the Mensheviks who were insolently mocking both the Party and the principles. ``There is a complete split in the Party and there must be no procrastination if we do not wish to reconcile ourselves to the sacrifice of Party principle to clannishness, to absence of principle prevailing in the Party for a long time to come, or its being thrown back to Economism and the Rabocheye Dyelo approach.''^^**^^ Lenin called upon the Bolsheviks to break decisively with the Mensheviks and to convene the Third Congress of the Party without delay. ``The centres,'' he wrote, ``have put themselves outside the Party. There is no middle ground; one is either with the centres or with the Party. It is time to draw the line of demarcation.''^^***^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 492, 495.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 43, pp. 150--51.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 8, p. 64.
107In the struggle for the Party and the Party principle, relying on the experience of the Iskra, Lenin attached particular importance, and devoted particular attention, to the founding of a Bolshevik newspaper. ``The main thing now is to have such an organ,'' he wrote to the Bolsheviks in Russia.
In early December 1904, Lenin addressed meetings in Paris and in a number of towns of Switzerland, reporting on the situation in the Party. The money collected at these gatherings was used for the founding of the newspaper. As ^n interesting detail, we may note that when the Socialist-Revolutionary group in Zurich learned that Lenin would be speaking there they wrote to their leader, Chernov, appealing for help: ``We most urgently request that you speak here, and oppose Lenin, who, they say, will soon arrive. We will telegraph you when he arrives. Our existence here depends on your eloquence.''^^*^^
At a meeting of Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, held in Geneva on November 29 (December 12), the question of founding a Bolshevik Party organ was finally decided. The meeting endorsed Lenin's suggestion for the name of the newspaper- Vperyod (Forward) -and the text of the announcement of its publication. The name Lenin had chosen for the paper expressed the Bolsheviks' determination to push ever forward in the work of consolidating the Party and of organising the working-class movement, whereas the Mensheviks were trying to drag the Party back to the outlived stage of organisational disunity and the circle principle. The meeting set up the editorial board of the paper-Lenin, V. Vorovsky, M. Olminsky and A. Lunacharsky - and discussed the articles prepared for the first issue. As V. Karpinsky, a participant in the meeting, recalls, this free discussion and frank criticism, a striking manifestation of inner-Party democracy, deeply impressed the rank-and-file Party members.
In ``A Letter to the Comrades (With Reference to the Forthcoming Publication of the Organ of the Party Majority)" Lenin stressed the designation of the newspaper Vperyod as an organ of the Russian working-class movement, and proposed that regular correspondence be set up between the Party functionaries and the editorial board, so that the paper would be the product of collective Party effort. Lenin was particularly anxious that worker correspondents contribute to the paper. He asked the comrades to inform him as to how the workers had received the news of the founding of a Bolshevik _-_-_
^^*^^ Krasnaya Letopis No. 1 (22), 1927, p. 35.
108 newspaper and the appeal to them to write for it. He considered it highly important that tens and hundreds of workers write directly to the paper, and that they give their addresses so that Vperyod might be sent to them. He advised the organisation of subscriptions to the paper among the workers.Comrades leaving for Russia, M. Olminsky was later to recall, would be instructed by Lenin ``to make it their particular care that workers write to the editorial board about the life of the factories. To every local functionary arriving from Russia, the question was put: 'Are there workers on your committee? And if not, why not?'
``One day two young committee members, just arrived from Odessa, answered:
`` 'We tried having workers on the committee, but it didn't work out.'
``'What was the trouble?'
`` 'Why, they demanded right off that we put out leaflets about wages and other petty demands in the different factories.'
``With what indignation Ilyich came down on those young committeemen! How he lashed out at them, explaining that this demand of the Odessa workers proved more than anything else how necessary and beneficial it would be to have workers among the members of the committee.''~^^*^^
The first issue of Vperyod came out in Geneva on December 22, 1904 (January 4, 1905). The issue included several articles written by Lenin, among them ``The Autocracy and the Proletariat" ( editorial), ``Good Demonstrations of Proletarians and Poor Arguments of Certain Intellectuals" and ``Time to Call a Halt!''. Lenin stressed the fact that ``the line of Vperyod is the line of the old `Iskra'. In the name of the old Iskra, Vperyod resolutely combats the new Iskra''.^^**^^ Under Lenin's guidance the newspaper Vperyod played an important part in the struggle to consolidate the Party and in the preparations for the Third Congress.
Lenin's political and theoretical activity, his writings of the 1890s
and the beginning of the 20th century, his resolute struggle against
opportunism and revisionist attempts to distort Marxist theory, his
struggle for the creation of a party of a new type, his creative
application and development of Marxism in the conditions of a new
age - all this was the beginning of the Leninist stage in the development of
_-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 222.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 130.
Leninism, as an international teaching, became the Marxism of the twentieth century, the Marxism of the modern age.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union emerged and developed on the most firm base of the revolutionary theory of Marxism. On the granite base of this theory the Bolshevik Party made practical history, ``which'', as Lenin pointed out, "was quite unequalled in terms of wealth of experience.'' Lenin and the Leninist Party forged by the working class of Russia opened up to mankind not only theoretically, but also in practice, the way to socialism and communism.
Lenin's long years of persistent and courageous revolutionary activity had gained him tremendous prestige among the Russian Social-Democrats. Inspired by his daring plan for the creation of the party, the finest representatives of the working class, the Bolsheviks, rallied to his side. They were now ready for new battles-for the approaching revolutionary storm of 1905.
[110] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Five __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE FIRST ASSAULTWithout the ``dress rehearsal'' of 1905, the victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible.
Lenin
The year 1905 began with events that were destined to make history. On January 3, a strike broke out at the Putilov Works in St. Petersburg, involving 13,000 workers. The Putilov strike was supported by the workers of other St. Petersburg factories. On January 7, the strike became general.
The tsarist government did everything in its power to check the working-class movement. Police and soldiery-over forty thousand men-were concentrated in the capital, to terrorise the workers by violence and bloodshed and thus to squelch the movement before it could develop further. At the same time, steps were taken to set up activity of the Zubatov organisations - bogus workers' organisations, subsidised by the police, designed to divert the workers from political, revolutionary struggle and to direct the working-class movement along the reformist path. Particularly active was the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg, with a membership of almost nine thousand, led by the priest Gapon-an agent of the secret police. Gapon proposed that the workers march in procession to the tsar and present a petition stating their needs. Convinced that once the tsar learned of the intolerable hardships the people were suffering, he would be sure to help them, the workers supported Gapon's plan. The Bolsheviks warned the people that nothing could be attained by such a petition; but, realising that the procession could not be prevented, they decided to march in it together with the workers.
111 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Beginning of the Revolution in RussiaEarly in the morning on Sunday, January 9, the workers of St. Petersburg, carrying church banners, icons and portraits of the tsar, set out in procession towards the Winter Palace. Many had brought along their families- wives, children, old folk, all in festive spirits. Over 140,000 people joined in the march. As had been planned beforehand, the tsarist government gave the order to open fire on the unarmed marchers. Over a thousand were killed and nearly five thousand wounded, in this ``dastardly, cold-blooded massacre of defenceless and peaceful people''.^^*^^
The tsarist government had thought, by such bloodshed and violence, to crush the workers' fighting spirit, to teach the lesson of humility and obedience. But the government had miscalculated. The shooting down of peaceful, unarmed petitioners destroyed the people's naive faith in the tsar's ``kindness'' and ``mercy''. Even the most backward workers now realised that neither appeals nor petitions could ease the unbearable conditions in which they lived; that freedom could be won only with arms in hand. The attempt to turn the working-class movement from the path of revolution ended in hopeless failure. Before evening fell, barricades were being thrown up in the working-class districts of St. Petersburg. The people began to rise in struggle against tsarism.
Lenin responded to the January 9 events on the following morning with deep emotion.
Lenin assessed the workers' wrathful protest against tsarist bloodshed as the beginning of revolution in Russia. That same day Lenin wrote his article ``Revolution in Russia'', throbbing with the hot breath of revolution, vividly portraying the heroic struggle of the St. Petersburg proletariat on January 9. ``Force against force. Street fighting is raging, barricades are being thrown up, rifles are crackling, guns are roaring. Rivers of blood are flowing, the civil war for freedom is blazing up. Moscow and the South, the Caucasus and Poland are ready to join the proletariat of St. Petersburg. The slogan of the workers has become: Death or freedom!"^^**^^ ``Long live the revolution! Long live the insurgent proletariat!" Lenin proclaimed.
On January 9, 1905 the Russian working class received a momentous lesson in civil war; the revolutionary education of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 109.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 71.
112 proletariat made more progress in this one day than it could have made in months and years of drab, humdrum, wretched existence.Compelled to live as a political emigrant, Lenin kept in close touch with events in Russia, reacting swiftly to each new development and subjecting it to thorough analysis and appraisal. He had recognised the inevitability of revolution long before its outbreak, and had foreseen that it would involve the entire people. And he had worked indefatigably to prepare the Party for the coming social battles, in which the working class was destined to play the leading role.
When the revolution began Lenin stressed the tremendous influence that would be exerted on the world working-class movement by the heroic struggle of the proletariat in Russia. ``The proletariat of the whole world,'' he wrote, ``is now looking eagerly towards the proletariat of Russia. The overthrow of tsarism in Russia, so valiantly begun by our working class, will be the turningpoint in the history of all countries; it will facilitate the task of the workers of all nations, in all states, in all parts of the globe.''^^*^^
Lenin's instructive articles in the Bolshevik press, his numerous letters to Party organisations, his conversations with comrades arriving from Russia helped and guided the Party in the development of the revolution.
Lenin explained the nature of the first Russian revolution, its specific historical features. In character and objectives, he demonstrated, this was a bourgeois-democratic revolution, aimed at the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, the abolition of landed proprietorship and other survivals of serfdom, and the establishment of a democratic republic. Notwithstanding its bourgeois-democratic nature, however, the leader and chief motive force in this revolution was the proletariat. It was supported by the peasantry as its ally and the working people of non-Russian nationalities in the border regions, more and more of whom were joining in the revolutionary struggle. Actually, as Lenin was later to show, the revolution was in some senses a proletarian one; both in the sense that the proletariat was its leading force, and in its specifically proletarian methods of struggle, most important among these being strikes and armed uprising. Only the proletariat consistently and actively revolutionary, and ruthlessly uncompromising in its attitude towards the autocracy-could carry the revolution to complete victory over tsarism; and such victory could be achieved only if the _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 100.
__PRINTERS_P_113_COMMENT__ 8---826 113 proletariat gained the following of the peasantry, if the proletariat and peasantry acted in close alliance.The specific feature distinguishing the Russian revolution from earlier bourgeois revolutions in the West lay, as Lenin pointed out, in the fact that this was the first people's revolution to take place in the new historical conditions, when the bourgeoisie had already become a counter-revolutionary force, and the proletariat had grown into an independent political force capable of heading the revolutionary struggle against tsarism.
Lenin defined the tasks set before the Party, as the leader and organiser of the working class, by the revolution that had now begun. The revolution, he pointed out, created new conditions for the Party's activities and new ways and means of educating the masses. It was the duty of the Party organisations to launch broad organisational effort, to encourage revolutionary initiative, unhesitatingly to advance young people. To carry out its functions as the vanguard of the proletariat, the Party must reorganise its work and its methods of mass leadership as demanded by the new, revolutionary situation. ``The more the popular movement spreads,'' Lenin wrote, ``the more clearly will the true nature of the different classes stand revealed and the more pressing will the Party's task be in leading the class, in becoming its organiser.''~^^*^^ It was the duty, the fundamental task of the workers' party, he declared, persistently, day by day, to rally and unite the forces of the proletariat, preparing them for open mass struggle, for an armed uprising of the entire people to overthrow the autocracy.
A tremendous role in mobilising the masses was played by the Bolshevik press and, first and foremost, the newspaper Vperyod of which Lenin was the editor. Lenin wrote more than sixty articles and reports for the paper, which were extremely popular with workers. In working out the tactical line of the Bolsheviks in the revolution, Lenin fully substantiated the need for the guiding role of the Party in the preparation and carrying out of an armed uprising.
In connection with this task Lenin paid particular attention to the high principles and staunchness of the Party on questions of theory and scientific world outlook. In April 1905 he wrote: ``Now, in the epoch of revolution, evasiveness or lack of principle in theoretical questions is tantamount to utter ideological bankruptcy; for now of all times a socialist requires a well thought-out and _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 216.
114 consistent world outlook, so that he may control the events and not the events him.''~^^*^^Lenin devoted great attention, in that period, to the question of armed struggle by the masses, to the proper organisation of insurrection. Krupskaya writes: "Ilyich had not only reread and very carefully studied and thought over all that Marx and Engels had written about revolution and insurrection, but had read many books dealing with the art of warfare, made a thorough study of the technique and organisation of armed uprising. He had given more thought to this than people know.''~^^**^^
Of particular interest to Lenin was the experience of the Paris Commune. This, he felt, must be brought to the knowledge of Social-Democratic and advanced workers in Russia. He edited for publication in the newspaper Vperyod a Russian translation of the memoirs of General Cluseret, Street Fighting, in which the experience of the Paris Communards in barricade fighting is summed up and generalised, and wrote a preface to the memoirs and a brief biography of this famous general of the Commune. On March 5 (18), 1905, at a meeting of the Russian colony of political emigrants in Geneva, Lenin read a paper on the Paris Commune. "In the present movement we all stand on the shoulders of the Commune,''^^***^^ Lenin reminded his hearers.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Third Party CongressDuring the revolution the differences between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks intensified. The Mensheviks' opportunism was brought out with particular clarity by their appraisal of the motive forces in the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution, and by the tactics they adopted. To them, the bourgeoisie seemed the principal motive force in the revolution. This conception was a distortion of Marxism. It came of failure to understand the new conditions of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the era of imperialism; of failure to recognise the leading role of the working class.
The Mensheviks held that the chief concern of Social-Democracy _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 8, p. 316.
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 1, Moscow,1979, p. 285 (Russ. ed.).
^^***^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 208.
__PRINTERS_P_115_COMMENT__ 8* 115 and the working class should be to avoid frightening the bourgeoisie by ``excessive'' revolutionary spirit. Assigning the leading role in the revolution to the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks thereby belittled not only the role of the proletariat, but also that of the proletarian party as leader and organiser of the masses.Uncompromisingly, Lenin combated the opportunist line of the Mensheviks, exposing their limited, dogmatic, hackneyed political thinking, their cowardice and fear of the revolution, their betrayal of the interests of the proletariat and the peasantry. The Mensheviks, he wrote, ``fear... the leading role in the democratic revolution, and they are terrified at the thought of having 'to conduct the uprising'. The thought lurks at the back of their minds only they do not yet dare to voice it outright in the columns of Iskra - that the Social-Democratic organisation must not 'conduct the uprising', that it must not strive to take full control over the revolutionary transition to the democratic republic.''^^*^^
While Lenin and the Bolsheviks worked far in advance to prepare the proletariat for revolution, for active leadership in revolutionary events, the efforts of the Mensheviks were directed towards disarming the working class both ideologically and organisationally, educating it in the spirit of reformism and adaptation to the policy and tactics of the liberal bourgeoisie. Throughout the revolution, the Mensheviks pursued this anti-revolutionary, opportunist line, which Lenin subjected to annihilating criticism.
In his constructive approach to the problems raised by the revolution, Lenin emphasised the tremendous importance of the proletarian party. He demonstrated, in sharp ideological dispute with the Mensheviks, that tsardom could be overthrown, and a democratic republic established, only if the struggle of the revolutionary masses was directed by a party of the working class. The hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution and the vanguard role of the proletarian party-such was the basic idea which Lenin maintained in all his writings and in all his activities, which he upheld in implacable struggle against the Mensheviks.
The crisis within the R.S.D.L.P. intensified. There was hardly a question of tactics or organisation that did not arouse furious differences between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in the local R.S.D.L.P. committees. To end the Mensheviks' opportunism in matters of organisation and tactics and to work out united tactics _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 173.
116 for the proletariat in the revolution, it was essential that a Party congress be convened without delay.The Bureau of Majority Committees, under Lenin's guidance, began preparations for the Third Party Congress. In the editorial, ``The Convening of the Third Party Congress'', written by Lenin, Vperyod presented a tentative agenda for the Congress. As the central issue at the Congress, it advanced the questions of organisation and tactics posed by the vast sweep of the revolutionary movement in the country. Having mapped out a programme of work for the Congress, Lenin elaborated the basic ideas on tactics which he intended to present for discussion at the Congress, and drew up draft resolutions on all the principal questions to be considered. Also, he drew up a questionnaire designed to collect and generalise the practical experience of the Party organisations, indispensable for the revision of the Party Rules and for the drafting of the Congress resolutions. The collective experience of all Party members, Lenin felt, was of vital importance to the proper solution of the questions of organisation and tactics raised by the revolutionary movement. He proposed that all the Party committees, both Bolshevik and Menshevik, be invited to the Congress. But the Mensheviks refused to participate in the Third Congress. Instead, acting as a body entirely split away from the Party, they called a congress of their own, in Geneva. So few delegates arrived, however, that this gathering was termed merely a conference. Two congresses - two parties, was Lenin's comment.
The Third Congress opened in London on April 12 (25), 1905. It was attended by delegates from twenty-one Bolshevik committees. Lenin had been accredited by the Odessa Committee. Elected chairman of the Congress, Lenin directed all its work. He spoke on the principal items on the agenda: on the armed uprising, on the participation of the Social-Democrats in a provisional revolutionary government, on the attitude towards the peasant movement. The Congress Minutes record some 140 statements and proposals made by Lenin. He kept a detailed diary of the Congress sittings, and, as a member of the resolutions committee, drafted and edited resolutions and reports.
The Bolshevik Congress mapped out a strategic plan and revolutionary tactics for the Party in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. In substance, the plan was that the proletariat, acting in alliance with the whole of the peasantry and neutralising the liberal bourgeoisie, must carry the bourgeois-democratic revolution to its completion and thus clear the way for a socialist revolution.
117The Congress discussed the question of armed uprising thoroughly in every aspect. It adopted a resolution, drafted by Lenin, which declared it one of the major and most urgent tasks of the Party to organise the proletariat for direct struggle against the autocracy by means of armed uprising. The Congress instructed all Party organisations to explain to the proletariat not only the political significance, but also the practical, organisational aspect of the impending armed uprising, and the part to be played in the rising by mass political strikes. The Party organisations, the Congress resolution stated, must take energetic steps to arm the proletariat and to draw up a plan for the armed uprising and for direct leadership in it.
Speaking at the Congress, Lenin sharply criticised the opportunist views and actions of the Menshevik ideologists-Plekhanov, Martov and Martynov. In his report on the participation of the Social-Democrats in a provisional revolutionary government, Lenin demolished the Mensheviks' dogmatic arguments against Social-- Democratic participation in such a government. Once the tsarist regime had been overthrown, he demonstrated, a revolutionarydemocratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry would have to be set up, with a provisional revolutionary government as its political organ. And, if conditions were favourable, representatives of the Social-Democrats must enter this provisional government, there to combat ruthlessly all attempts at counter-revolution and to uphold the independent interests of the working class in order to carry the revolution to its completion.
Recalling this speech of Lenin's M. Tskhakaya writes: ``He began his report very simply. Wrathfully exposing the opportunist theses propounded in the articles of the Menshevik Iskra, he opposed these rotten Menshevik ideas with firm revolutionary Marxist directives. He illustrated his thoughts abundantly with facts taken from the history of the international working-class movement and particularly from the current struggle of the workers in Russia in the early months of revolutionary 1905. Towards the end of his speech all the delegates were standing, listening with breathless attention, carried away by the iron logic of the theoretician, tribune and organiser of the revolution.
``When Ilyich had finished, there was round upon round of thunderous applause. Before us stood a great revolutionary, theoretician and tribune.''~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 206.
118Lenin's ``Draft Resolution on the Relations Between Workers and Intellectuals Within the Social-Democratic Organisations" called upon the Party to ``make every effort to strengthen the ties between the Party and the masses of the working class by raising still wider sections of proletarians and semi-proletarians to full Social-Democratic consciousness''.^^*^^ Lenin insisted that worker Social-Democrats be advanced to membership on the local Party centres and the allParty centre. Workers, Lenin pointed out, have the class instinct, and, given some political experience, they soon become staunch Marxists. On learning that there was only one worker on the St. Petersburg committee, he exclaimed indignantly, "Disgraceful!" And in one of his speeches at the Congress he declared, ``I could hardly keep my seat when it was said here that there are no workers fit to sit on the committees.''^^**^^
The growth of the peasant movement in Russia made it essential that the Party formulate its agrarian platform. Now that the peasant movement was on the order of the day, Lenin said, the Party of the proletariat must officially declare its full support of this movement. It was the Party's first task to make the peasant masses politically conscious, to set up revolutionary peasant committees to carry through land reforms.
The Congress endorsed Lenin's formulation of the first clause of the Party Rules. It set up a single authoritative Party centre, the Central Committee, headed by Lenin; and the Central Committee appointed Lenin as its representative abroad, and also as responsible editor of the newspaper Proletary, established by the Congress as the Central Organ of the Party in place of Iskra.
After the Congress Lenin, with the other delegates, visited the grave of Karl Marx, as he had done after the Second Congress. In the days remaining before his departure from London, he took the delegates, for most of whom this was their first trip abroad, to see the sights of the British capital. Then, with a group of delegates, he left for Geneva. During the brief stop in Paris, Lenin showed his comrades places connected with the revolutionary struggles of the French people, and with them visited the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where the Paris Communards had been shot.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 409--10.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 411.
119 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Two Tactics of Social-DemocracyLenin attributed the greatest importance to propaganda of the tactical line adopted by the Third Congress and to criticism of the Mensheviks' opportunist tactics.
In this a large part was played by the newspaper Proletary, continuing the traditions of the old Iskra and Vperyod. Proletary was published in Geneva over a period of six months, in which time it carried something like 90 articles and items written by Lenin. Its first issue contained three articles by Lenin devoted to the Congress: ``Report on the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party" (editorial); ``The Third Congress'', and a note to the resolution "How the Congress Was Constituted''. It published also the most important of the Congress resolutions, most of which had been drawn up by Lenin.
The Third Congress decisions were received by the majority of the Party organisations in Russia as a militant programme of struggle for the victory of the democratic revolution; they served as the basis of the Party's entire practical activity.
Lenin informed the International Socialist Bureau-the executive and information body of the Second International-about the Party Congress that had taken place and about its decision to consider the newspaper Proletary as the Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P. The publication of the most important Congress documents in French and German, organised by Lenin, promoted a correct understanding by progressive West European workers of the Bolsheviks' tactics. When Karl Kautsky wrote in the press distorting the essence of the Third Congress resolutions, Lenin sent an open letter of protest to the editorial board of the Leipziger Volkszeitung. Addressing himself to German Social-Democrats, he wrote: ``If you really consider the R.S.D.L.P. to be a fraternal party, do not believe a word of what the so-called impartial Germans tell you about our split. Insist on seeing the documents, the authentic documents. And do not forget that prejudice is further from the truth than ignorance.''~^^*^^
In June-July 1905 Lenin wrote the book Two Tactics of Social-- Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. It was published in Geneva at the beginning of August. In Two Tactics Lenin set forth the theoretical considerations behind the Third Congress decisions, behind the Bolsheviks' strategic plan and tactical line in the revolution. It was _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, pp. 532--33.
120 Lenin who first elaborated the question of the specific features of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the epoch of imperialism, its motive forces and its prospects. Thoughts which he had set out briefly in articles and in speeches at the Congress received profound and thorough treatment in his Two Tactics. In this book he presented a comprehensive substantiation of the idea of leadership of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. At the same time he subjected to devastating criticism the tactical line adopted by the Mensheviks at their Geneva conference, and pointed out the basic difference between the Bolshevik and the Menshevik tactics in the revolution.The Mensheviks attempted to bolster up their opportunist tactics by reference to the bourgeois revolutions of the past. Drawing formal analogies between the revolution in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century and the West European bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they maintained that in Russia, as in Western Europe, it would be the bourgeoisie that would play the leading role in the revolution. That being so, they argued, the task of the proletariat and of its party lay in supporting the liberal bourgeoisie, in urging it on from below; and to anything more than that, in the bourgeois revolution, the proletariat neither could nor should aspire. The Mensheviks completely denied the revolutionary character of the peasantiy and the prospect of its acting as one of the real forces in the revolution. Lenin scouted this anti-Marxist assessment of the character and motive forces of the Russian revolution. The Mensheviks, he showed, evinced neither the ability nor the desire to understand the new conditions in which the revolution in Russia was taking place.
A scientific analysis of Russia's socio-economic and political development and of the experience of the world revolutionary movement brought Leriin to the conclusion that the bourgeois revolution in Russia did not fall into the same category as the West European revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, inasmuch as it was taking place in a different historical period-in the era of the imminent proletarian revolution and at a far more advanced stage of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The Russian bourgeois revolution differed fundamentally from all past revolutions in that it was the proletariat and not the bourgeoisie that allied to itself the mass of peasantry and formed its leading force.
The Mensheviks did not understand the meaning of the concept of bourgeois revolution. As they saw it, a bourgeois revolution could 121 be of advantage only to the bourgeoisie. There could be nothing, Lenin explained, more erroneous than such an idea. The elimination of all survivals of the serf-owning system, which hampered the free and rapid development of capitalism, was indisputably of advantage to the working class. But this could be accomplished only as a result of the victory of the bourgeois revolution. ``The more complete, determined, and consistent the bourgeois revolution,'' Lenin wrote, ``the more assured will the proletariat's struggle be against the bourgeoisie and for socialism.''~^^*^^
Lenin showed, further, that in a certain sense a bourgeois revolution was more advantageous to the proletariat than to the bourgeoisie; that the bourgeoisie was anxious to restrict the scope of the revolution, to confine it within the framework of constitutionalmonarchist law. It was to the interest of the bourgeoisie that the monarchy, and with it the entire feudal state machinery-courts, police, standing army-should not be smashed completely, that they be preserved so far as possible, for they would be needed to fight the workers and to defend bourgeois private property. It was to the advantage of the bourgeoisie that the bourgeois democratic transformations be accomplished as slowly as possible, that it come gradually, by means of cautious reforms and not by means of revolution. The working class, on the other hand, would gain more if the essential measures in the direction of bourgeois democracy were accomplished by revolution rather than reform; if the monarchy and its institutions were removed from the nation's body by way of swift, direct amputation, which would do completely away with the old police autocracy. But to achieve this the working class must be the most active of the revolutionary forces.
``Marxism,'' Lenin wrote, ``teaches the proletarian not to keep aloof from the bourgeois revolution, not to be indifferent to it, not to allow the leadership of the revolution to be assumed by the bourgeoisie but, on the contrary, to take a most energetic part in it, to fight most resolutely for consistent proletarian democratism, for the revolution to be carried to its conclusion.''^^**^^
Lenin held that the victory of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in which the proletariat played the leading role and was the principal motive force should result not in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but in a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. Only such a dictatorship of the two revolutionary _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 50.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 52.
122 classes could put a complete end to tsarism and crush the resistance of the landowners and the big bourgeoisie. And it would have to rely on military force, on the armed masses, on an uprising-not on institutions ``lawfully'' or ``peaceably'' established.The political organ of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would be a provisional revolutionary government, backed by the armed people. The Mensheviks opposed Social-Democratic participation in a provisional revolutionary government. They regarded participation in such a government as something very like betrayal of the working class. Lenin, on the contrary, considered such participation not only possible, but-in favourable conditions-necessary, as it would lend the government the will and the resolution to put into effect all the democratic demands of the worker and peasant masses, to carry the revolution to completion.
One of Lenin's great accomplishments was his theory of development of bourgeois-democratic revolution into socialist revolution, based on Marx's well-known thesis concerning uninterrupted revolution and the combination of proletarian revolution and peasant war. Approaching Marxism creatively, Lenin developed this thesis as dictated by the new historical conditions, and advanced strategic slogans defining the tasks of the first and the second stages of the revolution.
``Theproletariat 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 defended and developed the theory of socialist revolution in the struggle against Russian Mensheviks and West European opportunists who denied the leadership of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and its alliance with the peasantry. Lenin's theory of the socialist revolution completely refuted Trotsky's and Parvus' theory of ``permanent revolution" in which bourgeois revolutionary spirit and adventurism were combined with Menshevism masked by Leftist phrases. Lack of faith in the powers of the working class, denial of the revolutionary role of the peasantry, and skipping over the bourgeois-democratic stage of _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 100.
123 revolution---this is the essence of Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution''. Trotsky's opportunist slogan "No tsar, but a workers' government" meant that the collapse of tsarism could bring the working class to power immediately. But if the peasantry, as Trotsky thought, would not follow the working class, the working class could stay in power only on condition that the socialist revolution triumphed in the West and with the support of the foreign proletariat.The ideas set forth in Lenin's ``Two Tactics" were a new contribution to Marxism. They retain to this day their political and theoretical importance to all the revolutionary parties of the world in the struggle for democracy and socialism.
Two Tactics, appearing on the upgrade of the revolution, was enthusiastically received by the Party organisations in Russia. The book was distributed throughout the country. In the course of 1905 it was twice reprinted within Russia in 10,000 copies, a huge edition at the time.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ In Revolutionary RussiaThe revolutionary struggle in Russia was steadily gaining momentum, the flame of revolution spreading the country over. The activity of the masses, led by the Bolsheviks, became more and more energetic, and more and more political in character.
The course of revolutionary development bore out the strategy and tactics which Lenin had worked out for the Bolshevik Party. The revolution was history's first test of the vitality of Lenin's thesis on the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, of his teaching on the leadership of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
A major advance in the development of the revolutionary movement against the autocracy was the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, which set off a series of revolts in the armed forces. This mutiny, Lenin wrote, signified the open transition of a part of the army to the side of the revolution. It was of tremendous importance as the first attempt to form the nucleus of a revolutionary army. Unfortunately, the mutiny on the Potemkin was put down.
Preparing the working class for armed uprising, Lenin urged upon the Party organisations the need for serious study of the military art, and for the formation of hundreds and thousands of fighting squads. He attached particular importance to the formation of armed detachments in the big cities and their working-class 124 suburbs. He stressed the necessity of organising these detachments, of arming them with whatever came to hand, of teaching and training them. In a letter written in October 1905 to the Combat Committee of the St. Petersburg R.S.D.L.P. Committee, he outlined ways and means of preparation for an armed uprising. On his instructions, military groups were formed in the local Party organisations to arrange for the acquisition and manufacture of weapons. The Bolsheviks launched extensive propaganda and agitation among the soldiers and sailors, and began to issue newspapers for the troops. There were more than twenty of these, of which the best known, Kaz.arma (Barracks), receiving direct guidance from Lenin, had a circulation of some 20,000 copies.
Lenin attached great importance to the drawing of young people into the revolutionary struggle and to the party's work with them. In his articles ``The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth'', ``Anti-Militarist Propaganda and Young Socialist Workers' Leagues'', ``The Student Movement and the Present Political Situation" and others Lenin urged Communists to take an active part in the youth movement, including the student movement, to introduce the ideas of scientific socialism into it, to help young people work out a clear, integrated socialist outlook, to fight against the influence of Right and ``Left'' elements, and to rally it around the working class.
By the autumn of 1905 the revolutionary movement in Russia had attained unprecedented power. The political strike called in October spread throughout the country, involving over two million people, of whom nearly a million were industrial workers. The strike slogans were, ``Down with the autocracy!'', ``Long live the democratic republic!''
Lenin described the closing months of 1905 as a period of revolutionary whirlwind. The all-Russia strike was growing into armed uprising. Lenin wrote elatedly: ``The nationwide strike ... reached its climax. The mighty arm of the proletariat, which was raised in an outburst of heroic solidarity all over Russia, brought the entire industrial, commercial and administrative life of the country to a standstill. It was the lull before the storm.''~^^*^^
The general political strike was a new form of proletarian struggle, unprecedented either in Russia or abroad. The peasant movement, too, spread as never before, embracing over one-third of all uyezds. The working people of all the nationalities inhabiting _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, pp. 427--28.
125 Russia were inspired by the revolutionary example of the Russian people. In the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Poland, the Baltic provinces, the Transcaucasia, Central Asia and other border areas of tsarist Russia, the working people waged a heroic struggle against the autocracy and the landowners. The Russian proletariat, led by the Bolsheviks, wholeheartedly supported the national liberation movement of the peoples of the Russian empire.In the course of the general strike the proletariat in Russia set up the world's first mass proletarian political organisations, the Soviets of Workers' Deputies. Originally founded to lead the strike struggle, many of these Soviets became organs of the revolutionary movement as a whole. During October and November 1905 Soviets were set up in many towns and working-class centres and became organs of the armed struggle of the masses, the embryo of a new, revolutionary power. In later years, in working out the question of the state form to be assumed by the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin based his conclusions on the experience gained in the revolution of 1905--07 and on the work of these first Soviets.
Lenin's first appraisal of the Soviets as organs of revolt and as the embryo of a new, revolutionary power was set forth in his programme article ``Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies (A Letter to the Editor)'', written in mid-November 1905. Lenin regarded the Soviet as the embryo of an all-Russia political centre, deeply rooted in the people and enjoying the confidence and support of the broad masses.
Substantiating the idea of the leadership of the proletariat and its alliance with the peasantry, Lenin paid exceptional attention to working out the tactics of a ``Left bloc'', the creation of a united front of the Left, of all democratic forces capable, with the leadership of the proletariat, of waging a revolutionary struggle against the oppression of landowners and capitalists. He stressed that ``the proletariat cannot achieve victory if it does not win the majority of the population to its side''.^^*^^
Attacking conspiratorial, Blanquist methods of struggle, Lenin repeatedly pointed out that the revolution in Russia was a popular one, that it was carried out by the people, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry, and the broad sections of the revolutionary-- democratic front led by the proletariat. Therefore the tactics of the ``Left Bloc'', Lenin stated, were essential for the working class and its party.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 265.
126Lenin longed to return home. He passionately dreamed of the time when he would be able to speak not from the ``hateful `abroad' of an exile'', ``not from the cursed remoteness of Geneva, but at meetings of thousands of workers in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, at the free village meetings of the Russian 'muzhiks'\thinspace''.^^*^^ At the height of the general strike he enthusiastically wrote: ``My word, our revolution in Russia is a fine one! We hope to return there soon-things are heading that way with remarkable speed.''~^^**^^
Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg on November 8 (21), 1905, and immediately launched vigorous revolutionary activity, directing the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik committees, addressing meetings and conferences in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, conferring with Party functionaries, writing articles for the Bolshevik press. Under his leadership, the Bolsheviks carried on energetic preparations for an armed uprising.
On his first day in St. Petersburg Lenin met L. Krasin, a member of the C.C., and other Party functionaries at a secret Bolshevik meeting place. On the same day he visited the Preobrazhensky Cemetery, where the victims of ``Bloody Sunday" lay buried, to bow his head in grief over the graves of St. Petersburg proletarians. Lenin's heart beat high with love for the working people. The people's suffering and grief were his suffering and grief; the people's struggle for freedom and happiness was his struggle.
In the evening, at an enlarged meeting of the St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committee, Lenin defined the tasks of the Party with respect to the Soviets-a question on which, at that time, not all members of the Party were quite clear in their minds. Lenin put the question very clearly. The Party, he said, must guide the Soviets, direct their activity; but it must not substitute itself for them, nor dissolve itself in them.
On the following day, November 9, Lenin called a joint meeting of the Bolshevik members of the editorial board of the legal newspaper Novaya %hiz,n (New Life) and the local Party functionaries. He now headed the editorial board, and Novaya fyizn became in effect the Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P. Lenin enlisted as contributors some of the Party's finest writers, among them such outstanding Party publicists as M. Olminsky, V. Vorovsky, A. Lunacharsky, _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 8, p. 288.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 34, p. 360.
127 V. Bonch-Bruyevich. Maxim Gorky was an active contributor, and greatly helped the paper financially as well. Circulation rose almost to 80,000 copies.This was the first experience of a legal Bolshevik newspaper closely connected with Party organisations and revolutionary workers and extremely popular with them. The list of foreign contributors included: Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Marcel Cachin, Paul Lafargue and others.
The paper's editorial offices on Nevsky Prospekt were used as a secret meeting place for Party comrades, and also as premises for meetings of the Central and the St. Petersburg committees. It was here that Lenin and Maxim Gorky first met. Recalling this occasion, M. Andreyeva, Gorky's wife, writes: ``Lenin came out of one of the back rooms and strode quickly to meet Gorky. They shook hands lengthily. Lenin was in high spirits. Gorky, as always when embarrassed, spoke in an even deeper bass than usual. Over and over, he repeated:
``'So this is what you're like.... Fine, fine! I'm very glad, very glad.'~"^^*^^
In the evening they met again, at a sitting of the Central Committee.
Lenin went into every aspect of the work connected with the publication of Novaya £hizn, and was a frequent visitor at the printshop. He read every line to be printed in the paper, from important articles to the briefest of items. The main material, as a rule, was discussed at editorial conferences. His own articles, too, were read at these conferences, and-as always-he turned a ready ear to any suggestions or criticism that his comrades had to offer. ``Generally speaking,'' Lunacharsky writes, recalling their joint work on Novaya Zjiizji, ``Lenin was always strongly in favour of collective effort in the true sense of the term; that is, all of us putting our heads together to work a rough draft into a finished exposition.''^^**^^
Under Lenin's editorship the paper exerted tremendous influence on the life and work of the Party. Articles by Lenin appeared regularly on its pages. On November 10, it started publication of the article, ``The Reorganisation of the Party'', the first to come from Lenin's pen after his return from abroad. Impatient, as always, of dogmatism and stereotype, Lenin made it clear that in this new, revolutionary period it would be mistaken for the Party to _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 225.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 199.
128 confine itself to its old methods of work. He called for a radical reorganisation of the Party's work, taking full advantage of the possibilities for open, legal activity that had been gained by the general political strike of October 1905. The Party, he wrote, should recruit new members more freely, particularly among the workers; the elective principle should be introduced in setting up Party organs; and, while the underground Party apparatus must be preserved, legal and semi-legal Party organs and affiliated organisations should be built up.The new conditions of Party work, in which the difference between the illegal and the legal press was beginning to disappear, brought sharply forward the question of Party literature. In this connection Lenin wrote his famous article, ``Party Organisation and Party Literature'', which appeared in Novaya ^hi^n on November 13. The importance of this article cannot be overestimated. It advanced and substantiated the principle of the Party spirit in literature, subsequently to become a guiding principle for all progressive writings. To the socialist proletariat, Lenin wrote, literature cannot be a means of enriching individual groups or persons, cannot be a private affair, independent of the common cause of the working class. It must become a part of the common proletarian cause, inseparable from the Party's organised, planned work. To be sure, Lenin explained, literature is least of all subject to mechanical adjustment or levelling; here greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed to personal initiative and individual inclinations, to thought and fantasy, form and content. This, however, does not refute the proposition that literature must by all means and necessarily be firmly linked with Party work.
Lenin exposed the servitors of capital who hypocritically lauded ``freedom of the press" in bourgeois society. He showed that this notorious freedom is no more than a bourgeois or anarchistic phrase. The so-called freedom of the writer, artist, or actor in capitalist society is simply masked dependence on the money-bags, on bribery. To this hypocritically free literature, in reality linked to the bourgeoisie, the socialists oppose a really free literature, openly linked to the proletariat.
In all, thirteen articles by Lenin appeared in JVovqya ^hi^n. The paper existed a little over a month. It was suppressed by the tsarist government on December 2. On December 3, its last, 28th issue, appeared illegally. But the Party could not work without a newspaper. In the spring of 1906 the Bolsheviks began to put out, in place of Novaya £hizn, a new legal paper of which Lenin was __PRINTERS_P_129_COMMENT__ 9---826 129 factually the editor. The new paper appeared under various names: Volna (Wave), Vperyod (For ward), Ekfio (Echo). In July it too was suppressed.
In mid-November 1905, Lenin delivered a report, ``A Criticism of the Agrarian Programme of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party'', at a meeting of St. Petersburg Party functionaries. This was Lenin's first opportunity to address so large an audience within Russia. The hall was filled to capacity, and Lenin's appearance on the platform was met with a thunder of applause. But his report was interrupted by the police, and was completed only several days later, in a privately owned school-house.
A development of great importance to the further activities of the Bolshevik organisations was the first Bolshevik conference, held in Tammerfors, Finland, in mid-December 1905.
Lenin was elected chairman of the conference. He delivered two reports: on the current situation and on the agrarian question. The conference passed the resolution on the agrarian question moved by Lenin. A number of amendments, necessitated by the development of the revolution, were introduced into the Party's agrarian programme, and a decision was taken on the restoration of Party unity. The Central Committee was instructed to convene a unity congress of the R.S.D.L.P.
A most important place in the Revolution of 1905--07 is held by the December armed uprising in Moscow. An outstanding role in it was played by the Moscow Soviet and the district Soviets of Workers' Deputies led by the Bolsheviks. They consistently pursued a revolutionary policy and acted as the militant organs of the leadership of the uprising.
On December 5, a conference of the Moscow Bolsheviks unanimously resolved to declare a general strike and commence armed struggle. On December 7, barricade fighting began between the Moscow workers and the tsarist troops. Almost a thousand barricades were put up in the city streets. For nine days the Moscow workers battled heroically, with arms in hand.
At the conference of the Central Committee members, the Militant and the United Military Organisation,^^28^^ held on December 10 and attended by Lenin, the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks discussed ways and means of assisting the Moscow workers. The conference outlined measures to prevent the dispatch of troops from St. Petersburg to Moscow. It was decided to blow up the tracks, thereby holding up the troop trains. But all attempts to prevent the dispatch of troops to Moscow failed. The government succeeded 130 in sending off the Semyonovsky Regiment and also a number of other regiments, with orders to suppress the Moscow uprising.
By 16 December the superiority of the government forces had become obvious. The Moscow Committee of Bolsheviks and the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet passed a decision to end the uprising in order to retreat in an organised fashion and preserve the revolutionary forces.
The armed uprising of the Moscow workers was defeated, but its significance was tremendous. For the first time in history the revolutionary struggle had attained such development, such power, that armed uprising was conjoined with mass strike action.
In his article ``Lessons of the Moscow Uprising" Lenin generalised its experience, analysed the causes of defeat and outlined basic tactics by which the Party and the proletariat should be guided in preparation of an armed uprising and in its conduct. First, arms must be taken up more resolutely, and it must be explained to the masses that a peaceful strike alone was not sufficient, that armed struggle was necessary. Second, an active fight must be waged for the troops, to win over wavering units. Third, it was necessary not to confine oneself to the tactics of barricade fighting but to proceed to the tactics of guerrilla warfare, by small detachments and squads, to pursue offensive tactics.
Relying on the well-known statement of Marx and Engels that insurrection must be treated as an art, Lenin comprehensively elaborated this idea in connection with the new historical situation, the new conditions in which the proletarian struggle now found itself.
Throughout the revolution the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, waged an implacable struggle against the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats) - the party of compromise with tsarism who called for petty reforms to ``pacify'' the people.
``The proletariat is fighting, the bourgeoisie is stealing its way into power. The proletariat is shattering the autocracy by its struggle; the bourgeoisie clutches at the sops thrown to it by the enfeebled autocracy. Before the whole people the proletariat holds on high the standard of struggle; the bourgeoisie raises the flag of minor concessions, deals and haggling"~^^*^^---such was Lenin's appraisal of the revolutionary line of the proletariat and the self-seeking of the liberal bourgeoisie.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 28.
131In his pamphlet The Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers' Party (March 1906) Lenin referred to the Cadets as the "worms in the grave of the revolution''. He showed that the Cadets were opposed to armed uprising, that their tactics would inevitably boil down to manoeuvring between the autocracy and the revolutionary people. Essentially, the Cadets' tactics consisted in the effort to utilise the popular struggle in their own ends, despite their fear of revolutionary popular action. More than anything else, they feared the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution.
The objective conditions in which the Russian revolution found itself at that time called for a determined class struggle for democratic liberties, combining both Duma and extra-Duma activity. The parliamentary game played with such gusto by the bourgeois politicians was carried on behind the backs of the people. The parliamentary activity of the workers' party, on the other hand, was bound up with all other aspects of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. At such a time, Lenin warned, there could be nothing more harmful, more dangerous, than constitutional illusions, which were no more and no less than opportunist, bourgeois poison that the Cadet press was injecting into the people's minds. It was the task of the proletarian party to combat these illusions, systematically explaining to the workers and the peasants that, as before, the principal form of the social movement was the direct revolutionary struggle of the broad masses. Further, Lenin exposed the attitude of the Mensheviks, who dragged in the wake of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie.
In this pamphlet Lenin summarised the experience gained by the Russian proletariat in the struggle of October-December 1905- a struggle which he regarded as an important advance in the cause of the working class the world over. The events of 1905 confirmed a basic proposition of Marxism that the only thoroughly revolutionary class in contemporary society, and therefore the vanguard fighter in any revolution, is the proletariat. In the October-- December fighting the working class had employed tactics proposed in a resolution adopted by the Third Party Congress, which had stressed the importance of combining mass political strikes with insurrection. Lenin wrote highly of the creative role of the people in the revolution, expressed in the conquest of political freedom by seizure; in the establishment of new, self-constituted organs of revolutionary authority, not envisaged by tsarist law and defying this law; in the use of violence by the people to counter violence against the people.
132 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Fourth (Unity) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.The development of the revolution brought once more to the forefront the urgent need for a Party Congress. The worker Social-- Democrats were demanding Party unity. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, supporting this demand, at the same time held that unity with the Mensheviks was possible only on the ideological and organisational basis of revolutionary Marxism. In letters to the Central Committee written in August-October 1905 Lenin pointed out that, preparing for unity with the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks must put forward clear-cut ideas on Rules and tactics, and must pursue a firm policy. In their striving for unity, he insisted, the Bolsheviks must not gloss over fundamental differences on questions of revolution. It was on the basis of these ideas that the Bolsheviks, seeking Party unity, proposed to the Mensheviks that a joint Congress be called.
Lenin mapped out the Bolshevik tactical platform in a number of draft resolutions to be submitted to the Unity Congress. Lenin made a special trip to Moscow, in early March 1906, to lead discussion of this platform at a number of Bolshevik conferences after a preliminary discussion. It was also discussed at a conference of the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks which elected Lenin to a committee set up to edit the final text; and shortly afterwards the ``Tactical Platform for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.'' was published in the newspaper Partiiniye Izvestia (Party News). All but one of the resolutions entering into the platform were written by Lenin.
During March and early April the tactical platforms of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were widely discussed in the Party. Lenin addressed several of the numerous discussion meetings held in St. Petersburg.
The Fourth (Unity) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. was held in Stockholm on April 10--25 (April 23-May 8), 1906. Lenin was chairman at several of its sittings. The principal questions discussed were the agrarian programme, the current situation and the tasks of the proletariat as a class, and the Party's attitude towards the Duma.^^29^^
The Congress was marked by bitter struggle between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Heated debate arose over the agrarian question. The text of Lenin's report to the Congress on this question, unfortunately, has not been found, and only his concluding remarks are at present available. The Bolsheviks upheld at the Congress a programme of nationalisation of the land. Their agrarian 133 programme called uncompromisingly for the overthrow of the autocracy; it called on the peasants to rise in revolution against the tsar and the landowners. The struggle for the nationalisation of the land was an indispensable condition of the complete victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia and its development into the socialist revolution.
Lenin emphasised the indissoluble connection between agrarian revolution and political revolution, declaring at the Congress: ``We must plainly and definitely say to the peasants: if you want to carry the agrarian revolution to the end, you must also carry the political revolution to the end; for unless the political revolution is carried to the end there will be no durable agrarian revolution, and perhaps none at all.''~^^*^^
In his concluding remarks on the agrarian programme Lenin forcefully criticised the objections to nationalisation of the land raised by Plekhanov, Maslov and other Mensheviks, who at the Congress advocated a programme of municipalisation, that is, putting the landed estates into the hands of the local self-government bodies or Zemstvos (municipalities). The Menshevik programme of municipalisation was based on a gradual, peaceful reform of the landownerautocratic system. It represented a deal with the landowners. Taking issue with the Mensheviks, Lenin advanced two basic arguments: first, that the peasants themselves would never agree to municipalisation; and second, that without a democratic republic, without the fully guaranteed sovereignty of the people and without electiveness of government officials, municipalisation would be harmful.
Lenin made the report on the present situation and the class tasks of the proletariat, and a co-report on the question of attitude to the Duma. He also spoke on the armed uprising and on questions of organisation. He was a member of the committee set up to draft the Rules of the R.S.D.L.P. The Congress adopted Lenin's formulation of the first clause of the Party Rules, dealing with Party membership, which was so obviously correct that the Mensheviks could no longer oppose it.
The Mensheviks, at this Congress, were in the majority; and this predetermined the Congress decisions. On the most vital questions it was the Menshevik resolutions that were adopted, including the programme of municipalisation of the land. The resolutions adopted on the armed uprising offered no clear appraisal of _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 282.
134 the experience of the October-December battles of 1905. The Congress did not, and actually could not, lead to the real unification of the Party, it somewhat strengthened the formal unity.Though the Bolshevik line was not accepted by the Congress, and the Mensheviks secured a majority on the Central Committee, Lenin never lost his confidence in eventual victory over the Mensheviks, in the inevitable triumph of revolutionary Marxism, revolutionary strategy and tactics.
Feeling that the broad masses of the workers must be informed of the struggle that had taken place at the Unity Congress, Lenin wrote ``An Appeal to the Party by Delegates to the Unity Congress Who Belonged to the Former `Bolshevik' Group''. This appeal was discussed and endorsed by a conference of the Bolshevik delegates. Shortly after his return from Stockholm to St. Petersburg, Lenin delivered reports on the Congress to Party functionaries and to a number of district Social-Democratic organisations.
In the summer of 1906, the revolutionary movement in Russia began a new upswing. There was a wave of political strikes; the peasant struggle against the landowners flared up again, and there were cases of unrest in army units.
On 16 July Lenin, having received news of the tense situation in the Sveaborg fortress (near Helsingfors) and the possibility of an armed uprising there, drafted a resolution of the Executive Committee of the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. on the immediate dispatch of a delegation to Sveaborg. On July 17, the soldiers and sailors of the Sveaborg garrison mutinied. On July 19, mutiny broke out in Kronstadt as well. On July 20, proceeding from Lenin's recommendation, the St. Petersburg Committee decided that a general political strike be called in support of the Sveaborg and Kronstadt risings. Both risings, however, were brutally crushed.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Victory at the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.Lenin engaged in vast practical activity in the years of the first Russian revolution. His energy and capacity for work were astounding. He found time for everything: guidance of the Bolshevik press, reading lectures for propagandists on the tasks of the proletariat in the revolutionary movement and on the agrarian programme of the Party; visits to secret study-circles among the Putilov workers, at which he discussed questions of tactics. He was a familiar figure at 135 Party meetings and at workers' gatherings, at meetings of intellectuals and of students, at the quarters of the clerks' and accountants' trade union, the shop-assistants' union, etc. On all problems of the revolutionary struggle, the St. Petersburg proletariat received advice and directions from Lenin. And these direct contacts with the workers served to strengthen his profound conviction that the proletariat was the leading force in the revolution, and that the creative possibilities of the working class were inexhaustible.
The tsarist secret police spared no effort in the attempt to lay hands on Lenin. On the appearance of his article ``The Workers' Party and Its Tasks in the Present Situation'', published in the legal Social-Democratic student paper Molodqya Rossiya (Young Russia), the Police Department took action to arrest Lenin. One evening towards the end of February Lenin spoke on work in the countryside at a meeting of Party functionaries held in the home of a St. Petersburg barrister. Leaving the house after the meeting, Lenin noticed that he was being followed, and decided not to go home. Not without difficulty had he shaken off his pursuers and left for Finland.
Towards the end of the summer of 1906 Lenin settled down at Vasa, a country-house in Kuokkala occupied by the Bolshevik G. Leiteizen and his family. Situated in a secluded spot at the edge of a wood, Vasa was very convenient as a hiding-place. Lenin lived there, on and off, up to December 1907, making secret trips to St. Petersburg.
Vasa became the Party's organisational centre, from which Lenin directed Party activities, and where he conducted Party conferences and editorial board meetings and had talks with Party functionaries. The Police Department reported to the St. Petersburg secret police in January 1907 that meetings attended by many people often took place at Lenin's place of residence in Kuokkala. There was such a constant stream of visitors that the doors were never locked. Among Lenin's visitors at Vasa were Krasin, Vorovsky, Stasova, Bonch-Bruyevich, representatives from many towns and factories. A special messenger from St. Petersburg brought Lenin the press and mail every day, and took back from him articles and other material.
In August 1906, the Bolsheviks began to publish an illegal newspaper named, as formerly, Proletary and edited by Lenin. Actually, Proletary was the Central Organ of the Bolsheviks. It existed more than three years, and in this period carried upwards of a hundred 136 articles and notes by Lenin, almost half of them dated in the period of revolution up to June 1907.
During his stay at Vasa Lenin wrote a large number of articles, pamphlets and draft resolutions. He got through an incredible amount of work, and, as always, with remarkable speed.
Observing the necessary precautions, Lenin made frequent trips to St. Petersburg during this period, visiting the warehouse and editorial offices of the Bolshevik publishing house Vperyod. As head of the editorial board he directed all the work of the publishing house. He spent whole evenings there, going over and correcting proofs, manuscripts and plans, or discussing various matters with the staff. He attended many meetings of the St. Petersburg Party Committee held on the Vperyod premises.
Having dissolved the First Duma, which was not sufficiently obedient, in July 1906, the tsarist government intensified the reprisal against the proletariat and peasantry and announced its decision to convene a Second Duma.
The elections to the Second Duma again raised the question of the Party's attitude to it as one of the most urgent policy questions.
The elections to the Duma were held in February 1907. Seeking complete independence for the working-class party in the election campaign, the Bolsheviks advocated a "Left bloc'', that is, an argeement with the parties which represented the democratic petty bourgeoisie of town and countryside and opposed tsarism and the liberal bourgeoisie. The basic task of revolutionary SocialDemocracy, Lenin explained, lay in wresting the petty-bourgeois strata, and primarily the peasantry, away from the influence of the Cadets. He firmly opposed the Menshevik tactics of a bloc with the Cadets and support of the Cadets in the Duma, declaring agreement with the Cadets impermissible in principle and politically harmful.
The situation in the country and within the R.S.D.L.P. called urgently for a new Party congress. In mid-February 1907, Lenin drafted several resolutions for the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. In April, a pamphlet by Lenin appeared, entitled Report to the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. on the St. Petersburg Split and the Institution of the Party Tribunal Ensuing Therefrom.
Prior to the Fifth Congress, the Mensheviks proposed the convocation of what they termed a ``workers' congress'', representing various workers' organisations and designed, as they put it, to set up a ``broad labour party" that would include Social-Democrats, 137 Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists.^^30^^ Lenin vigorously opposed this Menshevik proposal, which was, in effect, an attempt to liquidate the truly proletarian party, to discard its revolutionary programme and tactics.
At the end of April Lenin left for Copenhagen where the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. was scheduled to take place. Here he organised a conference of the Bolshevik delegates, and spoke at the conference on the question of fighting squads. Suddenly, however, the Danish police appeared and demanded that the delegates leave the country within twelve hours. The Congress had to be transferred to London. On the way there Lenin stopped off in Berlin, where he went sightseeing with Maxim Gorky and visited Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. In London, the conference of Bolshevik delegates re-assembled and elected a bureau of the Bolshevik group at the Congress, headed by Lenin.
Maxim Gorky was invited to the Fifth Congress as a delegate with deliberative vote. Knowing that Gorky had tuberculosis, Lenin was particularly solicitous for his comfort. He accompanied Gorky to his hotel, and expressed deep concern because the hotel room seemed to him rather damp. ``For a long time after Lenin had left,'' writes M. Andreyeva, ``Gorky paced the floor of the cheerless room ... twirling and biting the ends of his moustache, as was his habit. Finally he said slowly, half to himself: 'What a wonderful person!'~"^^*^^
The Fifth (London) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. opened on April 30 (May 13), 1907. It met in the building of a Reformed Church on the outskirts of London. The Congress was attended by 303 delegates with the right to vote and 39 in an advisory capacity representing 150,000 members of the Party. This time the Bolsheviks commanded a stable majority. They were supported, on all major questions, by the Polish Social-Democrats and by a majority of the Lettish delegates. Lenin took a leading part in the Congress proceedings. He was elected to the Presidium, presided over nearly ten sittings and delivered several reports and speeches.
One of the chief items on the agenda was Lenin's report on the attitude to be adopted towards the bourgeois parties. This was one of the central differences dividing the R.S.D.L.P. into two campsdifferences connected with the appraisal of the bourgeois revolution in Russia. When deciding what attitude should be adopted towards _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 226.
138 the bourgeois parties, Lenin explained, it was necessary first of all to define the class nature of the different parties. Next, it was necessary to make clear in what relation the interests of these classes stood to the continuation or development of the given revolution and the role of the various parties in the revolution, and to furnish practical directions concerning the policy of the workers' party on this question.Maxim Gorky, in his reminiscences, vividly describes Lenin's speech at the Congress. Lenin, Gorky wrote, ``did not try to invent fine phrases. He set things forth word by word, revealing each in its precise meaning, and with amazing ease. It is very difficult to convey the unusual impression he made.
``His arm outstretched and slightly raised, he seemed to weigh every word in his open palm, winnowing away his opponents' fine talk and replacing it with weighty arguments, demonstrating the right and the duty of the working class to take its own way rather than follow, or even accompany, the liberal bourgeoisie. All this was unaccustomed, and it was said not as though coming from him, Lenin, but as the dictate of history.''~^^*^^
The Congress adopted a resolution, moved by Lenin, calling for relentless struggle against the parties of the Black Hundreds,^^31^^ the parties of the landowners and the big bourgeoisie, and for uncompromising exposure of the hypocritical democratic phraseology of the Cadets.
The policy of the Mensheviks, in effect denying the independence of the proletariat and accommodating itself to the liberal bourgeoisie, was defeated at the Congress. Lenin later noted that ``the London Congress's adoption of the Bolshevik resolution on non-- proletarian parties means that the workers' party decisively rejects all deviations from the class struggle, and recognises, in point of fact, the socialist criticism of non-proletarian parties and the independent revolutionary tasks of the proletariat in the present revolution"~^^**^^.
Between Congress sittings, Lenin spent much of his time in conversation with worker delegates. Everything interested him: their living conditions, daily routine, the position of the working-class women. His approach to people was so friendly, his questions so imbued with genuine affection and interest, that response was always frank and warm.
_-_-_^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 20, pp. 247--48.
^^**^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 12, p. 500.
139``In Hyde Park,'' Maxim Gorky tells us, "several workers who had not met Lenin before were sharing impressions of his activities at the Congress. One of them remarked:
`` 'Maybe the workers here in Europe have someone as clever as Lenin-Bebel, maybe, or some other. But I can't believe there's another man on earth I'd give my heart to from the first, like him.'
``Another worker added, with a smile:
`` 'He's one of us!'
``'So is Plekhanov,' somebody put in.
``The reply was swift:
``~`Plekhanov--- he's our teacher, our fine gentleman. Lenin is our leader and our comrade.'
``And one young fellow concluded, grinning:
``'Plekhanov can't forget he wears a frock-coat.'~"^^*^^
The Fifth Congress elected Lenin a member of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. The newly elected C.C. included Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and also representatives of the non-Russian Social-Democratic organisations. These not infrequently vacillated in their stands. To ensure a consistent revolutionary line in the spirit of the Congress decisions, the Bolsheviks met separately at the end of the Congress and set up a Bolshevik Centre, headed by Lenin.
After the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. Lenin attended the Second Congress of the Lettish Social-Democrats-also held in London. Here he delivered a brief report on the tasks of the proletariat in the present stage of the bourgeois revolution, and moved a draft resolution on this question.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ After the Coup d'Etat of June 3On June 3, 1907, the tsarist government dissolved the Second Duma, an act which became known as the coup d'etat of June 3. The government launched a furious assault on the revolution. The members of the Social-Democratic group in the Duma were arrested and exiled to Siberia; thousands of workers and peasants were shot by punitive expeditions; the prisons and places of exile and penal servitude were crowded to overflowing with revolutionaries. Thus began the grim period of the Stolypin reaction, so called after the tsarist Prime Minister Stolypin, hangman of _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Hyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 249.
140 freedom and of revolution. Particularly savage was the persecution of the Bolsheviks. On June 18, 1907, the Department of Police instructed the chief of the St. Petersburg secret police to submit all available material concerning Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) and to institute proceedings for his extradition from Finland.Lenin moved to a place called Styrsudden, in the Finnish interior. This was necessary not only to avoid discovery. Lenin's health was bad, and he needed a rest.
But he did not rest long. In the summer and autumn up to November 1907 Lenin met every week with Bolshevik members of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee before the meetings of the C.C. held in Terijoki.
In August, Lenin went to Stuttgart as a member of the delegation sent by the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. to the Congress of the Second International. This was the first international congress in which Lenin had participated. As a member of the International Socialist Bureau-to which he had been appointed in October 1905 as representative from the R.S.D.L.P.-he was elected to the Presidium of the Congress and also to the committee that drafted the resolution on militarism and international conflicts.
The Stuttgart Congress was marked by sharp collision between the revolutionary and the opportunist trends in international Social-Democracy. Lenin, who led the Bolshevik delegation, headed the fight against the opportunist elements. The principal issue under discussion was the colonial question. The Dutch ``socialist'' Henry van Kol, who made the report on this question, tried to justify the enslavement of the colonial peoples by the imperialists; he approved capitalism's ``civilising mission" in the colonies, and maintained that the Socialist parties should support the colonial policy. The commission on the colonial question was so composed that the opportunist elements, headed by van Kol, got the upper hand. Then the question was submitted to the Congress. Heated debate arose. Half of the German delegation, headed by Bernstein and David, voted for the opportunist resolution. Lenin came out vigorously against the revisionists, qualifying van Kol's position as a decisive step towards subordinating the proletariat to bourgeois ideology, to bourgeois imperialism. Lenin's struggle was successful. The Congress voted down the opportunist resolution on the colonial question.
Lenin drew up and, jointly with Rosa Luxemburg, proposed to the Congress vital amendments to the resolution presented by A. Bebel on militarism and international conflicts. One of these 141 amendments declared that, should war break out, the working class and its representatives in the different parliaments must strive to utilise the crisis created by the war in the interests of socialist revolution. Marcel Cachin wrote in his reminiscences: ``I happened to meet Lenin at the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International in 1907. He drew up a number of amendments to the resolutions, which breathed with the spirit of consistent struggle against the imperialist war.''^^*^^ Lenin and his adherents by their firm, uncompromising stand, succeeded in changing Rebel's resolution fundamentally, in the spirit of revolutionary Marxism. This was the first such resolution to be adopted in all the history of international Social-Democracy.
During the Congress Lenin worked incessantly to unite the Leftwing forces in international Social-Democracy, and determinedly fought the opportunists and revisionists. With Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg, Jaures and others, he signed a message of greeting from the Congress to the American working-class leader William Haywood, who had been arrested by the American government on trumped-up charges.
Much of Lenin's time was devoted to determining proper Bolshevik tactics in the period of defeat of the revolution, and to implementing such tactics. At two Party conferences - in Terijoki in late October and in Helsingfors in November-he delivered reports on the Third Duma and on the tactics to be followed by the SocialDemocratic group in the Duma. Heated debate developed at each of these conferences. Both conferences, however, carried the Bolshevik resolutions.
During August-December 1907 Lenin prepared for press a threevolume edition of his works, under the title: Twelve Tears. In September he wrote a preface to the first volume. Of the three planned volumes, only Volume I and the first book of Volume II were actually published. Volume I came off the press in November 1907 (although its cover carried the date 1908). The author's name was given as VI. Ilyin. The first book of Volume II appeared at the beginning of 1908. The writings collected in this volume, Lenin wrote in his preface, dealt with the programme, tactical and organisational questions of Russian Social-Democracy.
The police were searching all Finland for Lenin. In November the St. Petersburg Chamber of Justice banned his Twelve Years. The book was confiscated, and proceedings were instituted against its _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Lenin by His Contemporaries Abroad, Moscow, 1966, p. 84 (Russ. ed.).
142 author. On December 22 the Chamber of Justice ordered the book Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution to be destroyed. Evading the police, Lenin left Kuokkala for Aggelby. A meeting of the Bolshevik centre decided to transfer the publication of Proletary abroad, and accordingly Lenin in December left Finland. Stopping off in Helsingfors, just before his departure abroad, he conferred with comrades who came from St. Petersburg to meet him. On the train for Abo, Lenin noticed that he was being shadowed. He managed to leave the train unnoticed when still several miles from Abo, and, though the day was bitterly cold, trampled the rest of the way on foot, swinging his small suitcase. It was two o'clock in the morning when he reached the home of the Finnish Social-Democrat Valter Borg, who had been charged with arranging his passage from Abo to Stockholm.Arriving so late, Lenin missed the steamer whose captain had agreed to take on a passenger at Abo. He set out for its next stopping place. The road was difficult and it took much effort and time to get there. Part of the way lay across ice, which, for all the December frosts, was still unreliable. At one point the ice cracked underfoot and, as Lenin was later to relate, the first thought to cross his mind was, "What a stupid way to die!" At great risk, he succeeded finally in getting out of Finland.
After a brief wait in Stockholm, Lenin was joined by his wife, who had stayed behind in St. Petersburg to wind up their affairs. On her arrival they started for Geneva, stopping off for a few days in Berlin, where they visited Rosa Luxemburg. Their second period of emigration had begun which lasted nearly ten years.
The revolution of 1905--07 showed that the centre of the world revolutionary movement had shifted to Russia, and that the heroic Russian proletariat had become the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat. The struggle of the Russian proletariat was led by the Bolshevik Party, headed by Lenin.
The revolution put to the test of practice Lenin's great ideas: the leadership of the proletariat; the alliance of the proletariat and peasantry; the role of the Party as the guiding force in the workingclass movement. It demonstrated the correctness of the tactical slogans Lenin had advanced for the Bolshevik Party.
Lenin acted in the revolution not only as a theoretician who enriched Marxism with new ideas and propositions but as the organiser and leader of the masses in the assault upon the tsarist autocracy.
[143] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Six __ALPHA_LVL1__ ``NOT FOR NOTHING DO THEY SAY WE AREAt present our Party is passing through difficult days but it is invincible, just as the proletariat is invincible.
Lenin
Lenin and Krupskaya arrived in Geneva on a cold, windy day of January 1908. Coming back to this quiet, sleepy town from revolutionary Russia was hard. Especially hard were the first days in Geneva.
Krupskaya recalls: ``It was difficult for us, after the revolution, to get used to life in emigration again. Vladimir Ilyich spent all his days in the library, and in the evenings we did not know what to do with ourselves. We had no desire to sit in the cold cheerless room we had rented and longed to be among people. Every evening we went to the cinema or the theatre, although we seldom stayed to the end, usually leaving in the middle of a show to wander about the streets, most often along the lake.''~^^*^^
Shortly after his arrival Lenin addressed several emigre meetings. At one of these, a gathering of Polish Social-Democrats in their emigre club, he exposed the counter-revolutionary role of the nationalist bourgeoisie, showing how it adapted itself to the tsarist regime which oppressed all nationalities in Russia and opposed to it the internationalist position of the proletariat. ``Long live a proletarian, workers' and peasants' Poland!" were his concluding words. On March 18 Lenin on behalf of the R.S.D.L.P. spoke on the Paris Commune at an international meeting called to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Karl Marx's death, the 60th anniversary of the 1848 revolution and the anniversary of the Paris Commune.
All Lenin's thoughts were centred on the Russian revolution. He was deeply convinced that the proletariat had suffered only temporary defeat, that victory would be won in the heroic battles that lay _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences oj Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. I, Moscow, 1979, p. 327 (Russ. ed.).
144 ahead. With unswerving faith in the working class and the triumph of socialism, he worked passionately for that victory. In his mind's eye he saw the brighter future that was in store for Russia and the whole of mankind. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Historical Lessons of the RevolutionThe years that followed the defeat of the revolution Lenin described as hellishly difficult. Reaction was rampant throughout Russia. The proletariat bore the brunt of political persecution by the tsarist government. The Social-Democratic Party was in a state of deep crisis, organisationally, ideologically and politically. Party membership dropped drastically; the intellectual and petty-- bourgeois elements that had joined the Party during the revolution were now scared off by the tsarist persecution.
In the new situation Lenin considered the Party's basic tasks to be: retention and strengthening of the illegal organisation; drawing lessons and conclusions from the experience of the revolution; defence of the theoretical foundations of Marxism; preservation of the revolutionary tradition, education of the working class in a revolutionary spirit; closer ties with the masses, and building up the forces for the new revolution.
Back in Geneva, Lenin concentrated on organising the publication of a Party newspaper which, in the situation that had arisen, he considered of paramount importance. ``I am convinced,'' he wrote to Maxim Gorky, ``that what the Party needs now is a regular political organ, consistently and vigorously pursuing a policy of struggle against disintegration and despondency - a Party organ, a political newspaper. Many people in Russia do not believe in a foreign-based organ. But this is an error, and our collegium knew what it was doing when it decided to transfer Proletary here. That it is difficult to organise, set it up and run it-goes without saying. But it has to be done and it will be done.''~^^*^^
The organisation of the paper took up much of Lenin's time and energy. Everything had to be begun anew. Fortunately, there were stocks of type and thin newsprint left over from 1905 in the Bolshevik library, of which V. Karpinsky was in charge. A press was rented from a French printshop. I. Dubrovinsky acted as manager. _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 380. 10 826
145 They were joined later by N. Semashko. In time the Party set up its own printshop.Maxim Gorky, A. Lunacharsky and other prominent publicists were invited to contribute to the paper.
Lenin did not confine his activities to publishing Proletary. He arranged for its delivery to Russia, devoting much attention to finding reliable communication facilities and organising transportation. A week after his arrival in Geneva he instructed Maria Andreyeva to contact the secretary of the Maritime Workers' Union through whom, for appropriate remuneration, arrangements could be made for the weekly delivery of the paper to Russia via Odessa. This had to be done as soon as possible, Lenin insisted, in order that everything be prepared beforehand for Proletary to be shipped to Russia immediately it came off the press. Publication was resumed less than two months after Lenin returned to Geneva, with the appearance of issue No. 21. Through the dark night of reaction, amidst all the confusion and collapse, there sounded the powerful and confident voice of the leader of the Party and revolutionary working class of Russia.
Lenin considered a correct appraisal of the 1905--07 revolution and the assimilation of its lessons by the working class to be of the utmost importance. He wrote: ``We must take advantage of the temporary lulls in mass action in order critically to study the experience of the great revolution, verify this experience, purge it of dross, and pass it on to the masses as a guide for the impending struggle.''~^^*^^
In his analysis of the revolution, Lenin emphasised that both its victories and defeats taught the people great historical lessons. The first and fundamental lesson was that only mass revolutionary struggle could improve the workers' conditions and secure a measure of democracy.
The second lesson was that it was not enough to undermine or restrict tsarist rule; it had to be destroyed.
The third and cardinal lesson consisted in the Party having seen how the various classes in Russia acted in the revolution. All classes of society came out openly and showed themselves in their true colours, revealed their true aspirations.
It was especially important, Lenin said, to show that the working class was the leader and driving force of the Russian revolution. ``...Of all classes of Russian society, it was the proletariat that _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 429.
146 displayed the greatest political maturity in 1905--07. The Russian liberal bourgeoisie, which behaved in just as vile, cowardly, stupid and treacherous a manner as the German bourgeoisie in 1848 hates the Russian proletariat for the very reason that in 1905 it proved sufficiently mature politically to wrest the leadership of the movement from this bourgeoisie and ruthlessly to expose the treachery of the liberals.''~^^*^^ It was this leading role of the proletariat, and the fact that the liberal bourgeoisie had been pushed aside, that gave the revolution its tremendous scope and created conditions for a decisive battle for democratic freedoms.Time and again Lenin stressed the immense importance of the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry, regarding this as an earnest of victory in the struggles that loomed ahead. ``Our Party,'' he declared, ``holds firmly to the view that the role of the proletariat is the role of leader in the bourgeois-democratic revolution; that joint actions of the proletariat and the peasantry are essential to carry it through to victory; that unless political power is won by the revolutionary classes, victory is impossible.''~^^**^^
Lenin discussed the character of the Russian revolution and the lessons to be drawn from it in a number of articles and speeches. Beginning with the spring of 1908, he addressed international gatherings in Geneva, Paris, Antwerp and London, and conducted a sharp polemic with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Lenin repeatedly showed that the first Russian revolution was of tremendous international significance: it marked the beginning of a new rise of the revolutionary movement in Europe and exerted a powerful influence on the national liberation struggle in Asia. ``The Russian revolution,'' he wrote later, ``engendered a movement throughout the whole of Asia. The revolutions in Turkey, Persia and China prove that the mighty uprising of 1905 left a deep imprint, and that its influence, expressed in the forward movement of hundreds and hundreds of millions, is ineradicable.''^^***^^
The historical experience of the first Russian revolution, generalised by Lenin, was thus brought to the knowledge of the international proletariat.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 374.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 15, p. 379.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 252.
147 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Agrarian QuestionIn these years of reaction Lenin devoted much time to the elaboration of the agrarian programme. For it was this problem that laid its peculiar, specifically national imprint on the revolution in Russia, with her overwhelmingly peasant population. The struggle for the land impelled large sections of the peasantry to take an active part in the democratic revolution, for only through revolutionary action could the landed estates be abolished and democratic freedoms won.
Lenin's Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905--1907 holds a special place in his writings of this period. It played an outstanding role in the development of Marxist theory and tactics. Proceeding from the experience of the revolution and creatively adapting Marx's theory to Russian conditions, Lenin theoretically substantiated the Bolshevik programme of nationalising all the land, showed its economic and political importance.
Lenin worked out the agrarian programme on the basis of a close analysis of the new data on landownership in Russia. He examined the economic factors that made necessary a revolutionary break-up of agrarian relations, drew a vivid picture of land distribution and clearly showed what the peasants had fought for in the revolution. He cited these figures: Ten million peasant households owned 73,000,000 dessiatines of land, whereas 28,000 noble and upstart landlords owned 62,000,000 dessiatines. Such was the main background of the developing peasant struggle for the land.^^*^^
The issue at stake in the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution, Lenin explained, was whether Russia's capitalist development would follow the ``Prussian'' path (retention of monarchy and landed proprietorship) or the ``American'' path (establishment of bourgeois republic, abolition of landed proprietorship and emergence of a farmer class). That was the economic basis of the revolution, and unless this were made clear, there could be no clarity on the question of an agrarian programme. Lenin showed that the frankly pro-landowner programme of Stolypin and the programme of the Cadet party, both were predicated on retention of the landed estates and the survivals of serfdom. The proletariat, Lenin taught, should fight for the second path, which provided for the greatest _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 225.
148 freedom and speed of development of the productive forces in capitalist Russia. A victory in this struggle could be won only on the basis of a revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry.The Mensheviks, Lenin wrote, framed their agrarian programme not with a view to combating medieval land tenure, ``not to clear the way completely for capitalism, but for a pitiful philistine attempt to combine 'harmoniously' the old with the new, landed property which arose as a result of the system of allotment and the latifundia of the feudalists confiscated by the revolution.''~^^*^^
The 1905--07 revolution refuted all the Menshevik arguments, all their reactionary claims about peasant hostility to the Bolshevik nationalisation programme. Three years of revolution had taught the peasants that they could expect nothing from the tsar and convinced them that the whole system of medieval land tenure had to be eliminated.
Lenin showed the indissoluble link between land nationalisation and political revolution: nationalisation could be carried out only with the victory of the revolution, only with the overthrow of tsarism, and it would facilitate the transition to socialist revolution. Land nationalisation was, in fact, a component part of Lenin's theory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution growing over into socialist revolution.
The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905--1907 was published in St. Petersburg in 1908 but was immediately confiscated and destroyed by the censors. Only one copy was salvaged, but without the concluding pages. These Lenin wrote nearly ten years later, in September 1917, when the book was finally put out. In the summer of 1908, at the request of the Polish Social-Democrats, he wrote a synopsis of the book for their magazine Przeglqd Socjaldemokratyczny (Social-Democratic Review).
Lenin upheld and developed the Marxist theory of the agrarian question in a number of his works. In the first half of 1908 he wrote The Agrarian Question in Russia Towards the Close oj the Nineteenth Century, in which he analysed the socio-economic relations in Russian agriculture.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 165--66.
149 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Against Reactionary Bourgeois PhilosophyThe bourgeois and landowner reactionaries took advantage of the defeat of the revolution to launch a new campaign against democratic and socialist ideas, against the Marxist world outlook.
This disbelief in the revolution, in the strength of the working class and people, and in the scientific validity and creative nature of Marxism affected also a section of Party intellectuals. Some Mensheviks and several Bolshevik writers (A. Bogdanov, V. Bazarov, A. Lunacharsky and others) proceeded to ``criticise'' Marxism and its philosophical foundations. Some of them, the so-called `` God-builders'', advocated the transformation of socialism into a kind of religion, arguing that, presented in a religious dressing, socialism would be more easily understood by the masses. Actually, however, they were duping the workers.
The rampant reaction was not a purely Russian phenomenon. With the advent of imperialism, the bourgeoisie of all countries turned from democracy to ``all-out reaction" in economics, politics and ideology.
A philosophy known as ``critical experience'', or empirio-- criticism, gained wide currency in Europe at the close of the nineteenth and in the early years of the twentieth centuries. It originated with the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach and the German philosopher Richard Avenarius. The Machists denied the objective existence of a material world and the objective character of the laws governing natural and social development, the objectivity of scientific knowledge. The world we live in, they maintained, was not material, but simply our own sensation, and all things in the world were no more than ``complexes of sensations".
Machism was, at that time, the most dangerous trend in bourgeois idealistic philosophy for the working class and its party. Ostensibly, the Machists were opposed to idealism, even claiming that modern natural science provided substantiation for their theory, and this gave it a semblance of scientific validity. Their doctrine was supported by the reactionary imperialist forces and was seized upon by the opportunist leaders in the Second International. The central organ of the German Social-- Democratic Party, Neue £eit, of which Karl Kautsky was editor, and the party's theoretical journal, Sozialistische Monatshefte, one of the organs of international opportunism, for many years published 150 articles by Machists and other revisionists. In his article ``Those Who Would Liquidate Us" Lenin emphasised that Kautsky was wrong in denying the idealistic nature of Machism.
The West European and Russian revisionists proclaimed the Machist philosophy the latest word in scientific thought. Their bitterest attacks were levelled at the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism. They tried to prove that Marxism had no philosophy of its own, and that Machism could therefore become its theory of knowledge. T^ revisionists continued to parade as Marxists, claiming that their sole aim was to ``improve'' Marxism, though in actual fact they were revising all the basic tenets of materialism, notably dialectical materialism.
In February 1908, Lenin began work on a book in which he decided to give battle to all opponents of Marxist philosophy. Defence and further development of the philosophical views of the Marxist party became an urgent task of the Party, and Lenin explained why: the Russian working class needed a truly scientific, Marxist philosophy for a profound theoretical generalisation of the experience of the 1905--07 Revolution. He wrote: ``The `present moment' in Russia is precisely one in which the theoretical work of Marxism, its deepening and expansion, are dictated ... by the whole objective state of affairs in the country. When the masses are digesting a new and exceptionally rich experience of direct revolutionary struggle, the theoretical struggle for a revolutionary outlook, i.e., for revolutionary Marxism, becomes the watchword of the day.''^^*^^
This ``philosophical sorting out'', Lenin remarked, was necessary also in view of the new discoveries in the natural sciences. Progress in physics and other sciences posed many new philosophical problems for which bourgeois philosophy had no answer and which, Lenin said, dialectical materialism had to tackle. It was therefore necessary to give a philosophical interpretation of major developments in the natural sciences since Marx and Engels.
In mid-April 1908, Lenin completed his famous article ``Marxism and Revisionism'', which he described as ``a formal declaration of war" on revisionism. The article was written for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Marx's death and appeared in the symposium Karl Marx, published in St. Petersburg in 1908. In it Lenin showed that since the 1890s, when the triumph of Marxism over other theories in the working-class movement was in the main completed, the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 290.
151 fight against Marxism had assumed new forms. Revisionism, a trend hostile to Marxism, arose in the Social-Democratic movement, which sought to undermine this great doctrine of the revolutionary proletariat, on the plea of ``amending'' and ``modifying'' Marx.Lenin proved that the revisionists, limping behind bourgeois professorial science, negated Marxist materialism and dialectics, rejected the fundamental tenets of Marxian political economy and the idea of class struggle and proletarian dictatorship, abandoned socialism as the ultimate aim of the working-class movement, and fully degenerated to reformism in their policy. Revisionism, Lenin demonstrated, was an international phenomenon with deep class roots in capitalist society. As long as capitalism exists, there will always be revisionism and, hence, the need for constant, systematic and energetic struggle against revisionism in the working-class movement. The ideological struggle of revolutionary Marxism against revisionism was but the prelude to the great revolutionary battles of the proletariat, which was marching forward to the complete triumph of its cause, overcoming weaknesses and vacillations in the working-class movement.
In the second half of April 1908, Lenin visited Gorky on the Isle of Capri, Italy, in response to Gorky's repeated invitations.
Lenin listened with keen interest to Gorky's stories of his childhood and youth in Nizhni Novgorod, of the great Volga, of Gorky's travels and wanderings through Russia. He suggested that Gorky write the story of his life. It would make splendid and very instructive reading, he said. Gorky followed this advice in later years, when he wrote his famous trilogy Childhood, My Apprenticeship and My Universities.
Together with Gorky, Lenin visited Naples, the National Museum and suburbs, the ruins of Pompeii, climbed Vesuvius. On several occasions they went out to sea with the Capri fishermen. In his conversations with them he would ask about their life, their earnings, their children. Gorky said in his reminiscences there was ``something magnetic" about Lenin, something that attracted the hearts of working folk. The Capri fishermen had met many famous Russians, but none of them had won their affection as Lenin did. One of these fishermen, old Giovanni Spadaro, on hearing Lenin's hearty laugh, remarked: ``Only honest men can laugh like that.'' And long after Lenin had left the fishermen would ask Gorky about ``Signor Lenin'', afraid lest he fall into the hands of the tsar's police.
152The Capri visit, their subsequent meetings in Paris in 1911 and 1912 and their correspondence, are striking evidence of the concern the leader of the working class showed for the development of the great proletarian writer. Lenin helped him discard his erroneous views. ``His attitude,'' Gorky wrote, ``was that of a strict teacher and good, solicitous friend.''
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Materialism and Empirio-CriticismBack in Geneva, Lenin continued work on his book. This entailed a great deal of scientific research, the study of hundreds of works on philosophy, the natural sciences, notably physics, in German, French, English and Russian, rereading of the philosophical works of Marx and Engels, and of the writings of Plekhanov, Mehring, Lafargue, Diderot, Feuerbach, Chernyshevsky, Dietzgen and other authors. In writing his book Lenin worked a great deal in Swiss libraries. In May 1908, Lenin went to London, where he worked for a month in the British Museum.
The work progressed rapidly and the book was completed in October 1908. Publishing the book legally in conditions of police persecution presented many difficulties. However, arrangements for its publication were made, through I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, with Zveno, a Moscow publishing firm run by L. Krumbiigel. The book was off the press in April 1909. Its full title is: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy. Lenin sent Rosa Luxemburg a copy of the book asking her to insert an announcement of its publication in Die Neue £eit, which she did.
The book was a striking example of consistent and uncompromising struggle against the enemies of Marxist philosophy, an example of militant Bolshevik partisanship and creative development of Marxism. In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism Lenin subjected to comprehensive and closely argued criticism bourgeois idealistic philosophy and philosophic revisionism, exposed their new methods of defending idealism, and formulated and further developed the basic propositions of Marxist philosophy.
Lenin demonstrated that Mach and other bourgeois philosophers, while proclaiming theirs to be a new philosophy, were palming off the old idealistic rubbish in a new guise. Under the abstruse name of ``empiric-criticism'', they were resurrecting, in a somewhat refurbished version, the philosophy of Berkeley, the eighteenth-century English bishop and militant opponent of materialism. Lenin proved 153 that the underlying premise of Berkeley's philosophy and of empirio-criticism was one and the same, namely, subjective idealism. This means that the idealist philosophy essentially preached the helplessness and capitulation of man before Nature. Marxist philosophy, on the other hand, proclaimed that science and human knowledge are omnipotent and their development has no limits.
Lenin's further elaboration of the basic question of philosophy, his definition of the philosophical notion of matter, is of paramount importance. Lenin regarded matter as being in constant movement-objective reality is matter in movement. The proposition that matter exists outside and independently of our consciousness is the basic tenet of philosophical materialism.
In criticising the Machists and other metaphysically thinking representatives of bourgeois philosophy, who maintained that the new discoveries in science (radioactivity, the complex structure of the atom, etc.) ``destroyed'' the concept of matter and ``refuted'' materialism, Lenin raised the question of the need to distinguish clearly between the philosophical concept of matter and the notion of it in natural science. He showed that from the viewpoint of dialectical materialism, the philosophical category of matter is connected only with the solving of the basic philosophical question of the relationship of being and thinking and does not include any physical, chemical, biological or other concrete characteristics. ``...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 wrote.
[DUMMY^^**^^]
Lenin attached special attention to working out the basic problems of the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism-the theory of reflection.
The idea of cognition as a reflection of the objective world in human consciousness was advanced and defended by philosophical materialism before Marx and Engels. Continuing this line, Marx and Engels gave its profound elaboration in their works. Lenin defended and developed their main propositions.
Bourgeois philosophers and revisionists have for many years
attacked the theory of reflection in Marxist-Leninist philosophy,
deliberately oversimplifying, distorting and falsifying it. They argue
that Lenin treats reflection as a simple ``mirror-like'' act between
the thought and the object, as a ``dead copying" by human
consciousness of the objects of nature. In fact, however, both in
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, pp. 260--61. ^^**^^ Ibid., p. 26.
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism states that ``the world is eternally moving and developing matter (as the Marxists think), reflected by the developing human consciousness''.^^**^^ ``Cognition is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object,'' we read in Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks. ``The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not 'lifelessly' ... but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.''^^***^^
Such are Lenin's propositions on the creatively active reflection of reality in the forms of human cognition.
Lenin gave a splendidly profound and thorough analysis of the process of cognition, the dialectics of the objective absolute and relative truth, which is of tremendous theoretical and practical importance. Sensations and concepts, being reflections of the objective world, have an objective content. And it is this objective content in our sensations, in our consciousness, which depends neither on man nor on mankind, that Lenin calls objective truth. The great cognitive force of Marxist teaching lies in the very fact that it rests on objective truth. ``Historical materialism and Marx's entire economic doctrine,'' Lenin stresses, ``are permeated through and through by a recognition of objective truth.''^^****^^ Human cognition is in a process of constant development. It moves and develops along an ascending curve from ignorance to knowledge, from incomplete and inaccurate knowledge to fuller and more precise knowledge, from relative truth to absolute truth. There are no insuperable barriers between absolute and relative truth: ``...human thought ... by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.''^^*****^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 26.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 137.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 38, p. 195.
^^****^^ Ibid., Vol. 14, p. 319.
^^*****^^ Ibid., p. 135.
155The dialectical-materialist doctrine of absolute and relative truth is the key to a scientific and creative understanding of theoretical problems and, at the same time, a powerful weapon against revisionism and dogmatism. Marxism is objective truth confirmed by the course of history. The fundamental principles of MarxismLeninism have to be creatively developed, concretised, enriched by the new data of science and practice. But there can be no revision of the substance and revolutionary spirit of Marxism.
In Materialism and Empiric-Criticism, Lenin substantially enriched the Marxist doctrine on the role of practice in the process of cognition. He showed the great importance of theoretical thinking in the process of cognition and the need for an indissoluble link of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge with practice, stressing that ``the standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge''.^^*^^
Lenin fully disclosed the role of practice as a criterion of truth, the dialectical nature of this criterion. It is precisely practice, which, by verifying our notions, confirms in them that which corresponds to the truth. Practice is a process of constant development and regeneration. This prevents man's knowledge from deteriorating into an ``absolute'', an ossified dogma, and makes for the steady advancement and deepening of our knowledge. Marxism represents the integral unity of scientific theory and revolutionary practice. Lenin's elaboration of the theory of knowledge is a splendid example of the creative development of dialectical materialism and a most valuable contribution to Marxist philosophy.
Lenin trenchantly criticised the Machists' views on society. The Machist ``sociology'', Lenin showed, had nothing to distinguish it from bourgeois sociology. In fact, reactionary bourgeois ideologists have long been campaigning against scientific cognition of the laws of history. They have good reason to fear genuine science, and hence their frenzied campaigns against Marxism, which reveals to us the objective laws of historical development. Analysis of the contradictions of capitalism inspires in the bourgeoisie fear and despair in the face of the laws of history, for the march of history inevitably leads to the collapse of capitalist society and its replacement by communist society.
Lenin especially emphasised the integral and harmonious character of Marxist philosophy and demolished all revisionist attempts to separate Marx's economic and political doctrines from _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 142.
156 philosophical materialism. ``From this Marxist philosophy, which is cast from a single piece of steel, you cannot eliminate one basic premise, one essential part, without departing from objective truth, without falling a prey to bourgeois-reactionary falsehood.''~^^*^^Both in Russia and Western Europe, the revisionists claimed that Machism was a "new philosophy of the natural sciences''. That speculation on the natural sciences had to be effectively refuted and the new scientific discoveries given philosophical interpretation. Lenin brilliantly accomplished both tasks in his Materialism and Empirio-- Criticism.
Great scientific discoveries were made at the turn of the century: X-rays (1895), radioactivity (1896), the electron (1897), radium (1898), the electron theory of matter, the quantum theory (1900), the theory of relativity (1905). This was the beginning of a veritable revolution in the natural sciences. It was established that the mass of the electron depended on speed and that the chemical elements could be transformed into one another. These fundamental discoveries led to a radical change in a number of accepted physical notions and concepts and produced a crisis in physics.
Lenin revealed the essence and the causes of the deep crisis in natural science, especially physics. The need had matured for physics to shift from its positions of spontaneous, unrealised and often metaphysical materialism to new positions of dialectical materialism.
Reactionary philosophers immediately seized on the new scientific discoveries and on the gnoseological problems posed by these discoveries to give prominence to their own interpretations, based entirely on idealistic theories, and divert the scientists from materialism to the old path of idealism, to reconcile science with religion.
Lenin tried to persuade natural scientists that dialectical materialism was the only true method of investigation and the only true philosophy. For it alone is intrinsically connected with the natural sciences, and by penetrating every field of research makes it possible correctly to interpret scientific achievements and indicate the sure road to resolving any crisis in science. But materialism, being a scientific world outlook, has to be constantly developed and enriched by new scientific discoveries.
Engels once said that ``with each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science it [materialism] has to change its form''.^^**^^ _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14, p. 326.
^^**^^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1977, p. 349.
157 And it was Lenin who gave materialism a new form according to the new conditions of history, when capitalism had entered its imperialist stage, and when natural science was undergoing revolutionary transformation.Materialism and Empirio-Criticism is a paean to the power of the human mind, revealing the limitless prospects for our scientific understanding of the essence of phenomena in infinite nature. ``Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.''^^*^^
In his book, Lenin concretised, investigated and developed, on the basis of the latest achievements of science, all the cardinal problems of dialectical materialism. ``Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" represents the new, Lenin stage in Marxist philosophy.
The Conclusion of Lenin's book formulates the principles of the struggle against reactionary ideology, the criteria which make it possible to identify truly valuable new conclusions and generalisations of the data of science and social practice. Lenin showed that any deviation from philosophical materialism, any attempt to ``refute'' or revise the principles of the Marxist dialectical-- materialist world outlook ultimately serve the interests of the exploiting classes. Lenin's statement that behind the epistemological scholasticism of bourgeois and revisionist trends and schools ``one cannot fail to see the struggle of the party in philosophy, a struggle which in the final analysis expresses the tendencies and ideology of the hostile classes of modern society" is most relevant today. ``Recent philosophy,'' Lenin emphasised, ``is as partisan as was philosophy two thousand years ago.''^^**^^ ``Non-partisanship in philosophy,'' he concluded, ``is only wretchedly masked servility to idealism and fideism.''^^***^^^^32^^
The rejection of party commitment in philosophy by modern revisionists is doomed to failure.
The appearance of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was of immense importance for the Party's activities. Its publication was followed by heated philosophical discussions among Russian SocialDemocrats in many parts of Europe. The most frequent gatherings were held in Paris, where hundreds of Russian socialist workers living in the Paris working-class districts visited the Bolshevik Proletary _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 14. pp. 281--82.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 358.
^^***^^ Ibid., p. 355.
158 club. Lenin's book aroused great interest and produced a profound impression on the Bolsheviks in Russia. It was studied by political prisoners in tsarist jails and places of exile. The discussions frequently turned into real ideological battles of Lenin's disciples and followers against Machists and Otzovists.Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was a powerful weapon of the Party in the battle against all forms and varieties of opportunism, against all the falsifiers of Marxism in the Russian working-class movement. Its appearance aroused wide interest in the study of Marxist philosophy among Party members and did much to help Party activists and front-rank workers master dialectical and historical materialism. It played an outstanding part in the ideological arming of the Bolsheviks, in the theoretical substantiation of the principles of the proletarian party of the new type and in rallying and strengthening its ranks.
For more than half a century now this classical work of Lenin has served the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as a reliable guide in forming the scientific world outlook of the people and in combating reactionary ideology. The fight waged by Lenin and the Bolsheviks against revisionism in Marxist philosophy had a strong international impact-it exposed the Second International opportunist leaders' contention that philosophy had no relation to politics, that the philosophical views of Party members were their private affair, and that one could be a Marxist without subscribing to dialectical materialism.
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism has for many progressive scientists been a guide in their research, helping them to break with idealistic views and adopt a scientific, materialist world outlook. For a number of outstanding progressive intellectuals acquaintance with Marxist-Leninist theory and the experience of the liberation struggle of the working people was decisive in winning them over to the working class and communism. That is how the eminent French scientists and peace fighters Paul Langevin and Frederic JoliotCurie joined the communist ranks.
In our day, too, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism contributes to the struggle against modern bourgeois philosophy, philosophical revisionism and dogmatism, helping the peoples to understand and reorganise in a revolutionary fashion the world they live in.
159 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Against the Right and Left LiquidatorsTowards the close of 1908, publication of Proletary was transferred to Paris, then the centre of Russian political emigration. This made it necessary for Lenin and Krupskaya to move to Paris too. There was some difficulty in finding a suitable flat in Paris. At first they rented a four-room apartment - a rather sumptuous affair with mirrored mantlepieces-but it was too expensive and out of keeping with the furniture they had brought from Geneva. The concierge was rather nonplussed as she saw the new lodgers bring in their modest belongings. The landlord even refused to give Krupskaya the letter of recommendation required of all lending library subscribers. After a while a suitable two-room apartment was found in 4 Rue Marie-Rose.^^33^^
In Paris, as in Geneva, there were always many visitors; they felt at home at the ``Ilyiches'' in the atmosphere of complete harmony, mutual affection, consideration and infinite tact. Everyone who visited them remarked on this and on the unfailing consideration Lenin showed not only for Krupskaya but also for her aged mother, whom he always helped with her household chores. This friendly atmosphere never failed to attract the emigres for whom separation from Russia was especially painful in these difficult years.
Everyone who knew Lenin in these trying times remarked on his optimism, and varied interests. Though engrossed in political activity, he always found time for a lecture on Shakespeare, a brief visit to Antwerp, its port and museum, a game of chess, a premiere at the theatre, a visit to the exhibition on the 1848 revolution, where he would examine every item for it reminded him of real struggles, or Victor Hugo's verse about the 1848 revolution. On sleepless nights he would read Verhaeren. Lenin was fond of a theatre frequented by workers in one of the suburbs. It staged revolutionary plays that could not be produced on the regular Paris stage. He also liked to hear Montegus, whose performance of revolutionary songs had made him a favourite of the working-class suburbs. Montegus was the son of a Paris Communard. Lenin had a long talk with him. Lenin was keenly interested in aviation and liked to watch the test flights at the Juvisy Airfield near Paris.
In Paris Lenin made a close study of the French labour movement. Together with Nadezhda Konstantinovna he visited Paul Lafargue and his wife, Laura, the daughter of Karl Marx, at their home in Draveil, some twenty kilometres from Paris. The Lafargues received them with great cordiality. Lenin had a long talk with 160 Lafargue, whom he had first met in 1895, on philosophical subjects, notably on Materialism and Empiric-Criticism. Laura Lafargue walked with Nadezhda Konstantinovna in the park and they discussed events in Russia and the participation of women in the revolutionary movement. The visit left an indelible impression on Lenin and Krupskaya.
In those trying years of reaction, Lenin considered the Bolsheviks' chief task to be preservation and strengthening of the revolutionary working-class party and preparation of the proletariat for the new rise of the revolution.
Lenin elaborated and substantiated the Party's policy and tactics of preserving and rallying together the forces needed to prepare for a new revolutionary offensive. He taught the Bolsheviks to avail themselves of every opportunity, even the smallest, to come out in the open, bring into the movement new proletarian forces, imbue every aspect of their activity with the spirit of revolutionary struggle.
This task could be solved only through uncompromising struggle against the Party's numerous enemies-the Mensheviks, Trotskyites and their accomplices.
The Mensheviks appealed to the workers to seek agreement with the bourgeoisie. They wanted to liquidate the illegal party organisations, cease all illegal revolutionary activity and tried to set up a reformist, legal party. These were the liquidators of the Marxist party, and they did great harm to the working-class movement. The Menshevik Liquidators denied that a new democratic revolution against the monarchy was inevitable. In their view, the revolution had been completed and there was no longer any need for an illegal revolutionary proletarian party. The need now, they argued, was to fight for reforms.
The emergence of this Liquidationist trend, Lenin pointed out, was no mere accident. It was a deep-rooted social phenomenon, indissolubly connected with the counter-revolutionary position of the liberal bourgeoisie and disintegration among the petty-bourgeois fellow travellers of the revolution. Menshevik Liquidationism, Lenin wrote, ``consists ideologically in negation of the revolutionary class struggle of the socialist proletariat in general, and denial of the hegemony of the proletariat in our bourgeois-democratic revolution in particular''.^^*^^ Organisationally, Liquidationism signified negation of the illegal Social-Democratic Party, defection from the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 454.
__PRINTERS_P_162_COMMENT__ 11---826 161 R.S.D.L.P., resignation from its ranks, and struggle against the Party in the legal press and legal workers' organisations. Without relentlessly combating Liquidationism and destroying it, Lenin stressed, the Party could make no headway.The ideological confusion and disintegration led not only to direct Liquidationism, but to "Liquidationism inside-out'', or Otzovism. In the spring of 1908, an opportunist group of BolsheviksBogdanov, Alexinsky, Lunacharsky and others-declared that in conditions of reaction the Party should confine itself to illegal activities. Accordingly, the group urged the recall of the Social-- Democratic members of the Duma. These were the Otzovists (from the Russian word ``otozvat'', meaning recall), and they were hampering the Party's efforts to use the Duma rostrum and build up support in the semi-legal and legal working-class organisations. In other words, the Otzovists were destroying the Party's ties with the masses, renouncing leadership of the masses and working to convert the Party into a sectarian organisation incapable of marshalling the forces for a new rise of the revolution. They distorted the very essence of revolutionary Marxist tactics, which call for adapting forms and methods of struggle to new situations without, however, losing sight of the Party's ultimate goal. The Otzovists were doing immense harm to the Party, for sectarianism inevitably leads to isolation from the masses.
Otzovism, Lenin stressed, was a departure from the principles of revolutionary Marxism, and therefore a departure from Bolshevism. By depriving the Party of an opportunity to use the Duma rostrum for propaganda, the Otzovists were actually leading the Party towards its liquidation as the revolutionary party of the working class. Lenin described Otzovism as a caricature of Bolshevism. In his efforts to preserve the Party, Lenin fought both varieties of Liquidationism, Right and Left.
Lenin also had to fight Trotsky who sided with the Liquidators and who under the guise of ``non-factionalism'' was advocating Centrism or unity of revolutionaries and opportunists within a single party. Trotsky used the newspaper he published in Vienna^^34^^ to distort Bolshevism, falsify the history of the first Russian revolution and support the Liquidators. Lenin condemned the unprincipled attitude of Trotsky and opposed any support of Trotsky's paper. In a letter to Sotsial-Demokrat, the Central Party Organ he wrote: ``Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist...'', either he submits to the Central Committee, or ``a break with this swindler and an exposure of him in the C.O. He pays 162 lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists.''^^*^^
A turning-point in the life of the Party at that period was the Fifth All-Russia R.S.D.L.P. Conference in Paris, December 21--27, 1908 (January 3-9, 1909), which Lenin attended as a representative of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee. The keynote was the struggle on two fronts - against the Menshevik Liquidators and the ``Left'' opportunists - the Otzovists and the Ultimatumists.^^35^^ The central point was Lenin's report, ``The Present Situation and the Tasks of the Party'', on which the conference adopted a resolution drafted by Lenin. The conference resolutely condemned Liquidationism.
Lenin attached exceptional importance to the conference resolutions, which defined the Party's revolutionary line and organisational policy for the entire period of reaction. They revealed, he said, the causes and implications of the crisis in the Party and indicated the way out.
The conference resolutions were approved by a plenary meeting of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee and published in a Central Committee Report. Taking the conference decisions as their basis, Lenin and his associates launched a decisive struggle against the enemies of the Party and the Party spirit. Plekhanov also came out against Liquidationism, and this Lenin regarded as a victory for Bolshevism.
The struggle for the Party grew more and more bitter. At that period Lenin lectured and wrote a great deal on the attitude of the Marxist Party to religion. In May 1909 the editorial board of Proletary organised a report by Lenin on the subject of religion and the working-class party. A few days later the paper published an article by him entitled ``The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion'', and in the middle of June the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat carried his article "Classes and Parties in Their Attitude to Religion and the Church''. In these articles he revealed the social roots of religion and stressed its class nature and the use of religion by the bourgeoisie as a means of distracting the masses from the class struggle.
Lenin explained that Marxism was incompatible with religion. The struggle against religion, he said, was the ``ABC of all materialism, and consequently of Marxism''. But it must be connected with the concrete practice of a class movement aimed at abolishing the social causes of religion. The Party's atheist propaganda, Lenin wrote, must be subordinated to its main task---the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, pp. 399--400.
__PRINTERS_P_163_COMMENT__ 11* 163 development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters.In the fight to preserve and strengthen the R.S.D.L.P. Lenin devoted much attention to the activities of Party organisations in Russia, directing their work and training Party cadres, especially from among the workers. He believed that the worker groups in the big industrial centres, which were gradually taking over direction of Party activities, should be given the utmost attention. Lenin himself devoted much energy and care to training Party functionaries with working-class background. Meetings with workers gave him the greatest pleasure. That was evident from his animation, from the warm sparkle in his eyes.
A meeting of the enlarged editorial board of Proletary was held in Paris to rally the Bolshevik forces against the Otzovists. On the eve of the meeting Lenin conferred with members of the editorial board and representatives of local Social-Democratic organisations and explained the situation that had arisen in the Party and the Bolshevik faction. The enlarged editorial board meeting began on June 8 (21), 1909, and proceeded under Lenin's leadership. The resolution ``On Otzovism and Ultimatumism" adopted by the meeting on Lenin's report exposed the great harm Otzovist and Ultimatumist propaganda was causing the working-class movement and SocialDemocratic activity, and the menace it created to Party unity. The editorial board meeting declared that Otzovism and Ultimatumism had nothing in common with Bolshevism, were outright deviations from revolutionary Marxism and should be resolutely combated as such by all Bolsheviks.
The meeting considered the use of all legal opportunities of utmost importance, noting that this should not be an aim in itself; it should always be closely connected with the objects and methods of the Party's illegal revolutionary activities.
Lenin's struggle against the Liquidators, Otzovists, Machists and ``God-builders'' met with strong support in Party organisations in Russia.
Lenin was uncompromising not only in fighting open opportunists, the Liquidators, but also in opposing the sectarians and the ``Lefts'', who used revolutionary phraseology as a cover for their opportunism. Fighting on two fronts, the Bolsheviks strengthened their ranks and upheld their revolutionary policy and tactics.
After the Proletary editorial board meeting Lenin and his family spent some time at a cheap pension (found through a newspaper advertisement) in the little village of Bombon (Seine-et-Marne 164 Department). There were frequent walks in the surrounding countryside and cycling trips to the Clamart woods about fifteen kilometres away. Lenin returned to Paris in the middle of September. As his wife recalled, he had a rigorous work schedule: up at eight, breakfast, the Bibliotheque Nationale till the reading-room closed for lunch, back home at two. The conditions for work were not so good as in Geneva: the library was a considerable distance from his home. The long bicycle journeys were exhausting and therefore after dinner Lenin worked at home, usually late into the night.
Lenin frequently lectured to different audiences on the situation in Russia, the position in the Party, the struggle against counter-- revolutionary liberalism, the Paris Commune and other subjects, and also went to other countries to lecture. In the end of October 1909, he addressed a gathering of Social-Democrats in Liege, Belgium, on the position in the Party and gave a public lecture on ``The Ideology of the Counter-Revolutionary Bourgeoisie''. One of the audience described the lecture (in a letter to Kiev intercepted by the tsarist police) as ``excellent in content and delivery. Now I understand why Lenin enjoys such influence, affection even, among wide sections of the Party. He is a splendid propagandist, brilliant diplomat and politician, profound theoretician, shrewd practical leader, equally effective before a university audience and a workers' meeting and understood and appreciated by the masses-in short, the embodiment of everything one expects in a Party leader.''~^^*^^
Counter-revolutionary liberalism and its ideology was the subject of a public lecture Lenin gave in November 1909 at the Science Society on the Rue Danton. The hall was filled to capacity. There were many Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary hecklers among the audience, but they were soon silenced by the iron logic of Lenin's arguments and his clear, lucid delivery. The meeting adopted a resolution proposed by Lenin.
The fight Lenin and the Bolsheviks waged against the Liquidators took on fresh force at the plenary meeting of the Party Central Committee in Paris in January 1910. The situation in the Party was the central question on the agenda. The atmosphere at the meeting was tense.
Lenin put all his energy into the fight against the conciliators and their ally Trotsky. His draft resolution on the state of affairs in the Party condemned both Liquidationism and Otzovism and revealed their class roots - bourgeois influence on the proletariat. _-_-_
^^*^^ Uvestia No. 238, October 11, 1935.
165 The resolution said both were dangerous deviations from Marxism but it was expressed in most general terms.The struggle became sharper still after the Central Committee plenary meeting. The Menshevik Liquidators did not submit to its decisions and continued their unprincipled splitting activities. They stooped to outright foul play. The Otzovists were provoking all manner of squabbles. However, despite the complex situation and hard struggle, Lenin was as usual quite confident that ``the development of the Party, the development of the Social-Democratic movement goes forward despite all the devilish difficulties of the present situation''.^^*^^
The Central Committee plenum elected Lenin to the editorial board of Sotsial-Demokrat, the Central Party Organ, now published abroad. Lenin used its pages for a resolute struggle against Liquidationism, Otzovism and Trotskyism. In fact, his articles were the central feature of Sotsial-Demokrat, and at times there were as many as four in a single issue. A total of more than 80 articles were published.
Lenin was adamant in upholding a consistently Bolshevik policy against conciliatory tendencies on the editorial board. The atmosphere became especially strained following the January Central Committee plenary meeting, and at one time the struggle became so acute that Lenin was on the verge of resigning from the editorial board when Martov together with Dan began an anti-Party campaign of intrigue against the Bolsheviks and the pro-Party Mensheviks.^^36^^
Lenin stood for co-operation with Plekhanov and his pro-Party Menshevik followers, who were opposed to Liquidationism. But he emphasised that it was purely a matter of conciliation with them for joint struggle against Liquidationism, and that there could be no question of glossing over the differences with the pro-Party Mensheviks.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Against OpportunismThroughout all these years Lenin fought against the opportunist leaders in the Second International, who continued to support the Mensheviks. The two chief German Social-Democratic publications, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34, p. 421.
166 Neue Zjeit and Vorwarts, threw their columns open to calumnious Menshevik attacks on the Bolsheviks.In October 1908, Lenin went to Brussels for a meeting of the International Socialist Bureau, at which he again had to come out against the opportunists. On the eve of the meeting he attended an international peace rally. Next day, when the I.S.B. met, he criticised Kautsky's resolution in admitting the British Independent Labour Party^^37^^ to the International. While supporting its application, Lenin emphasised that, contrary to Kautsky's contention, it was not really independent of the bourgeoisie and was not really committed to an independent class policy. He also argued against admitting the Zionist socialists in Russia to the Russian section of the International.
The Zionists supported the ``class cooperation" of all Jews, thereby distracting the toiling Jews from the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, from a joint struggle with the working people of other nationalities for democratic freedoms and socialism. Lenin, who hated all nationalism, fought against both anti-Semitism and Zionism, firmly upholding the principles of proletarian internationalism.
The International Socialist Bureau held its eleventh meeting in November 1909 and discussed two major questions, the International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen in 1910 and the split in the Dutch Social-Democratic Labour Party, the result of a long struggle between the opportunists and Marxists. Speaking on this question Lenin insisted that the Dutch Marxists be admitted to the International.
Busy as he was with Party affairs, Lenin closely followed world developments, especially the growing menace of world war. He exposed the hypocrisy of the ruling circles of the imperialist powers who were preparing world carnage behind a barrage of diplomatic talk. An ardent champion of peace, he urged the workers' parties to wage struggle against militarism and strain every effort to prevent imperialist war. He stressed the great importance of anti-militarist activity of revolutionary Social-Democracy and of propaganda of international solidarity among the working people.
In his article ``Bellicose Militarism and the Anti-Militarist Tactics of Social-Democracy'', Lenin sharply criticised Vollmar, Noske and the other German Right-wing Social-Democrats for contending that, since militarism and war were inevitable concomitants of capitalism, there was no point in combating them, in carrying out antimilitarist activity. Lenin showed that this line of argument on the 167 need to participate in a ``defensive'' war led to nationalism, to defence of one's own bourgeois ``fatherland''.
That opportunist policy of the Social-Democratic Right wing, it will be recalled, did lead them to social-chauvinism in the First World War.
In other articles, ``Inflammable Material in World Politics'', ``Events in the Balkans and in Persia'', Lenin denounced the predatory imperialist policy of the European colonialists in Asia. Pointing to their suppression of the national liberation movement in Persia, India and other countries, he showed ``what brutes the highly ` civilised' European 'politicians', men who have passed through the high school of constitutionalism, can turn into when it comes to a rise in the mass struggle against capital and the capitalist colonial system, i.e., a system of enslavement, plunder and violence''.^^*^^ Lenin called for a struggle against colonial oppression and colonial policy: ``Down with all colonial policy, down with the whole policy of intervention and capitalist struggle for the conquest of foreign lands and foreign populations, for new privileges, new markets, control of the Straits, etc.!"^^**^^
In the summer of 1910, Lenin vacationed with his family at Pornic on the shores of the Bay of Biscay and then went to Copenhagen for the Eighth Congress of the Second International. This was the second international congress he attended. On his first day in the Danish capital he took part in a meeting of the Congress Bureau and, as at the Stuttgart Congress, he convened a conference of Left-wing Social-Democrats during the Congress. This was a further step towards uniting the revolutionary Marxists in the international arena.
One of the chief items on the Congress agenda was the cooperative movement, an issue on which there were sharp differences between the revolutionary and revisionist trends. It concerned the relations between cooperatives and political parties. Two basic policies emerged from the debate, one expressive of proletarian class struggle, and the other of petty-bourgeois reformism. Exponents of the revolutionary policy regarded the cooperatives as weapons of the class struggle, as one of its auxiliary means, and defined the conditions under which the cooperatives could perform that function effectively and not remain merely commercial enterprises. The _-_-_
^^*^^ V. 1. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 182.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 229.
168 petty-bourgeois line was to play down the role of the cooperatives in the proletarian class struggle.As a member of the Congress cooperative committee, Lenin drafted a resolution clearly and comprehensively defining the role and tasks of the cooperatives in the class struggle. Lenin's resolution was made the basis of the draft submitted to the Congress by the R.S.D.L.P. delegation.
The Russian delegation was dominated by opportunists, and Lenin had to wage a vigorous struggle against them. In their rabid hatred of the Bolsheviks and their leader, the Mensheviks even accused Lenin, at a delegation meeting, of trying to ``wreck the Party''. When a Bolshevik delegate asked how one man could wreck the Party, the Menshevik Dan replied: ``He devotes twentyfour hours to the revolution, has no other thoughts save thoughts of the revolution, even sees revolution in his sleep. What can you do with such a man?"~^^*^^ A bitter enemy of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Dan unwittingly spoke the truth. For Lenin devoted all his life to the struggle for the victory of the revolution, for the establishment of proletarian dictatorship, for socialism and the happiness of the working people.
In the course of the Congress, Lenin again drew closer to Plekhanov. They were united in a common effort to preserve the illegal Marxist party against the Liquidators, Trotskyites and revisionists of every stripe. Together they rebutted Trotsky's slanderous writings in the German press, in which he gave a false picture of the situation in the R.S.D.L.P., claiming that the Party was in a state of confusion and disintegration. Together they vigorously protested against these malicious fabrications. In a letter to the Executive of the German Social-Democratic Party they exposed Trotsky's article in Vorwdrts, and after the Congress Lenin wrote a long article, "The Historical Meaning of the Inner-Party Struggle in Russia'', in which he effectively refuted all Trotsky's lies.
Lenin continued his tense work in Copenhagen, visiting the public library every day before and after the Congress sittings. He was chiefly interested in Danish agriculture and made a careful study of agricultural statistics, which he later used in a number of works. On the closing day of the Congress he signed a message to Tina Kirkova, a prominent figure in the Bulgarian labour movement and _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Lenin, edited by N. Meshcheryakov, Vol. II, 1925, p. 49 (Russ. ed.).
169 the Rumanian Social-Democrat K. Dobrogeanu-Gherea, on behalf of a group of Marxist delegates.In mid-September, Lenin went to Stockholm to meet his mother.
In Stockholm Lenin addressed several Social-Democratic meetings on the International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen and the situation in the Russian Party. Maria Alexandrovna attended one of the lectures, arranged by the Stockholm Bolshevik group. This was the first time she heard her son speak in public, ``and it seemed to me,'' wrote Lenin's sister, Maria Ilyinichna who accompanied her, "that listening to him [Lenin] she was reminded of the speech of her other son, Alexander Ilyich, at his trial. That was evident from her changed expression.''~^^*^^
They did not spend long together. The day of parting came. Lenin stood on the pier wistfully watching his mother board the ship. He could not go aboard since it was a Russian ship and he ran the risk of being arrested. It was a sad farewell, for Lenin had a feeling that this was probably the last time he was to see his mother. And so it was; Maria Alexandrovna died in July 1916. She did not live to see her son carry his great cause to victory. Towards the end of September 1910 Lenin returned to Paris. He broke the journey in Copenhagen, where he delivered a lecture on the Eighth International Socialist Congress of the Second International.
_-_-_^^*^^ M. Ulyanova, Reminiscences of Lenin and the Ulyanov Family, Moscow, 1978, p. 299 (Russ. ed.).
170 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Seven __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE NEW RISE OF THE REVOLUTION __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.]Our cause is going ahead-in spite of everything --- and the workers' party is being built up as a revolutionary Social-Democratic party, against the liberal renegades, the Liquidators. We shall have cause to celebrate one day.
Lenin
As Lenin had foreseen, the triumph of the Stolypin reaction was shortlived.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Beginning of a New Revolutionary UpsurgeThe proletariat was the first to take the offensive against tsarism. The summer of 1910 saw a revival of the working-class movement, and in the autumn there were more frequent strikes in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw and other industrial centres. The lessons of the 1905--07 revolution made for heightened class consciousness of the workers.
The industrial revival meant an increase in the number of workers and, what was of exceptional importance, a greater degree of concentration: over half of the industrial labour force was employed in factories with 500 or more workers each, as against only about one-third in the United States. Russia, in fact, had the world's highest concentration of industrial workers. And though the working class was comparatively small numerically, its economic and political conditions and militancy, and the entire preceding Bolshevik activity for the revolutionary education and organisation of the Russian working class, made it the decisive force of the liberation movement against tsarism and capitalism.
And the selfless struggle waged by the working class was an example to the peasantry and the other democratic forces, bringing them into the fight for freedom. The peasants replied to Stolypin's agrarian reform~^^38^^ by setting fire to manor-houses. The beginning of the new revolutionary upsurge insistently demanded the unity of 171 the R.S.D.L.P., purging of its ranks from opportunists, and strengthening of the leading bodies of the Party.
On Lenin's initiative the Bolsheviks strengthened their bloc with the pro-Party Mensheviks and began publication in Paris of the illegal popular newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta (Workers' Gazette), the first issue of which appeared on October 30 (November 12), 1910. Lenin urged all Bolshevik groups in Russia and abroad to support the new paper and begin preparation for meetings and conferences that would re-establish and strengthen the Party.
In connection with the new upsurge of the revolutionary movement in Russia, Lenin set the Bolsheviks the urgent task of re-- establishing the legal Marxist press. And the Bolsheviks accomplished that task, after surmounting great difficulties, by starting publication in St. Petersburg of a weekly newspaper, ^ve^da (The Star). The first issue appeared on December 16 (29), 1910.
Lenin invited Gorky to contribute and ^joe^da published seven of his famous Tales of Italy. ``I am very, very glad,'' Lenin wrote Gorky, ``that you are helping Qiezda. We are having a devilish hard job with it -internal and external and financial difficulties are immense-but still we are managing so far.''^^*^^
At the same time, in December 1910, arrangements were made for the publication in Moscow of a legal Bolshevik magazine Mysl (Thought). Lenin exercised ideological guidance of both Zjiezda and Mysl. He was in constant touch with the editors, directed their work, criticised mistakes, particularly in the early issues of Zjiezda, and waged a struggle for a consistent Marxist line of the newspaper. He published more than fifty of his own articles in %yez.da and Mysl. Under his leadership ^ve^da became a militant Marxist paper that propagated the programme and tactics of the illegal proletarian party and served as the legal Bolshevik centre in Russia.
Among the Lenin articles it printed were the well-known `` Certain Features of the Historical Development of Marxism" and `` Differences in the European Labour Movement''. Mysl carried Lenin's important article ``Those Who Would Liquidate Us''. In all of them Lenin gave an exceptionally profound and lucid description of the creative nature of revolutionary Marxism. Engels's classical formula that Marxism was not a dogma, but a guide to action, Lenin remarked, expressed the most profound and distinctive feature of Marxism, its intrinsic projection into the future, its creative _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 22.
172 revolutionary spirit. Overlooking this aspect of Marxism, we ``turn Marxism into something one-sided, distorted and lifeless; we deprive it of its life blood; we undermine its basic theoretical foundations --- dialectics, the doctrine of historical development, all-embracing and full of contradictions; we undermine its connection with the definite practical tasks of the epoch which may change with every new turn of history''.^^*^^Of special significance in this context is ``Differences in the European Labour Movement''. In it, Lenin discloses the chief cause of the differences over theory and tactics within the international labour movement. For several decades there had been an incessant struggle between two basic deviations from Marxism: revisionism, opportunism, reformism, on the one hand, and anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalism, on the other. All deviations from Marxism, Lenin demonstrated, stemmed from the very nature of capitalist society, from the development of the class struggle.
The socialist movement attracts to its ranks, particularly in periods of rapid growth of the working-class movement, ever new strata of the working people, whose training is inevitably accompanied by ``waverings in the sphere of theory and tactics, by repetitions of old mistakes, by a temporary reversion to antiquated views and antiquated methods, and so forth''.^^**^^
In countries where backward economic relationships hamper the development of capitalism and the proletarian class struggle, some supporters of the labour movement ``assimilate only certain aspects of Marxism, only certain parts of the new world outlook, or individual slogans and demands''.^^***^^
A constant source of differences, Lenin pointed out, is the dialectical nature of social development, which proceeds in contradictions and through contradictions.
Differences in the labour movement are due also to some change of tactics by the ruling classes in general and the bourgeoisie in particular. In most countries the bourgeoisie devises two systems of rule, two methods-the whip and the carrot-of maintaining its domination: the method of direct, unconcealed coercion, and the method of ``liberalism'', of individual concessions. And not infrequently these methods succeed each other or are applied in various combinations.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 39.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 16, p. 348.
^^***^^ Ibid.
173The growth of anarchism, petty-bourgeois revolutionism, and sectarianism in the working-class movement is due to one-sided reaction by definite groups of socialists to the method of direct coercion used by the bourgeoisie with regard to the people. Left opportunists of every variety reject ``petty work'', systematic, painstaking activities among the masses, especially utilisation of the parliamentary platform. In practice, this tactic of Leftist groups and trends amounts to waiting for momentous revolutionary events, along with inability to muster the forces which create great events.
In some of the more developed capitalist countries the bourgeoisie resorts to a policy of ``reforms against revolution''. One-sided reaction to this liberalism and ``bourgeois reformism" breeds Right opportunism in the labour movement. For the Right opportunists accept reforms, which are fully compatible with the capitalist system, as ``partial realisation of socialism'', bow to bourgeois ``legality'' and reject revolution for transition from capitalism to socialism.
Both Right and Left opportunists, Lenin wrote in conclusion, ``hinder the thing that is most important and most urgent, namely, to unite the workers in big, powerful and properly functioning organisations, capable of functioning well under all circumstances, permeated with the spirit of the class struggle, clearly realising their aims and trained in the true Marxist world outlook''.^^*^^
Today the Communist and Workers' Parties draw many lessons from Lenin's article ``Differences in the European Labour Movement".
The struggle against both Right and Left revisionism and opportunism and a conciliatory attitude towards them is the indispensable duty of the Communist parties, a prime condition of their unity and strength.
Living in emigration Lenin devoted much attention to the training of Party cadres. In the spring of 1911 on his initiative was organised a Party school at Longjumeau, a little village near Paris. Krupskaya, Semashko and Armand took an active part in organising and directing the work of the school. The students, eighteen in number, were workers drawn from Party organisations in the big industrial centres of Russia-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Sormovo, Yekaterinoslav, and others. Among the students there were ten Bolsheviks, four pro-Party Mensheviks and one Vperyod-ist.^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 16, p. 349.
^^**^^ Vfteiyod-ists Otzovists grouped around the newspaper Vperyod, published from 1910 to 1917.
174Before the opening of the school Lenin discussed with the group the Manifesto of the Communist Party of Marx and Engels and Krupskaya taught the students to write articles and letters to newspapers.
In the school Lenin gave 29 lectures on political economy and 12 each on the agrarian question and the theory and practice of socialism in Russia. At the request of the students, he gave three additional lectures on the materialist interpretation of history and a talk on the political situation and position within the Party. His lectures often took the form of animated discussion in which all eighteen students participated. He taught them to analyse problems and trained them in the habit of independent and systematic study.
The school was in session for about three months. Lenin was very pleased with the results of its work. A farewell ``graduation'' evening was organised, at which Lenin addressed some warm parting words to the revolutionaries who were soon to depart for Russia. He charged them to remember Party comradeship, and, most important, to rely more boldly on the working class, for in it lay the power and the future of the Party and the revolution.
Three of the students, G. Orjonikidze, I. Schwarz and B. Breslav, left to take up illegal work in Russia before the end of the course and the rest followed when the school closed. In Russia they came .to be known as ``Leninists'' and were proud of the name. All of them became subsequently prominent Party and Soviet workers. The Longjumeau school, organised and directed by Lenin, was the forerunner of the Bolshevik Party schools and Communist universities founded in later years.
In memory of Lenin's stay in Longjumeau the French Communists put up a memorial plaque on the wall of house number 91 on the corner of the Rue de 1'ecole and the Grande Rue, bearing the inscription: ``V. I. Lenin, theoretician and leader of the world Communist movement and founder of the Soviet Union, lived and worked here in 1911.''
In May 1911, Lenin took steps to restore the Party leading body. All the Bolshevik members of the C.C. working in Russia had been arrested, and Lenin therefore decided to call a conference of C.C. members living abroad. It was held in Paris on May 28-June 4 (June 10--17), 1911, and greatly expedited the convocation of a general Party conference. It appointed an Organising Commission Abroad for calling an all-Russia Party conference. It instructed experienced Party workers, Orjonikidze, Schwarz and Breslav, to contact Party committees in Central and South Russia and the Urals and, together with them, convene a conference which would set up 175 a Russian Organising Committee. The R.O.C. was formed at the end of September 1911, at a conference of local Party organisations in Baku, and immediately started energetic activity.
In September 1911, Lenin attended a meeting of the International Socialist Bureau in Zurich at which he supported Rosa Luxemburg against the opportunist attitude of the German Social-- Democrats in connection with the Reichstag elections. While in Switzerland he gave lectures on ``Stolypin and the Revolution" in several towns, repeating the lecture in Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Liege and London in October and November.
At the end of December, in Paris, he held a meeting of Bolshevik groups abroad, at which he delivered a report on the position in the Party. The meeting approved the work of the R.O.C. in preparing a Party conference.
It was decided to hold the conference in Prague. The Czech Social-Democrats rendered valuable assistance in its organisation, providing the hall, arranging for the delegates to be put up with workers' families and, in general, displaying friendly concern for their safety and comfort. This was an expression of genuine proletarian solidarity.
The overwhelming majority of the delegates were workers. With one of them, Yevgeny Onufriyev (Stepan), a mechanic at the Obukhov Engineering Works in St. Petersburg and a member of the St. Petersburg Party Committee, Lenin shared a room in the home of a Czech worker. In his reminiscences, Onufriyev speaks of the great consideration and tact Lenin always showed at home. He would often return late at night and, not to disturb Onufriyev, would tiptoe across the room, quietly undress and go to bed. If he came earlier, he would drink a cup of tea and rest for ten or fifteen minutes, pacing the room with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Then, valuing his time, he would tell his room-mate: ``Well, Stepan, you go on with your reading and I'll do some work.''
The Sixth All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. opened on January 5 (18), 1912, and held all its 23 sessions secretly in a modest hall in the Social-Democrat People's House at 7, Gibern Street.
Lenin directed all the work of the conference, was elected its chairman, delivered the reports and speeches on all key questions, drafted the conference resolutions, which were adopted by the conference. He was not only the organiser and leader but the heart and soul of this historic conference.
176 CmtlA.1 b.IKMOKPATHMKCKAfl PABOMAfl IIArmi HCKPA JE I.First page of Iskra No. I, December 1900 Reduced
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An important feature of the Prague deliberations was the reports from Party organisations in Russia, to which Lenin attached the utmost importance, making copious notes throughout the five sessions at which these reports were heard. He was particularly interested in the number and composition of Party organisations, how long they had been in existence, how they were popularising and circulating the Bolshevik newspapers Sotsial-Demokrat and %vez.da and the magazine Mysl, in propaganda activity among workers, and joint work with pro-Party Mensheviks. And he was gratified to learn that everywhere energetic work was being conducted among revolutionary-minded workers to strengthen the illegal Party organisations and groups, and that everywhere there was wide understanding of the need to combine illegal and legal forms of political activity.
In his speech on the organisational question, Lenin emphasised the need for able utilisation of the Duma platform and work in the trade unions and various legal workers' organisations, urging the establishment in each of these of a Party nucleus capable of carrying out firm Party policy.
The conference adopted the resolution on ``Liquidationism and the Liquidator Group'', drafted by Lenin, in which it declared that the liquidator group has ``definitely placed itself outside the Party". The Conference thus expelled the Liquidators from the proletarian Party. That was a historic decision-the Bolsheviks eliminated all vestiges of formal unity with the Mensheviks within the R.S.D.L.P. The Conference formalised the independent existence of the Bolshevik Party founded by Lenin in 1903.
Lenin reported on the activities of the International Socialist Bureau, devoting a large part of his speech to the struggle within the German Social-Democratic Party in which, he said, things were heading towards a split. Three distinct groups-centrist, opportunist and revolutionary - had taken shape in the party. Lenin sharply criticised the opportunism of some members of the German delegation on the International Socialist Bureau.
Lenin regarded the deteriorating relations between the revolutionary and opportunist trends within the German Social-- __PRINTERS_P_177_COMMENT__ 12---826 177 Democracy as an important symptom of the beginning of a new age-the age of socialist revolution.
The Prague Conference adopted a number of important resolutions on international issues and the national liberation movement. It hailed the revolutionary republicans of China, emphasising the worldwide implications of the Chinese people's revolutionary struggle. It expressed complete sympathy with the liberation struggle of the Persian people, and noted the common aims of the workers of Finland and Russia in the fight against tsarism and the counter-- revolutionary bourgeoisie. Expressed in all these conference resolutions was the great principle of proletarian internationalism.
The organisational principles of Bolshevism, the Party's policy and tactics in the new conditions of a revolutionary upsurge, found full expression in the Prague resolutions.
The Conference had vast international significance, for it gave the revolutionary forces in the Second International parties a striking example of struggle against opportunism in the socialist workingclass movement.
Every action by the Left Socialists in the Second International parties against the opportunists gratified Lenin. He welcomed the decision of the Thirteenth Italian Socialist Party Congress, held six months after the Prague Conference of the R.S.D.L.P., to expel a group of opportunists (Right-wing reformists) led by the former Party leader, Bissolati, commenting on the Italian Socialist Party Congress in an article for Pravda (The Truth).
In the expulsion of the opportunists from the Italian Socialist Party Lenin saw confirmation of the Prague Conference policy of energetically and consistently combating the opportunists, right up to an organisational break with them.
The Liquidators in Russia and abroad-the Trotskyites, Bundists, Vperyod-ists, and the opportunist elements in the Polish and Latvian Social-Democratic parties-started a vicious campaign against the Prague Conference, seeking to discredit it and vindicate the Liquidators who had been expelled from the Party. With the opportunists ousted from its ranks, the Bolshevik Party greatly strengthened its organisations, achieved close-knit unity, enhanced its fighting capacity and was in a position to give effective leadership to the new upsurge of the mass revolutionary struggle.
Both in Russia and abroad Lenin and the Bolsheviks directed their efforts to putting the Prague resolutions into effect.
178 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Bolshevik PressOn April 4 (17), 1912, a bloody drama was enacted in the far-off Siberian taiga when tsarist troops opened fire on striking miners employed on the Lena Goldfields. This spurred the masses throughout the country to revolutionary action. News of the Lena tragedy was carried by the Bolshevik %yezda to every corner of the country, merging the numberless voices of protest from factory workers into a single, powerful wrathful voice of Russia's working class. Lenin made a report on the Lena events and strikes in Russia to the Paris section of the R.S.D.L.P. Organisation Abroad and outlined measures that would enable the Bolshevik Party to give leadership to the mounting mass revolutionary movement. Later he addressed meetings in Paris and Leipzig on the revolutionary upsurge in Russia.
The Lena shootings greatly increased the demand for %yezda, which in March began to appear three times a week. The growth of the working-class movement made fresh demands on the Party press; a daily mass workers' newspaper was required.
On April 10 (23), permission was obtained from the authorities to publish a daily paper, Pravda, and its publication was announced shortly thereafter. On the night following April 21 (May 4), the printing plant where Pravda was being put out and its yard were crowded with workers sent by Party organisations from all parts, of the capital: they had come to bring copies of the first Marxist daily to their factories.
Pravda was published on voluntary contributions from workers and enjoyed immense popularity: in 1912, there were 620 group contributions, in 1913, the number was 2,181, and in January-May 1914, 2,873. Lenin regarded these voluntary contributions as equivalent to Party membership dues. Without the assistance of the working class, Pravda would never have been able to survive in conditions of brutal police repressions; 36 court suits were filed against its editors in the first year of publication alone, chiefly for failure to pay fines. All in all, the editors spent nearly four years (47.5 months) in jail, and 41 issues were confiscated. True, only a small part of the total edition fell into the hands of the police, for most of the papers were carried away by workers before the police could lay their hands on them. Such issues, wrapped in reactionary newspapers, were mailed to Lenin and subscribers in Russia and abroad.
Eight times the tsarist government suppressed Pravda, but it continued to come out under different names. Despite all difficulties, __PRINTERS_P_178_COMMENT__ 12* 179 the Bolsheviks were able to put out 636 issues in the little more than two years of Pravda's existence. And this, Lenin said, was conspicuous proof of the class consciousness, energy and unity of the Russian workers.
The anniversary of Pravda, April 22 (May 5), has since 1922 been celebrated as Workers' Press Day.
In June 1912, Lenin and Krupskaya moved from Paris to Cracow, Polish Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary. They spent a few days in Leipzig and on June 9 (22) arrived in Cracow. To obtain a residence permit, Lenin, as a foreigner, had to appear and answer questions at police headquarters. Asked about his occupation and means of livelihood, he replied: ``I am a correspondent of Pravda, a Russian democratic newspaper published in St. Petersburg, and of Sotsial-Demokrat, a Russian newspaper published in Paris; that is the source of my earnings.''
Questioned about his purpose in coming to Cracow, Lenin said: ``I have come to Galicia to study agrarian relations, in which I am particularly interested, and also to study the Polish language.''~^^*^^ Lenin was immediately put under secret police surveillance.
The real reason why Lenin chose Cracow was that it offered better opportunities for establishing closer relations with Russia and directing Pravda and Party activity there.
At first, Lenin rented a two-room apartment in a house on Zwierzyniec Street in the eastern, working-class suburb. But this was too far away from the railway station, to which Lenin had to make daily trips to post letters-to make sure that his articles reach Pravda in time, he used to send them with the evening express. Early in September 1912, Lenin and Krupskaya moved to another address, not far from the railway station, on Lubomirski Street (now Andrzej Modrzewski Street), where they rented another tworoom flat. The furniture consisted of three cheap iron beds, two deal tables, a few bookshelves and a few chairs.
In Cracow and in summer in Bely Dunajec near Poronin, Lenin came into still closer association with the Polish labour movement, with Polish Social-Democrats and rendered them considerable assistance. He had a sufficient command of the language to follow the press.
In 1913 Lenin attended the May Day meeting of Cracow workers. In April 1913, at the People's University he read a lecture to Polish Socialists of the various trends. Lenin's subject was: ``The _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin Miscellany II, p. 471.
180 Russian Working-Class Movement and Social-Democracy''. The second lecture, "The Russian Social-Democratic Movement and the National Question'', was delivered in March 1914, at a meeting of the Spunja students' society.In Cracow, Lenin was soon in close contact with Russia-with Pravda, the Social-Democratic Duma group and local Party organisations. Correspondence with Russia increased rapidly reaching up to several hundred letters a month. Arrangements were made for illegal crossings of the frontier. Many comrades came from Russia to deliver messages and reports from Party organisations, discuss their problems and receive instructions and advice.
Lenin was Pravda's factual editor-in-chief. He wrote for the paper almost daily. His articles appeared under various pseudonyms: V. Ilyin, V. Frey, K. T., V. I., Pravdist, Statistician, Reader M. N., and many more. Altogether, more than 280 of Lenin's articles and shorter notes appeared in the paper. Those on the most controversial subjects were written in an Aesopian language that evaded the censor but was perfectly clear to the reader.
During the Fourth Duma election campaign, in the autumn of 1912, the Menshevik Liquidators tried to prevent a discussion of political platforms of the two groups at election meetings. They were afraid-and with good reason-to discuss a revolutionary programme for the R.S.D.L.P., knowing that they would be defeated. Lenin requested Pravda and its supporters to make this the chief issue and intensify their campaign against the Cadets and Liquidators, thereby giving the paper a more militant spirit.
Lenin attached great importance in the elections to the ``Left bloc" tactic, i.e., temporary agreements with the Trudoviks,^^39^^ Socialist-Revolutionaries and Popular Socialists^^40^^ as a counterweight to the Menshevik tactic of alliance with the Cadets.
He was pleased with the results of the Bolshevik campaign: Bolshevik workers were elected from the workers' curia^^41^^ in all six industrial gubernias. The non-industrial gubernias returned seven Mensheviks.
And Lenin was gratified by the fact, also, that the Bolsheviks had polled over one million workers' votes, compared with less than a quarter of a million cast for the Menshevik Liquidators. In his letters to St. Petersburg he congratulated the contributors, editors and friends of Pravda on this election victory.
181Lenin was unremitting in his efforts to improve Pravda and discussed its reorganisation with members of the Central Committee and the Bolshevik Duma group. He insisted on strengthening the Pravda editorial staff to ensure a consistent Bolshevik policy, vigorously campaign for working-class unity from below and utilise every opportunity to help organise illegal work at local Party level.
The reorganisation was carried out in the spring of 1913. Central Committee direction of the paper was strengthened. The participation of local Bolshevik organisations in preparing workers' letters for Pravda, in collecting funds for its publication and in its distribution considerably increased. Its prestige as the champion of workers' interests grew.
In March 1913, Pravda's circulation reached 30,000--32,000, and on holidays as much as 40,000--42,000. But that was only a beginning, and Lenin pressed for an intensified campaign to increase circulation. Pravda comprehensively reported conditions in numerous factories, publishing in all over 17,000 items from its worker-- correspondents, of which 10,000 dealt with strike struggles. Pravda trained and rallied around it a veritable army of worker-correspondents who courageously carried Lenin's ideas to the masses.
In a series of articles published in Pravda Lenin angrily denounced the reactionary nature of the whole policy of the imperialist bourgeoisie and called on the international working class to support the national liberation movement of the peoples of Asia, aroused by the Russian Revolution of 1905--07.
The Chinese people were in the van of the democratic movement in Asia. Lenin had a high regard for Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary democrat who led the national liberation movement in China, and though he pointed to certain errors in his political views, he spoke highly of his militant, republican and democratic spirit, his heartfelt sympathy for the toiling and exploited people, his implicit faith in their strength and the justice of their cause. Lenin was confident that, whatever the fate of the Chinese Republic, which was menaced by all kinds of ``civilised'' hyenas, no power on earth could crush the heroic democratic spirit of the masses in Asian and semi-Asian countries.
Led by Lenin, the Bolsheviks were the most consistent and resolute opponents of colonialism. Lenin described Italy's 1911--12 military campaign in Africa and her seizure of Tripolitania, a province in the north-west of Libya, as a typical colonial war of twentiethcentury ``civilised'' states. It was, he wrote, ``a perfected, civilised bloodbath, the massacre of Arabs with the help of the `latest' 182 weapons''.^^*^^ To put down the resistance of the coastal population, Italian troops, by way of ``punishment'', beat up nearly 3,000 Arabs, hanged some 1,000, killed whole families.
Under the peace treaty, Tripolitania passed from one foreign oppressor to another-from Turkey to Italy. This, Lenin pointed out, did not end the war, for the Arab tribes in the heart of the country would not submit to the annexationist peace. However, Lenin also understood well that the path to freedom would be a hard one. The imperialist freebooters, he wrote, would for a long time to come ``civilise'' the Arabs by bayonet, bullet, noose, fire and rape,^^**^^ rejoicing in their suppression of a backward and unarmed people. But Lenin was always sure that the colonialists would be defeated. He was a genuine friend of the Arabs and other oppressed African peoples.
He regarded the struggle of the colonial peoples for freedom as a component part of the world proletarian struggle against imperialism.
The Party's legal activity in Russia centred around Pravda. But Pravda was, at the same time, an important channel through which illegal organisational work was conducted. For it was through Pravda that Lenin and the Central Committee communicated their directives to local Party organisations, and it was through the same channel that these organisations kept the Central Committee and Lenin in touch with the movement. Local Party leaders met at the Pravda offices to exchange experience in building the Party under illegal conditions, and members of the Pravda staff helped front-rank workers build new Party organisations in the factories, legal societies, trade unions, insurance societies, etc. Pravda was in the centre of the struggle for the Party spirit.
Raising the Party banner, patiently and consistently campaigning for political working-class unity, Pravda directed the working-class movement towards the new revolution.
Lenin made a special effort to enlist the Party's best literary forces and make Pravda a mass workers' paper of a new type. He was in regular correspondence with its editors, most of the contributors, knew many of them personally and could accurately gauge their literary abilities and shortcomings. Pravda trained a new generation of revolutionary workers, hundreds of thousands of proletarians who were to play a decisive part in carrying out the Great _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 337.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 338.
183 October Socialist Revolution and assuring victory in the Civil War.The standard-bearer of Marxism-Leninism, the Party's potent ideological weapon, Pravda continued and multiplied the militant traditions of the Bolshevik press set by Lenin in Iskra, Vperyod and Proletary. And the Pravda tradition was further enriched in the Party and Soviet press after the October Revolution.
In organising and conducting Pravda, in using it to carry out revolutionary policy and for the political education of the masses in the difficult conditions of tsarism, Lenin and his associates set a signal example for the international working-class movement and for the Communist, revolutionary press of the world. That has been emphasised by leaders of Communist Parties in many countries.
The Bolsheviks' legal press was not confined to Pravda. On Lenin's instructions the Bolshevik monthly Prosveshcheniye ( Enlightenment) was started in 1911, the first issue appearing in St. Petersburg in December of that year. Right up to the time it was closed, in July 1914, the magazine played an outstanding part in the Marxist internationalist education of Russia's front-rank workers.
Lenin asked Maxim Gorky to take charge of its belles lettres section.
From Paris, and later from Cracow, Lenin directed Prosveshcheniye, editing its articles. He himself contributed 26 articles, among them ``The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism'', ``Critical Remarks on the National Question'', and ``The Right of Nations to Self-Determination".
On August 25 (September 7), 1913 the first issue of the Bolshevik newspaper Nash Put (Our Path) appeared and the newspaper immediately won wide popularity among Moscow workers. It was suppressed by the police, however, on September 12 (25). Ten of Lenin's articles appeared in its sixteen issues.
Lenin closely followed the political and educational activities of the magazine Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker), published legally in St. Petersburg from February 23 to June 26, 1914. Lenin devoted much attention also to another legal Bolshevik publication, the weekly journal Voprosy Strakhovaniya (Social Insurance), founded in St. Petersburg in October 1913 and published with intervals. It skilfully combined the campaign for centralisation of the sick-- benefit societies, workers' control over insurance societies, etc., with the struggle for ``uncurtailed'' Bolshevik slogans.^^42^^
During his stay in Poland Lenin wrote about 400 articles for the legal and illegal Party press, not counting numerous letters.
184The combination of legal and illegal forms of press propaganda enabled the Bolsheviks to train hundreds of thousands of classconscious fighters for democracy and socialism. In later years Lenin frequently referred to this Bolshevik experience of building up a new type of periodical press for the workers, pointing to its immense international significance and insisting that it be ably utilised by the Communist and Workers' Parties of other countries.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ For the Unity of the PartyFollowing the elections to the Fourth Duma, Lenin worked for close contact between the Bolshevik Duma members and the C.C. Bureau Abroad. Membership in the Duma, he pointed out, was a militant and responsible post. It was the duty of working-class representatives to speak and act on behalf of Russia's millions, use the Duma platform to disseminate revolutionary ideas and hold aloft the great banner of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin carefully followed Bolshevik activity in the Duma, correcting the group when they made a false step and teaching them on their own mistakes and successes.
Lenin patiently and painstakingly taught the Bolshevik deputies how to make the most of the Duma platform for revolutionary purposes. They frequently visited Lenin in Cracow to consult with him and attended Central Committee meetings at which they received advice and instructions on all aspects of Duma activity.
All the important Bolshevik Duma speeches were drawn up by Lenin or with his close cooperation. In 1914, Lenin prepared two bills on national equality and drafted speeches ``On the Question of National Policy" and ``The Estimates of the Ministry of Agriculture''. The speeches of the Bolsheviks in the Duma exposing the reactionary policy of the landlords and capitalists met with lively and sympathetic response among the working people.
Lenin closely followed the illegal extra-Duma activity of the Bolshevik group, carried out in pursuance of Party decisions.
Under Lenin's leadership a new type of proletarian-Party parliamentarian was being trained. The Bolshevik deputies were executors of the Party's will; its decisions, by which it was guided in all its activity, were binding on them. Unity within the parliamentary group was based on its submission to the will of the Party.
185Lenin repeatedly pointed to the vast importance of the Bolsheviks' ``parliamentary'' experience for the entire international Communist movement, stressing that the Communist Parties must be exceptionally exacting with regard to their parliamentary groups. He worked out the following guiding principles: complete subordination of parliamentary groups to the control and directives of the Central Committee; parliamentary groups should consist mainly of revolutionary workers; parliamentary speeches should be carefully analysed in the Party press and at Party meetings from the standpoint of fidelity to communist principles; members of parliament should learn from their mistakes; they should be required to engage in mass propaganda; members of parliament who display opportunist tendencies must be expelled from the group. These principles became guidelines for the fraternal Communist parties of the capitalist countries.
Towards the close of December 1912 the Central Committee met together with Party functionaries.
The arrival of Party activists from Russia was a great occasion for Lenin. He was in his element, animated and elated. All free time was spent in long talks with the delegates and making the acquaintance of those he did not know.
The meeting reviewed the experience of 1912, after the Prague Conference.
The working class launched a mass offensive against the capitalists and the autocracy. The wave of economic and political strikes combined with political demonstrations was once more broader in scope than in any other country in the world, including even the most developed. About one million had been involved in political strikes. Russia had entered the phase of maturing revolution. The resolution adopted on Lenin's report defined the basic tasks of the Party and working class in the situation of mounting revolutionary upsurge.
Lenin's report and the resolution drafted by him ``On the Attitude to Liquidationism and on Unity" were devoted to questions of the further rallying of the Bolshevik Party and the uniting of the working class under its leadership for a successful struggle against tsarism and capitalism. The central issue of the resolution was the tactical proposition on Social-Democratic worker unity from below-in the factory nuclei, shop committees, district groups, city organisations, the various legal societies, etc. The Lenin tactic of united front from below holds a firm place in the strategy and tactics of the Communist Parties.
186Other resolutions, also framed by Lenin, dealt with the SocialDemocratic Duma group, the insurance campaign, Social-- Democratic organisations in the non-Russian areas, and reorganisation of the Pravda editorial board. The Cracow resolutions did much to strengthen the Party, promote closer unity in its ranks and help win over the majority of the working class.
In the spring of 1913, Nadezhda Konstantinovna's health became worse and her doctors advised her to spend a few months in the mountains. Early in May the family moved to Bely Dunajec, a small village near Zakopane, the well-known mountain resort. They rented a small cottage-two rooms, kitchen and tiny attic which Lenin used as a study. Lenin, Krupskaya and her mother spent the summer here in 1913 and 1914. Lenin would begin his day with a swim before breakfast, in the Dunajec, a mountain stream that ran near the cottage, then walk to the post-office to pick up mail, glance through it and answer urgent telegrams and letters. After breakfast he would work till seven in the evening with a brief interval for the midday meal. In the evenings Lenin would cycle to the railway station to mail his letters. When the weather was good he would take his work to the Golitsova Hrapa, a hill affording an excellent view of the snowcapped Tatra peaks. Sometimes he would take long walks in the mountains. Older Poronin inhabitants recall ``Pan Ulyanov" dressed in a sports jacket, his pockets stuffed with newspapers. What surprised them was that he was the only vacationist to take an interest in their life, the harvest, wages, etc.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna's health did not improve in Poronin however and Cracow doctors suggested that she consult Professor Kocher, a specialist on thyroid disorders, in Berne, Switzerland.
In the last week of June, Lenin and Krupskaya left for Berne, stopping over at Vienna for a meeting with Party comrades. In Vienna they met their comrades and, having walked over the city, left for Berne. Krupskaya was put in hospital, where she spent about three weeks. Lenin visited her in the mornings and spent the rest of the day in the libraries. He read a great deal and made notes on the subjects which interested him.
In Berne, Lenin wrote his ``Theses on the National Question" and drew up notes for a lecture on the subject which he delivered in Zurich, Geneva, Lausanne and Berne. The halls were always packed. On August 3, 1913, Lenin delivered a report ``On the Position in the Party" to the Second Conference of R.S.D.L.P. organisations abroad in Berne.
187Lenin and Krupskaya returned to Poronin early in August, in time for a meeting of the Central Committee.
In Poronin, Lenin learned of the death of August Bebel and immediately sent a message of condolence to the German socialists on behalf of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee. It was published in Vorwarts on August 17. On August 8 (21), Severnaya Pravda (Northern Pravdd) carried an article by Lenin ``August Bebel" paying tribute to Bebel as an outstanding leader of the German proletariat, prominent international Social-Democratic spokesman and active opponent of opportunism and reformism.
In the autumn, the Central Committee met together with Party functionaries. For purposes of secrecy it was called the ``summer'' conference, but has gone down in Party history as the ``Poronin'' conference. The conference opened with Lenin's speech and was directed by Lenin.
Lenin delivered the report on the work of the Central Committee. The growth of the revolutionary movement and the organisational strengthening of the Party, he said, were clear proof that the Bolsheviks had adopted and followed a correct policy. The outstanding success in the elections to the Fourth Duma, the founding of Pravda, and the high level of the strike movement, were all the result of the Party's activities under the direction of its Central Committee. We can say with a clear conscience, Lenin told the meeting, that we have done our duty. The reports from local organisations are evidence that the workers are anxious to strengthen the Party and build up its organisations.
The resolution ``The Tasks of Agitation in the Present Situation" and ``Resolution on the Organisational Question and on the Party Congress" drafted by Lenin and approved by the conference, defined the Party's tasks and basic forms of activity in the new situation.
Lenin made a comprehensive report on the national question, which had acquired heightened importance in view of the spread of Black-Hundred chauvinism and the growth of nationalist tendencies among the liberal bourgeoisie and the top sections of the oppressed nationalities. This created a grave danger to the movement's militant internationalist unity, which the Bolsheviks had always championed. The resolution called for discussion of a Bolshevik national programme at the next Party congress.
Lenin regarded the resolution on the national question as a fundamental policy statement of the Party and repeatedly referred to it as an expression of the collective view of the Russian Marxists.
188Lenin and Krupskaya returned to Cracow on October 7 (20), 1913. By this time contacts with Russia had been greatly extended and strengthened and Lenin was able to give more operational leadership to the Party. Though away from Russia, he was the recognised leader of her working class.
Parallel with this day-to-day guidance of the Party, Lenin continued, during October-December 1913 and the early months of
1914, to work on a comprehensive substantiation of the Party's theory and policy on the national question. On his advice a number of prominent Party workers undertook a study of the problem. Lenin assisted them with counsel and instructions. In this period Lenin wrote his classical ``Critical Remarks on the National Question" and ``The Right of Nations to Self-Determination'', both of which are a masterly theoretical analysis of the national question and of the tremendous part it plays in the working-class movement and in the destiny of the nations.
Lenin substantiated economically the Bolshevik programme on the national question and formulated the famous Marxist proposition about two tendencies in the development of the national question under capitalism:
``Developing capitalism knows two historical tendencies in the national question. The first is the awakening of national life and national movements, the struggle against all national oppression, and the creation of national states. The second is the development and growing frequency of international intercourse in every form, the breakdown of national barriers, the creation of the international unity of capital, of economic life in general, of politics, science, etc.
``Both tendencies are a universal law of capitalism.''~^^*^^
The first tendency, Lenin wrote, is historically associated with the epoch of the triumph of capitalism over feudalism and stems from deep-rooted economic factors. The free development of capitalism requires conquest by the bourgeoisie of the home market, the merger into a single state of territories with populations speaking one and the same language, with removal of all obstacles to the development of that language and to its consolidation in literature. It is therefore the tendency of every national movement to form national states best suited to these requirements of modern capitalism. Deep-rooted economic factors thus make the national state the typical and normal type under capitalism. That applies to the whole civilised world.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 27.
189The second tendency is typical of the higher, imperialist stage of capitalist development. The emergence and extension of international sea and rail routes, development of the world market, export of capital, etc., make for closer economic ties between nations and for international division of labour. And this tendency, Lenin believed, was expressive of the tremendous expansion of the productive forces. It led to liquidation of national isolation and the rise of the capitalist world system. But the capitalist world system achieved these closer economic ties not through equal cooperation, but through savage rivalry, through oppression, coercion and subjection of colonial and semi-colonial nations, through brutal imperialist exploitation and robbery of backward countries by imperialist states. The second tendency, therefore, far from superseding the first, aggravated it and roused among the oppressed nations resentment and struggle against imperialism.
Lenin demonstrated that the Marxist national programme took both tendencies into account. The first, by championing equality of nations and languages and the right to self-determination up to and including secession and formation of independent states, and the second, by championing the great principle of proletarian internationalism and urging uncompromising struggle against attempts to instil bourgeois nationalism in the working class.
It stands to reason that Lenin never believed national oppression could be fully ended under capitalism - only socialism offered a consistent and thorough solution. Since then and up to February 1917 a democratic revolution was on the order of the day in Russia, Lenin regarded the national question as part of the general question of the bougeois-democratic revolution.
The demand he advanced for all the non-Russian peoples oppressed by tsarism-and they made up more than half of Russia's population-was the right to self-determination, the right to independent statehood. Accordingly, he called on the working class to support these peoples in their fight for national liberation, against tsarism.
In all his writings on the national question Lenin disclosed the substance of bourgeois nationalism as an attempt to divide the workers along national lines, weaken their unity, undermine the proletarian class struggle and the cause of freedom and democracy. To the nationalism of the bourgeoisie Lenin always, firmly and consistently, counterposed the internationalism of the proletariat. He wrote: "Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalismthese are the two irreconcilably hostile slogans that correspond to the two great class camps throughout the capitalist world, and 190 express the two policies (nay, the two world outlooks) in the national question.''~^^*^^
In ``Critical Remarks on the National Question" Lenin formulated the important proposition that there existed two cultures in every national culture: democratic and bourgeois. The class-- conscious worker takes from each national culture only its democratic and socialist elements, as a counterweight to the bourgeois culture and the bourgeois nationalism of each nation.
The important thing in the national question, Lenin teaches us, is to unite the workers of all nations in the struggle against bourgeois-landlord nationalism, bring them closer together and achieve their unity in the class struggle.
In his article, ``The Right of Nations to Self-Determination'', Lenin deals with Rosa Luxemburg's erroneous proposal to delete the clause on self-determination from the Russian Marxists' Programme. Rosa Luxemburg's mistake lay in the fact that she regarded the right of nations to self-determination as a concession to the bourgeois nationalism of oppressed nations. Wholly concerned with the struggle against bourgeois nationalism in Poland, she was oblivious to Great-Russian nationalism, which at that time represented the principal obstacle to the development of democracy and proletarian struggle.
Later, assessing the views of the Polish Social-Democrats, Lenin stressed their international nature: ``The Polish Social-Democratic comrades have rendered a great historic service by advancing the slogan of internationalism and declaring that the fraternal union of the proletariat of all countries is of supreme importance to them and that they will never go to war for the liberation of Poland. This is to their credit, and this is why we have always regarded only these Polish Social-Democrats as socialists.''^^**^^
Demonstrating why it was necessary to retain this clause in the Party's Programme, Lenin explained that recognition of the right to secession must not be confused with the advisability or inadvisability of secession in any specific instance. All other conditions being equal, the revolutionary proletariat would favour a bigger state, for it offered a number of significant advantages compared with smaller states.
In his efforts to promote proletarian internationalism, Lenin was always guided by the practical activities of Marx, by the advice _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 26.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 24, p. 298.
191 and instructions given in his writings. ``The Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association'', drafted by Marx in October 1864, stressed the immense importance of fraternal alliance of the workers of the various countries in the fight for emancipation of all the working people. The Address contains this statement: ``Past experience has shown how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between the workmen of different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by each other in all their struggle for emancipation, will be chastised by the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts.''^^*^^Time and again Lenin drew attention to the well-known Marxist thesis that no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations. The freedom of the Russian nation demands a struggle against the oppression of all non-Russian nationalities. For only such a struggle can guarantee the really democratic and really socialist education of the masses and offer the best chances of national peace in Russia. Conversely, the slightest support by the proletariat of the privileges of ``its'' national bourgeoisie will inevitably breed distrust on the part of the proletariat of another nation, will inevitably weaken working-class solidarity and disunite the workers to the joy and delight of the bourgeoisie.
Guided by Lenin's teaching on the national question and developing it further, the Communist Parties support the national liberation struggle of the Asian, African and Latin American nations against imperialism and feudalism, for this struggle serves the cause of national freedom and victory over the forces of imperialist reaction, the cause of social progress.
Lenin's works on the national question written in these years of revolutionary revival are an outstanding contribution to the ideological treasure-house of creative Marxism. They continue to serve as a reliable guide for all Communist and Workers' Parties.
The increasing scope of the revolutionary struggle accentuated the need for stronger working-class political unity.
Without unity, Lenin taught, the working class cannot successfully wage its struggle. And real, genuine unity presupposes, first and foremost, unity of the working-class party. Unity implies discussion in which opinions are heard and weighed, the views of the majority of organised Marxists ascertained and formulated in a decision that gives integral, comprehensive and accurate answers to pressing problems, and, further, faithful fulfilment of that _-_-_
^^*^^ Marx and Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1977, p. 17.
192 decision. Unity is inconceivable without the Marxist minority submitting to the majority, without respect for and wholehearted implementation of the will of the majority.In criticising the Liquidator theory of a ``broad section"^^43^^ as a substitute for the party, Lenin further developed his thesis on the relation of party to class, on the role of organisation.
``The party is the politically conscious, advanced section of the class, it is its vanguard. The strength of that vanguard is ten times, a hundred times, more than a hundred times, greater than its numbers.
``Is that possible? Can the strength of hundreds be greater than the strength of thousands?
``It can be, and is, when the hundreds are organised.
``Organisation increases strength tenfold.''~^^*^^
And it is in its ability to organise, Lenin taught, that the political consciousness of the vanguard manifests itself. Organised, it acquires a single will, and this single will of the front-rank thousand, of hundreds of thousands, of a million, becomes the will of the class.
Lenin devoted much time and effort in 1913--14 to exposing Trotsky's anti-Party activity and the August bloc (formed by Trotsky in 1912 at the August Conference of Liquidators, Bundists, Caucasian Mensheviks, and Vperyod-ists^^44^^), who sought to subject the proletarian revolutionary elements to petty-bourgeois reformist elements within a single party. In a series of articles Lenin denounced the Centrism of the Trotskyite group, its political adventurism, and most indignantly condemned the unprincipled behaviour of Trotsky, who, under cover of Leftist phraseology, defended Liquidators and reformists.
Early in May 1914, Lenin and Krupskaya again went to Poronin. Shortly before there was a meeting of the Central Committee to discuss the Party's participation in the Second International Congress in Vienna and the International Women's Conference, and preparations for the next Party Congress. The International Congress and the Party Congress were scheduled to meet in Vienna in August.
Now that they had been dislodged from all key positions in the Russian working-class movement, the Mensheviks were determined to take revenge at the I.S.B. meeting and the Vienna International Congress. The Second International leaders hastened to help them.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 406.
__PRINTERS_P_193_COMMENT__ 13---826 193On the eve of the First World War the International Socialist Bureau arranged a conference in Brussels. The Bolshevik Central Committee delegated I. Armand, M. Vladimirsky and I. Popov. Inessa Armand read in French a statement of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee drawn up by Lenin, which convincingly demonstrated that there was no ``factional chaos" in Russia, as the Russian opportunists and their Second International patrons had tried to make out. What was taking place in Russia, the statement emphasised, was a struggle between the Marxists and the Liquidators, in which a genuine workers' Marxist party was being forged, developed and strengthened, a party that already had the support of the overwhelming majority of Russia's class-conscious workers.
The differences with the Liquidators concerned more than organisational matters, more than the question of how to build the Party-the very existence of the Party was at stake. On this issue there could be no reconciliation, agreement, or compromise. The only way to build and strengthen the Party was through resolute struggle against the Liquidators.
After spokesmen of the various ``trends'' and groups had had their say, Kautsky submitted a resolution on the reunification of the R.S.D.L.P. The resolution was out of order, for the conference had been called for the express purpose of exchanging views, no more. The Bolsheviks and the Lettish Social-Democratic representative therefore declared they would have no part in the voting; all the rest voted for the Kautsky resolution.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks refused to submit to the decisions of the opportunist Second International and rebuffed the attempts to turn the proletarian party into a discussion club, a union of factions and groups. On the pretext of establishing ``peace'' in the R.S.D.L.P. its leadership was planning to liquidate the independent Bolshevik party, the proletarian party of a new type. That plan was exposed and foiled.
Lenin insisted that the minutes and resolutions of the Brussels Conference be published so that they be brought to the knowledge of broad sections of the workers in Russia and Western Europe. He availed himself of every opportunity to explain to the Western workers the essence of Bolshevism and the vast importance for the world socialist labour movement of the Bolshevik struggle against opportunism and revisionism.
In mid-July 1914, Lenin presided over another conference in Poronin of Central Committee members and Party functionaries from Russia. They discussed the activities of the Duma group and 194 preparations for the Party Congress, which were proceeding against the background of a mounting revolutionary movement in Russia.
A revolutionary crisis was maturing in Russia. Meanwhile, the tsarist government, in alliance with Anglo-French imperialism, was making frenzied preparations for war against Germany. The government hoped that war would put an end to the revolutionary movement. There were wholesale arrests of Bolsheviks and Party sympathisers. On July 8 (Old Style), the St. Petersburg secret police raided the Pravda offices and arrested many of its staff.
The years of the new rise of the revolution preceding the First World War were one of the most important periods in Lenin's life and activity, in the struggle for the Party. Looking back on this period, Lenin remarked that the Bolsheviks had won the battle against the opportunists in the socialist movement in Russia. The Bolsheviks not only restored their illegal organisation, but converted it into a mass working-class party, into the strongest political force of the Russian revolutionary movement.
[195] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Eight __ALPHA_LVL1__ FIDELITY TO PROLETARIANWe must not be deceived by the present gravelike stillness in Europe. Europe is pregnant with revolution.
Lenin
The summer of 1914.... Imperialism had plunged mankind into a devastating, predatory war that was to bring incalculable misery and suffering, death to tens of millions of men at the front and measureless grief to their families - their mothers, wives and children at home. The war spread with avalanche-like speed, involving the whole world. It was a war between two groups of imperialist powers for the re-division of colonies and spheres of influence, for the plunder and enslavement of other peoples. One of the groups, the Quadruple Alliance, was headed by German imperialism; its other members were Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. The other, the Entente, was headed by the British and French imperialists; tsarist Russia was one of its members. Later, Japan, Italy, the United States and other countries entered the war on the side of the Entente.
The outbreak of war found Lenin in Poronin. All the Bolsheviks living there gathered at his house to discuss the situation. Lenin told them it was imperative to devise new forms and methods of Party work to conform with war-time conditions, and re-establish regular contact with Russia as soon as possible. He felt sure that the war would accentuate all the contradictions of capitalism, intensify the class struggle in all countries, create and aggravate a general political crisis and thereby hasten the new revolution in Russia. That was an objective inevitability.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin's Manifesto on the WarLenin was falsely accused of espionage and on July 25 (August 7) his house was searched. One of the gendarmes seized his manuscript on the agrarian question, mistaking the statistical tables for a secret 196 code. Lenin was ordered to appear before the military authorities at Nowy Targ, the county seat, on the following day. It was obvious that he would be arrested and tried by a military tribunal. He immediately warned the other Bolsheviks and wired a protest to the Cracow police.
When he came to Nowy Targ, he was arrested and put in jail. There were many local peasants in the jail. Lenin won their respect by giving them legal advice and helping to obtain their release.
While in prison Lenin thought over the Party's tasks and tactics in connection with the imperialist war that had broken out. Questioned by the police, he replied that he was a correspondent and staff member of the St. Petersburg Pravda and had been a member of the Russian Social-Democratic Party for the last twenty years.
News of his arrest by the Austrian authorities appeared in Russian newspapers and caused much alarm to his relatives and Party members. There was all the more reason for alarm because Russian troops were near Cracow and if the city was captured by the Russian army, Lenin would easily fall into the hands of the tsarist police.
In fact, the latter were already anticipating that. The Police Department notified General Alekseyev, commander at the Southwestern front, that according to information in possession of the Ministry of the Interior, V. I. Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, was being held in custody in Cracow. Lenin, the police dispatch said, was one of the top leaders of the R.S.D.L.P., ``with long years of participation in the revolutionary movement ... a member of the Party's Central Committee and the founder of a distinct trend within the Party''. He was wanted by the police, and General Alekseyev was asked to ``be good enough to order Lenin's arrest" and place him ``at the disposal of the Petrograd authorities".
There were many strong protests from Polish progressives --- the Social-Democratic leaders Hanecki and Bagotsky, Dr. Dhiski of Zakopane, a veteran of the Narodnaya Volya, the well-known writers Jan Kasprowicz, Wladyslaw Orkan and others.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna appealed to the Austrian M.P.s Victor Adler and Hermann Diamant, who knew Lenin as a member of the International Socialist Bureau. They brought pressure to bear on the Austrian authorities and vouched for him. The espionage charge was so preposterous that even the Cracow police had to admit they had ``no incriminating evidence to support the charge of espionage against Ulyanov''. That was the ignominious end of the 197 foul reactionary attempt to vilify and calumniate this great champion of the working class and the people.
Upon his release on August 6 (19), Lenin immediately returned to Poronin by peasant cart, without waiting for a train. A week later the family moved to Cracow, where they obtained the necessary papers for the journey to neutral Switzerland, and left AustriaHungary. Lenin's large library and many Party documents and manuscripts remained in Cracow and Poronin, which was a matter of great regret to him. Not until many years later was it possible to recover part of this valuable material which was presented by the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party to the Central Committee of the CPSU.
On August 23 (September 5), Lenin, Krupskaya and her mother arrived in Switzerland and took up residence in Berne. At first they rented a room, and then moved to a small flat with a tiny garden on the city's outskirts, near the Bremgarten Forest.
The war had exacerbated and brought to the fore the deeprooted contradictions in the socialist labour movement and showed that most of the leaders of the Social-Democratic parties and of the Second International were openly betraying the working class and the anti-war decisions of the socialist congresses.
On August 4, 1914, acting in contravention to the will of the International, the Social-Democratic group in Germany voted with the bourgeois-landowner majority in the Reichstag in favour of giving the Kaiser government war credits amounting to 5,000 million marks. Thus, Siidekum, Scheidemann, Haase, Legien, Kautsky and other leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party and the Second International rejected the class struggle and proletarian internationalism in favour of ``civil peace" and social-chauvinism, becoming obedient tools of German imperialism.
Most of the official leaders of other socialist parties likewise came out in defence of their imperialist fatherlands. Emile Vandervelde, leader of the Belgian socialists and President of the International Socialist Bureau, Jules Guesde, Albert Thomas, and Marcel Sembat, leaders of the French socialists, accepted portfolios in the bourgeois, reactionary governments of their countries; in Britain the same road was taken by MacDonald and Hyndman. Plekhanov and Axelrod, in Russia, became ardent defencists.^^45^^ At the beginning of the war Martov criticised the social-chauvinist position of the German and French Social-Democratic parties, but soon shifted to Kautsky's standpoint. The Second International shamefully collapsed and disintegrated.
198During this momentous crisis in the world working-class movement, the banner of proletarian internationalism was held aloft by the Bolshevik Party headed by Lenin. It alone set a worthy example of fidelity to socialism and proletarian internationalism leading the struggle of the working class of Russia against imperialism and the imperialist war. For Lenin and all other Bolsheviks the resolutions on the war, adopted by international socialist congresses, were a guide to action.
On August 24--26 (September 6--8), 1914, the local Bolshevik group in Berne held a meeting at which Lenin set forth his views on what should be the Bolshevik attitude to the war. The Bolshevik Party took a firm, consistently internationalist stand on the war.
Lenin used the theses adopted in Berne for a manifesto ``The War and Russian Social-Democracy''. It gave a profoundly Marxist assessment of the war as an imperialist, predatory and unjust war of aggrandisement on both sides. The war was engendered by the conditions of the age of imperialism and arose as a result of the uneven development of capitalism, a change in the alignment of forces of the imperialist powers.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks had done everything in their power to prevent war from breaking out. But ``once the war is on, it is impossible to escape it. One must go and do one's duty as a socialist''.^^*^^ Lenin advanced the slogan: Turn the imperialist war into a civil war. During war, he maintained, revolution signified civil war.
The Lenin Manifesto stated that ``from the standpoint of the working class and of the toiling masses of all the nations of Russia, the defeat of the tsarist monarchy ... would be the lesser evil''.^^**^^ It would undoubtedly facilitate the people's victory over tsardom and, in its turn, this would enable the working class to move resolutely towards socialist revolution, towards liberation from capitalist slavery and imperialist wars. Lenin's point of departure was that the policy of defeat of one's own imperialist government should be pursued not only by the Russian revolutionaries, but also by the revolutionary Marxists of all the belligerent states.
Lenin particularly denounced the shameful part played by the German Social-Democrats, the strongest and most influential party in the Second International. Its support of the imperialist war and betrayal of revolutionary Marxism and the socialist cause predetermined, in effect, the collapse of the Second International. For many _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 302.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 21, pp. 32--33.
199 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1983/LB525/20070119/299.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.01.19) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ years it had been considered the custodian and interpreter of the great theoretical heritage of the founders of scientific communism and had set the tone in the international socialist movement. The socialists of every country had faith in that party and in many cases had emulated it. And even after it had voted for war credits, the vast majority of the socialists did not fully appreciate the depths to which it had fallen and its betrayal of revolutionary Marxism, international proletarian solidarity.To the treacherous position of the German Social-Democratic leaders, Lenin opposed the genuine internationalist policy of the Bolshevik Duma representatives, who refused to vote for war credits, walked out of the Duma in token of protest and branded the policy of tsarism and the European governments as imperialist.
He urged revolutionary Marxists to found a Third International that would be genuinely proletarian and free of opportunists and social-chauvinists, for only after a complete break had been made with these elements would it be possible to educate the working class in a truly internationalist spirit and prepare it for socialist revolution. Insofar as the bourgeoisie resorted to mass repressions against the proletariat, Lenin put before revolutionary Marxists the task of building up illegal communist organisations in all countries and conducting illegal propaganda among the masses.
There was the pressing practical problem of printing the Central Committee Manifesto, and this, even in ``neutral'' Switzerland, was by no means easy. Moreover, there were difficulties in obtaining paper and finding a printshop and money. But all these difficulties were overcome.
By decision of the Central Committee Bureau Abroad, the Central Party Organ, Sotsial-Demokrat, resumed publication in Geneva. No. 33 of the newspaper appeared on October 19 (November 1), 1914. It carried the Central Committee's Manifesto on the War as its editorial. This issue, printed in 1,500 copies, was circulated among the Bolshevik groups abroad and smuggled into Russia via Sweden. It played an important role in the Party's activities during the war.
The Manifesto was also put out as a separate pamphlet. The Bolshevik Party and the international labour movement thus received a clear programme of effective struggle against the imperialist war, tsarism and the bourgeoisie, a programme of struggle for the socialist revolution.
200 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Consolidating the Bolshevik ForcesIn Switzerland Lenin worked persistently to weld together the Bolshevik Party forces. The Party had to work in particularly difficult conditions. The tsarist government began persecuting Bolshevik organisations and their committees with unprecedented fury. Members of illegal Party organisations were arrested and exiled in their thousands. All Bolshevik newspapers and other periodicals were closed. Most of the trade unions and many cultural and educational societies were dispersed. Lenin's contacts with Russia, which had been broken by the war, were re-established with considerable difficulty, in a roundabout way. Mail from Russia reached Switzerland very rarely.
Lenin and Krupskaya found themselves in straightened material circumstances. Lenin lost a great deal of weight and grew very thin. ``We shall soon lose all our old means of subsistence,'' Nadezhda Konstantinovna wrote to Lenin's sister, Maria Ulyanova, on December 14, 1915.
However, despite all the difficulties and deprivations Lenin worked with indomitable energy to get the Party activities going properly and unite the Bolshevik groups abroad. He toured the Bolshevik organisations in Switzerland, flaying in his lectures the Mensheviks, Bundists and Trotskyites and explaining the meaning of the Central Committee Manifesto.
At first Lenin refused to believe the rumour that Plekhanov had become a defencist. When he learned that Plekhanov, who had moved from Paris to Switzerland, had addressed a meeting in Geneva and was to address another one in Lausanne on September 28 (October 11), 1914, he decided to attend it. Plekhanov's speech was indeed a plea for support of the war. Though there was a large audience, Lenin was the only one to ask for the floor. On mounting the platform he did not offer to shake hands with Plekhanov, and in his speech referred to him as the ``reporter'' and not as `` comrade''. This was immediately noted by the audience. In the ten minutes at his disposal, Lenin could only set out the chief points of the Bolshevik Manifesto and the chief arguments against the defencists.
To enable him to deal with the problem in greater detail, it was decided to arrange a lecture on ``The Proletariat and the War" in the same hall, the Lausanne People's House, on October 1 (14). The hall was packed long before the lecture was due to begin. Lenin was in buoyant, fighting spirits. He showed up the social 201 nature of the war as an imperialist war of aggrandisement on both sides. The lecture was followed with rapt attention and was an undoubted success.
The following day Lenin arrived in Geneva, where his lecture on ``The European War and Socialism" had already been announced, and where he delivered it with equal success. He repeated this lecture in Clarenz and Zurich, and also spoke in Berne, giving a critical analysis of Martov's lecture on the war.
Lenin's chief aim was to develop Party activity in Russia herself. He succeeded in arranging regular correspondence with members of the Central Committee in Petrograd, in re-establishing the C.C. Bureau there and in establishing contact with the Party organisations in Russia and with individual revolutionaries, who were opposed to the war. A. Shlyapnikov, resident in Stockholm as representative of the St. Petersburg Committee and the Central Committee, kept Lenin in regular contact with the organisations in Petrograd and other parts of Russia.
Bolshevik activity abroad, and even more so in Russia, aroused the fury of the imperialists and their ideological servitors. A slander campaign was launched against the Bolsheviks not only by the Russian bourgeoisie, but also by the Anglo-French bourgeoisie and the ``socialist'' press, which accused them of ``anti-patriotism''. Lenin emphatically rejected this slander. His brilliant article ``On the National Pride of the Great Russians'', published in Sotsial-- Demokrat, explained what patriotism meant and how it should be combined with internationalism.
The internationalist socialist tasks of Russian revolutionary Marxists, Lenin explained, did not run counter to the correctly understood national interests of the working people of Russia. ``The interests of the Great-Russians' national pride (understood, not in the slavish sense),'' he wrote, ``coincide with the socialist interests of the Great-Russian (and all other) proletarians.''~^^*^^
Lenin called upon Marxists to educate the working class in a spirit of proletarian internationalism, consistent democracy, complete national equality, and the right of all nations to self-- determination.
On February 14--19 (February 27-March 4), 1915, he presided over a conference in Berne of the R.S.D.L.P. Organisations Abroad and delivered a report on ``The War and the Tasks of the Party". _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 106.
202 The conference resolutions on major issues, framed by Lenin, set out concrete measures for converting the imperialist war into a civil war: voting against war credits and resignation of socialists from bourgeois governments; no agreements with the bourgeoisie; total rejection of the ``national peace" policy; building of illegal organisations wherever legal activity was impeded; support of fraternisation at the front; support of every revolutionary proletarian mass action.In pursuance of the Berne decisions, the Bolshevik organisations in Russia developed extensive illegal revolutionary activity in the working-class centres, the navy and the army. After its initial victories, the tsarist army began to sustain defeats on all the major fronts. Its retreat from Galicia in the spring of 1915 was soon followed by the loss of Poland, part of the Baltic provinces and of Byelorussia. Millions of refugees fled to the interior of the country. The staggering burden that the war put on every working-class family and the soaring prices caused mounting discontent with the tsarist government and the bourgeoisie, which was battening on war contracts.
The Bolsheviks led the working-class fight, organised protest meetings of workers and urban population generally, drawing new sections of the population into the movement, and showing them the direct connection between the high prices and the war policy of the tsarist government and the bourgeoisie. Already in August-- September 1915, the political character of the economic strikes became more and more pronounced.
Lenin was therefore fully justified in stating, in his article `` Socialism and War" (1915), that the proletariat was the only class in Russia ``that has not been infected with chauvinism''. The Russian working class refused to conclude a ``class peace" with the bourgeoisie, and did not follow the social-chauvinists. It supported the policy of the Bolshevik Party, which never wavered in its duty to the International steadfastly holding aloft the banner of internationalism.
The Bolsheviks were also active in the navy and the army. Lenin attached the greatest importance to Bolshevik work among the troops. The army, he said, had absorbed the flower of the popular forces; in it were concentrated millions of peasants, most of them poor peasants, and a large section of the workers. By their persevering work in the tsarist army, the Bolsheviks were forging a fighting alliance of the working class and the peasantry and preparing the masses for the second revolution.
203The Bolsheviks proved to be ready for the struggle against the war and the overthrow of the imperialist government in their own country, because they had built up an efficient organisation capable of leading the masses against the imperialist war and imperialism.
Headed by Lenin, the Bolshevik Party was the leading force that could initiate the mustering of all Left socialist groups in the international working-class movement under the banner of revolutionary Marxism and undertake to organise a new proletarian International that would be free of opportunism. From the very outset of the war Lenin worked with his usual energy and perseverance to create a solid nucleus of the new, truly militant, revolutionary organisation of the world proletariat. He embarked upon a relentless struggle against the overt opportunists, and the covert ones - supporters of Kautsky in particular.
Lenin saw the danger of Kautskyism chiefly in the fact that while justifying the ``middle'', Centrist and, essentially, opportunist line of the socialist parties, it styled itself before the working class as the ``Marxist centre" in the International. Kautsky screened his defencist stand with regard to the imperialist war with internationalist slogans and references to Marx, even though they concerned a different epoch and wars of a different nature.
``Kautskyism,'' Lenin wrote, `is not fortuitous; it is the social product of the contradictions within the Second International, a blend of loyalty to Marxism in word, and subordination to opportunism in deed.''~^^*^^
Kautsky's Centrist stand was supported by L. Trotsky, L. Martov, N. Chkheidze and others in Russia, Henriette Roland-Hoist in the Netherlands, R. Grimm in Switzerland, J. Longuet and A. Pressemane in France, T. Barboni in Italy, Kh. Rakovski in Rumania, and so on.
In the socialist parties, side by side with the social-chauvinist and Centrist trends, there was a third trend represented by Left, internationalist elements. With unflagging attention Lenin kept an eye on the stand of each Left group, on the activities of each genuinely Left socialist leader. He corresponded with many of them, helping them with advice, patiently and in a comradely way pointing out their errors in a number of issues, explaining why and how opportunism had to be combated and drawing them closer to him.
An abridged text of the Central Committee Manifesto on the War was published in the Swiss La Sentinelle in November. Lenin at _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 312.
204 once sent this important document to the International Socialist Bureau and to French, German, British and Swedish Social-- Democratic newspapers.He welcomed the stand of the Italian Socialist Party, which in the early period of the war did not succumb to chauvinism, condemned the treacherous conduct of the German Social-Democrats and expelled a group of social-chauvinists and renegades (Mussolini and others). This stand was supported by the overwhelming majority of the Italian working class. In Switzerland, where Lenin took an active part in the socialist movement, a Left socialist nucleus was gradually being formed.
A conference of Italian and Swiss socialists met in Lugano, Switzerland, on September 27, 1914, and at Lenin's request discussed his theses on the war. A number of the principles contained in these theses were incorporated in the conference resolution. The Lugano decisions, though not consistently internationalist and revolutionary, nonetheless represented a first step towards a revival of international proletarian contacts.
The imperialist war was opposed also by the revolutionary socialists of Bulgaria, the tesnyaki^^46^^ led by Dimitr Blagoev, and by the Serbian Social-Democrats. When Lenin learned that the Serbian Social-Democratic deputies had voted against war credits, he publicly declared that they had discharged their proletarian internationalist duty. He soon established direct contact with the Bulgarian and Serbian revolutionary Social-Democrats and helped them follow a consistent internationalist line.
Lenin was in regular correspondence with D. Wijnkoop, Anton Pannekoek and other Left-wing socialists in Holland grouped around the newspaper De Tribune. He also established contact, through Alexandra Kollontai and A. Shlyapnikov, with leaders of the Left-wing socialists in Norway and Sweden. In the war years the Swedish Left-wing socialists were a fairly strong body-they published three daily newspapers and had thirteen members in Parliament.
Lenin was especially gratified at the news that Eugene V. Debs, leader of the American socialist Left wing, had come out in active opposition to the imperialist carnage and advocated civil war for socialism. The U.S. Government sentenced this outstanding labour leader to ten years' imprisonment for his anti-war activities.
Lenin closely followed the rise and development of the Left opposition in the German Social-Democratic Party. He enthusiastically welcomed the news that the revolutionary socialists in Germany --- 205 the Internationale group, the forerunner of the Spartacus League, headed by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Franz Mehring, J. Marchlewski, Leo Jogiches (Tyszka) and Wilhclm Pieck-had taken a firm stand against the war. Liebknecht, Lenin said, had set an example to all internationalists by voting in the Reichstag against war credits.
Lenin was fully aware that the Left forces in the West were still extremely weak and that their campaign against chauvinism and for internationalism was still feeble, disunited and not always sustained. But he had unswerving faith in the inevitable victory of proletarian internationalism throughout the world labour movement.
A conference of socialists of the Allied countries (Britain, France, Belgium, Russia) met in London on February 14, 1915. The Bolsheviks were not invited, but Lenin drew up a draft declaration of the Bolshevik Central Committee and M. Litvinov, the representative of the Bolsheviks on the I.S.B., was instructed to read it at the conference. The declaration demanded that socialists resign from the bourgeois governments of Belgium and France, that socialists in the Allied countries abandon the ``civil peace" slogan, refuse to vote for war credits and to support Russian tsarism. The conference chairman prevented Litvinov from reading the declaration to the end. Litvinov handed it to the chairman and walked out of the conference in protest, declaring that the Bolsheviks would take no part in this social-chauvinist forum.
The discussions in the press, at meetings and at Lenin's own lectures, his correspondence and talks with Left-wing socialists of various countries, and the debates at the women's and Socialist youth conferences, held in Berne in March-April 1915, made it plain to Lenin that in the West the Lefts were still strongly influenced by the Centrists on basic issues of war, peace, revolution and socialism. He knew that unity of the Lefts on a platform of revolutionary Marxist theory and tactics could be achieved only by carrying on a resolute struggle against Kautsky's falsification of Marxism and by painstaking explanatory work.
Kautsky and the other Second International revisionists contended that the new developments in capitalism made the basic propositions of Marx's Capital ``obsolete''. It was, therefore, essential not only to safeguard revolutionary Marxism against renewed revisionist distortions, but to develop it further by analysing the new features of social development and the new experience of the proletarian class struggle. Lenin wrote: ``The world's greatest movement for liberation of the oppressed class, the most revolutionary class in 206 history, is impossible without a revolutionary theory. That theory cannot be thought up. It grows out of the sum total of the revolutionary experience and the revolutionary thinking of all countries in the world. Such a theory has developed since the second half of the nineteenth century. It is known as Marxism. One cannot be a socialist, a revolutionary Social-Democrat, without participating, in the measure of one's powers, in developing and applying that theory, and without waging a ruthless struggle today against the mutilation of this theory by Plekhanov, Kautsky and Co.''~^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Philosophical NotebooksDuring the First World War, aware of the increasingly acute profound contradictions of capitalism and the critical nature of the historical moment, Lenin elaborated and further developed every facet of revolutionary Marxism-the theory of socialist revolution, Marxist economics and Marxist philosophy-in their indissoluble unity.
The task was not only to safeguard the purity of Marxist dialectics and expose revisionist attempts to replace it by vulgar evolutionism, sophistry and eclectics. It was also necessary to advance the science of materialist dialectics, in the light of the new conditions of history and the new experience of the liberation movement, with new data of natural science, as an effective instrument of understanding the world and remaking it by revolution.
The years 1914 and 1915 were devoted to re-reading Aristotle, Hegel, Feuerbach and other philosophers, works on natural science and the writings of the founders of scientific communism. Lenin's copious notes and comments, unfinished essays and other materials were subsequently published under the title Philosophical Notebooks.
Lenin evidently intended to use them for a book on materialist dialectics, but, unfortunately, was unable to carry the work to completion. But even uncompleted, the Philosophical Notebooks are an organic continuation of his chief philosophical work, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and constitute a new step in the creative development of Marxist philosophy. The two works form the basis of the Lenin stage in philosophy. For in the Notebooks Lenin dealt with a wide range of philosophical problems, with special accent on Marxist dialectics.
A central place in the Philosophical Notebooks is held by Lenin's _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 354.
207 conspectuses of Hegel's Science oj Logic, Lectures on the History oj Philosophy and Lectures on the Philosophy of History. A careful study of Hegel's dialectical method and its comparison with the dialectics of Marx and Engels in the light of mankind's new historical and scientific experience and the practical needs of the working-class struggle enabled Lenin to develop further the proposition of Hegel and Marx that in the final analysis dialectics, logic and the theory of knowledge coincide. This idea is a fundamental plank in Lenin's concept of materialist dialectics as a science.He comprehensively showed the diversity of features, aspects, elements and categories of dialectics as the most profound theory of development. Schematism and dogmatism, Lenin said, is alien to dialectics. And while dialectics expresses the most general laws of every process of development, it requires a Concrete analysis of reality and the multitude of forms in which reality is revealed to us.
For the first time in the history of Marxism, Lenin formulated and substantiated, in the Philosophical Notebooks, the key proposition that the very essence, the kernel, of dialectics is the study of the unity of opposites. Lenin enriched and concretised Marxist dialectics by his analysis and generalisation of the new types and kinds of contradictions in the imperialist era, of the new ways in which opposites are transformed into one another, of the transition, the growing over, of one phenomenon into another.
The struggle of opposites, the rise and settlement of contradictions, Lenin pointed out, are the source of development in the material world, the condition necessary for social progress. He denounced the attempts of the opportunist Second International leaders to ``purge'' reality of contradictions and struggle. The central axis of dialectics is the doctrine of constant development through struggle of antithetical forces and tendencies, through struggle between the old and the new. Hence, Lenin emphasised, the basic conclusion to be drawn from dialectics is that the new, the progressive, is invincible, that its victory over the old, obsolescent and reactionary is inevitable. The old is negated by the new, but this should be understood from the standpoint of materialist dialectics, which precludes bare negation as leading to an interruption in development, to a break in the connection between the old and the new. Marxist dialectics regards ``negation as a moment of connection, as a moment of development, retaining the positive''.^^*^^ Without this there can be no progress either in nature, society or knowledge.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 226.
208The Philosophical Notebooks contain an analysis of the epistemological roots of idealism, which is of fundamental importance for the struggle against reactionary bourgeois philosophy and philosophical revisionism. The Notebooks formulate important propositions on problems of historical materialism.
Lenin's philosophical conspectuses, fragments and notes point the
way to the further development of dialectical and historical
materialism, the scientific history of philosophy. ``Continuation of the work
of Hegel and Marx,'' Lenin wrote, ``must consist in the
All Lenin's most important works written during the First World War---Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Socialism and War, On the Slogan for a United States of Europe, The Junius Pamphlet,^^47^^ The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, The State and Revolution and others, are inseparably linked with the Philosophical Notebooks.
Lenin's analysis of all the laws and categories of materialist dialectics as a philosophical science is remarkable for its profundity, militant materialist spirit, close link with reality and organic connection with the policy of the proletarian party. His masterly application of the Marxist dialectical method in analysing the new era in history became the basis of his new discoveries, which gave the proletariat the Marxist theory of imperialism, a correct and clear theory of socialist revolution, the teaching on the state, and the sound and scientifically-based strategy and tactics in revolutionary transformations of society.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Against Social-ChauvinismIn 1915, Lenin wrote a number of important articles: ``The Collapse of the Second International'', ``Opportunism and the Collapse of the Second International'', ``Socialism and War'', ``The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War'', ``On the Slogan for a United States of Europe''. In 1916, he wrote his classic Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, his splendid articles `` Imperialism and the Split in Socialism'', ``The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution'', ``The `Disarmament' Slogan'', and his important works on the national question. A bare listing of these works illustrates the tremendous scale of Lenin's activities. They _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 147.
__PRINTERS_P_209_COMMENT__ 14---826 209 cover a wide range of problems and comprehensively and profoundly expound Marxist revolutionary policy as opposed to the opportunist stand of the Second International.Lenin disclosed the roots of the disgraceful conduct of most of the European Social-Democratic leaders. He showed that the collapse of the Second International was the collapse of opportunism, which had arisen and grown in the period of capitalism's so-called `` peaceful" development, and in the years preceding the war, became the dominant trend in the International. The ideas underlying socialchauvinism, opportunism and opportunist policy were renunciation of the acute class struggle in capitalist society and of proletarian dictatorship, of socialist revolution in favour of bourgeois reformism and class collaboration in capitalist society and refusal to support the revolutionary actions of the proletariat against its ``own'' bourgeoisie.
The economic basis of opportunism and social-chauvinism, Lenin said, was that the imperialist bourgeoisie bribed ``labour leaders'', threw sops to the labour aristocracy and created a privileged position for part of the workers with the purpose of diverting them from the revolutionary struggle against imperialism. This stratum of workers grafted with its bourgeoisie, this "labour aristocracy'', constituted the chief support of the Second International.
Lenin also revealed the source which enabled the bourgeoisie to buy over part of the workers. It was its high monopoly profits derived from the exploitation and rapine of colonial and other nations. In his ``Imperialism and the Split in Socialism'', he wrote: ``A handful of wealthy countries - there are only four of them, if we mean independent, really gigantic, 'modern' wealth: England, France, the United States and Germany-have developed monopoly to vast proportions, they obtain superprofits running into hundreds, if not thousands, of millions, they 'ride on the backs' of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people in other countries....''^^*^^ The organisation, at the expense of these superprofits, of ``bourgeois labour parties" was an inevitable and typical feature of all imperialist countries. And these parties ``are working hand in glove with the imperialist bourgeoisie precisely towards creating an imperialist Europe on the backs of Asia and Africa....''^^**^^
Reading these lines now, over half a century after they were written, millions of people throughout the world ask themselves: are _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 115.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 110.
210 not the reactionary Right-wing socialist leaders doing the same thing today?Lenin conclusively proved that during the imperialist war the opportunists and chauvinists owed their greater strength to their alliance with the bourgeoisie, the governments and general staff. Before the war that alliance had been secret; now there was no secret.
The burden of exposing the treachery of the opportunists, their manoeuvring and their shameful deals with the bourgeoisie devolved on Lenin. This earned him the blind hatred of his political adversaries. In December 1916 he wrote to Inessa Armand: ``There it is, my fate. One fighting campaign after another - against political stupidities, philistinism, opportunism and so forth.
``It has been going on since 1893. And so has the hatred of the philistines on account of it. But still, I would not exchange this fate for 'peace' with the philistines.''~^^*^^
Lenin was never at odds with his crystal-clear conscience and consistent principles as a revolutionary and Communist.
He convincingly showed the need for an organisational as well as ideological break with the opportunists. ``The whole struggle of our Party (and of the working-class movement in Europe generally),'' he wrote, ``must be directed against opportunism. The latter is not a current of opinion, not a tendency; it (opportunism) has now become the organised tool of the bourgeoisie within the workingclass movement.''^^**^^ He said that any struggle against imperialism that was not linked up with the struggle against opportunism was merely an empty sound or deceit. He urged the Lefts in Germany and other countries to defy the opportunist leaders and build a new type of fighting organisation, genuinely revolutionary working-class parties.
He wrote that the Bolsheviks, the Russian internationalists, were not making any claim to interfere in the internal affairs of their Left comrades. ``We understand,'' he pointed out, ``that they alone are fully competent to determine their methods of combating the opportunists, according to the conditions of time and place. Only we consider it our right and our duty to express our frank opinion on the state of affairs.''~^^***^^ Lenin and the Bolsheviks based their relations with the Left groups in other countries on equality and on principles of proletarian internationalism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 259.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 197.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 326.
211 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin on the Nature of WarsThe opportunist Social-Democratic leaders tried to dupe the workers by giving a ``Marxist'' slant to hypocritical government and bourgeois press propaganda about the war being fought in defence of the freedom and existence of nations. In every belligerent country the social-chauvinists tried to prove that their particular country and its allies were waging a just war. The Centrists headed by Kautsky maintained that the socialists of all the belligerent powers had an equal right to ``defend the fatherland''. Lenin denounced this as a most infamous defence of imperialism, as a shameful attempt to justify the ``right'' of workers to kill each other "in defence of the fatherland'', for the sake of the imperialists' war profits.
In the pamphlet Socialism and War and in other works Lenin made the question of war clear from the standpoint of Marxism and further developed Marxist theory on wars and on the attitude of socialists to them. Socialists, he wrote, had always condemned war between nations as brutal and barbarous. But inasmuch as wars account for centuries of human history, Marxists must carefully study and disclose the causes underlying them, reveal the nature of wars and devise ways and means by which the working class and the working people generally can effectively oppose imperialist wars.
In his research on the subject, Lenin explained how the nature of a war is to be determined and proved that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Every war must be seen as the continuation of the peacetime policy of the state and its ruling classes.
In the imperialist era, Lenin taught, the main types of war are:
1) Unjust, imperialist wars for the conquest and enslavement of other countries and peoples, the suppression of socialist, democratic and national liberation movements and the destruction of socialist states. Wars of this type must be resolutely opposed by every possible means, up to and including revolution and the overthrow of one's own imperialist government;
2) Just wars waged to liberate the working people from feudal and capitalist slavery and colonial and dependent countries from imperialist oppression, to defend their independent national existence from imperialist encroachments or to defend the socialist state against imperialist attack. The working people should give every possible support to wars of this type.
212Some of the Left Socialists in the West believed that in the imperialist era Marxists should, in general, be opposed to the defence of the fatherland. In justification of that idea they cited the proposition proclaimed by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: ``The working men have no country.'' Lenin came out against this vulgar, non-historical approach to Marxism.
The proletariat must define its attitude towards defence of the fatherland in context with the concrete historical situation. The first consideration should always be: which class calls for defence of the fatherland, and for what purpose? In a situation of a mounting national liberation movement and the need to uphold national independence, defence of the fatherland becomes the most vital task of the people, and the working class should be the first to rise in defence of the country's freedom and independence. History has proved that the working class is the genuinely patriotic class. Defence of the fatherland in a national liberation war, and, naturally, in the struggle of socialist states against imperialism, Lenin stressed, fully accords with the spirit of Marxism.
It is quite another matter when an imperialist war is being waged. In this case the socialists must oppose defence of the fatherland ``since (1) imperialism is the eve of socialism, (2) imperialist war is a war of thieves over their booty, (3) in both coalitions there is an advanced proletariat, (4) in both a socialist revolution is ripe. Only for these reasons are we against 'defence of the fatherland', only for these reasons!!"^^*^^ That, Lenin declared, accords with the interests of the entire international proletariat.
National interests do not run counter to the international interests of the working class. On the contrary: only a correct understanding of its international tasks enables the working class to accomplish its national tasks. Emphasising the significance of this community of fundamental international tasks of the workers of all countries, Lenin wrote: ``The international unity of the workers is more important than the national.''^^**^^ For only through firm, ever-- expanding and ever-strengthening unity can the working class and the working people generally attain their cherished goal of peace and socialism.
Lenin emphasised that as a social system socialism strives to end wars and establish lasting peace on earth. ``An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence-such is _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 274.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 247.
213 our ideal,''^^*^^ he wrote in 1915. He pointed out that as distinct from bourgeois pacifists, Marxists understand the ``inevitable connection between wars and the class struggle within the country''; they understand that ``war cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and socialism is created".In providing theoretical grounds for the thesis that war is inevitable under imperialism, he based himself on the following facts. First, by its very nature imperialism is a source of war, and as long as imperialism exists the economic basis and the threat of aggressive war will remain. Second, as long as imperialism is the only social system with undivided sway in the world, the question of war and peace will be decided by the imperialist, financial-industrial oligarchy in secret from the peoples. In that period the working class and other peaceloving forces were disunited and weak and were unable to prevent imperialist predatory and other criminal wars.
Epoch-making events that have radically changed the balance of political, economic and military forces in the world in favour of the peace camp, democracy and socialism, have taken place since these major theoretical propositions were formulated by Lenin. From the new alignment of forces the CPSU has drawn the bold conclusion, Leninist in spirit, of the possibility in the present period of averting a new world war. This does not mean, however, that the threat of such a war has been totally removed. The forces of aggression and militarism, although hard pressed, have not been neutralised. To stop the threat of war from becoming a reality is the sacred duty of all peoples. The aggressive policy of imperialism is countered by the USSR with the policy of the active defence of peace and the strengthening of international security.
The slogan of ``disarmament'' was relatively widespread among pacifists and social-reformists in Europe and the United States during the First World War. It was used by the social-pacifists and Kautskyites to oppose the Bolshevik slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. Under the circumstances, Lenin, naturally, could not support the slogan of disarmament because it weakened the struggle of the working class against world imperialism and the struggle of revolutionary Social-Democracy against opportunism.
It by no means followed from this, however, that Lenin was opposed to demanding disarmament in principle. The concretehistorical posing of the question of disarmament was characteristic of him.
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 293.
214In principle, he explained, socialism desired disarmament. `` Disarmament is the ideal of socialism. There will be no wars in socialist society; consequently, disarmament will be achieved,''^^*^^ he said. Peace, disarmament and socialism are interconnected and inseparable.
The correct slogan in the situation created by the imperialist war was not disarmament but the armed struggle of the working class and working people in general against imperialism, meaning that the imperialist war should be turned into a civil war.
But Lenin foresaw that after the socialist revolution had triumphed in one or several countries, the victorious proletariat would consistently pursue a policy of peace between peoples, of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, and would wage a struggle for the total banning of weapons of mass destruction, against the arms race and for universal disarmament.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Imperialism, the Highest Stage of CapitalismAn analysis of the economic and political essence of imperialism was required to enable the working class to further its revolutionary struggle. Without this analysis it was impossible to provide the revolutionary movement with correct leadership.
In the summer of 1916, Lenin completed his classical Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which is an outstanding contribution to creative Marxism. In it he makes a comprehensive investigation of imperialism.
It is the result of immense scientific research and intensive thought. The preparatory notes for the book, subsequently published under the title Notebooks on Imperialism, form a volume of nearly 50 quires. Lenin traces the development of world capitalism over the course of half a century after the publication of Marx's Capital. Basing himself on the laws of the emergence, development and decline of capitalism, discovered by Marx and Engels, he was the first to give a profound scientific analysis of the economic and political substance of imperialism as a special, the highest, and, at the same time, last stage of capitalism, showing that under imperialism all the contradictions of capitalist society inevitably become aggravated.
Lenin showed that imperialism is a special phase in the economic development of capitalism, its ``monopoly stage'', which is _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23. p. 95.
215 characterised by the following five basic features: "(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies, which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this 'finance capital', of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.''~^^*^^Capitalism became imperialism only at a definite, high stage of its development. The main thing economically in this process is the replacement of free competition by monopolies driven by the motive of obtaining a high monopoly profit. Yet at the same time the monopolies do not abolish free competition, but exist above it and beside it, thus giving rise to acute and sharp contradictions, friction and conflicts. The objective dialectics of this process meant, to quote Lenin, ``the transformation of quantity into quality, of developed capitalism into imperialism''.^^**^^
Lenin characterises imperialism as monopoly capitalism and, at the same time, as parasitical, decaying and dying capitalism, disclosing the conditions that will bring on its end and demonstrating that capitalism will inevitably and necessarily be superseded by socialism.
His proposition that at this stage there is a swing to reaction all along the line and spiritual impoverishment is of immense importance for a characterisation of the new, imperialist phase of capitalist development. Monopoly capital establishes its dictatorship over society, suppressing not only the working-class but also the democratic liberation movement and abolishing the already curtailed bourgeois-democratic rights and freedoms. In particular, national oppression heightens and the monopolies show an increasing desire for annexations, i.e., for transgressions against the national independence and sovereignty of peoples.
Monopoly rule, Lenin explained, signifies a sharp intensification of the exploitation of the working class and an exacerbation of the contradictions between labour and capital, of the contradictions leading to the proletarian revolution. It worsens the condition of the working class and leads to the ruin of the bulk of the peasants _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 266.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 267.
216 and the urban petty bourgeoisie, to increased dissatisfaction among them. This creates the objective conditions for cementing the alliance between the working class and the non-proletarian labouring masses. That alliance is the principal force in the struggle against the imperialist bourgeoisie.Furthermore, subjection of all the nations to a handful of ``Great Powers'', the sharp intensification of colonial oppression, must inevitably result in the growth of the national liberation movement and make for a united front of struggle of the proletariat of the capitalist countries and the colonial and dependent peoples against imperialism.
Lenin's scientific analysis of the contradictions of capitalism at its last stage brought him round to the conclusion that imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution. The revolutionary transition to socialism had now become a vital necessity.
Lenin showed that during the war imperialism had taken a new step towards greater concentration of finance capital, towards the growing-over of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism. This means a sharp increase in the direct intervention of the state in the economy, in the process of capitalist production in the interests of the financial oligarchy. In the interests of the latter the bourgeois state takes various sorts of regulatory measures, militarises the economy, etc.
The ideologists of state-monopoly capitalism, followed by Rightwing socialists and revisionists, proclaimed the advent of the age of ``planned'', ``crisis-free'' capitalism, characterised by ``dynamic balance" and ``social harmony''. They maintain that state-- monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism. In his work The State and Revolution Lenin showed the total fallacy of these arguments. ``The erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state-monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can now be called 'state socialism' and so on, is very common...'', he wrote. ``The `proximity' of such capitalism to socialism should serve genuine representatives of the proletariat as an agrument 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.''~^^*^^
The state-monopoly capitalism increased still more the material prerequisites for a revolutionary transition to socialism. The _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, pp. 442--43.
217 gigantic expansion of the productive forces and socialisation of production under monopoly capitalism had come into irreconcilable contradiction with the capitalist relations of production.Lenin showed that under imperialism, too, the bourgeoisie succeeds in preserving the capitalist system with the help of sharply intensified dictatorial, repressive measures against the proletarian socialist, national liberation and all democratic movements. Imperialism survives by the subtle application of social manoeuvres in relation to the working masses. In so doing it makes broad use of opportunism and revisionism in the working-class movement.
In his work Lenin showed the utter scientific groundlessness and exposed the reformist substance of Kautsky's ``ultra-imperialism'' theory, which endeavours to whitewash capitalism. He refuted Kautsky's thesis that the creation of international monopoly alliances weakens the contradictions within the world capitalist system and eliminates crises and wars.
He foresaw the possibility that monopoly capital would unite on a world scale not only in the form of international monopolies but also in the form of agreements between entire states. ``In this sense,'' he wrote, ``a United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe, of jointly protecting colonial booty.''~^^*^^
These tendencies manifest themselves now in setting up military blocs spearheaded against the world socialist system and the international working-class movement, against the young states in Asia and Africa and other countries striving to liberate themselves from the imperialist yoke.
Lenin's analysis of the fundamental laws of capitalism at its last stage has been confirmed by the reality of modern capitalism. The attempts of capitalism to make use of the growth of state-monopoly forms, inter-state economic integration, and the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution with the aim of strengthening its class rule are not resulting in its stabilisation as a social system. The general crisis of capitalism continues to grow deeper.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism is an exceptionally important creative contribution to the economic theory of Marxism and a sharp militant weapon in the struggle against the latest bourgeois and social-reformist ``theories'' of ``people's capitalism'', the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 341.
218 ``welfare'' society, the ``industrial society'', ``convergence'', the `` integrated society'', the ``post-industrial society'', the ``technotronic era'', and so on. All these myths preached by bourgeois ideologists are based on the false idea that the development of industry in the modern scientific and technological revolution is leading to a gradual removal of the radical distinction between socialism and capitalism. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin's Theory of Socialist RevolutionThorough analysis of the new stage in world history enabled Lenin to determine the vast opportunities for the revolutionary movement in the age of imperialism. On the basis of his own study of imperialism Lenin further developed the Marxist theory of socialist revolution, its content, its motive forces and conditions and forms of development, in the new epoch. He proved that the war had accelerated the growth of the requisites for revolution and that as a whole the world capitalist system had matured for the transition to socialism.
In Principles of Communism (1847), Engels had replied in the negative to the question of whether it was possible to accomplish a socialist revolution in one country. Proceeding from the fact that the world market and large-scale industry had levelled social development in all civilised countries, Engels drew a conclusion that ``...the communist revolution ... will be a revolution taking place simultaneously in all civilised countries, that is, at least in England, America, France and Germany''.^^*^^ However, living as they did in the period of pre-monopoly capitalism, Marx and Engels neither raised nor could raise the question of the possibility of socialism being triumphant in one country.
One of Lenin's greatest services was that in creatively developing the teachings of Marx and Engels in the new historical conditions, in the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, he came to the key conclusion that socialism can be victorious first in several countries, or even in one country that does not necessarily have to be at a high level of economic development. He drew this conclusion on the basis of the law, discovered by him, of the uneven economic and political development of capitalism in the imperialist era; this development inevitably leads to the uneven maturing of the socialist revolution in different countries. Lenin first formulated _-_-_
^^*^^ K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 352.
219 this conclusion in August 1915 in the article ``On the Slogan for a United States of Europe".``Uneven economic and political development,'' he wrote in this article, ``is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of socialism is possible first in several or even in one capitalist country alone. 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.''~^^*^^
From these propositions of Lenin's it can be seen that by 1915 he already had a clear view of the coming division of the world- into two opposing systems: socialism and capitalism.
In September 1916, in the article ``The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution'', he amplified his views on the prospects for socialist revolution in the imperialist era and on the conditions for its victory.
``The development of capitalism proceeds extremely unevenly in different countries. It cannot be otherwise under commodity production. From this it follows irrefutably that socialism cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all countries. It will achieve victory first in one or several countries, while the others will for some time remain bourgeois or pre-bourgeois.''^^**^^
Lenin also pointed out that the victorious proletariat must be ready to repulse the military attacks of world imperialism on the socialist state. ``In such cases,'' he wrote, ``a war on our part would be a legitimate and just war.''^^***^^
Lenin's theory that socialism can be victorious first in one country or several countries is a model of creative development of revolutionary Marxism and was the greatest discovery of Marxist science.
He exposed the anti-Marxist substance of Trotsky's views that socialist revolution cannot be victorious first in one country and criticised Pyatakov, who defined the socialist revolution as the ``united action of the proletarians of all countries".
The main task of the next stage of the revolution in Russia remained the struggle for the establishment of a revolutionarydemocratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry and the use of it for the transition to socialist revolution.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 342.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 79.
^^***^^ Ibid.
220Explaining the balance of class forces in the forthcoming revolution, Lenin in the article ``On the Two Lines in the Revolution" revealed the fallibility of the theory of permanent revolution of Trotsky, who denied the revolutionary role of the peasantry on the grounds that the peasantry had grown stratified and its possible revolutionary role had been declining ever since 1905. Naturally, Lenin pointed out, the stratification of the peasantry had intensified the class struggle within it and brought the rural proletariat closer to the urban. But the antagonism between the peasantry and the landowners had also grown more intense and acute.
In the years of the imperialist war Lenin continued to develop his theory of the revolutionary situation, which was to be of immense significance for the practical activities of the Marxist parties. Popular revolutions do not take place at the whim of one or another party. The masses rise to struggle under the influence of factors deeply rooted in the objective conditions of life. Capitalism itself creates the conditions that make mass revolutionary action inevitable; capitalist development impels the masses to struggle. Lenin showed that revolution cannot be ``made to order'', that it grows out of objectively maturing crises called revolutionary situations and indicated symptoms of a revolutionary situation: ``... = 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.''~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 213--14.
221But, Lenin further emphasised, for a revolutionary situation to turn into a revolution these objective factors must be accompanied by a subjective factor: the ability and readiness of the revolutionary class to carry out revolutionary mass actions strong enough to overthrow the old power and establish their own. Only concrete historical conditions in a given country could produce this coincidence of objective and subjective prerequisites, Lenin believed. There was no such thing as introducing revolution from ``without''. It was the duty of the Marxist party to do its utmost to facilitate the development of the revolutionary movements and to strengthen the alliance of the working class, as the leading force of the revolution, with the broadest sections of the working people, primarily with its main ally, the peasants. Lenin held that leadership of the working-class' revolutionary struggle by its Marxist party, was the decisive condition for the victory of the socialist revolution.
Lenin always regarded socialist revolution in any country as a component of the world socialist revolution. He therefore held that it was the sacred duty of all Marxist parties and groups to strengthen the unity and solidarity of the world revolutionary socialist movement and to be guided always and everywhere by the great principle of proletarian internationalism.
Such are the cardinal tenets of Lenin's theory of socialist revolution. On the basis of this theory and tactics the Bolsheviks developed their work in Russia and rallied the Left forces in the West.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Zimmerwald and Kienthal ConferencesEarly in June 1915, Lenin and Krupskaya moved from Berne to Sorenberg, a remote mountain village. Lenin intensively prepared for the conference of socialist internationalists, now clearly necessitated by the growth of the international labour movement. The fraternisation at the firing lines, and the strikes and demonstrations in a number of countries were indications that the masses had started a revolutionary struggle. In various countries the Left socialists were displaying more boldness and energy. The need, an urgent one, was to unite the Left internationalist forces around revolutionary tactics. Lenin, through his extensive correspondence with Left socialists, worked to bring about closer cohesion and unity of policy. He suggested drafting a joint declaration prior to the conference.
The First International Socialist Conference was held on August 23--26 (September 5-8), 1915, in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald 222 and was attended by thirty-eight delegates from eleven countries. Two days before the conference was due to open Lenin had a meeting with the Russian and Polish delegates in Berne. Then, on August 22 (September 4), he met in private with all the Left delegates and read a report on the nature of the world war and on the tactics of revolutionary internationalists.
At the conference itself Lenin organised the Zimmerwald Left, composed of eight delegates. There was a sharp ideological struggle between this close-knit group of internationalists, revolutionary Marxists headed by Lenin, and the Kautskyites and pro-Kautsky delegates, headed by Georg Ledebour, the German Social-- Democrat. The Left submitted a draft resolution on the war and the tasks of the Social-Democrats, and also a draft Manifesto.
One of the first to speak in the general debate was Vasil Kolarov, representative of the Tesnyaki, the Bulgarian socialists. Lenin followed his speech with keen attention, seeing in the Bulgarian Party experience during the Balkan war added confirmation that the Bolshevik proposals on work in the army were fully realisable.
The conference majority rejected the drafts submitted by the Lefts, but on the insistence of Lenin and other Left delegates, a number of basic propositions of revolutionary Marxism were incorporated in the Manifesto. However, the Manifesto was inconsistent, and left much unsaid. It did not include the proposition that imperialism was the eve of socialist revolution, did not explain the causes of the Second International's collapse, the need to break with opportunism, etc.
Even so Lenin considered it right to sign the Manifesto. He was guided by the important tactical principle of revolutionary Marxism-the principle of avoiding sectarianism.
Lenin called the Zimmerwald Conference the first step in developing an international movement against the war.
Lenin felt the strain of the conference, at which he had to wage an uncompromising struggle against the Kautskyites. It took several days of complete rest and fresh mountain air before he could resume his work with his customary energy. Early in October 1915, he and Krupskaya returned to Berne from Sorenberg.
The building of closer contacts with Left socialist groups in other countries continued. In November 1915, Lenin received from the United States a leaflet put out by the Socialist Propaganda League.^^48^^ After having convinced himself that the leaflet had been issued by an internationalist organisation with a strongly Left-- inclined programme, he sent the League a letter and the statements 223 of the Zimmerwald Left. He warmly welcomed the League's appeal to Socialist Party members to work for a new International, for genuine revolutionary socialism.
But he considered it his duty to tell the American Lefts that the Bolsheviks could not agree with several points of their programme, in particular with the centralist principle of proletarian party organisation.
In February 1916, Lenin sent a letter to the French internationalists, pointing to their inconsistency in the struggle against opportunism, their fear of a break with the opportunists. What we have now, Lenin said, are two mutually opposed working-class tactics and policies on the war, and they cannot be reconciled. At the same time, Lenin warned the French Lefts against the danger of anarcho-syndicalism^^49^^ and expressed the confidence that they would learn to conduct revolutionary work among the masses in the new conditions. ``I have faith in the French revolutionary proletariat,'' he wrote. He asked the French comrades to put out a leaflet giving the full translation of his letter. This was done in 1916, and the leaflet played a big part in uniting the French Lefts.
Lenin sent similar letters to the Left socialists in Norway, Sweden, Holland, Britain and other European countries. This comradely criticism of their position on fundamental programmatic, tactical and organisational issues was of valuable assistance to the internationalist groups in the war period and did much to forge their ideological and political unity on the basis of revolutionary Marxism and proletarian internationalism.
In January 1916, Lenin took an active part in organising the German-language magazine Vorbote, the organ of the Zimmerwald Left.
On February 10 or 11, the family moved from Berne to Zurich, where they rented a room in an old neighbourhood near the centre of the city. The room was anything but convenient. There was always an unpleasant smell from the sausage factory in the yard, so that the window could be opened only late in the evening. A much better room could have been rented for the same money, but Lenin and Krupskaya liked the owners and the fact that the flat was an ``international community": two of the rooms were occupied by the owner and his family, one by the wife and children of a German soldier, another by an Italian, a third by Austrian actors, and the fourth by Lenin and Krupskaya. Lenin lived in the house until April 1917. By decision of the Zurich Municipality there is a plaque under the window of his room with this inscription: ``LENIN, the 224 leader of the Russian Revolution, lived here from February 21, 1916, to April 2, 1917.''
In Zurich, Lenin worked energetically to prepare for the Second International Socialist Conference. It met in the Swiss village of Kienthal in April 1916 and was attended by forty-one delegates from eight countries. This time the Zimmerwald Left numbered twelve, and acted as a more closely-knit group, on several issues mustering as many as nineteen votes.
The changed international situation since the Zimmerwald Conference, and the mounting mass discontent against the war found reflection at Kienthal in the conduct of the delegates. Lenin was especially interested in the speeches of the German delegates, who emphatically declared there would be major revolutionary upheavals in Germany if the war dragged out into the autumn.
There was a heated debate on the attitude to be adopted towards the International Socialist Bureau. Lenin convincingly argued that the I.S.B. had become a tool of the Anglo-French social-chauvinists. There had to be a split with the Second International, it was inevitable, in fact it had already taken place in a number of countries. That was the only way to save the honour of proletarian socialism and revolutionary internationalism.
The Zimmerwald Left supported Lenin's proposals. A compromise resolution sharply criticised the I.S.B., demanded the resignation of its Executive Committee and expulsion from the party of socialists who had joined bourgeois governments. The resolution, however, did not call for an immediate break with the I.S.B. and the founding of a new International.
The discussion on the question of peace centred around the Bolshevik Central Committee proposals which directly linked the problem of a democratic peace with that of the socialist revolution. The Bolshevik proposals were supported by Left delegates from other countries.
The Kienthal Conference did not adopt the Bolshevik slogans of converting the imperialist war into a civil war, defeat of one's ``own'' imperialist government, and the founding of a Third International. But it did help to cement the internationalist forces on the ideological basis of Marxism-Leninism.
In his Fils du peuple, Maurice Thorez describes how he, then a farm-hand in the Creuse Department, learned of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences and the policy advocated by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. His landlord, an 225 elderly revolutionary-minded stonemason named Menager, told him about Zimmerwald and Kienthal. ``In 1915 and 1916, from these villages hidden in the Swiss mountains there came, through the acrid smoke of battle, the voices of a small army of genuine socialists led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who were true to the ideas of proletarian internationalism and revolution.''~^^*^^
Antonio Gramsci, a leading Italian Marxist, was one of those who carried to the masses the revolutionary ideas of Zimmerwald and Kienthal. And it was through Gramsci ``that Togliatti learned of the appeals of Zimmerwald and Kienthal Left and together with Gramsci began to study the theory and practical activities of the Russian Bolsheviks''.^^**^^
The vitalising influence of Lenin's ideas was felt by many other socialist internationalists during the years of imperialist war. Subsequently, they formed the Communist Parties which, under Lenin's leadership, joined together to found the Communist International.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Discussion on the Right of NationsA close study of the national and colonial question is still another aspect of Lenin's work in the years of the First World War. The imperialist war, and indeed the whole era of imperialism, made this one of the pressing problems of socialist revolution, especially the question of the right of nations to self-determination. An international discussion on the subject developed in 1915--16 in which, besides the Bolsheviks, German, Dutch and Polish socialists took part.
Between December 1915 and February 1916, Lenin drew up his theses ``The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to SelfDetermination''. They represented a new Bolshevik programmatic declaration on the national and colonial question, in which the national question was treated as an inseparable component part of the question of socialist revolution, its reserves and allies and its direct support of the anti-imperialist struggle of the colonial and oppressed nations.
In the summer of 1916, Lenin wrote his famous articles ``The Junius Pamphlet" and ``The Discussion on Self-Determination _-_-_
^^*^^ M. Thorez, Fils du peuple, Moscow, 1951, p. 26.
^^**^^ Marcella e Maurizio Ferrara, Conversando con Togliatti, Roma, 1953, p. 38.
226 Summed Up''. In both articles Lenin reviewed the international discussion on the national question and criticised the erroneous views expounded by Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek and others, who maintained that the demand for national self-- determination should be abandoned in the imperialist era. Lenin amplified and substantiated the theory and tactics of revolutionary Marxists on the national question in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions.Lenin gave a clear and lucid answer to the question of how to educate the working class in an internationalist spirit, both in the big, oppressor nations and in the small, oppressed nations. The approach cannot be the same, because, from the standpoint of the national question, the position of the working class is not the same. There is the economic difference that in the oppressor countries part of the working class gets the crumbs from the superprofits the bourgeoisie receives by exploiting the working people of the oppressed nations. There is also the political difference that in the oppressor nations the workers enjoy a privileged position, compared with the workers in the oppressed nations, in many spheres of public life. Lastly, there is this difference: the workers of the oppressor nations are trained by the bourgeoisie in a spirit of contempt for the workers of the oppressed nations.
For that reason, Lenin believed, the internationalist education of the proletariat in the oppressor nations should centre around the demand for the right of colonies and oppressed nations to secession. On the other hand, the socialists in the oppressed nations must advocate and implement unity of the workers, of all working people, of the oppressed with the workers of the oppressor nation. Without that it would be impossible to uphold the proletariat's independent policy and class solidarity with the proletariat of other countries. The socialists of the oppressed nations must under all circumstances combat national narrow-mindedness, egoism, exclusiveness and aloofness.
The internationalist education of the working people, Lenin explained, would remain a cardinal task even after the proletarian revolution. Lenin subjected to comprehensive and profound criticism the erroneous views held by the Polish, Dutch and German Left socialists and the Bukharin-Pyatakov group, all of whom were opposed to national self-determination, arguing that it was unfeasible under imperialism. Of course, Lenin explained, under imperialism national self-determination could be achieved only by overcoming immense difficulties. But that did not at all imply that 227 revolutionary socialists should reject an immediate and most resolute struggle for this demand - that would only play into the hands of the bourgeoisie and the reactionaries. On the contrary, what they should do is to raise the oppressed peoples against every variety of national and colonial oppression, for full implementation of the right of nations to political self-determination.
Lenin expressed the conviction that the victory of the working class in only one of the imperialist powers and, even more so, revolutions in a number of countries would create particularly favourable conditions for the development and success of national liberation wars and uprisings and for the gaining of independence by peoples oppressed by imperialism.^^*^^
Of exceptional importance to this day is Lenin's proposition that, under imperialism, the winning of political independence does not mean that a nation has acquired economic independence. ``Finance capital is such a great, such a decisive, you might say, force in all economic and in all international relations, that it is capable of subjecting, and actually does subject, to itself even states enjoying the fullest political independence.''^^**^^ Nations oppressed by imperialism, Lenin taught, must seek not only political, but economic independence. But colonial and semi-colonial, the small and weak nations cannot hope to obtain genuine economic aid from the imperialist powers. On the contrary, under the guise of ``economic aid" the colonialists try to tighten their stranglehold on these nations.
Lenin held that only socialism will usher in an era of genuine liberation for the oppressed peoples. He put forward the programmatic proposition that when the working class comes to power in the developed capitalist countries it will not only give all the colonial and dependent peoples the right of self-determination up to secession, but will also make the maximum effort to establish closer ties with the backward peoples of Asia and Africa who have taken the road of independent development, extend disinterested aid to them and help them ``to pass to the use of machinery, to the lightening of labour, to democracy, to socialism''.^^***^^
Lenin's brilliant forecast has been fully confirmed. Imperialism today is being subjected to more and more pressure. ``The main thing is that the struggle for national liberation in many countries _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 353.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 259.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 67.
228 has in practice begun to develop into a struggle against exploitative relations, both feudal and capitalist. The countries which have taken the non-capitalist path of development, that is, those which have taken the long-term line of building socialist society, are the advanced contingent of the present-day national liberation movement.''~^^*^^The opponents of national self-determination claimed that the ``national state" slogan was no longer valid under imperialism. Lenin conceded that, historically, it was an old slogan. But in the East, in the colonies with their total population of 1,000 million, new, bourgeois-democratic national movements had arisen in the imperialist era, and liberation wars were being fought there. Even in Western Europe, the possibility of national wars, for example, by small nationally-oppressed or annexed states against imperialist powers, was not excluded. Under certain condition, Lenin believed, it was possible to convert the imperialist war into ``a great national war in Europe''.^^**^^
In his writings during the period of the First World War Lenin expressed a number of important propositions on the prospects for the development of nations during the building of socialist society and the transition from socialism to communism.
He showed that the Polish Left socialists, the supporters of Rosa Luxemburg, were mistaken in arguing that nations in socialist society would have the nature only of ``cultural and linguistic units" and that territorial division, insofar as it remained, would be determined only by the needs of production. Criticising these arguments, Lenin stressed that their authors were proceeding from the fact that there would be no state under socialism. In fact, however, the state would be retained under socialism and in the period of the transition from socialism to communism and there would naturally be a need to determine its borders. Hence the question of national relations retains its importance. ``Socialism,'' Lenin pointed out, ``by organising production without class oppression, by ensuring the well-being of all members of the state, gives full play to the ' sympathies' of the population, thereby promoting and greatly accelerating the drawing together and fusion of the nations.''^^***^^ An essential condition of this development of national relations is the pursuance _-_-_
^^*^^ 24th Congress oj the CP5t/,Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1971, p. 215.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 310.
^^***^^ Ibid., p. 324.
229 by the socialist state of a correct nationalities policy-the ensuring of the full equality of all peoples, the development of their economy and culture, and the fraternal mutual assistance of the socialist nations. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Combining the Struggle for DemocracyThe summer of 1916 was spent in the mountains because of Nadezhda Konstantinovna's health. They stayed at a modest boarding-house, the Tschudiweise, in the little village of Flums, not far from Zurich. They chose it because it was cheap, probably the cheapest in all Switzerland. This was important because Lenin and Krupskaya had to practise the utmost economy.
In fine weather they would take walks in the mountains, and during these walks, Nadezhda Konstantinovna recalled, Lenin spoke of the problems uppermost in his mind. One of these was the role of democracy in the development of the proletarian class struggle under imperialism. Early in September they returned to Zurich, to their former room.
From August to October Lenin wrote a series of articles in which he continued to develop the Marxist teaching on the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the world revolutionary process as a whole, and national relations, adding new important propositions which have enriched scientific communism.
Many of the Left Socialists in the West and in Russia who had opposed the right of nations to self-determination were now repudiating the struggle for democracy under imperialism. This time they argued that since imperialism was itself a negation of democracy, it followed that democracy was ``unrealisable'' under imperialism and all the talk about democratic rights and republican form of government was meaningless. The struggle for democracy diverted workers from the struggle for socialism.
Lenin vigorously opposed this theory, qualifying it as ``imperialist economism'', the same kind of ugly caricature of Marxism as the Economism of 1894--1902. He qualified ``imperialist economism" as a striking manifestation of dogmatism and sectarianism in the world socialist movement.
In the articles ``The Nascent Trend of Imperialist Economism'',
``Reply to P. Kievsky (Y. Pyatakov)'', ``A Caricature of Marxism
and Imperialist Economism'', written in the autumn of 1916, Lenin
explained in detail that though imperialism signified, politically,
230
a sharp turn from democracy to reaction, an attempt to abolish
democratic freedoms and institutions, it inevitably engendered and
accentuated democratic tendencies among the masses. And it was
not a matter of indifference to the proletariat and the working
people what kind of state they lived in. The more democratic the state
is, the easier it is for the proletariat to conduct a broad, open,
organised and united struggle against capitalism and the
bourgeoisie. The transition to socialism requires a socialist revolution and
proletarian dictatorship. But the working class cannot carry out the
socialist revolution unless it has prepared for it by a comprehensive,
consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy. The struggle
for democracy is part of the struggle for socialism. ``One should
know how to
In his articles written in 1916 Lenin consistently upheld and developed the cardinal revolutionary Marxist principle that proletarian dictatorship is an objective law of development common to all countries in their transition from capitalism to socialism. ``...Whoever expects that socialism will be achieved without a social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a socialist.''^^**^^
He formulated and substantiated the proposition that different nations will pass to the dictatorship of the proletariat and to socialism in different ways. This has been fully confirmed by the development of a number of countries after World War II. ``All nations,'' Lenin wrote, ``will arrive at socialism --- this is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformations in the different aspects of social life.''^^***^^ Unlike the anarchists, the Marxists hold that the state and its institutions can be used in the fight for the emancipation of the working class. They advocate the ``break-up'' of the old, bourgeois state machine in the course of the proletarian revolution and the creation of a proletarian state (proletarian dictatorship). Revolutionary Marxism is ``recognition of the fact that the state will exist until victorious socialism develops into full communism''.^^****^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 267.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 23, p. 95.
^^***^^ Ibid., pp. 69--70.
^^****^^ Ibid., Vol. 22, p. 323.
231In the closing months of 1916 and the early months of 1917 Lenin made a special study of Marx's and Engels' works on the state, making copious notes from them, giving his own comments and demonstrating, first and foremost, that on this question too the opportunists of the Second International had openly renounced the views of the founders of scientific communism. Writing to Inessa Armand after re-reading Engels' The Housing Question, Lenin remarked that he could not calmly bear the attacks on Marx and Engels. The materials he collected made up a notebook, Marxism on the State, and served as the basis for his book The State and Revolution.
A revolutionary situation had arisen in Europe. Fearing that it might develop into a revolution, the capitalists tried to conclude an imperialist peace. The social-chauvinists and Kautskyites took a pacifist position, seeking to reassure the peoples with the prospect of a democratic peace granted by the imperialist governments. Soon after the Kienthal Conference, the entire Zimmerwald Right in major European countries-France, Germany, Italy-slid into social-pacifism, which had been rejected at Kienthal, and openly aligned themselves with the social-chauvinists and reformists against the revolutionary internationalists, who supported the Zimmerwald Left. Robert Grimm, one of the leaders of the Socialist Party of Switzerland and chairman of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences and of the International Socialist Commission, which was set up by these conferences, sided with the social-patriots in his country. He screened his defection with abuse at the social-patriots of other countries.
Lenin publicly branded the desertion of the Centrist majority in the Zimmerwald Association to social-chauvinism, relentlessly exposed Grimm's sneaking ``tactics'' and called upon the Left internationalists to form a genuinely revolutionary working-class International and to organise in all countries proletarian parties of a new type, parties capable of heading the revolutionary struggle of the working class for socialism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ February RevolutionWhile he was in Switzerland Lenin gave much of his attention to the local working-class movement, notably to the Swiss socialist youth. All the Bolsheviks, including Lenin, were members of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party. Swiss workers heard Lenin speak at their rallies and meetings. He had direct contact with Fritz Flatten and other Swiss Left socialists, attended many of their conferences 232 and helped them in their struggle against the social-chauvinists and Centrists. He drew up special theses on the subject, entitling them ``Tasks of the Left Zimmerwaldists in the Swiss Social-Democratic Party''. At the Congress of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party in Zurich, on October 22 (November 4), he greeted the delegates on behalf of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee.
On January 9 (22), 1917, he gave a lecture on the Russian Revolution of 1905 at a meeting of young workers in the Zurich People's House. He closed the lecture with the words: ``We must not be deceived by the present grave-like stillness in Europe. Europe is pregnant with revolution.''~^^*^^
Only a few weeks after Lenin pronounced these prophetic words a revolution broke out in Russia. In February 1917, the tsarist autocracy was overthrown. The revolution was victorious because its leader and chief motive force was the working class, which carried with it millions of peasants clad in army uniform. The Bolshevik Party had inspired and organised the militant alliance of the workers and peasants in the revolution.
Lenin learned of the revolution in Petrograd from the Swiss papers of March 2 (15). He was beside himself with joy. The revolution stirred the entire world. Lenin at once got down to appraising it and defining the new tasks of the proletariat and its Bolshevik Party.
In letters written on March 3 (16) and 4 (17) to Alexandra Kollontai in Christiania (Oslo), through whom the Party C.C. members abroad maintained contact with the Bolsheviks in Russia, he outlined the course the Party had to follow in view of the establishment of a bourgeois Provisional Government and the Soviets of Workers' Deputies. The chief thing now, he said, was to keep strengthening the working-class revolutionary party, to extend activities, to organise the masses, rouse new strata in preparation for the conquest of power by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. Finish off reaction! Not the slightest confidence in, or support for, the new bourgeois government; build a broader base for a higher stage of the revolution.
Of great importance for the elaboration of the principles of the new political course of the Bolshevik Party were Lenin's Letters from Afar, which provided answers to the questions confronting the working class and working people of Russia after the February revolution: on the driving forces, nature and direction of the second _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 253.
233 Russian revolution, on state power, on war and peace, on the attitude to the bourgeois Provisional Government, on the Soviets as a new form of political organisation of the working people, and on the transition from the bourgeois-democratic stage of the revolution to the socialist, and other points.After the victorious February revolution Lenin was impatient to return to Russia. But how to get to Russia, to revolutionary Petrograd? Since all lines of communication from neutral Switzerland to belligerent Russia were in the hands of Britain and France, the plan arose of Lenin and the internationalists travelling legally via England; soundings were made. When it became clear that Russia's ``allies'', the ``democratic'' British, who freely allowed war supporters into Russia, would not let Bolsheviks, revolutionary proletarian internationalists, through, other ways had to be sought. Krupskaya recalled: ``The moment that the news of the revolution arrived Lenin forgot about sleep, and at night the most impracticable plans were made. Like flying over on an aeroplane. But such fantasies could arise only during sleepless nights. As soon as one said it aloud, the impracticability, the unreality, of the plan was immediately obvious. It would be necessary to get a passport of a foreigner from a neutral country, preferably a Swede: a Swede would arouse the least suspicion. A passport of a Swede could be obtained through the Swedish comrades, but poor knowledge of the language was a problem. Perhaps a dumb Swede? But suppose you talk in your sleep. `It won't work, you might talk in your sleep. You might see the Mensheviks in your dreams and you would be muttering, ``What scum, what scum!" and then everyone would know you're not a Swede,' I laughed.''
There was a suggestion that they travel via Germany, by exchanging Russian political emigrants for German war prisoners. Lenin seized on the idea. With the help of Swiss socialists, notably Fritz Flatten, the secretary of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party, permission to pass through Germany was obtained.
Under the agreement Flatten had reached with German representatives, permission to pass through Germany was granted to all emigres irrespective of party affiliation or attitude towards the war.
Krupskaya recalls: "When we received the letter from Berne that all the arrangements had been completed and we could start on our way to Russia, Ilyich said: 'Let's catch the first train.' We had only two hours to pack and I hesitated. We had to wind up our ' household; return the books to the library, pay up our rent, etc. 'You go and I'll follow tomorrow.' 'No, we'll go together.' The `household' 234 was wound up, the books packed, letters destroyed, some clothes and other essentials packed and we took the first train out.''~^^*^^
Lenin and Krupskaya left Switzerland on March 27 (April 9) together with thirty other emigres, among them nineteen Bolsheviks.
Shortly before his departure from Switzerland Lenin had prepared a leaflet entitled ``To Our Comrades in War-Prisoner Camps'', in which he told the two million Russian war prisoners in Germany and Austria of the revolution and of the tasks in the coming struggle for socialism in Russia. Furthermore, he wrote a `` Farewell Letter to the Swiss Workers''. On March 26 (April 8), it was discussed and approved at a meeting of Bolsheviks departing for Russia. In it, they conveyed their deep gratitude to the revolutionary workers of Switzerland, with whom they had worked as fellow socialists, and comprehensively explained the historic tasks confronting the Russian proletariat.
At Gottmadingen, the German frontier station, the Russians were put in a separate carriage, three doors of which were sealed and the fourth, back door, left open. Two German officers were installed in the last compartment as representatives of the German Command and a chalk line was drawn across the corridor to indicate the boundary between the Russian revolutionaries and the German officers. Only Fritz Flatten, who accompanied the group, was allowed to cross the line without permission of the Russian passengers.
In Stuttgart the party was met by Jansson,. a member of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions. He had come on the instructions of the opportunist trade union leadership to try to enter into conversation with the Russian political leaders. He was vigorously rebuffed by Flatten, who acted on Lenin's instructions.
The German press had strict orders not to publish any reports about the Russian emigres until they had left German soil. The authorities feared that such reports might lead to demonstrations of sympathy.
On March 30 (April 12), the train reached Zashnitz on the Baltic seaboard. All the passengers were put on a Swedish cargo vessel that took them through the mine fields to the Swedish port of Trelleborg, where they were met by the Polish Social-Democrat _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1979, pp. 446--47 (Russ. ed.).
235 Hanecki and the Swedish journalist Otto Grimlund, and then travelled by train to Stockholm.In Stockholm Lenin and his comrades were given a warm welcome by the Bolsheviks living there and by the Swedish Left SocialDemocrats. Lenin decided to spend only one day in Stockholm. During his short stay in the Swedish capital he set up a Bureau Abroad of the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee, attended a meeting of Swedish internationalist Social-Democrats and a banquet in honour of the Russian comrades. He conversed in German with Fr. Strom, speaking of the coming socialist revolution in Russia, the prospects of the world revolutionary movement, bourgeois democracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat and other important problems.
On March 31 (April 13), warmly thanking the Swedish comrades for the hospitality and attention accorded to them, the group left Stockholm and two days later arrived at Thorneo, the Finnish frontier station. Their sudden appearance on the very threshold of the revolution (Finland was then part of Russia) highly annoyed the Allies. The British officers stationed at the Swedish-Finnish frontier gave vent to their spite-they took Lenin into a separate room and subjected him to a humiliating search.
``Ilyich remained calm throughout the procedure,'' Mikha Tskhakaya wrote later. "When he noticed that the gendarmes were disappointed at not having found anything suspicious and were obliged to set us free, Ilyich burst out laughing. He hugged me and said: 'Our ordeals are over, Mikha. We are on our own soil and we'll show them,' here he shook his fist, 'that we are worthy masters of the future.'"
Lenin did an immense amount of work during the First World War. In these difficult days, when the Second International's betrayal of socialism had plunged the world labour movement into deep crisis, it was Lenin who upheld revolutionary Marxism and dealt crushing blows at social-chauvinism and Centrism. It was Lenin who laid the foundations for the new, Third International and raised aloft the banner of proletarian internationalism. Lenin appeared before the world as the recognised teacher and leader of the international proletariat.
[236] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Nine __ALPHA_LVL1__ INSPIRER AND LEADERFrom now on, a new phase in the history of Russia begins, and this, the third Russian revolution, should in the end lead to the victory of socialism.
Lenin
In the small hours of April 3 (16), 1917, a train carrying Lenin and a group of political emigrants crossed the Finnish frontier from Sweden. As soon as he was in Finland Lenin literally pounced on the Petrograd newspapers, which had been almost unobtainable in Switzerland. When the frontier inspection and formalities had been completed, the train proceeded on to Petrograd.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The April ThesesThe news that Lenin would arrive in the capital that evening had reached Petrograd earlier in the day, and though it was the Easter holiday and there were no newspapers and the factories were closed, the good news spread to all parts of the city and to every ship and regiment. Workers, soldiers and sailors started preparing for the meeting.
That night a guard of honour composed of soldiers and sailors formed up on the dimly lighted platform of the Finland Railway Station in Petrograd. Everyone waited excitedly. As Lenin stepped out of the train, the Kronstadt sailors presented arms and a military band played the Marseillaise. The workers of Petrograd showed their delight at his homecoming. Amid hurrahs and handclapping I. Chugurin, whom Lenin had known at the Longjumeau Party school, handed Lenin Party Card No. 600 of the Vyborg District Bolshevik organisation.^^50^^ Lenin embraced him warmly, greeted the soldiers and sailors and then went out into the square.
The square and the streets adjoining the station were thronged with thousands of Petrograd workers and soldiers. Countless banners waved in the glare of searchlights. Many of them bore the 237 words: ``Welcome to Lenin.'' The band struck up the Internationale. Amid a steady roar of cheering, workers and soldiers lifted Lenin on to an armoured car. Standing on the car, he greeted the revolutionary proletariat of Russia and the army rank-and-file who had carried out the victorious revolution against tsarism. The proletariat of the whole world, said Lenin, was watching with hope the bold steps taken by the Russian workers. He ended his first speech to the workers and soldiers of Petrograd with a stirring call: ``Long live the socialist revolution!''
People thronged round the armoured car as it bore Lenin to the premises of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Here another meeting took place attended by Petrograd workers and soldiers, who welcomed their leader with great enthusiasm. Lenin spoke several times during the meeting and was listened to by thousands of working men and women, soldiers and sailors.
April 4 was Lenin's first working day in revolutionary Petrograd. It was a very full day. In the morning he had a meeting with leaders of the Bolshevik Party at V. Bonch-Bruyevich's flat. In the afternoon he spoke twice at the Taurida Palace. The same day Lenin attended a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, at which the question of the emigrants' return to Russia was discussed. Lenin described the circumstances of their journey back to Russia through Germany and proposed that the journey be approved by the meeting, and that steps be taken accordingly to get a corresponding number of interned Germans set free, particularly the prominent Austrian socialist Otto Bauer. Lenin's proposals were not accepted.
That same day Lenin managed to visit Volkovo Cemetery, where his mother and sister Olga were buried.
Lenin's return from abroad was of tremendous importance to the Bolshevik Party and the people of Russia. It was vitally important not only to the Russian but also to the world revolutionary liberation movement as a whole. The February revolution had radically altered the situation in Russia. The task to which the Party had given priority from the outset-the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy - had been carried out. Now the Bolshevik Party and the working class were confronted with a new historical, truly great in scope and significance task-the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution. As soon as he arrived in Petrograd Lenin took direct control over the Central Committee and Pravda.
Since the February revolution the Bolshevik Party, having emerged from underground, had been mustering its forces, working 238 out its tactics and extending its activities in a highly complex situation. To lead the struggle of the working class and the rest of the working people under the new conditions effectively, the Bolsheviks had to make a correct Marxist appraisal of the February revolution, elucidate its class character, take into account the changes in the balance of class forces and define the specific features of the new historical situation.
The Bolshevik Party was the only party that had not hauled down its socialist colours. It was explaining to the masses the class nature of the Provisional Government as a bourgeois government and exposing its imperialist policy and the conciliatory tactics of the petty-bourgeois parties. From the very first days of its legal existence the Bolshevik Party began to organise and strengthen its ranks, to extend political work among the masses.
The main propositions on the revolutionary strategy and tactics of the proletariat, its tasks in the new historical conditions after the overthrow of autocracy, had been formulated by Lenin in March in his Letters from Afar. However, not all the members of the Central Committee shared Lenin's views of the prospects for revolution at that time. Some did not agree that the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia was completed and that there must be a struggle for the transition to a socialist revolution. Before Lenin's return to Russia the Letters from Afar had not been generally known in the Party. Only the first one had been published, in abridged form, in Pravda. The leading Party bodies in Russia felt the need for new, additional explanations by Lenin of fundamental questions concerning the new and remarkably bold political course of the Party elaborated by him. The Party officials were in need of personal contact with Lenin.
On the morning of April 4, Lenin delivered a report ``The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution" at a meeting in the Taurida Palace of the Bolshevik delegates to the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. These were Lenin's April Theses, which armed the Party with a scientificallybased plan of struggle for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic to the socialist revolution. Lenin repeated his report at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, who had taken part in the above-- mentioned Conference of Soviets.
Lenin's Theses defined, first and foremost, the attitude to be adopted by the Party to the war, the most vital of all the issues facing the peoples of Russia and the whole world. The war that Russia was waging, even under the Provisional Government, wrote Lenin, 239 continued to be a predatory, imperialist war because of the bourgeois character, aims and policy of that government. Dependent financially and diplomatically on the more powerful British and French imperialists, the capitalist class could not wage any other kind of war but an imperialist one. It was therefore impossible to end the war unless the power of capital was overthrown, unless state power passed to the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry which supported it. Only such a government could give the people peace, bread and freedom and set the country on the path to socialism. Hence the Bolshevik slogans: ``No support for, not the slightest confidence in the Provisional Government!" and ``All power to the Soviets!''
In the April Theses Lenin proclaimed the goal as victory of a socialist revolution: ``The specific feature of the present situation in Russia,'' he wrote, "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.''~^^*^^ This proposition is the basic and central theme that runs all through Lenin's Theses.
As far back as 1905, Lenin had regarded the Soviets not merely as instruments of armed uprising but also as the embryo of a new, revolutionary form of government. Mindful of the experience of the Paris Commune and the Russian revolutions of 1905 and February 1917, Lenin saw in the Republic of the Soviets the political form of the dictatorship of the proletariat and placed before the Party and the working class the task of establishing such a republic in Russia.
Marx had spoken of a new form of state power ``of the type of the Paris Commune''. Marx and Engels said that the working class could not simply take over the old state machine ready-made and rule by means of it; it must replace that machine with a new one and convert its political supremacy - the dictatorship of the proletariat-in to an instrument for the socialist reconstruction of society. The parliamentary republic, they said, constitutes progress as compared with absolutism, but does not abolish the domination of capital; it merely makes it easier for the working class to fight for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Kautsky and other opportunists of the Second International distorted the teachings of Marx and Engels on the state, ignored their _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 22.
240 ideas that it was necessary to create a new, higher type of democratic state, a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and instead advocated the bourgeois political form of democracy, the parliamentary republic, as the best form of state for the transition to socialism. Exposing these opportunists, Lenin showed that life had produced a new ``higher type of democratic state'', in comparison with the parliamentary democratic republic, and that a republic of Soviets would represent the dictatorship of the proletariat.This was a great discovery in Marxist theory, a discovery that was to be of the greatest importance in ensuring the victory of the socialist revolution in October 1917, in setting up Soviet power and building socialism in the U.S.S.R., and in evolving the political forms of the dictatorship of the working class in other countries.
The April Theses formulated the economic platform of the proletarian Party. In the economic sphere Lenin stood for carrying out at once the revolutionary measures that the situation actually demanded, that were absolutely essential to combat the impending economic catastrophe and famine, and that would be comprehensible to and within the reach of the masses: first, nationalisation of all the land in the country along with confiscation of the landed estates and placing of the land at the disposal of the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies; conversion of the large estates that were confiscated into model farms under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies; second, the immediate amalgamation of all the banks in the country into one national bank, to be placed under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies; and third, the setting up of workers' control over the production and distribution of products.
These measures, if executed in a revolutionary way, Lenin pointed out, would be an important step towards socialism. A few days later he raised with the Party and the working class the question of ``the nationalisation of the banks and capitalist syndicates'', in order to undermine the economic strength of monopoly capital.
In his Theses Lenin formulated the Party's tactics in the struggle for a socialist revolution with the utmost clarity. These tactics were based on a Marxist analysis of the complex and contradictory situation. The specific feature of the February revolution was that in the course of its development a dual power had come into being. Alongside the bourgeois Provisional Government there existed the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, in which the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries had a majority.
__PRINTERS_P_241_COMMENT__ 16---826 241The great mass of the people, who were taking part in political life for the first time and had no experience of politics, were temporarily disorientated and could not immediately distinguish friend from foe. In this situation, Lenin said, the majority of the working class, the majority of the working people, must be won over to our side. The anti-popular, imperialist nature of the Provisional Government must be exposed; this government must be deprived of the confidence and support of the workers and soldiers.
By this profound analysis of the historical situation obtaining at the time, Lenin proved the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power to the proletariat. He armed Marxists with yet another convincing argument against the false allegations of the enemies of the proletariat, who claim that the Communists have always, under all circumstances, favoured the forcible seizure of power by the working class. At the same time he urged Bolsheviks to prepare for other forms of struggle also and called on them to arm the working class, the people.
Concerning matters within the Party, Lenin called for the immediate convocation of a Party Congress and amendment of the Party Programme. In his opinion the new programme should give an assessment of imperialism and imperialist wars, expound the teaching of Marxism on the state, and advance the task of setting up a Soviet republic.
Lenin proposed that the Party's name be changed from SocialDemocratic to Communist Party, as Marx and Engels had called the proletarian party they had founded, since the official SocialDemocratic leaders in almost all countries had betrayed socialism. This name was scientifically correct because the ultimate aim of the party of the proletariat was to build a communist society. ``It is time to cast off the soiled shirt and to put on clean linen,'' wrote Lenin.^^*^^
In the sphere of the international working-class movement, Lenin proposed as a practical task the creation of a third, Communist International.
Lenin's April Theses provided an ideological basis for the unity of the Bolshevik Party organisations. They roused tremendous enthusiasm in the ranks of the Party and the working class and inspired the workers to fight for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 88.
242Lenin's theses were published in Pravda on April 7. The open Party discussion that followed lasted nearly three weeks and Lenin's position quickly won over leading Party workers and Party organisations.
The April Theses incensed the enemies of the revolutionary proletariat. A slanderous campaign was launched against the Bolsheviks. Provocatory inventions and lies of the lowest kind were put about by the bourgeois press, primarily against Lenin. The fact that Lenin and other Bolsheviks had come to Russia through Germany was used to suggest that the new arrivals might be helping the German imperialists. The effect of this agitation was that some people started shouting in the streets for physical violence against Lenin.
Plekhanov declared the April Theses to be anarchism and Blanquism.^^51^^ ``Lenin has only just arrived, he doesn't know Russia,'' bawled Dan. Lenin is ``destroying Marxism" with his Theses, announced Tsereteli, making play with a quotation from Engels's The Peasant War in Germany, which stated that a class that seized power prematurely would perish.
Ignorant people or renegade Marxists, Lenin told them, could go on about anarchism, Blanquism, etc. But people who wished to think and learn could not fail to understand that Blanquism was the seizure of power by the minority, and Lenin supported the transfer of power to the Soviets which were obviously the direct and immediate organisation of the majority of the people. This was the first point.
Secondly, Blanquism was a denial of the need for the state and state power in the age of the transition from the rule of the bourgeoisie to the rule of the proletariat. "Whereas I, with a precision that precludes any possibility of misinterpretation, advocate the need for a state in this period, although, in accordance with Marx and the lessons of the Paris Commune, I advocate not the usual parliamentary bourgeois state, but a state without a standing army, without a police opposed to the people, without an officialdom placed above the people.... Mr. Plekhanov, the ex-Marxist, has absolutely failed to understand the Marxist doctrine of the state.''~^^*^^
The Petrograd City Conference of Bolsheviks opened on April 14. Lenin delivered a report to the Conference and summed up the debate on the current situation and the attitude to be adopted towards the Provisional Government. The Conference passed the resolution on the attitude towards the Provisional Government, moved _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collerlerl Works, Vol. 24, p. 49.
243 by Lenin. It called on the Bolsheviks of Petrograd to take energeticaction and to prepare for a socialist revolution in Russia. Lenin's tactics were thus approved by the Petrograd Party organisation, the largest in the country.On April 20, the Petrograd City Conference was interrupted by a mighty political demonstration of the Petrograd workers and sol diers protesting against the imperialist policy of the Provisiona Government. Demonstrations were also held in other cities.
During the April demonstration a small group of members of the Petrograd Bolshevik organisation advanced a slogan calling for the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government. This slogan ran counter to the Party's line on the peaceful development of the revolution, on the gradual winning of a majority in the Soviets. The Central Committee explained that it was essential that the majority of the people be firmly rallied round the revolutionary proletariat, that unless this condition were observed an attack on the Provisional Government would be sheer recklessness. ``The proletarian party would be making a dangerous mistake if it based its tactics on subjective desires where organisation is required,''~^^*^^ Lenin warned.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Party Approves Lenin's Political LineThe Petrograd Conference was soon to be followed by the AllRussia Party Conference. Lenin prepared enthusiastically and with great care for this conference, the first legal Party conference to be held in Russia. On April 10, he wrote an important work The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, which he regarded as a draft platform for the proletarian party. On April 23 Lenin conducted a preliminary meeting of the delegates who had arrived for the conference. At the request of those present Lenin gave an analysis of the development of the Russian revolution.
All the work of the Seventh All-Russia Conference, which opened on April 24, proceeded under Lenin's direct leadership. He delivered reports on the current situation, on the agrarian question, and on the revision of the Party Programme, explaining and substantiating the propositions formulated in the April Theses. ``The basic question of every revolution,'' he explained, "is that of state power.''^^**^^ The bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia had _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 237.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 38.
244 decided this question. But since power had, in fact, passed to the bourgeoisie, and to the landowners who had become bourgeois, the February revolution had not given the people bread, peace or freedom. To withdraw from the imperialist war, to win real freedom, and secure bread and land, it was necessary to transfer all power to the workers and the poorest strata of the peasantry, united in the Soviets.In his speeches at the conference Lenin gave a profound explanation of the world-historic significance of the Soviets and showed that, in the conditions then obtaining, the slogan ``All Power to the Soviets!" was the Party's principal slogan, whose aim was to put an end to the power of the bourgeoisie and establish working-class dictatorship. The conference approved Lenin's policy of peaceful development of the revolution.
In his report on the current situation Lenin outlined a concrete programme of gradual steps towards socialism. This programme proceeded from the existence in Russia of the necessary economic prerequisites for a socialist revolution, which had been created by the development of capitalism, and at the same time it took account of the fact that many vestiges of pre-capitalist modes of production and relics of serfdom had survived. It was this that determined the complexity and difficulty of the transition to socialism. We must now raise the question of socialism in a different way from that in which it was raised before, Lenin said. We must transfer it to the sphere of practice; instead of general propositions on the transition to socialism we must speak of ``concrete steps and measures. Some of them are ripe, and some are not''.^^*^^
Lenin denounced the bourgeois slander that the Bolshevik Party intended to ``introduce socialism" by decree, without taking account of the objective economic conditions and the will of the majority of the population. He considered the growth of the activity and organisation, the utmost use of the initiative and diverse creativity of the masses as the main condition for the victory of the revolution and the taking of steps to socialism after the establishment of the power of the Soviets.
The conference unanimously approved Lenin's policy of developing the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.
In his report on the agrarian question Lenin proved the necessity of nationalising all the land, as demanded by the Bolsheviks. This measure, he said, would free peasant landownership of its semi-feudal _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, p. 241.
245 fetters, and abolish the landed estates, which were the material mainstay of the power of the feudal landowners. Moreover, since it meant abolition of private ownership of land, land nationalisation would in practice deal a heavy blow at private ownership of all the means of production in general.The conference approved all Lenin's proposals on the agrarian question and its decisions played an enormous part in rallying the peasantry round the working class.
The conference heard a report, delivered by Stalin, and passed a resolution, moved by Lenin, on the national question. Both demanded the right of nations to self-determination, including the right to secede and form independent states. Only recognition of this right would ensure complete solidarity of the workers, solidarity of all the working people of the various nations, the resolution said. At the same time it stressed that the question of the right of nations to free secession must not be confused with the question of the advisability of a given nation seceding. ``The party of the proletariat must decide the latter question quite independently in each particular case, having regard to the interests of social development as a whole and the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat for socialism.''~^^*^^
Lenin paid particular attention to the reports from the local Party organisations, especially those which dealt with the activity of the Soviets. ``This may be,'' he said, ``the most important material the conference has provided, it is material that enables us to test our slogans against the actual course of events. The picture it gives prompts us to draw optimistic conclusions.''^^**^^ In a number of regions and towns the local Soviets had moved further ahead in carrying out revolutionary measures than the Soviets of Moscow and Petrograd. This confirmed that Lenin was right in his policy of calling for preparation on an all-Russia scale of forces for the second stage of the revolution.
The conference passed a resolution on rallying the internationalists. The resolution admitted the need to bring together and unite groups and trends that really stood for internationalism on condition that they broke with the policy of petty-bourgeois betrayal of socialism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 302--03.
^^**^^ Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P (Bolsheviks). Petrograd City Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks). April 1917. Minutes, Moscow, 19.>8, p. 145 (Russ. ed.).
246On the basis of Lenin's report the conference passed a resolution on the revision of the Party Programme and indicated on what lines it was to be carried out. It also instructed the Central Committee to take the initiative in forming a Third International.
The All-Russia (April) Conference of Bolsheviks was of tremendous importance in the work of the Party and the development of the socialist revolution in Russia. In importance, this conference was equal to a Party Congress. It elected a Central Committee headed by Lenin.
On May 8, Lenin delivered a long report summing up the results of the April Conference at a general meeting of the Petrograd Bolshevik organisation. Lenin warned his audience that an awareness of the need for a new, socialist revolution must be acquired by the people through its own experience. When the majority of the people did not want-because it did not yet understand to take power into its hands, the minority, no matter how revolutionary and intelligent it might be, could not impose its will on the majority of the people. Hence also the actions of the Bolsheviks. Each Bolshevik must turn himself into everything: an agitator, a propagandist, and an organiser of the Party. Lenin particularly emphasised the need to ``be as firm as a rock in maintaining the proletarian line against petty-bourgeois waverings" and to prepare for ``a revolution 1,000 times more powerful than the February one''.^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ In Revolutionary PetrogradThe First All-Russia Congress of Soviets met at the beginning of June. Out of a total of 1,090, the Bolsheviks had only 105 delegates at the Congress. The bulk of the delegates belonged to the Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary bloc and the groups supporting it.
The report on the question ``The Provisional Government and Revolutionary Democracy" was delivered by the Menshevik Lieber. He was followed by Tsereteli, Minister of Post and Telegraph Services in the coalition government and leader of the Mensheviks. Tsereteli made a long speech rejecting the Bolsheviks' proposal to set up a Soviet government. Supporting Lieber's thesis that it was necessary to consolidate the bloc of all democratic parties and form a coalition government, he stated: ``At the present moment there is not a single political party in Russia that is prepared to say: 'Hand over the power to us, get out, and we will take your place.'~"
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 450.
247Whereupon a firm and resolute voice rang out from the middle of the silent hall:
``There is such a party!''
The voice was that of Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party. People who were present relate that his words came like a thunderbolt, and caused a great stir in the hall and confusion on the platform. The hall hummed with voices. Tsereteli, the smooth flow of his oratory interrupted by Lenin's unexpected retort, hurriedly rounded off his speech. Lenin went to the rostrum. He made a forceful speech on the attitude to be adopted towards the Provisional Government. Referring to Tsereteli's assertion that there was not a single party in Russia that would consent to assume full power, Lenin exclaimed once again, from the rostrum: ``I reply: `Yes, there is.' No party can refuse this, and our Party certainly doesn't. It is ready to take over full power at any moment.''~^^*^^
The impression made by Lenin's speech was so powerful that when his time was up, nearly the whole Congress demanded an extension. In the second part of his speech Lenin warned the Congress of Soviets that it was a question of advancing or retreating. During a revolution it was impossible to mark time; power must be transferred to the revolutionary proletariat, supported by the poorest strata of the peasantry.
Lenin's second speech to the Congress, which he made on June 9, dealt with the question of the war. He said that because of the foreign policy supported by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, the revolutionary workers and the toiling peasantry had been placed in an unbelievably muddled situation. As working classes they had no interest in plans of conquest, but because of the trickery practised by the bourgeoisie, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, many had taken up a defencist standpoint. The masses did not yet understand that the war was a continuation of the imperialist policy of the bourgeoisie of various countries. Withdrawal from the war could only be achieved by the victory of a socialist revolution.
The Congress delegates, particularly the soldiers, listened eagerly to every word Lenin had to say about war and peace. Many of them gradually began to shake off the prejudices against the Bolshevik line that had been drummed into their heads by the slanderous articles in the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois newspapers.
The First Congress of Soviets showed up the open retreat of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 20.
248 Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders from the revolution. By rejecting the Bolshevik proposals on war and peace, and the transfer of power to the Soviets, by approving the policy of the Provisional Government, the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik majority were turning the Soviets into an appendage of the Provisional Government.Meanwhile disturbances had begun in the working-class districts of Petrograd on account of increasing economic dislocation, the rising cost of living, discontent with the policy of the Provisional Government, and indignation over the activities of the counter-- revolutionaries, who were becoming more and more arrogant.
On June 18, half a million workers and soldiers marched through the streets of Petrograd under Bolshevik slogans. This was a big advance for the Bolshevik Party towards creating a political army of the revolution.
By the end of June the pressure of work was beginning to tell on Lenin's health. Overstrain and constant lack of sleep were giving him headaches and insomnia. He went for a few days' rest to Bonch-Bruyevich's country-house. But his holiday was interrupted by disturbances in Petrograd.
News of the reckless offensive which Kerensky had launched on June 18 and subsequent rumours reaching the capital about the failure of this offensive, about fresh lives sacrificed at the will of the imperialists, touched off an explosion of indignation.
On July 3, masses of workers and soldiers came out into the streets of Petrograd demanding the transfer of all power to the Soviets.
The situation was critical in the extreme. Armed action would have been premature at the time, for a revolutionary crisis had not yet matured and the army and the provinces were not yet prepared to support the Petrograd workers. The bourgeoisie was making ready to crush the movement and drown it in the blood of the working people.
Early in the morning of July 4 Lenin, who had not recovered his strength, arrived in Petrograd.
At about midday a grandiose demonstration began, with more than 500,000 workers from all districts in Petrograd and soldiers of the Petrograd Garrison taking part.
This demonstration terrified the bourgeoisie and its Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary hangers-on, as well as the counter-- revolutionary generals and the Anglo-French imperialists. According to Lenin ``it was not an ordinary demonstration; it was something 249 considerably more than a demonstration, but less than a revolution''.^^*^^
The demonstrators were fired upon and the streets of Petrograd ran with blood. On the night of July 4, a conference of members of the Central Committee and the Petrograd Committee, presided over by Lenin, passed a decision to stop the demonstration and called upon the demonstrators to disperse peacefully to the factories, barracks, and ships. The Bolshevik Party managed to withdraw its main forces out of range of the counter-revolution.
In the days that followed, mass searches and confiscation of arms were carried out among the workers. Revolutionary regiments were disarmed, arrests were made among the soldiers. The British ambassador in Petrograd Buchanan demanded that the Provisional Government should disarm all Petrograd workers, reintroduce capital punishment at the front and deal summarily with the participants in the July demonstration. An attack was immediately launched on the Bolshevik Party, and on Lenin. On the night of July 4, the premises of Bolshevik organisations were raided.
Early in the morning of July 5, officer-cadets wrecked the Pravda editorial office. Lenin, who had called there just before they raided the place, nearly fell into their hands. The Trud printing plant, which had been bought with money contributed to the Bolshevik Party by the workers, was also raided.
An unbridled campaign of slander was launched against Lenin. Alexinsky, an agent provocateur and slanderer of the worst kind, had told the Petrograd Journalists' Committee on July 4 that he possessed documentary evidence confirming the charge that Lenin was a German spy. This statement was so fantastic that Chkheidze, the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of Soviets, on his own behalf and on behalf of Tsereteli, a member of the Provisional Government, telephoned all the big Petrograd newspapers asking them not to print Alexinsky's libel. Only ^hivoye Slovo (Living Word), a tabloid catering for the most backward sections of the city's population, published Alexinsky's slanderous allegation. The frantic attempts to smear Lenin grew even more violent, and incitement to murder Bolsheviks took an even more threatening form. Lists containing the names of those who were to be killed were being circulated among the soldiers.
The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party issued a proclamation to the population of Petrograd, to all honest citizens _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 171.
250 completely refuting the slander against Lenin, and took steps to protect the great leader of the working class.But now, though forced to hide from the Provisional Government, just as he had from the tsarist authorities, Lenin went on with his Party work.
In the evening on July 6, Lenin went into consultation with members of the Bolshevik Central Committee in the Vyborg District to discuss the situation. It was suggested to him that he should remain underground.
On July 7, Provisional Government issued warrants for the arrest and indictment of Lenin and a number of other Bolsheviks. The Constitutional-Democrat and Menshevik newspapers demanded that Lenin should appear in court. Certain Bolsheviks, who did not fully understand the situation, also considered that Lenin should not remain in hiding, that he ought to appear in court. If he did not, they said, it would be bad for the Party's prestige.
Lenin was so indignant at the monstrous slander against him that he decided on the spur of the moment to appear in court and expose the slanderers. He even asked his comrades to inform the presidium of the Central Executive Committee of his decision.
In his reminiscences G. Orjonikidze described how the matter of Lenin's appearance in court was discussed: ``Nogin rather tentatively spoke in favour of Lenin's appearing and putting up a fight at a public trial. This opinion was shared by a considerable number of the Moscow comrades. Vladimir Ilyich with characteristic clear-- headedness argued that there would be no public trial. Stalin was firmly against any appearing before the authorities. 'The officercadets wouldn't take him to the prison, they'd kill him on the way,' he said. Ilyich also seemed to be against the idea, but hesitated because of what Nogin had said.''~^^*^^ A decision was taken to send V. Nogin and G. Orjonikidze to negotiate about the conditions under which Lenin might be detained in prison. Orjonikidze categorically demanded that he should be given a full guarantee that Lenin's life would be in no danger. As Orjonikidze later reported, he was told that all necessary measures would be taken but that there were no guarantees. To this Orjonikidze replied indignantly: ``We will not give up Ilyich to you.''
That evening there was a meeting at Alliluyev's flat attended by Nogin, Orjonikidze, Stalin, Yelena Stasova, and others. Everyone _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1979, p. 417 (Russ. ed.).
251 present felt indignant and extremely anxious and profoundly aware of his responsibility for Lenin's life. A decision was taken not to allow Lenin to appear in court and at the same time to find a safer hiding-place for him. This was the only correct decision, for there could be no fair trial in Russia at that time. The counter-- revolutionary militarists were at work. If Lenin had fallen into their murderous clutches, he would have been killed on the spot.Events proved that the members of the Central Committee were perfectly right in the action they took to save Lenin's life. Every hour the situation in Petrograd was growing more critical. The Red Guard detachments were being disarmed, the revolutionary regiments of the Petrograd garrison were being dispatched forcibly to the front. The Bolshevik newspapers had been closed down. Arrests and searches were becoming more and more frequent.
On the night of July 6, a detachment of officer-cadets was sent to the Yelizarovs' flat to arrest Lenin. He was not there, so they searched his room and seized various papers. Two days later they came again. Although they were told Lenin was not at home, they searched every possible hiding-place - under the beds, in the cupboards, behind the curtains, and so on. They ordered hampers and chests to be opened and plunged their bayonets through the contents. After a fruitless search they retired, taking with them Krupskaya, M. Yelizarov, and the maid. The same night, after the overzealous detectives had received a dressing-down from their chief for bringing in the wrong man, the prisoners were released.
On the afternoon of July 7 Lenin sent a letter to the Bureau of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russia Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies protesting at the search made of his flat.
It was becoming dangerous for Lenin to remain in Petrograd. The Party Central Committee decided to move Lenin to the Sestroretsk District and shelter him not far from Razliv Railway Station, at the house of Nikolai Yemelyanov, a worker at the Sestroretsk Factory and a veteran of the Party. Razliv Station was near the Finnish frontier and, if necessary, Lenin could be taken off into the heart of Finland.
On the evening of the 9th, he began preparing for the somewhat risky journey to Sestroretsk. Having shaved his beard and clipped his moustache, he put on a brownish-red overcoat and a grey cap. In this garb he bore some resemblance to a Finnish peasant. At about 11 p.m., Lenin, accompanied by his comrades, started off in the direction of Primorsky Station to catch the last train, which was usually occupied by a mixed crowd of late travellers.
252At the appointed spot Lenin and his companions were met by Nikolai Yemelyanov, whom the Central Committee had entrusted with the task of hiding Lenin. Yemelyanov had bought tickets in advance and for safety's sake took Lenin to the train by way of some stationary trucks standing in a siding. Lenin mounted the steps of the carriage. His comrades gave him farewell glances and soon the train moved off. Lenin reached Razliv Station without mishap and a few minutes later was in Yemelyanov's cottage.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin at Razliv. The Sixth Party CongressLenin was temporarily accommodated in the loft of a barn, which had been used for storing hay. A bed was made in the hay and a table and two chairs were provided for work. Since the Yemelyanovs' yard and garden were well screened by trees and lilac bushes, Lenin was sometimes able to go outside for a breath of fresh air, though he still had to be careful.
The hazards in Sestroretsk and Razliv were increasing. Detectives were combing the area for Lenin. To provide Lenin with a more secure hiding-place Yemelyanov rented a mowing plot on the shore of Lake Razliv, five or six kilometres from the station, in a marshy, wooded locality.
Lenin and Zinoviev, who had come with him, were rowed across the lake, and pretending to be Finnish mowers, they took up their quarters in a kind of tent built of branches and thatched with hay. The tent was next to a hayrick, in which a nest had been made to serve as a ``bedroom'' on cold nights. In a dense thicket near the tent a small space was later cleared for Lenin to work in. Lenin used to refer to this jokingly as "my green study''. In this nook there were two logs, one to serve as a desk, the other as a stool. Not far away was the ``kitchen''-a pot hanging from a crossbar supported by two forked branches. Food and newspapers were brought across the lake by Yemelyanov's wife and sons. Lenin demanded a huge number of newspapers - every paper, in fact, that was then published in Petrograd. In order not to arouse suspicion by such large purchases of newspapers Yemelyanov's sons arranged among themselves what papers each should buy. They also maintained a watch.
The Provisional Government's detectives were scouring the country for Lenin. There was a big price on his head. Holidaymakers sometimes came across the lake to gather mushrooms in the 253 marshes and Lenin had more than once to transform himself quickly into a typical Finnish mower. But while keeping strictly to the security arrangements, Lenin managed to go for walks, enjoy the sunshine, go swimming in the lake late in the evening, and sometimes do a little fishing.
Today the tent on the shore of Lake Razliv is preserved just as it was in 1917. Close by stands a granite memorial with an inscription carved upon it: ``Here in July and August 1917, in a tent made of branches, the leader of the October Revolution hid from pursuit by the bourgeoisie and wrote his book The State and Revolution. In memory of this we have built here a tent of granite. Workers of the city of Lenin.^^*^^ 1927.'' By the lake a museum has been set up with exhibits that acquaint the visitor with the life and activity of Lenin in July and August 1917.
Lenin worked hard, reading and writing, although neither living nor working conditions were easy. From his hiding-place Lenin continued to direct Party activities. All this time the Party heard the confident voice of its leader and felt his wise, cautious and yet firm guidance. At Razliv Lenin wrote his article entitled ``The Political Situation'', the booklet On Slogans, and the articles `` Constitutional Illusions" and ``The Lessons of the Revolution''. In these writings Lenin gave a profound analysis of the changes in the political situation following the July events and outlined the tactics the Party should adopt in the new conditions.
The July events, Lenin wrote, were a turning-point in the development of the revolution. Dual power was a thing of the past. The counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie had organised and consolidated its ranks, and had, in effect, seized all power in the state. It had placed that power in the hands of a gang of militarists. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had completely betrayed the cause of the revolution and deserted to the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. Under their leadership the Soviets had become a helpless appendage of the bourgeois Provisional Government. All hope of peaceful development of the revolution, Lenin pointed out, had disappeared.
The revolution had entered upon a non-peaceful course. The power of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie could now be overthrown only by force. Lenin called upon the Bolsheviks to act as they had done under tsarism in 1912--14, combining illegal forms _-_-_
^^*^^ In 1924, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad (city of Lenin).
254 of struggle with legal forms and marshalling their forces for an armed uprising.The radical change in the internal political situation demanded that the Party change its tactical slogans. In his article ``The Political Situation" and the pamphlet On Slogans Lenin proved the necessity of temporarily withdrawing the slogan ``All power to the Soviets!" This slogan had been correct during the period of peaceful development of the revolution (up to July 4), when state power was in the balance and was shared, by voluntary agreement, between the Provisional Government and the Soviets. Now the slogan was no longer correct because the present Soviets, being dominated by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, had failed. To call for the transfer of state power to these Soviets would in fact amount to deception of the people.
At the same time Lenin explained that the temporary withdrawal of the slogan ``All power to the Soviets!" did not mean that the Bolshevik Party had given up the idea of a Soviet Republic as a new type of state. He was convinced that with a fresh upsurge of the Russian revolution Soviets possessing full power would appear, but not the present kind of Soviets dominated by Socialist-- Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, not organs of compromise with the bourgeoisie, but Soviets as organs of revolutionary struggle against it. With the victory of the socialist revolution the Bolsheviks would build the whole state on the model of the Soviets.
Though forced to remain in hiding, Lenin maintained close contact with the Party's Central Committee through comrades, who had been specially assigned to this task.
Lenin's ``The Political Situation'', On Slogans, ``The Lessons of the Revolution" and other writings of this period formed the basis of the decisions of the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party, which met in Petrograd at the end of July and the beginning of August 1917.
The Congress approved Lenin's proposal for the temporary withdrawal of the slogan ``All power to the Soviets!" and called on the Party to fight for the complete abolition of the dictatorship of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie and for the seizure of state power by the proletariat and the poorest peasantry by means of an armed uprising. In complete accordance with the Leninist doctrine the Congress stressed that the alliance of the working class and the poorest peasantry was an important condition for the victory of the socialist revolution. The Congress upheld Lenin's theory of the socialist revolution and Lenin's proposition on the possibility of the victory of socialism first in one country, Russia.
255The Congress also discussed whether Lenin should appear in court. Ten delegates took part in the debate. In Orjonikidze's report on the matter and in all the speeches there was a sense of anxiety and great responsibility for Lenin's safety. And this is understandable. The judicial authorities of the Provisional Government intended to try and convict Lenin ``for treason and for the organisation of an armed uprising''. The speakers approved Lenin's action in refusing to appear for trial by rabid counter-- revolutionaries.
By a secret ballot the Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. ( Bolsheviks) elected a Central Committee headed by Lenin, with twice the original number of members. The Congress nominated Lenin as the Bolshevik Party's first candidate for the Constituent Assembly.^^52^^
All Congress decisions were aimed at preparing the working class and the poorest peasants for an armed uprising, for the victory of the socialist revolution. This is what gives it its main significance for the history of the Party and the revolution.
As soon as the Congress was over the Central Committee sent out Lenin's pamphlet On Slogans to four hundred Party organisations. The Congress decisions were also soon published.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin Goes to HelsingforsWhen the hay-making season was over Lenin found it difficult to keep up the pretence of being a mower. A new and safer refuge had to be found. The Central Committee passed a decision to arrange with the Finnish Bolsheviks for Lenin's removal to Finland. Orjonikidze passed this instruction to A. Shotman, who together with the Finnish worker Eino Rahja, a Bolshevik, immediately set about making the necessary arrangements. N. Yemelyanov obtained an identity card and a pass made out in the name of the Sestroretsk worker Konstantin Petrovich Ivanov. A Bolshevik D. Leshchenko took a photo of Lenin in make-up and a wig. The photograph was stuck in the card which had the actual stamp of the Sestroretsk Militia Committee.
After investigating all the possible ways of getting into Finland, the comrades suggested to Lenin that he should make the journey on the foot-plate of a locomotive, as a fireman. When he agreed, they arranged with Hugo Jalava, an engine-driver they knew well, to get him taken across the frontier.
Late in the evening of August 8, Lenin left his tent. Ahead of him lay a walk of some ten kilometres to the next station on the 256 Finnish line. He was accompanied by some of his comrades. On the way they strayed off the path and came to a river, which they had to ford. They made their way on through a forest, parts of which were on fire. The going was dangerous because peat was burning underfoot and there was the risk of floundering into a swamp. Nevertheless they had to avoid the fires. This, too, was dangerous, because the frontier was near and there was a grave risk of running into officer-cadets. Eventually, hungry and utterly exhausted, they came out in the middle of the night at Dibuny Station, which was guarded by a party of cadets. Lenin managed to hide in the bushes at the bottom of the embankment. Yemelyanov went out to reconnoitre and buy tickets, and was immediately stopped by the cadets. When a train came in, Lenin and Rahja slipped quickly into one of the end carriages and travelled safely as far as the station of Udelnaya, where Lenin spent the night at the flat of a Finnish worker, E. G. Kalske.
The next day they went back to the station. Before getting into the train, Lenin handed Shotman a blue-covered notebook and asked him to look after it well. In this notebook with the inscription ``Marxism on the State" Lenin had brought together and analysed the ideas of Marx and Engels on the state and formulated a number of highly important propositions about the destruction of the bourgeois state machine during the socialist revolution, about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and about proletarian democracy, socialism and communism which were thoroughly developed and substantiated in the book The State and Revolution. Lenin exposed the views of the opportunists of the Second International and the anarchists on the socialist revolution and the state. The work Marxism on the State is of great independent importance. A part of the material which contained an analysis of the most valuable theoretical legacy of Marxism was not used in the book The State and Revolution.
Engine-driver Hugo Jalava took Lenin aboard his engine as a fireman and Lenin worked hard throwing logs into the fire-box. The going was good as far as the frontier station of Beloostrov, but at the frontier the guards began checking the passengers' documents. The train crew's documents might also be checked, but the experienced Jalava knew how to deal with the situation. Pretending the engine needed a filling-up, he uncoupled it and drove it off to the pumps and did not return until the station bell had rung three times. He then quickly recoupled the engine, gave a sharp blast on the whistle and put on steam.
__PRINTERS_P_257_COMMENT__ 17---826 257In a few minutes Lenin was in Terijoki and had recovered his notebook from Shotman. Soon afterwards he arrived in the village of Jalkala, about twelve kilometres from Terijoki. Here he put up at the house of a Finnish worker, P. Parviainen, that stood aside from the village on the edge of the woods. According to Eino Rahja's reminiscences, Lenin did not live in the cottage itself but in one of the outhouses.
Lenin maintained contact with Petrograd through L. P. Parviainen, a daughter of the master of the house. In Jalkala, Lenin worked hard, writing and reading, and in his spare time helped the master of the house with the ploughing and mowing, went to the forest to gather mushrooms and bilberries, bathed in the lake, and went rowing and fishing. His friends were Parviainen's little children, for whom he showed great affection. Lenin always enjoyed being with children.
Jalkala provided only a brief refuge for Lenin. With the Russian frontier so close, it was dangerous to stay longer. Lenin lived there while a suitable lodging in Helsingfors was being found for him. It was not long before two Finns arrived from Helsingfors to take Lenin deeper into Finland. They were Kuusela and Kallio, young workers, members of a Helsingfors amateur dramatics society. They made Lenin up as a Finnish pastor. With them Lenin took the train from Terijoki to the little town of Lahti, 130 km from Helsingfors, and put up at a flat belonging to a correspondent of the Finnish Social-Democratic newspaper Tyomies (The Worker), Axel Koski, who had once worked at a shoe factory in St. Petersburg. Then Lenin made another day's stop at the station of Malmi (a suburb of Helsingfors), at the country-house of a deputy to the Finnish Diet Karl Viik whom Lenin had known since 1910. With his assistance Lenin set about getting in touch by post with the Bureau Abroad of the Bolshevik Central Committee in Sweden.
In Helsingfors, Lenin lodged with a Finnish Social-Democrat Kustaa Rovio, who was at the time acting chief of the Helsingfors police. Nothing could have been better for Lenin from the point of view of secrecy and protection. Rovio's flat consisted of one room and a kitchen and it was vacant because Rovio's wife was in the country at the time. While he was in Helsingfors Lenin also lived at the flats of the Finnish workers Usenius and Blomqvist. Rovio kept Lenin in touch with Petrograd through engine-driver Jalava, who lived in the Vyborg District, not far from the flat where Krupskaya was in hiding.
258Very few Bolsheviks knew Lenin's whereabouts. But his articles appearing in the newspapers Proletary and Rabochy (Worker), which the Bolsheviks were bringing out to replace the banned Pravda, were read by the whole Party in the joyful knowledge that its leader was at his post and safe from danger.
At that time Lenin wrote with great pride and gratitude of the Bolshevik Party: ``We trust our Party. We see in it the intelligence, honour and conscience of our times. We see the only guarantee of success for the emancipation movement of the working class in a world alliance of revolutionary internationalists.''~^^*^^ Lenin's moving words contain the highest appreciation of the historic services rendered by the Communist Party to the Russian and international working-class movement, of the Marxist theoretical maturity, its selfless dedication to the cause of the socialist revolution and its splendid moral qualities as collective political leader of the working people.
The resolute, consistent, selfless struggle for the interests of the people enhanced the authority and influence of the Bolshevik Party considerably. This was particularly apparent in the period of the putting down of the Kornilov mutiny, prepared by the counterrevolution and aimed at setting up a military dictatorship in the country, abolishing the Soviets and restoring the monarchy.
The mutiny instigated by the Cadet Party began on August 25, 1917. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General Kornilov, a henchman of the landowners and bourgeoisie, moved an army corps and some Cossack units from the front to march on St. Petersburg. Lenin worked out the Bolshevik tactics for the struggle against Kornilov. The masses rose against Kornilov and the counter-revolutionary mutiny was put down in a few days.
On September 1 (14) Lenin wrote his famous article ``On Compromises" in which he refuted the ignorant, philistine idea supported by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks that the Bolsheviks were fundamentally opposed to any sort of compromise. He showed the true attitude of the Marxist party of the working class to compromise. ``The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises,'' Lenin wrote, ``but to be able through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 260.
259 revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution.''~^^*^^After the putting down of the Kornilov plot came the renewal of the Soviets and their transition to the platform of the Bolsheviks.
Lenin again returned to the question of the possibility of the peaceful development of the revolution in Russia in the event of all power being handed over to the Soviets in the centre and in the localities. The concentration of all state power in the hands of the Soviets, Lenin pointed out, was the only means which could make the further development of the revolution gradual, peaceful and calm. Lenin considered that in the new conditions the slogan ``All power to the Soviets!" had acquired a new content, for the Soviets had become different. Now this slogan meant a direct approach to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the organisation and state arrangement of this dictatorship.
The peaceful path of the development of the revolution in Lenin's interpretation had nothing in common with the reformist and revisionist idea of the "growth of capitalism into socialism''. From the Leninist viewpoint the peaceful path, like the non-- peaceful path, was the path of the revolutionary transformation of society, the path of the most active class struggle of the broad masses of the working class and the toiling peasantry led by the Marxist Party, a struggle for power, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for socialism.
While he was in Finland, Lenin worked hard on the theoretical problems of Marxism. In this period he wrote his outstanding works The State and Revolution and The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, and Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, in which he developed the Marxist teaching on the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, formulated the fundamental principles of the internal and foreign policy to be adopted by the proletarian government and outlined the immediate measures it should take.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The State and RevolutionIn his book, The State and Revolution, written between August and September 1917, Lenin most comprehensively and systematically expounded Marx's teaching on the state, which had been distorted _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 309.
260 by Kautsky and other opportunists. At the same time in this work Lenin developed the Marxist teaching on the state on the basis of the new historical experience, in particular the experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905--07 and 1917. It was extremely important to examine and interpret this teaching correctly because with the socialist revolution maturing in Russia and other countries the question of the role of the state had arisen as an urgent theoretical and practical issue, ``demanding immediate action, and, moreover, action on a mass scale''.^^*^^Bourgeois ideologists, echoed by opportunists in the socialist parties, put forward numerous theories of the state intended to justify the rule of the exploiting classes and to gloss over the real class nature of the bourgeois state. In their opinion, the bourgeois state was an institution above classes, whose function was to reconcile the interests of the various classes of society. Lenin rejected this assertion as unscientific and insisted that it was Marxist doctrine that had for the first time provided a genuinely scientific explanation of the origin of the state and revealed its true nature.
The state in the proper sense of the term, so Marxism teaches, is a machine for the suppression of one class by another. Like other instruments for ensuring the exploiting classes' domination over the people, the state came into being when private ownership appeared and society split up into antagonistic classes. Not only in slave-- owning and feudal societies, but also in capitalist society is the state an instrument for exploiting and oppressing the working people, who form the overwhelming majority of the population. Especially in the epoch of imperialism, in the epoch of monopoly capitalism growing into state-monopoly capitalism, Lenin wrote, the bourgeois "state machine" is greatly intensified; there is an unprecedented increase in its bureaucratic, police and military apparatus, which is directed against the revolutionary proletariat and the popular masses, the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples, and so on. All former revolutions, said Lenin, improved the bourgeois state machine. All kinds of bourgeois states arose, but they were all essentially the same. They were all dictatorships of the bourgeoisie.
The proletarian revolution must destroy, smash the bourgeois state and do away with its main instruments of oppression: the army, the police, the bureaucratic machine, the courts and the prisons. However, the destruction of the bourgeois state did not mean _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 392.
261 that the new society created by the proletariat could exist and develop without a state, as the anarchists held, proceeding from the idea of the incompatibility of any state with the triumph of democracy. We are not Utopians, wrote Lenin, and we understand that the idea of doing without ,any sort of administration, any sort of subordination immediately is an anarchist dream and totally alien to Marxism.Contrary to cowardly revisionist-opportunist attempts to evade at all costs a ``dictatorship of the proletariat'', Lenin stressed most strongly that the teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat is the main thing in Marxism. ``Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat."~^^*^^
In The State and Revolution Lenin gave a comprehensive substantiation of the vital Marxist proposition on the law-governed nature and inevitability of the dictatorship of the working class and its historical role in the development of mankind on the path to communism. ``Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." Quoting in his book this statement of Marx's from A Critique of the Gotha Programme, which had been forgotten by the opportunists, Lenin showed its genuinely scientific truthfulness and programme importance for Marxist parties. ``Marx bases this conclusion on an analysis of the role played by the proletariat in modern capitalist society, on the data concerning the development of this society, and on the irreconcilability of the antagonistic interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.''^^**^^
In defining the historical role of the dictatorship of the proletariat Lenin, in full agreement with Marx and Engels, never reduced it to violence. In The State and Revolution he stressed the great creative role of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the building of socialist society. He proceeded from the fact that the main aims and tasks of socialist construction - economic, socio-political and cultural-are attained and solved by the development of the broadest creative initiative of all the working people, by widespread democracy, by drawing the whole working people into the management of the state. With the deepening of the socialist revolution and the _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 417.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 464.
262 successes in building the new, classless society, violent methods of struggle increasingly fade into the background, and eventually class coercion inside the country of victorious socialism disappears.The dictatorship of the proletariat is fundamentally different from all exploiter states. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or of other exploiter classes is always a dictatorship over the working masses, over the people; it is the power of the minority over the vast majority. The dictatorship of the proletariat is power which expresses and protects the vital interests of the revolutionary people. It rests on a close alliance of the proletariat and the working peasantry and aims at eliminating all exploitation of man by man, at building a socialist society.
Again and again Lenin draws Marxists' attention to the fact that ``the transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat''.^^*^^
Lenin showed the decisive role of the Communist Party not only in winning but in consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the building of socialism and communism. The party of the proletariat is the organising and directing force in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the political system of socialist society.
The Marxist doctrine, as expounded in The State and Revolution, on socialism and communism as the two basic phases through which communist society passes in its development, on the conditions under which the state withers away, is Lenin's great contribution to Marxist theory. He showed that socialism and communism inevitably replace capitalism and develop on the same type of economic basis---social ownership of the means of production, which excludes exploitation of man by man. The difference between socialism and communism is determined by the degree of their economic, political and cultural maturity.
Socialism is the first, the lower phase of communism. The level of development of social production at this stage is such that society can put into effect, as yet, only the principle: ``From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.'' Society still bears the traces, the birthmarks of the old society from which it emerged. Since people have different qualifications, unequal talents and working capacity, and different family backgrounds, it is natural _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 418.
263 that, given equal pay for equal work, their incomes are in fact unequal. But this is inevitable in the first phase of communist society; society cannot leap straight from capitalism to communism without passing through the socialist stage of development.``From capitalism,'' said Lenin, ``mankind can pass directly only to socialism, i.e., to the social ownership of the means of production and the distribution of products according to the amount of work performed by each individual.''~^^*^^ Accounting and control by society and the state of the measure of labour and the measure of consumption are therefore of the greatest importance under socialism.
Under communism, i.e., in the higher phase of communist society, which develops through the consolidation of socialism, the basic principle is: ``From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.'' This is possible, Lenin pointed out, only in the higher stage of development of society, when the essential differences between mental and physical work have been overcome, when work becomes man's primary need and when, on the basis of an enormous increase in the productive forces and the development of the new man, material and spiritual wealth flows in a broad stream and there is abundance in society.
In The State and Revolution Lenin went deep into the question of the economic basis of the withering away of the state. The withering away of the state depends on the rapidity of development of the higher phase of communism; he emphasised that this was bound to be a long and gradual process. The state would be able to wither away completely when people had become accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of the community and when their labour was so productive that they would voluntarily work according to their abilities. The state would finally wither away, Lenin explained, only when there was complete communism. Lenin formulated the profound idea that ``politically, the distinction between the first, or lower, and the higher phase of communism will in time, probably, be tremendous''.^^**^^ He considered the further development, the perfection of socialist democracy to be the political prerequisite for the withering away of the state.
``The State and Revolution'' was a great contribution to the theoretical knowledge of the Bolshevik Party. The ideas which Lenin developed in this work guided our Party in achieving victory in the October _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 84--85.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 475.
264 Revolution, in building socialism; they guide the Party today in tackling the great tasks of the full-scale socialism, the immediate building of communist society. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Salvation from the Impending CatastropheBy the autumn of 1917, in the fourth year of the imperialist war, the economic position of Russia had taken a sharp turn for the worse. Railway transport was disorganised. The flow of raw materials, coal and metal to the factories dwindled inexorably. Output of metal and coal dropped steeply every month, there was a catastrophic fall in the production of consumer goods. The disorganisation of the economy was leading inevitably to famine. The tsarist autocracy and the bourgeoisie, wrote Lenin, had brought the country to the brink of disaster.
Far from taking any measures to avert the impending economic disaster, the bourgeoisie deliberately aggravated the situation. They counted on being able to throw all the blame for the catastrophic state of affairs on the revolution and hoped that economic disaster would lead to the destruction of the Soviets and strengthen the power of the bourgeoisie and the landowners. The capitalists deliberately sabotaged production and adopted a policy of closing down factories and throwing workers out into the streets. Mass unemployment increased, the prices of bread soared. Many provinces in the central part of Russia were gripped by famine. Tens of millions of people were in danger of starvation in both town and country. An army of ten millions was enduring terrible privations in the trenches. There was no end to the sufferings of the people.
At this anxious and difficult time the Bolshevik Party elaborated, and offered to the people, effective measures for combating the impending catastrophe, and acted as the Party of true patriots of Russia.
Lenin gave the Party a programme for preventing disaster and renovating the country economically in his pamphlet The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, which he wrote in Helsingfors in the middle of September 1917. Control, supervision, accounting and regulation of production and consumption by the state, these were the first essentials in the fight against ruin and famine. All the belligerent imperialist countries had long ago adopted extensive controls. But these controls were everywhere exercised in a 265 reactionary and bureaucratic fashion, in the interests of the ruling classes of exploiters, landowners and capitalists.
To this type of control Lenin counterposed control by the workers over production and distribution. As priority measures to combat the impending catastrophe he proposed: nationalisation of the banks, insurance companies and enterprises belonging to the capitalist monopolies; nationalisation of the land; abolition of commercial secrecy; compulsory amalgamation of separate capitalist enterprises into syndicates; organisation of the population into consumers' societies to achieve an equal sharing of the burdens of the war and also control by the poor over consumption by the rich.
These measures, Lenin said, would evoke a great political and spiritual upsurge among the people, enormously increase the country's power to defend itself, and save it from subjugation by the Western imperialists. At the same time, Lenin added, these measures, if they were carried out in a revolutionary and democratic manner, would speed the country's advance. ``It is impossible in twentieth-century Russia, which has won a republic and democracy in a revolutionary way, to go forward without advancing towards socialism, without taking steps towards it.''~^^*^^
In the pamphlet The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It Lenin's proposition on the possibility of socialism being victorious first in one capitalist country alone was further developed as applied to Russia. Lenin resolutely exposed the disastrous policy of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were still asserting that Russia was ripe only for a bourgeois and not for a socialist revolution. These short-sighted politicians completely failed to understand that the war had accelerated the growth of the capitalist monopolies and their transformation into state-monopoly groupings in all the bourgeois countries, including Russia. And state-- monopoly capitalism, wrote Lenin, ``is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism''.^^**^^
Lenin developed the important proposition that it would be necessary to preserve the ``accounting and registering" apparatus set up by capitalism. This apparatus, he taught, must be taken out of capitalist control and put under the control of the proletarian Soviets; it must be made much wider, more versatile and comprehensive. Lenin also advanced the important thesis that the victorious proletariat should draw the bourgeois intelligentsia into the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 362.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 363.
266 work of socialist construction, bank employees, engineers, agriculturalists, technicians, and specialists of all kinds, creating favourable conditions for them to work in and putting them under all-round workers' control.The measures to be undertaken by a proletarian government in building the new, socialist life that Lenin mapped out on the eve of the October Revolution have since been applied with great success in the U.S.S.R. and the countries of the socialist community. This is quite natural because these measures are in line with the principal objective laws characteristic of all countries that take the path of socialist revolution and building socialism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Before the AssaultIn the middle of September Lenin wrote a letter to the Central Committee and the Petrograd and Moscow Committees ``The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power'', and a letter to the Central Committee ``Marxism and Insurrection''. On the basis of a penetrating and comprehensive analysis of the international and internal situation he set the Party the task of preparing and organising an armed uprising in order to seize power.
In his letter ``Marxism and Insurrection" Lenin showed that the Marxist treatment of insurrection as an art had nothing in common with Blanquism and conspiracy. Taking the views of Marx and Engels on insurrection a step further, he wrote that to be successful an insurrection must rely on the advanced class, on a revolutionary upsurge of the people and on that crucial moment in the development of the revolution when the activity of the advanced sections of the people is at its height and vacillation among the enemies and among the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution is strongest. If all these conditions are present, to refuse to treat insurrection as an art is a betrayal of Marxism and the revolution.
With the revolutionary crisis developing in Russia at such speed Lenin decided he could not remain any longer in Helsingfors. From so far away it was difficult to direct the Party at this critical revolutionary time. The mail arrived late from Petrograd, the morning papers did not come till the evening of the following day. Lenin told his host Rovio that he wanted to move, and asked him to get him a wig and arrange accommodation in Vyborg.
At the end of his stay in Helsingfors Lenin had a talk with O. V. Kuusinen, a member of the Central Committee of the 267 Social-Democratic Party of Finland. In this talk Lenin advised the Finnish Left-wing Social-Democrats to press strongly in the Diet for breaking off relations between Finland and the Provisional Government of Russia. The Bolshevik Party supported the recognition of the independence of Finland, Lenin said, and it would be easy to reach an agreement on this when power in Russia came into the hands of the revolutionary working class.
In the talk Lenin mentioned that he was leaving next day for Petrograd. When O. V. Kuusinen, worried about Lenin's return to Petrograd and the renewed threat to his life, asked if he could not delay his departure for a while, Lenin replied firmly: no, he could wait no longer, the situation of the decisive combat for the power of the Soviets was coming to a head very rapidly.
In late September Lenin was in Vyborg. He was provided with lodgings by a member of the staff of the local workers' paper Tyb (Labour) Juho K. Latukka, who lived in Talikkala, a working-class suburb of the town.
As usual Lenin set to work immediately. Latukka recalls that Lenin kept to a strict timetable. At seven in the morning he was at his desk and all through the day he maintained regular hours for dinner and supper, for discussion and for his afternoon rest. Only the hour for going to bed was irregular. "That must depend on how productive the day has been, so that nothing is left undone,'' he used to say.
In connection with the preparations for the uprising the role of the Party as the leading and guiding force was particularly enhanced. It was necessary therefore to strengthen its ranks, to strive for the unity of action of all Bolsheviks, and to increase the organisational role of the Party. In a long article "The Crisis Has Matured" Lenin noted fresh changes that had occurred in the internal political situation at the beginning of October, and that called imperatively for an immediate armed uprising.
The growing peasant revolt, the mounting strength of the national liberation movement in the country, the refusal of the Finnish troops and the Baltic Fleet to obey the Provisional Government, the readiness of the soldiers of the Northern Front to support the Bolsheviks, the unwillingness of the soldiers of the other fronts to fight for the imperialist aims of the Russian and foreign bourgeoisie, all these things proved irrefutably that a nation-wide revolutionary crisis had matured, that a great turning-point had arrived, compelling the party of the proletariat to take energetic revolutionary action against the bourgeois Provisional Government. ``The whole 268 future of the Russian revolution is at stake,'' Lenin wrote. ``The honour of the Bolshevik Party is in question. The whole future of the international workers' revolution for socialism is at stake.''~^^*^^
All the time he was in Vyborg Lenin was longing to get to revolutionary Petrograd. More than once he asked the Central Committee to allow him to come to the capital. On October 3, the Central Committee passed a decision ``...to suggest to Ilyich that he come to Petrograd to ensure regular and close contact''.^^**^^
Unfortunately, there are no documents confirming the exact date of Lenin's arrival in Petrograd from Vyborg. The recollections of his contemporaries on this matter are contradictory. Some maintain that Lenin arrived in Petrograd at the end of September, and state the day as being either the 22nd or the 29th. Others consider that Lenin arrived at the beginning of October. The only official document that has been preserved is the Central Committee decision mentioned above. Judging by this decision, Lenin must have arrived in Petrograd soon after October 3. According to certain sources, on October 7, Lenin in disguise and accompanied by Eino Rahja took the train to the station of Raivola. There he boarded the tender of locomotive No. 293 driven by Hugo Jalava, an engine-driver with whom he was already acquainted. After crossing the frontier safely, he got out at the station of Udelnaya. Nadezhda Krupskaya had a secret apartment ready for him at the house of Margarita Fofanova, one of her colleagues in the cultural commission of the Vyborg District Duma.
Lenin set about preparing the Party for organising the uprising with tremendous energy and persistence. On October 8, he wrote his famous ``Advice of an Onlooker''. In this article and others Lenin builds the statements made by Marx and Engels into a comprehensive and integral Marxist doctrine on insurrection and develops this doctrine as applied to the new epoch. Pointing out that ``armed uprising is a special form of political struggle, one subject to special laws'', and that it must be treated as an art, Lenin reminds the Bolsheviks in his ``Advice of an Onlooker" of the basic rules of armed insurrection formulated by Marx and Engels and states them specifically as follows:
``1) Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it realise firmly that you must go all the way.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 82.
^^**^^ Minutes of the Central Committee of_the R.S.D.L.P.fB.), August 1917-February 1918, Moscow, 1958, p. 74 (Russ. ed.).
269``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.'
``4) You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.
``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'.''~^^*^^
Guided by these rules and taking into account the concrete circumstances existing in Russia at the time, Lenin wrote, the Bolsheviks must organise an attack on Petrograd and carry it out as swiftly and unexpectedly as possible, simultaneously both from within and without, from the working-class districts of the capital, and from Finland, Revel and Kronstadt; the whole fleet must be brought into the operation and a gigantic superiority of forces created over the counter-revolutionary forces of Kerensky. It was essential, he said, to combine the three main forces: the fleet, the workers and the army units, so as to occupy without fail and hold at all costs the telephone exchange, the telegraph, the railway stations and, above all, the bridges. It was also essential to select the most resolute elements-the shock detachments, the young workers and the best of the sailors---and form them into small units for occupying key-points and for taking part in all important operations.
On October 10, a meeting of the Central Committee of the Party took place which was presided over by Lenin and which played a vital part in preparing the Party for armed uprising.
In the report on the current situation Lenin pointed out that
politically the ground for seizure of power by the Soviets was fully
prepared but that since the beginning of September there had been
impermissible indifference towards the question of insurrection
among the leading Bolshevik circles. Technical preparations for the
uprising must now be the major aspect of the Party's activities. The
Central Committee adopted the historic resolution proposed by Lenin in which
it was stressed that an armed uprising was inevitable and the time for it was
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 179 and 180.
This historic meeting of the Central Committee ended late at night. It would have been a long way for Lenin to return on foot to the Vyborg District, so he spent the night at Eino Rahja's flat. Out of consideration for his host Lenin refused to take a bed, and went to sleep on the floor with some books for a pillow. In the morning of October 11 Lenin returned to Fofanova's apartment.
After the Central Committee meeting of October 10, Lenin devoted himself to further work on the plan for an armed uprising and had meetings with Central Committee members at Mikhail Kalinin's flat. At H. Jalava's flat on October 14, Lenin discussed the practical problems of the uprising with leading Party workers.
On October 16, an enlarged meeting of the Central Committee was held. Lenin made a report defending the Central Committe.e's resolution on armed uprising. Zinoviev and Kamenev opposed the resolution. They both condemned the uprising, on the plea that the Bolshevik forces were still too small and greatly outnumbered by the forces of the counter-revolution; instead they demanded that the Party should wait for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. They counterposed their tactics to what they called the conspiratorial tactics of Lenin and the Central Committee. Dzerzhinsky, Kalinin, Krylenko, Sverdlov, Stalin and others criticised the position of Kamenev and Zinoviev. Nearly everyone present stated his opinion and the debate went on till morning. The question was put to the vote. By nineteen votes to two, with four abstentions, the Central Committee passed the following resolution, proposed by Lenin: ``The meeting fully welcomes and wholly supports the Central Committee's resolution, calls upon all organisations and all workers and soldiers to make thorough and most intensive preparations for an armed uprising, and for support of the centre set up by the Central Committee for this purpose, and expresses complete confidence that the Central Committee and the Soviet will in good time indicate the favourable moment and suitable means for launching the attack.''~^^*^^
On October 16, a plenary meeting of the Petrograd Soviet endorsed by a vast majority the decision of the Executive Committee and Soldiers' Section on the creation of a Revolutionary Military Committee.
_-_-_^^*^^ Minutes of the Central Committee oj the R.S.D.L.P.fB.), August 1917-February 1918, p. 104.
271On the basis of the historic decisions passed by the Party Central Committee on October 10 and 16, preparations by Bolshevik organisations for the armed uprising were launched in all parts of the country. In many towns and districts revolutionary military committees were set up to give direct leadership in the working people's struggle for the establishment of Soviet power. On the night of October 17, Lenin met the leaders of the Military Organisation of the Central Committee. Lenin paid special attention to the selection of Red Guard commanders with regard to their military qualifications, skill with weapons, knowledge of street-fighting tactics, and so on. Lenin said that the directing force of the uprising in a socialist revolution was the working class. The Red Guard detachments that had been formed at many enterprises in all districts of the capital and consisted of workers should become the chief military force, the force on which the success of the uprising depended. In saying this, Lenin had no intention of belittling the importance of the revolutionary military units.
That same night the entire Bolshevik Military Organisation^^53^^ immediately set about putting Lenin's instructions into effect.
On October 18, just when preparations for the armed uprising were in full swing both at the centre and in the provinces, Kamenev, acting on his own behalf and on behalf of Zinoviev, gave an interview to the semi-Menshevik newspaper Novaya ^hi^n (New Life), in which he stated his disagreement with the decision on the armed uprising that the Party was preparing. He thus betrayed to the enemy the secret decision taken by the Party Central Committee. This was a monstrous piece of treachery, which might have caused irreparable harm to the cause of the revolution.
With anger and contempt Lenin branded Kamenev and Zinoviev as strikebreakers of the revolution and demanded that their conduct should be condemned and they themselves should be expelled from the Party: ``I should consider it disgraceful on my part if I were to hesitate to condemn these former comrades because of my earlier close relations with them. I declare outright that I no longer consider either of them comrades and that I will fight with all my might, both in the Central Committee and at the Congress, to secure the expulsion of both of them from the Party.''~^^*^^
On October 20 the Rabochy Put (Workers' Path) published a letter from Zinoviev containing a completely unsupported denial of Lenin's charges against him.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 217.
272 Lenin disguised Photo, August 1917 Lenin in his study in the Kremlin Photo, 1918 Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power Painting by V. Serov News trom the Front Drawing by JV. £/mkov Lenin reading Pravda Photo, 1918 Lenin addressing the Vsevobuch troops in the Red Square Photo. 1919 Peasant Messengers Visiting Lenin From painting by V. SerovLenin speaks From painting by A. Gerasimov
That same day, Lenin's letters about Kamenev and Zinoviev were discussed at a meeting of the Central Committee. Lenin was not present. Most of the Central Committee members (Stalin, Sverdlov, Sokolnikov and others) who were present did not support Lenin's proposal. By five votes to three it was decided to ``accept Kamenev's resignation" from the Central Committee, and by six votes to ``charge Kamenev and Zinoviev not to issue any statements against the Central Committee's decisions and the line of work it has adopted''.^^*^^ A proposal that no member of the Central Committee should make any statements against Central Committee decisions was also accepted.
But Trotsky took a stand dangerous for the fate of the revolution. Though making no open declaration against the Central Committee's decision on armed uprising, he continued to foster constitutional illusions in the Party and urged that the uprising should be postponed until the Second Congress of Soviets opened, which would in fact have meant wrecking the uprising altogether, Lenin vigorously attacked this flabby attitude. To wait for the Congress, he wrote, would be downright idiocy or downright betrayal.
Having exposed and isolated the opponents of the armed uprising in its own ranks, the Party went ahead even more energetically with practical preparations for the uprising. In all districts of Petrograd and in many other towns, fresh contingents of the workers' guard and revolutionary committees were formed; the Red Guard, the principal fighting force of the socialist revolution, was trained and armed.
Meanwhile the counter-revolutionaries, too, were mustering their forces. On learning of the Bolsheviks' decision, the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary Central Executive Committee immediately resolved to postpone the Congress of Soviets till October 25, in order to upset the plans of the Bolsheviks, allow the Provisional Government to take the initiative and make better preparations for crushing the forces of the revolution.
For many weeks Lenin had zealously prepared the Party and the working class for the uprising, worked out its basic rules and plans, checked up to see whether the Party organisations were ready for it in practice, and had kept a close watch on the development of the revolutionary situation in the country as a whole. He had worked hard to determine the ``moment'' for the uprising, the correct choice of _-_-_
^^*^^ Minutes of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.), August 1917-February 1918, 107.
__PRINTERS_P_273_COMMENT__ 18---826 273 which he considered to be decisive. Lenin insisted that the Provisional Government must be overthrown before the Second Congress of Soviets, so as to anticipate the enemy, who were expecting the Bolsheviks to attack on the day the Congress opened.On October 24, while still in hiding, Lenin learned from E. Rahja and M. Fofanova that government forces were raising the bridges over the Neva. He immediately wrote a note to the Central Committee, asking permission to come to the Smolny. Soon afterwards Lenin wrote his historic letter to the Central Committee members demanding that the uprising be launched immediately.
``I am writing these lines on the evening of the 24th. The situation is critical in the extreme. In fact it is now absolutely clear that to delay the uprising would be fatal.
``With all my might I urge comrades to realise that everything now hangs by a thread; that we are confronted by problems which are not to be solved by conferences or congresses (even congresses of Soviets), but exclusively by peoples, by the masses, by the struggle of the armed people.... We must at all costs, this very evening, this very night, arrest the government, having first disarmed the officercadets (defeating them, if they resist), and so on.... 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.''~^^*^^ Lenin's exhortations were fully in keeping with the mood of the revolutionary masses who were full of enthusiasm and impatient to go into action.
Lenin sent Fofanova with this letter to the Vyborg District Party Committee to be passed on to the Central Committee. The same evening he himself decided to go to the Smolny at once. With the help of Eino Rahja, who was attached to Lenin as a messenger, he found an old overcoat and cap and tied a handkerchief round his cheek. In this effective disguise he set off. The note he left for Fofanova read as follows: ``Gone where you didn't want me to go. Till we meet again. Hyich." It was by no means a safe journey. On the way he and Rahja were stopped more than once by patrols of officer-cadets. Lenin might easily have been arrested. But Lenin had the invaluable qualities of a revolutionary leader of the proletariat. In moments of danger he was particularly daring, brave and resourceful. All the hazards of the journey to the Smolny Institute were successfully overcome.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 234 and 235.
274Lenin's last spell of hiding was over. Throughout this exceptionally difficult period in his life and work the workers, the rankand-file Party members had risked their own lives to protect his. They had given him every care and attention. Lenin deeply appreciated this warmth of affection that sprang straight from the heart of the working class.
Now at last Lenin was at the headquarters of the revolution - the Smolny. The leader of the Party had taken the whole course of the armed uprising under his firm and resolute control.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Revolution TriumphedOn that historic night the Smolny was a magnificent spectacle. It was brightly illuminated and humming with activity. Red Guards and representatives from the regiments and factories came from all parts for instructions. The Revolutionary Military Committee was in continuous session on the second floor. From time to time fresh guards were mounted at the doors and gates. Hundreds of messengers from the Red Guards and revolutionary regiments came and went continuously. In the great Assembly Hall workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors had gathered as delegates to the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets. Armoured cars, lorries and motor-cycles roared across the square in front of the Smolny Institute. Field-guns and machine-guns were mounted at the gates, the whole building was guarded by sentries. More and more contingents of workers, young and old, marched in and placed themselves at the disposal of the Revolutionary Military Committee. The bonfires blazing in the square lent a fantastic glow to the whole scene.
Soon after Lenin's arrival at the Smolny, dispatch-riders rode off to the factories, districts and military units with orders to begin the uprising. The workers' Red Guard detachments, sailors and regiments of Petrograd moved into action. A planned and lightningswift drive to block all the streets leading to the centre of the city and seize key points and government offices was launched. By the following morning of October 25 (November 7) all the bridges across the Neva, the central telephone exchange, the telegraph office, the Petrograd Telegraph Agency, the wireless station, the railway and power stations, the State Bank and other important buildings had been occupied by Red Guards, sailors and soldiers. With the exception of the Winter Palace, where the Provisional 275 Government had taken refuge, and the Petrograd Military Area Headquarters, the whole city was in the hands of the armed proletariat and the revolutionary troops. Lenin urged that the Red Guards, sailors and soldiers occupy the Winter Palace. The uprising was already victorious.
On the morning of October 25 an appeal ``To the Citizens of Russia!" written by Lenin, was published on behalf of the Revolutionary Military Committee. It stated: ``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.''~^^*^^ The same morning this appeal was published in the Bolshevik newspaper Rabochy i Soldat (Worker and Soldier). Telegrams about the victory of the revolution in Petrograd were sent out all over Russia and to all fronts.
At 2.35 p.m. an extraordinary meeting of the Petrograd Soviet opened in the great Assembly Hall of the Smolny. The chairman's announcement that the meeting would be addressed by Lenin and Lenin's appearance in the hall roused jubilation and prolonged tumultuous applause from the deputies. It was a long time before the cheering and clapping died down. ``The workers' and peasants' revolution,'' said Lenin, ``about the necessity of which the Bolsheviks have always spoken, has been accomplished....
``From now on, a new phase in the history of Russia begins, and this, the third Russian revolution, should in the end lead to the victory of socialism.''^^**^^ Amid a roar of applause Lenin proclaimed:
``Long live the world socialist revolution!''
By an overwhelming majority the Petrograd Soviet passed a resolution written by Lenin which stressed the extraordinary solidarity, organisation, discipline and complete unanimity demonstrated by the masses "in this unusually bloodless and unusually successful uprising''; it expressed unshakable confidence that the Soviet Government of workers and peasants would advance steadfastly towards socialism, that the workers of the towns in alliance with the poorest peasantry would show firm, comradely discipline and maintain the absolute strict revolutionary order essential to the victory of socialism.
On the evening of October 25, the historic shot from the revolutionary cruiser Aurora was fired and the assault on the Winter _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 236.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 239.
276 Palace began. It ended a few hours later in complete victory for the insurgent workers, soldiers arid sailors.Lenin played a colossal role in the organisation and carrying out of the October armed uprising. K. A. Mekhonoshin, a member of the Revolutionary Military Committee, describes it as follows in his memoirs: ``In the days of the October armed uprising Lenin had a full and most accurate idea of the course of the struggle at every moment. All the reports from the positions were sent to him, as the centre, and he always managed to give the most valuable and precise instructions in good time, and to foresee danger in this or that spot in time. Comrade Lenin was the true commander-in-chief of all the armed forces of the October revolution, and under his leadership worked a headquarters such as no commander has ever had before.... Lenin can boldly be called our first Red marshal.''~^^*^^
Thanks to the great feat of the working class and the peasants of Russia, accomplished under the leadership of Lenin's party, October 25 (November 7), 1917, had become the glorious day of the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia.
It was past three in the morning on October 26 (November 8) when the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets received the news of the capture of the Winter Palace, the last stronghold of the counter-revolution. The announcement of the successful storming of the Winter Palace and the arrest of the ministers of the Provisional Government was greeted with a thunderous ``hurrah!" and shouts of joy and approval. Amid a storm of applause the Congress adopted the proclamation ``To the Workers, Soldiers and Peasants!" written by Lenin, which announced the transfer of all state power in the capital and the provinces to the Soviets. The Soviet state, a state of workers and peasants, was born. The Congress called upon the workers and peasants, and particularly the soldiers in the trenches, to defend their state from any encroachments by the imperialists.
Lenin was not present at the first session of the Congress. He was at the Revolutionary Military Committee directing the final operations of the assault on the Winter Palace and planning the first steps to be taken by the Soviet government then being established. He had not slept for forty-eight hours. Only after the capture of the Winter Palace and the arrest of the ministers of the Provisional Government, did Lenin leave the Smolny and go for a very short _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin-the Leader of the October Revolution. Petrograd Workers' Reminiscences, Leningrad, 1956, p. 191 (Russ. ed.).
277 spell of sleep and rest at the flat of Bonch-Bruyevich, who lived not far away. A room had been prepared for Lenin but for a long time he could not fall asleep. Taking care not to disturb anyone, he got up, quietly seated himself at a table and began to draft the Decree on Land, which he had thought out in advance, while in his last hiding place.On October 26, 1917 Lenin also drafted the decrees on peace and the formation of the workers' and peasants' government of Russia.
The second and last session of the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets began in the evening on October 26 (November 8). ``It was just 8.40 when a thundering wave of cheers announced the entrance of the presidium, with Lenin-great Lenin-among them. A short, stocky figure, with a big head set down in his shoulders, bald and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide, generous mouth, and heavy chin, clean-shaven now, but already beginning to bristle with the well-known beard of his past and future. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressive, to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been. A strange popular leader-a leader purely by virtue of intellect; colourless, humourless, uncompromising and detached, without picturesque idiosyncrasies-but with the power of explaining profound ideas in simple terms, of analysing a concrete situation. And combined with shrewdness, the greatest intellectual audacity.''~^^*^^ This is what John Reed wrote about those historical days, about Lenin.
The first declaration of the newly born Soviet state was a declaration of peace. The report on peace was delivered by Lenin himself, the leader and inspirer of the October Revolution.
``When Lenin appeared on the platform,'' A. Andreyev, a Congress delegate recalls, "the audience stood up and moved towards him. For a long time he was unable to begin his speech because of round after round of applause and shouts of 'Long live Lenin!'
``The conference hall was an incredible sight. Shouts of joy mingled with the applause. Besides the delegates, the hall was packed to overflowing with workers, soldiers and sailors from all over the building. People climbed on to window-sills, ledges and chairs just to catch a glimpse of Lenin standing on the platform. Workers and sailors kept tossing their hats and caps into the air, rifles were _-_-_
^^*^^ John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, New York, 1934, p. 125.
278 raised aloft. Standing thus, the Congress listened to Lenin's report on peace.''~^^*^^Having pointed out that the question of peace was the most urgent and painful question of the day, Lenin read out his draft of the famous Decree on Peace submitted for consideration of the Congress by the Bolshevik Party. The declaration (decree) called upon the peoples and governments of all the belligerent countries to start immediate open negotiations for the conclusion of peace without annexations or indemnities.
At the same time, Lenin's declaration stated that the Soviet Government was prepared to consider any other peace terms. The Soviet Government proposed the immediate signing of an armistice for a period of not less than three months in order to conclude the peace negotiations, and also to convene conferences of the peoples' representatives with full powers to ratify the terms of peace.
The declaration ended with an appeal to the proletariat of Britain, France and Germany to help the Russian proletariat by allround, resolute and supreme action ``to conclude peace successfully".
When Lenin's report had been discussed the Congress unanimously passed its first historic decree-the Decree on Peace. The Decree on Peace opened the way to a new type of international relations that the world had never known before.
Lenin addressed the Congress on yet another important question of the agenda, the question of the land.
During his speech Lenin read out the draft of the Decree on Land, submitted to the Congress by the Bolshevik Party for approval. By this decree the landed estates were to be abolished forthwith without any compensation and turned over to the volost^^54^^ Land Committees and the uyezd Soviets of Peasants' Deputies.
Lenin proposed including in the Decree on Land a ``Peasant Mandate on the Land"^^55^^ by which ``private ownership of the land shall be abolished for ever". All land should be given over to the use of the working people and could neither be bought nor sold. Lands (estates) on which high-level scientific farming was practised were to be converted into model farms and turned over for ``exclusive use to the state or to the communes, depending on the size and importance of such lands''. The ``Peasant Mandate" instituted land tenure on an equalitarian basis, i.e., the land should be distributed among the _-_-_
^^*^^ A.A. Andreyev, Vladimir llyich Lenin, Moscow, 1965, pp. 23--24 (Russ. ed.).
279 working people ``in conformity with a labour standard or a subsistence standard'',^^56^^ depending on local conditions.Explaining the necessity of including the ``Peasant Mandate'', which had been drawn up by the Socialist-Revolutionaries, in the Decree on Land, Lenin said: ``Does it matter who drew them up? As a democratic government, we cannot ignore the decision of the masses of the people, even though we may disagree with it. In the fire of experience, applying the decree in practice, and carrying it out locally, the peasants will themselves realise where the truth lies.... Experience is the best teacher and it will show who is right. Let the peasants solve this problem from one end and we shall solve it from the other. Experience will oblige us to draw together in the general stream of revolutionary creative work, in the elaboration of new state forms. We must be guided by experience; we must allow complete freedom to the creative faculties of the masses.''~^^*^^
Life had fully confirmed Lenin's brilliant scientific insight. Subsequently the peasants themselves abandoned the ``labour'' and `` subsistence" standards, according to which the land was distributed among the farms, and in response to the call of the Communist Party voluntarily adopted collective forms of farming on the nationally-owned land. The Congress greeted Lenin's draft of the Decree on Land with loud applause and passed it with only one vote against and eight abstentions.
Lenin's Decree on Land was of the greatest importance in the Bolshevik Party's campaign to win over completely the Russian peasantry to the support of the working class and in consolidating the victory of the socialist revolution.
At the same session the All-Russia Congress of Soviets formed a workers' and peasants' Soviet Government - the Council of People's Commissars, with Lenin at its head. The Congress elected the AllRussia Central Executive Committee.
It was past five in the morning on October 27 (November 9) when to shouts of ``Long live the revolution!'', ``Long live socialism!" and the strains of the Internationale the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets concluded its work. The Lenin decrees on peace and land and on the formation of a Soviet Government which the Congress adopted played a key role in strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism. The Congress delegates immediately left for the provinces to help spread the workers' and peasants' power throughout Russia.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 260 and 261.
280 __ALPHA_LVL2__ On the International SignificanceLenin saw the historic significance which the October Socialist Revolution held for the whole world primarily in the fact that it overthrew the political power of the bourgeoisie and the landowners, smashed their state machine, established a dictatorship of the proletariat, based on the alliance of the working class and toiling peasantry, over one-sixth of the globe, and affirmed the power of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, which constituted genuinely popular rule and a higher form of democracy. ``Soviet power, the Soviet republic - this is what the workers' revolution has put in place of bourgeois democracy, this is the form of transition from capitalism to socialism, the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.''~^^*^^
The October Revolution showed that it was impossible to put an end to capitalism and start building socialism without putting an end to the bourgeois state, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, without replacing it by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin pointed out that the October Revolution had for the first time in history liquidated the capitalists' and landowners' ``sacred rights" to private ownership of the means of production. For the first time in history the working class, all the people of toil, had become masters of their country. All its riches, the land and its mineral deposits, the factories, the railways and banks had become the property of the working people.
Lenin saw a great achievement of the October Revolution in the fact that it had proclaimed and put into practice in Russia a policy of genuine national equality, had proclaimed the right of the previously oppressed peoples to their national sovereignty, had unfolded before them broad opportunities for economic, political and cultural development, for the broadening and strengthening of brotherly friendship on the basis of socialism.
The October Revolution had created the most just political and social system on earth, a system based on genuine equality, on real freedom. Its great and humane ideas inspire the working people, all progressive humanity in the struggle for a bright future.
Lenin regarded the October Revolution as an inspiring example of the workers' and peasants' most resolute and dedicated struggle _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 564.
281 against the imperialist war, and for peace among the nations. ``The first Bolshevik revolution has wrested the first hundred million people of this earth from the clutches of imperialist war and the imperialist world. Subsequent revolutions,'' Lenin predicted, ``will deliver the rest of mankind from such wars and from such a world.''~^^*^^The socialist revolution in Russia shook the edifice of world capitalism to its foundations; the world had split up into two opposing systems, the struggle between socialism and imperialism had become the pivot of world politics; world capitalism had entered the period of its general crisis.
A state that put into effect new principles of equality, friendship and co-operation in relations between peoples and countries had entered the international arena for the first time. Humanity had gained a reliable bastion in its struggle against wars of aggression, in its efforts to ensure peace and international security.
Lenin regarded the leadership given by the Communist Party as a cardinal factor in the victory of the October Revolution. It was the Party, headed by Lenin, that was always in the vanguard of the working class, that armed the movement with a scientifically based programme of struggle, correct strategy and tactics, and political slogans that could be understood by the broad masses of the people. It was the Party that forged the alliance of the working class and the toiling peasantry and converted it into the invincible force of the socialist revolution. The Party struck a crushing blow at the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and exposed their complete desertion to the camp of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. The people realised the counter-revolutionary nature of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks and became convinced that the Bolshevik Party was the only party that kept its word, that it was the only party that was waging a selfless struggle to abolish all forms of oppression and exploitation and to save the country from the catastrophe that threatened it.
The October Socialist Revolution, Lenin pointed out, had a tremendous revolutionising effect on the working class of Europe and of the whole world. The proletarians, the working people, progressive men and women all over the world acclaimed the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia. There was not a single workingclass organisation in the world, said Lenin, where the Soviet decrees on peace, on land, on the nationalisation of the banks, and the other decrees of October were not greeted with enthusiasm. The _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 57.
282 graphic example of the new socialist life being built in Russia fired the hearts of the working people in all countries.The victory of the socialist revolution in Russia marked the victory of revolutionary theory over reformism, the victory of Leninism over Social-Democracy. It engendered the modern international communist movement. It placed the working class at the centre of the modern age. The development of the world communist movement is proceeding under the banner of the ideas of the October Revolution. The example of the October Revolution convinced the world proletariat of how much it needed a party of a new type, a party of revolutionary action equipped with Marxist-Leninist theory, a party that leads the masses. The October Revolution conclusively proved the Marxist truth that the principle of proletarian internationalism is a law of the development of the international working-class movement, the prerequisite of all its victories.
The socialist revolution in Russia delivered a very powerful blow at the colonial system of imperialism. As Lenin said on many occasions, the First World War and the October Revolution awakened the East and made it once and for all part of the general flood of the world revolutionary movement. By setting up a Soviet republic on the junction between Europe and Asia, between the West and the East, the October Revolution rallied to its banner the proletarianrevolutionary socialist movement of the West and the national liberation movement of the peoples of all countries oppressed by imperialism. After the victory of the October Revolution the crisis of the imperialist colonial system began.
The socialist revolution in Russia opened up a new era in the history of mankind - the era of the collapse of capitalism and the assertion of a new, socialist society. It ``has charted the road to socialism for the whole world and has shown the bourgeoisie that their triumph is coming to an end''.^^*^^
Russia of 1917 was the weakest link in the chain of world imperialism. The working class in Russia was the most active force of the world revolutionary process in the period of the general crisis of capitalism, which began in the years of the First World War and the October Revolution. Hence the historical inevitability of the victory of the socialist revolution and the building of a socialist society, first and foremost, in Russia, on one-sixth of the earth's surface.
As Lenin foresaw and subsequent historical experience showed, the basic features of the Great October Socialist Revolution are of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 44.
283 not only specifically national, but also general, international importance. They have found embodiment in countries that have embarked on the path of socialist revolution and the building of socialism.The ideas of the October Revolution, communist ideas, are the leading ideas of our day, the great creative force of modern world history.
``The revolutionary cause started by the Great October Socialist Revolution is broadening out, growing stronger and triumphing. Socialism is the present for hundreds of millions of people and the morrow for the whole of mankind.''^^*^^
The ice is broken, the way clear, the path blazed-was the terse and vivid phrase that Lenin used to define the international significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
_-_-_^^*^^ Fiftieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Theses of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Moscow, 1970, p. 3.
284 __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Ten __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE GREAT FOUNDER OF THE SOVIET STATE __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.] __NOTE__ Quote is between LVL1 and LVL2 in original.Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity.
Lenin
A new period in the life and work of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin began with the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Now that he was at the helm of the proletarian state, it was his task to lead the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet people in the struggle to accomplish the historic tasks of the dictatorship of the working class, to build socialism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Introduction of Socialist Economic ReformsThe proletariat of Russia began the building of socialism in extremely complex and difficult circumstances. The war continued to devastate and exhaust the country. The deposed exploiters, landowners and capitalists, frantically resisted the dictatorship of the proletariat. They were supported by international capital. The enemies of the revolution had staked heavily on undermining Soviet power from within, by using the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and also opportunist elements in the Bolshevik Party itself. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries acted as direct agents of the deposed exploiting classes in their struggle against Soviet power. Seeking to divert Russia from the path of socialist revolution and establish a bourgeois-parliamentary system, they demanded the formation of a new, so-called ``all-Socialist government" from representatives of various parties - ``from the Bolsheviks to the Popular Socialists"-in which they would play the decisive part.
The Central Committee's message "To All Party Members and to All the Working Classes of Russia'', written by Lenin, stressed that at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets the Bolshevik Party had won a majority and that only a government formed by 285 this party expressed the will of the Congress and was a Soviet Government; the Congress had approved the Bolshevik composition of the Council of People's Commissars. Nevertheless, contrary to the allegations of the bourgeois hacks who were shouting in chorus about Bolshevik ``intractability'' and ``intolerance'', the Bolsheviks stated they would agree ``to share power with the minority in the Soviets, provided that minority loyally and honestly undertake to submit to the majority and carry out the programme, approved by the whole Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets, for gradual, but firm and undeviating steps towards socialism''.^^*^^ On these conditions the Bolsheviks invited the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries^^57^^ to enter the government. After considerable vacillation, the Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries, afraid of losing their influence over the peasantry, entered the Council of People's Commissars in December 1917.
The Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties continued to exist for a time. But all these petty-bourgeois parties disgraced themselves by collaborating with the deposed exploiter classes and the imperialist interventionists, by taking an active part in armed struggle against the people, against the Soviet Republic. When the civil war was over, the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders joined the counter-revolutionary underground or emigrated; many rank-and-file members of the Menshevik and Socialist-- Revolutionary parties broke with their politically bankrupt leaders, and some of them, particularly those who were workers, later joined the Communist Party.
That only one political party, the Communist Party, remained in the country is explained by the fact that the petty-bourgeois parties of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries definitely joined forces with the counter-revolution and suffered a total political defeat. Only the Communist Party acted as the true champion of the interests of the working people, as their leader; only this party gained indisputable authority among the people and earned the trust and affection of the whole nation.
In principle, Lenin was far from treating the one-Party system as an essential feature of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He emphasised, however, that even if several parties existed, the dictatorship of the proletariat presupposed that the leading role should belong to one party-the Communist Party, which should hold the majority of posts in the government. An essential condition for the participation of the representatives of other parties in the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 307.
286 government was that they should acknowledge the dictatorship of the proletariat and the necessity of the transition to socialism.Lenin's conclusions have been confirmed by the experience of the socialist revolutions in several countries, where in addition to the Communist Party other democratic parties exist.
Having consolidated the victory they had won in October, the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government channelled the energies of the people into the great tasks of creating the new state and social system. In his speeches and appeals Lenin called upon the working people to manage the affairs of state themselves, to rally round the Soviets, to reinforce them, to show initiative and act independently.
One of the immediate tasks confronting the party and the working class after the victory of the October Revolution was to destroy the old bourgeois-landowner state machine and set up a new Soviet state machine in its place. The central bodies of administration, the people's commissariats, were set up under Lenin's direct guidance. He drew up their programmes and selected the leading personnel.
It was desperately hard work to build the new state. The proletariat had no qualified personnel of its own. The workers and peasants, who had only just broken free from the yoke of exploitation and tyranny, had no experience of government. The difficulties were multiplied by the fact that part of the bourgeois intelligentsia, the top civil servants and officials, made every attempt to sabotage the measures undertaken by the Soviet Government. The Party sent its best forces into the Soviet government apparatus and enlisted thousands upon thousands of men and women from the common people in the work of building up the Soviet state.
Lenin urged the people at all costs to get rid of the ``old, absurd, savage, despicable and disgusting prejudice" that only the so-called ``upper classes'',^^*^^ the rich and their hangers-on, were fitted to rule the country. He insisted that the rank-and-file workers and peasants were fully capable of performing organisational work provided they were literate, had a knowledge of human nature and practical experience. ``Difficulties may crop up at the start,'' he said, giving the ordinary people confidence in their capabilities, ``due to inadequate training. But the art of practical government, which has been monopolised by the bourgeoisie, must be mastered.''~^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 409.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 342.
287On one occasion, some working men who had been appointed to posts in one of the People's Commissariats came to Lenin and told him they were getting poor results. Could they go back to their factory? Lenin listened attentively and said: "I have never governed a state either, but the Party and the people have entrusted me with this work and I have got to justify that trust, I recommend you to do the same.''
Lenin's appeals drew an eager response from the workers and peasants. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party they steadily mastered the art of government. Lenin saw the strength of the genuine people's Soviet state primarily in the stability of its social foundations, in the dedicated support of the working people, in their high level of political consciousness.
The Soviet Government at once initiated measures designed to satisfy the vital needs of the workers and peasants and improve their condition. It consolidated the gains of the October Revolution and was a powerful instrument in effecting radical socio-economic changes. In the course of a few weeks, the survivals of feudalism and serfdom - landed estates, the social estates, the inequality of women, and national oppression-were eliminated from all spheres of social life; the church was separated from the state, and the school from the church.
The Party and the Soviet Government paid enormous attention to the carrying out of the Decree on Land.
In a country possessing so many nationalities as Russia the fate of Soviet power depended to a great extent on how the problem of nationalities was handled. Lenin regarded the abolition of national oppression as one of the most urgent tasks of the socialist revolution.
In ``The Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia'', published on November 3, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars proclaimed the equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia, their right to free self-determination up to and including secession and formation of independent states, the abolition of all national and national-religious privileges and restrictions, and the free development of the national minorities and ethnographical groups inhabiting the territory of Russia. That the Soviet Government recognised this right in practice was shown by the decision of the Council of People's Commissars, in answer to the Finnish Government's request, on recognition of Finland's independence. Lenin personally presented this decision of the Council of People's Commissars to the head of the Finnish Government. The Soviet Government annulled the robber treaties concerning colonial and semi-- 288 colonial countries, which tsarist Russia had concluded with other imperialist powers.
Having given the peoples of Russia the right to self-- determination, the Bolsheviks explained that it was essential for the working people of all nations to be united in the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution, that the principle of self-determination must be subordinated to the principles of socialism. We give all peoples, said Lenin, the right to arrange their lives in their own way, and hold out to the working people of all nations a brotherly hand for common struggle against the bourgeoisie.
Lenin's national policy gained Soviet power the confidence of many millions of working people of the formerly oppressed nationalities, brought the peoples of Russia together, and laid the foundations of a multi-national socialist state.
As soon as the October Revolution dawned, the working class of Russia set about building a socialist way of life. In his speeches and articles Lenin emphasised the creative, constructive character of the socialist revolution.
Developing Marx's propositions on the socialisation of property as the economic basis of socialism, Lenin defined the ways and forms of its creation.
He regarded the organisation of workers' control over all enterprises without exception as one of the essential conditions. The setting up of workers' control over social production and distribution of products played a great part in safeguarding the enterprises from destruction by the capitalists, and in training the workers to manage production when industry was nationalised.
When they encountered opposition from the capitalists, or ran into other obstacles, the workers often appealed to Lenin for help. He listened attentively to their requests and suggestions, questioned them about the mood of the workers, the situation at the factories, explained to them how to effect control over production and run the factories properly, and urged them to act boldly, in a revolutionary manner, and put a stop to sabotage by the capitalists. He strove to give the workers a clear understanding of the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat and pointed out that now that power had passed into the hands of the working class it was responsible for the fate of the country.
Lenin liked to chat with the workers. He shared some of his innermost thoughts with them, and their ideas and reasoning always interested him very much. They gave him a yardstick by which to check his own deductions and plans. And for the workers these 289 meetings and conversations with Lenin were a splendid school, which strengthened their faith in the invincibility of Soviet power.
``I left the Smolny,'' a railway worker who visited Lenin in those days recalls, ``feeling sure that the revolution was in safe hands and that there was no one else in the world like Ilyich, no one who knew the working man's heart like he did.''~^^*^^
Starting out from the idea that a national economy based on public ownership ought to be a planned economy, Lenin proposed setting up an economic centre for the whole country. The first proletarian organ for regulating the country's economy was the Supreme Economic Council, a body formed by, and responsible to, the Council of People's Commissars. Lenin guided the work of the Supreme Economic Council and took part in the meetings of its presidium.
Lenin considered the nationalisation of the banks an important step towards socialism. On his instructions the nationalisation of the private banks was carried out unexpectedly, before the publication of the decree, so that the bourgeoisie had no chance of withdrawing their money. Nationalisation of the banks was accompanied by socialisation of share capital and the big deposits belonging to the bourgeoisie. The Soviet state turned the banks, formerly the financial stronghold of the bourgeoisie, into an apparatus of socialist accounting and control.
By the spring of 1918, a considerable number of larger enterprises in Petrograd and Moscow, the Urals and the Donets coalfield had been taken over by the Soviet state. The railways became the property of the whole people. With Lenin's participation the Decree on the Nationalisation of the Merchant Fleet was drawn up and passed by the Government. Foreign trade became a state monopoly and all foreign loans contracted by tsarism and the bourgeois Provisional Government were annulled, thus freeing Russia from the stranglehold of foreign capital.
The Soviet Government conducted a policy of expropriating the big capitalists. With regard to medium- and small-scale industry the intention was to transform it gradually into socialist industry. Partial compensation for firms that were nationalised was considered. However, sabotage by the capitalists and their violent resistance to workers' control compelled the Soviet Government to _-_-_
^^*^^ About Ilyich. A collection of articles, reminiscences, papers and other materials, Leningrad, 1924, p. 45 (Russ. ed.).
290 accelerate nationalisation of industry, and to do so by confiscating capitalist property.To counterbalance petty-bourgeois conceptions of socialism Lenin stressed that by its nature large-scale machine industry requires socialisation on a state level. And this is precisely what the working class of Russia did. Not a single factory was ``appropriated'' by separate bodies of workers; they were all made the property of the Soviet state and put at its disposal, thus becoming the property of the whole nation.
Socialist nationalisation brought with it a fundamental change in the character of the production relations. Exploitation was abolished, the workers began to work for their own benefit, for the benefit of society, the people. ``For the first time after centuries of working for others, of forced labour for the exploiter,'' Lenin wrote, ``it has become possible to work for oneself and moreover to employ all the achievements of modern technology and culture in one's work.''~^^*^^
The bourgeoisie and the landowners, with the servile support of the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, refused to submit to the will of the majority of the people and put up savage resistance to the measures taken by the Soviet Government. Egged on by international imperialism, they resorted to every means, including armed action against Soviet power, to strangle the revolution and restore the old regime. The victorious proletariat had to crush this resistance by the deposed exploiting classes.
Lenin emphasised more than once that it was sabotage and terrorism on the part of the bourgeoisie that compelled the Soviet Government to take stern retaliatory measures, including even terrorism. We are against civil war, Lenin explained. But civil war continues, the overthrown exploiters are waging war against the workers and peasants. How can we stop taking measures to put down an enemy that has not stopped its counter-revolutionary actions.
Newspapers calling for open resistance or disobedience to the workers' and peasants' government were banned. The Soviet Government took decisive measures to check the counter-revolutionary sabotage organised by the Constitutional-Democrats, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The revolts of the upper strata of the Cossacks on the Don and in the Urals were crushed by force of arms.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 407.
__PRINTERS_P_291_COMMENT__ 19* 291``When a revolutionary class,'' said Lenin, ``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.''~^^*^^
A workers' and peasants' militia was set up in the first days of Soviet power to maintain revolutionary public order. Unlike the police, which in the capitalist countries stands above the people, the Soviet militia, as Lenin emphasised, expresses the people's interests and serves the people.
At Lenin's suggestion, a special body, the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, was set up in December 1917. It was headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Bolshevik of long standing and one of the finest leaders of the Party. The work of the Extraordinary Commission, as Lenin stressed, was directed by the Party Central Committee and the Soviet Government.
Lenin's decrees on the judiciary laid the foundation of the new People's Courts, which became an instrument for protecting the working people and for educating them in the spirit of socialism.
The historic decree on the organisation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, passed by the Council of People's Commissars on January 15, 1918, was drawn up under Lenin's direction.
Lenin described the first months after October as a time when Soviet power marched triumphant across the land. In a few weeks, Soviet power was established in the central regions, in the Urals and over nearly the whole of Siberia, the Transbaikal and the Far East of Russia. Lenin kept a keen eye on the course of the socialist revolution in the national areas, where the Russian working class rendered fraternal aid to the working people of other nationalities in their struggle for liberation. By March 1918, Soviet power was victorious almost throughout the Ukraine and in Byelorussia, the Baltic provinces, Turkestan and Baku.
The tremendous pace of work began to tell on Lenin; he became extremely overtired. Krupskaya urged him to go away to the country for a few days. With great reluctance he agreed, only doing so because he hoped in calm surroundings away from the city to be able to write the articles he could not find time to tackle in the Smolny. On December 23, the Council of People's Commissars took a decision to grant Lenin a few days' leave. Lenin spent them with _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 354.
292 his wife and sister Maria at a sanatorium in Finland. Here he wrote notes under the title of ``From a Publicist's Diary (Themes for Elaboration)'', the articles ``How to Organise Competition?'', ``Fear of the Collapse of the Old and the Fight for the New'', and the draft decree on the consumers' communes. These articles and notes, which were published some time later, show that as early as December 1917 Lenin was working hard on the problems of building socialism. In his splendid article ``How to Organise Competition?" he formulated several ideas and propositions that he afterwards developed in his pamphlet The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government and other works: on socialist competition and the development of the initiative of the workers and all working people in creative, organisational work, on the setting up of nation-wide control over the production and distribution of products, and also on democratic centralism in state and economic construction.By December 28, Lenin was back in Petrograd. Lenin and Krupskaya celebrated the first Soviet New Year with the workers of the Vyborg District. The party was organised in the huge hall of the Artillery School. Lenin, who was joyfully greeted by all present, made a short speech. He talked about how the workers should organise their lives under Soviet power. When he concluded, he was given a tremendous ovation. Four workers grasped the legs of the chair on which he was sitting, picked it up and lifted him shoulder high. Then there was a concert and dancing, Lenin had tea and chatted, and presently he and Krupskaya withdrew quietly, so that their departure should not spoil the general fun. For long afterwards they retained warm memories of that New Year's eve spent with the workers.
The next day, January 1, 1918, Lenin spoke to the first echelons of the socialist army which were leaving for the front. On his way back from the meeting the car in which he was driving was fired upon by terrorist counter-revolutionaries. The Swiss Communist Fritz Flatten, who was with him, pulled Lenin's head down quickly. Flatten was slightly wounded; Lenin, fortunately, escaped unharmed.
The attempt on Lenin's life roused the greatest indignation among the working people. In letters and telegrams, at meetings and conferences workers and peasants poured shame on the enemies of the people, demanded stern measures against them and expressed their love for Lenin and their confidence in the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government.
293 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Third Congress of SovietsOne of the central issues that confronted the Party at the time was that of the Constituent Assembly. The elections to the Assembly had been held in the middle of November on the basis of old lists of candidates nominated by various political parties before the October Revolution. At this time a considerable number of people could not grasp the full scope and significance of the October Socialist Revolution and the elections had given the Socialist-- Revolutionary Party a majority, most of the seats being filled by Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were open enemies of Soviet power.
By the end of November 1917, however, a split had occurred in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the bulk of the working peasants had turned their backs on its Right wing. The composition of the Constituent Assembly did not, therefore, reflect the true balance of class forces in the country. Nevertheless, Lenin considered it essential to convene it because many peasants and also the backward sections of the urban working population still believed in a bourgeois parliament, and they had to be shown in practice that the Constituent Assembly did not voice the interests of the working people and would not satisfy their demands.
Early in January 1918, Lenin wrote the historic ``Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People'', which later formed the basis of the Soviet Constitution. The representatives of Soviet power were to read out this Declaration in the Constituent Assembly and propose that it be adopted by the Assembly. ``Russia,'' the Declaration stated, ``is hereby proclaimed a Republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. All power, centrally and locally, is vested in these Soviets.''
The Declaration defined the fundamental tasks of Soviet power to be: the abolition of all exploitation of man by man, suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, socialist organisation of society, and complete elimination of the division of society into classes. It confirmed the basic decrees of the Soviet Government, formulated the principles of the peaceful foreign policy of the Soviet state, and declared that the ``Russian Soviet Republic is established on the principle of a free union of free nations, as a federation of Soviet national republics.''~^^*^^
The Constituent Assembly opened on January 5, 1918. The counter-revolutionary majority in the Assembly refused to discuss _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 423.
294 and adopt the ``Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People'', whereupon the Bolsheviks announced that they did not wish to serve as a cover for the criminal actions of the enemies of the people and walked out of the Assembly. The next day the Council of People's Commissars and then the All-Russia Central Executive Committee passed a decree written by Lenin on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.This decision was approved and supported by the workers, soldiers and peasants of Russia.
To the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviks counterposed the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets as the only supreme organ of power expressing the will of the workers and peasants. The Congress opened on January 10, 1918. Lenin delivered a report on the work of the Council of People's Commissars. This was the Soviet Government's first report-back to the people. When the chairman gave Lenin the floor, the overwhelming majority of the delegates rose to their feet. There was something supreme in the enthusiasm with which these people with living, practical experience of the revolution welcomed their beloved leader. The breath of revolution swept through the hall. Cheers and shouts of ``Long live Comrade Lenin!" were heard on all sides. The delegates, listened intently to every word of the report.
In his speech Lenin analysed the reasons for the victory of Soviet power and its successes in the struggle against the counter-- revolutionary forces, and emphasised that there was no other way to socialism except through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Noting that Russia had entered the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, he substantiated the correctness and revolutionary expediency of the measures carried out by the Soviet Government in the period under review and set out the practical tasks to be undertaken in the organisation of the new socialist economy. Lenin said with pride that history had assigned the Russian working class ``the honour of being the vanguard of the international socialist revolution''.^^*^^ He ruthlessly criticised the Mensheviks and the SocialistRevolutionaries and also the sceptics in the ranks of the Bolshevik Party who had maintained that the victory of the socialist revolution in one country, in Russia, was impossible. At the same time he pointed out that the final victory of socialism was inseparably linked with the development of the liberation movement of the working people in other countries.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 472.
295Lenin stressed the immense and decisive international significance of the victory of Soviet power in Russia; he showed the great advantage of the new-born system of socialism compared with the historically obsolete system of capitalism. ``Our socialist Republic of Soviets,'' Lenin said, ``will stand secure, as a torch of international socialism and as an example to all the working people. Over thereconflict, war, bloodshed, the sacrifice of millions of people, capitalist exploitation; here-a genuine policy of peace and a socialist Republic of Soviets.''~^^*^^
With great enthusiasm the Third Congress of Soviets endorsed the policy of the Soviet Government and adopted Lenin's `` Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People''. The programme of building a socialist society proclaimed in the Declaration became a law approved by the supreme organ of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Third Congress of Soviets, Lenin said, confirmed the organisation of the new state power created by the October Revolution, and outlined the stages of socialist construction in Russia.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Efforts to Withdraw from the WarHaving proclaimed a policy of peace and friendship among the peoples, the Soviet state launched an energetic campaign for cessation of the war and the conclusion of a general democratic peace. Lenin regarded withdrawal from the war and the achievement of lasting peace as what was most needed in the struggle for socialism. ``What ... could be more conclusive and clear than the following truth: a government that gave Soviet power, land, workers' control and peace to a people tortured by three years of predatory war would be invincible? Peace is the chief thing.''^^**^^
The Soviet Government appealed on several occasions to the governments of the Entente jointly to begin negotiations with Germany and her allies for an armistice and the conclusion of peace, but its proposals were rejected.
``It was the Anglo-French and the American bourgeoisie,'' Lenin wrote later, ``who refused to accept our proposal; it was they who even refused to talk to us about a general peace! It was they who betrayed the interests of all nations; it was they who prolonged the imperialist slaughter!
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 472.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 36.
296``It was they who, banking on the possibility of dragging Russia back into the imperialist war, refused to take part in the peace negotiations and thereby gave a free hand to the no less predatory German capitalists who imposed the annexationist and harsh Brest Peace upon Russia!"^^*^^
Since France, Britain and the United States refused to enter into any peace negotiations, the Soviet Government, which was anxious to bring Russia out of the war, decided to begin talks with the countries of the Austro-German bloc. Lenin sent out a radio appeal to the soldiers to take the cause of peace into their own hands, to enter into armistice negotiations with the enemy through their own representatives and not allow the counter-revolutionary generals to wreck the great cause of peace.
The further course of events fully confirmed the correctness of Lenin's decision. The army supported Soviet power. Whole divisions, army corps and even armies entered into negotiation with German units and concluded an armistice.
Official negotiations between the representatives of the AustroGerman bloc and the Soviet delegation began on November 20, 1917, at Brest-Litovsk and led to the signing of an armistice. On December 9, the peace conference opened in Brest-Litovsk. The German delegation, having first hypocritically declared its agreement with the basic principles of the Soviet declaration concerning the conclusion of peace without annexations and indemnities, soon threw off the mask and arrogantly began to impose on Soviet Russia a predatory ``peace'' treaty, under which Poland, Lithuania, a part of Latvia, Estonia and Byelorussia, all of which had been seized by the Germans, would be placed under German control, while the Ukraine would become a state dependent on Germany.
The Party and the Soviet Government were now faced with a question of the utmost urgency. Were they to sign this harsh and humiliating peace or to wage war?
For Lenin, who always faced up to the truth fearlessly, the answer was clear. He knew the situation. The Soviet Republic had, in fact, no army, because the old army was disorganised and the Red Army was only just being formed; the majority of the soldiers and working peasants, who were utterly sick of fighting, were longing for peace and would not support a war. Lenin knew that in this situation to continue the war would mean disaster to Soviet power. It was, Lenin stated, a question of life and death for the Soviet _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 64--65.
297 state. For the sake of saving the Republic of Soviets it was necessary to conclude peace with imperialist Germany, no matter how painful that might be.Lenin's line was opposed by the ``Left Communists"^^58^^ and Trotsky. The ``Left Communists" called for a ``revolutionary war" against Germany and demanded that negotiations be broken off. They stated that the signing of a peace treaty would undermine the revolutionary movement in the West and lead to the restoration of bourgeois rule in Russia. Trotsky, who claimed that the Germans were incapable of launching an offensive, suggested declaring the war over, demobilising the army, but not signing any peace treaty. This policy would also have been disastrous for Soviet Russia because it would have opened the door to the Germans and led to continuation of the war. Both the attitude of the ``Left Communists" and Trotsky's position were determined in the final analysis by their disbelief in the possibility of socialism being victorious in one country, in Russia, if the pace of the world revolution slackened.
On January 8, 1918, Lenin submitted to a conference of responsible Party workers his ``Theses on the Question of the Immediate Conclusion of a Separate and Annexationist Peace''. In these theses he shattered the arguments of the supporters of a ``revolutionary war" and proved the necessity of concluding an immediate peace with Germany. He explained that Soviet Russia was not in a position to wage war. By concluding peace, the Soviet Government was gaining a necessary breathing-space to consolidate Soviet power and go on with socialist construction. As for the ``Left Communists" who counted on a revolution in Germany, it was impossible, Lenin pointed out, to have a revolution just when you wanted it and policy could not be shaped on that basis.
At this conference, 32 votes were cast in favour of a `` revolutionary war'', 16 in favour of Trotsky's position (``neither peace nor war''), and 15 for the signing of a peace treaty on the terms proposed by Germany.
The situation was extremely difficult. At a meeting of the. Central Committee on January 11, the majority favoured Trotsky's point of view. A number of local Party committees did not at once take up a correct position. Even among the rank-and-file Communists there were at first strong feelings against Soviet acceptance of these predatory peace terms. Lenin suffered deep anxiety. Nadezhda Krupskaya later wrote of Lenin that he was ``a man of intense feeling, who took everything that concerned the cause very closely to 298 heart''. At moments of great anxiety, he would pace about the room quietly, sometimes on tiptoe, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, or sit absolutely still, absorbed in his thoughts; sometimes he did not sleep for several nights running. But Lenin had great will-power and exceptional endurance. He was an optimist by nature, and during the critical period of Brest, as at all such times, he was unshakable. With characteristic courage, vision and adherence to principle he firmly upheld his line; he was sure that the Party and the working class would support him. And, indeed, the Party organisations and workers quickly grasped the situation and resolutely declared their support of Lenin's position.
In spite of Lenin's instruction to conclude peace if the Germans raised the matter as an ultimatum, Trotsky, who was leading the Soviet peace delegation at Brest, announced on January 28 ( February 10) that Soviet Russia refused to sign any annexationist treaty, but was ending the state of war and completely demobilising its army. This was a disgraceful betrayal of the interests of the Soviet country, and the German army took advantage of it. On February 18 (New Style), it launched an offensive. The same day, at an evening session of the Central Committee, after a hard struggle (7 votes to 5, with one abstention) Lenin's proposal to send a telegram immediately to the German Government, informing it that the Soviet Government agreed to sign the peace treaty, was accepted. The telegram, in the name of the Council of People's Commissars, was sent at once. The German imperialists, however, deliberately delayed their answer and continued to advance.
The Soviet country was in grave danger. The interventionists had to be repelled and the republic defended. On February 21, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars issued a call to the people, written by Lenin: ``The Socialist Fatherland Is in Danger!" This stated that ``all the forces and means of the country are placed entirely at the service of revolutionary defence". It declared it to be the duty of all Soviets and revolutionary organisations ``to defend every position to the last drop of blood'. The first contingents of the Red Army were sent to the front. Hard fighting developed at Pskov, Revel (Tallinn) and Narva.
On February 23, new and even harsher German peace terms were received. Germany now laid claim to the whole of Latvia and Estonia and demanded recognition of the treaty the bourgeois Ukrainian Central Rada had made with the powers of the Quadruple Alliance,^^59^^ under which the Ukraine became virtually a colony of Germany. The Soviet Republic was to demobilise its army 299 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1983/LB525/20070119/399.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.01.24) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ completely, conclude unprofitable economic agreements with Germany, and so on. Such were the results of the adventurist, and in fact treacherous, policy of Trotsky and the ``Left Communists''. Lenin pointed out that they had ``actually helped the German imperialists and hindered the growth and development of the revolution in Germany''.^^*^^
At a meeting of the Central Committee on February 23, Lenin categorically demanded immediate acceptance of the German peace terms. ``These terms must be signed,'' Lenin said. ``If you don't sign them, you will sign the death warrant of Soviet power in three weeks.''^^**^^ Lenin's inexorability, his firm stand decided matters.
The treaty with Germany was signed by the Soviet delegation on March 3, 1918. ``It is incredibly, unprecedentedly hard to sign an unfortunate, immeasurably severe, infinitely humiliating peace when the strong has the weak by the throat,''^^***^^ wrote Lenin. He fully realised the tremendous responsibility he was taking upon himself by deciding to sign the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. But he did not yield for a moment to doubt or hesitation. Lenin believed profoundly in the strength of the working class, in the invincibility of Soviet power. His articles and speeches united the masses, fired them with energy and new strength.
On March 6--8, the Extraordinary Seventh Party Congress was held in Petrograd. It was the first congress of the Bolshevik Party since the victory of the October Revolution. Lenin delivered the Central Committee's political report. He gave a profound analysis of the development of the revolution in Russia, the balance of class forces inside the country and in the international arena, and proved the necessity of concluding the Brest Treaty.
Lenin emphasised that the first and most urgent task of the Party, of Soviet power, of all workers and peasants was to improve the discipline and self-discipline of the working people, to ensure revolutionary order in the country, to start a campaign against the chaos, disorganisation and economic ruin that were the aftermath of the war, to form an army, and to organise universal military training.
By a majority of votes the Congress passed Lenin's resolution on war and peace, which approved the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 80.
^^**^^ Minutes of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.fB.), August 1917--February 1918, Moscow, 1958, pp. 212, 213 (Russ. ed.).
^^***^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 51.
300The Congress also heard Lenin's report on revision of the Party Programme and changing the name of the Party. Up till then it had been called the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party ( Bolsheviks). Lenin proposed calling the Party the Communist Party. This title, he said, clearly expresses the fact that we are moving towards complete communism.
After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution the Party could not confine itself to merely amending and adding to the old Programme, as provided for by the Seventh (April) AllRussia Party Conference and the Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.(B-). The Bolshevik Party had become the ruling party; the country had entered the period of transition to socialism. The first Programme had been fulfilled. Now a new Programme was needed that would formulate the tasks the Party must perform in building a socialist society. ``In place of the old Programme,'' said Lenin, "we must now write a new Programme of Soviet power...''~^^*^^ For the Congress Lenin had written the "Rough Outline of the Draft Programme'', which was handed out to the delegates. It formulated the aims of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the tasks of the Party in the political, economic and international fields.
The Congress passed a resolution renaming the Party, which was henceforth to be called: the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). A special commission headed by Lenin was elected to draw up a new Programme. Lenin's "Rough Outline of the Draft Programme" formed the basis of the commission's work.
At the end of February, the Council of People's Commissars passed a decision on moving the Government from Petrograd to Moscow. The Central Committee of the Party and the Council of People's Commissars headed by Lenin arrived in Moscow on March 11, 1918, and Moscow became the capital of the Soviet state.
On March 14, the Extraordinary Fourth All-Russia Congress of Soviets was convened in Moscow to ratify the Brest Peace Treaty. Two reports were delivered, one by Lenin, the other, against ratification, by the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Kamkov. The Congress passed Lenin's resolution on the ratification of the peace treaty with Germany, the names of those for and against being recorded.
In an exceptionally complex international and internal situation the Communist Party succeeded in extricating Russia from the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 136.
301 imperialist slaughter, and thwarted the first and extremely dangerous attempt by the reactionary forces of the world to crush the Russian revolution - to smash the Soviet Republic with the armed forces of militarist Germany. Soviet power, the power of the workers and peasants, born of the Great October Socialist Revolution, saved the country from the national disaster to which it had been condemned by the exploiting classes, and rid the peoples of Russia of the threat of being enslaved by foreign capital. Thanks to withdrawal from the war, the working class and the peasants of the Land of Soviets gained the peaceful breathing-space they so badly needed to consolidate the Soviet state and push ahead with the socialist revolution. The greatest credit for this was due to Lenin. His wisdom, loyalty to principle and strength of will made effective the only correct policy in the vital question of war and peace.The conclusion of the Brest Peace Treaty is a striking instance of the flexibility of Lenin's tactics, of his ability to retreat when necessary in order to gain time and build up strength for victory in battles to come. Lenin assessed the Brest Treaty as an example of reasonable political compromise between a socialist country and capitalist countries, as a compromise arrived at in the interests of peace and preserving the gains of socialism. ``It was indeed a compromise with the imperialists'', Lenin wrote later, ``but it was a compromise which, under the circumstances, had to be made.''^^*^^ At the same time, by concluding the peace of Brest, the Communist Party showed the correct way of combining the national and international tasks of the working class.
Lenin wrote that among the particularly formidable difficulties facing the proletarian revolution in Russia was the fact that, owing to the Brest Treaty, it was compelled to pass through a period of sharp divergence from the patriotism of the petty-bourgeois masses, the philistine patriotism that would acknowledge nothing except immediate gains for the fatherland, as understood in the old way, and which saw only that Russia was to cede a part of her territory and consent to great sacrifices and humiliation. In fact, it was the Bolsheviks who were the true patriots of their socialist country, for they accepted these sacrifices in the interests of preserving the main thing-Soviet power, the first socialist state ever created in history, the Republic of Soviets, which had become the true fatherland of the working people.
Soviet, socialist patriotism is in organic harmony with proletarian _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 36.
302 internationalism. Lenin always regarded the working class of the Soviet land as one of the contingents of the world army of socialism. He pointed out that the socialist revolution in Russia was a component part of the world liberation movement of the working people, and that national tasks must be accomplished in direct relation to the overall tasks of the movement.When deciding the question of the Brest peace the Bolsheviks were guided by the principles of proletarian internationalism, which, as Lenin wrote, meant a revolutionary struggle against imperialist government, ``overthrowing it, and being ready to make the greatest national sacrifices (even down to a Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty), if it should benefit the development of the world workers' revolution.''~^^*^^ The Communists of the Land of Soviets displayed exemplary loyalty to their internationalist duty. They were not deterred by the enormous sacrifices that had to be made to preserve the world's first socialist republic, the very existence of which is a great stand-by for the proletarians of all countries in their struggle against capitalism.
The whole course of development of the world liberation movement since the conclusion of the Brest Treaty has confirmed the correctness of Lenin's wise policy, the power of his scientific foresight. Every day the Soviet Republic grew stronger, and the contradictions of imperialism grew more intense. The revolutionary crisis in the West mounted rapidly and led to revolutions in a number of countries. The revolution in Germany in November 1918 enabled the Soviet Government to annul the rapacious Treaty of Brest.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Leninist Principles of Foreign PolicyOne of Lenin's great services was that in this struggle for peace he formulated the principles of the foreign policy of a socialist country.
In determining the principles of Soviet foreign policy, Lenin started out from the fact that the socialist revolution cannot be victorious simultaneously in all countries, that a period ``of the coexistence side by side of socialist and capitalist states"^^**^^ is historically inevitable. Lenin thus regarded the coexistence of states with different social systems as an objective law that could operate throughout _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 111.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 39.
303 the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism on a world scale.Lenin held that the foreign policy of a socialist state should aim at furthering the development of the international liberation movement of the working people, the key factor in which is the successful building of a socialist society in the countries where the dictatorship of the proletariat is established.
One of the most important principles of Soviet foreign policy was to maintain peace, ``peaceful coexistence" with other peoples, ``with the workers and peasants of all nations" as Lenin declared in an interview he gave to foreign journalists.^^*^^ He sharply criticised the ``Left Communists" who denied the possibility and necessity of peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems.
The persistent efforts of the Soviet state to achieve peace, its peaceful foreign policy, as Lenin frequently pointed out, stem from the very nature of the socialist system, to which aggression, the seizure of foreign territory, and the subjugation of other nations are fundamentally alien. Lasting peace is essential for building socialism and communism. Lenin exposed the untenability of the position of the ``Left Communists'', who failed to understand the need for certain agreements with capitalist countries, for establishing peaceful relations with them. Since the socialist state existed on the same planet as the capitalist states, it could and should trade with them, and conclude economic and other agreements with them. Otherwise the socialist republic surrounded by imperialist powers ``could not exist at all, without flying to the moon''.^^**^^
Lenin's policy of peaceful coexistence between countries with different social systems does not, of course, mean reconciliation with capitalism, does not mean that Communists should give up their ultimate aim-the victory of socialism throughout the world.
Peaceful coexistence, as Lenin understood it, presupposes unremitting ideological, political and economic struggle between the two systems, expansion of the class struggle of the working people in the capitalist countries in all its forms, and development of the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples against imperialism. Defining the tasks of the Communist Party of the Soviet country, Lenin wrote: ``Support of the revolutionary movement of the socialist proletariat in the advanced countries in the first instance... Support of the democratic and revolutionary movement in all countries in general, and especially in the colonies and _-_-_
^^*^^ Cf. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 365.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 71.
304 dependent countries.''^^*^^ The interests of the world revolution demand ``that Soviet power, having overthrown the bourgeoisie in our country, should help that revolution, but that it should choose a form of help which is commensurate with its own strength''.^^**^^Communists have never considered that the path to revolution lies necessarily through war between states. Arguing against the ``Left Communists" and exposing their adventurist and, in fact, provocative attitude, Lenin wrote in his article ``Strange and Monstrous": ``Perhaps the authors^^***^^ believe that the interests of the world revolution require that it should be given a push, and that such a push can be given only by war, never by peace, which might give the people the impression that imperialism was being 'legitimised'? Such a 'theory' would be completely at variance with Marxism, for Marxism has always been opposed to 'pushing' revolutions, which develop with the growing acuteness of the class antagonisms that engender revolutions. Such a theory would be tantamount to the view that armed uprising is a form of struggle which is obligatory always and under all conditions.''^^****^^
Lenin was always emphatically opposed to the idea of ``exporting revolutions''. Only ``madmen or provocateurs" could imagine that revolution could be produced in other countries to order, by agreement, he pointed out. Revolutions must never be imposed on peoples from without. ``We know,'' Lenin said, ``that revolutions cannot be made to order, or by agreement; they break out when tens of millions of people come to the conclusion that it is impossible to live in the old way any longer.''~^^*****^^ Lenin unmasked the false allegations of the bourgeoisie and the Right Socialists that the Bolsheviks wanted to introduce their system in other countries by force.^^******^^ While opposing the ``export of revolutions'', Lenin also resolutely condemned the ``export of counter-revolution'', interference by the imperialists in the internal affairs of the Soviet Republic and of other peoples engaged in revolution.
As Lenin saw it, peaceful coexistence creates the most favourable international climate for the entire process of world revolution, and _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 157--58.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 72.
^^***^^ The reference is to the "Left Communists'', authors of the resolution adopted by the Moscow Regional Bureau of the R.S.D.L.P. on February 24, 1918.
^^****^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 71--72.
^^*****^^ Ibid., p. 480.
^^******^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, pp. 173--74.
305 accelerates the development of the international liberation movement; it completely accords with the principles of proletarian internationalism. Peaceful coexistence, the struggle against unjust wars, the prevention of world wars with their terrible loss of life and destruction promote the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of mankind.Lenin devoted much attention to the foreign policy problems of the Soviet Republic. He considered that after Soviet Russia had withdrawn from the war the chief aim of her foreign policy should be to make the peace she had won more secure. The Soviet Government immediately took steps to establish business relations with the capitalist countries. On Lenin's initiative a plan for development of trade and economic relations between Soviet Russia and the United States was worked out. The Soviet Government declared its readiness to pay for goods purchased in the U.S.A. with agricultural produce and raw materials, and also to grant the United States concessions on equal terms with other countries.
Evidence of Soviet Russia's desire for peace was provided when the design for the State Seal came up for discussion by the Council of People's Commissars. Part of the design was a sword, which had been included as a symbol of strength and militancy. Lenin was absolutely opposed to this. ``Why a sword?" he asked. ``We have no need of conquests. We are against them; we do not attack, we are defending ourselves against internal and external enemies; our war is defensive, and the sword is not our emblem.'' The Council of People's Commissars examined the design and passed a resolution, one of the points of which was to ``take the sword out of the drawing".
It was finally decided that the emblem of the Land of Soviets should be the hammer and sickle-symbol of peaceful creative labour.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin's Vivid OratoryWhen they arrived in Moscow, Lenin and Krupskaya lived for a time in the Hotel National, after which they moved into the Kremlin.
Lenin's study was quite a small room. Everything on the desk had a place and purpose of its own. On the writing pad, which was always there, Lenin made notes, wrote instructions and jotted down the names of anyone who had asked to see him. Sometimes he made notes on the pages of the calendar. Behind the desk stood a wooden 306 armchair with a cane back and seat; in the conference room there was a similar armchair. In front of the desk stood another table with big leather armchairs on both sides of it for visitors.
On each side of the desk there were revolving bookstands, which Lenin used to call ``whirligigs''. One of them was for papers concerning Party conferences and congresses, and for reference books and dictionaries. The other contained files and papers that might be needed for the business of the day; Lenin also used it to keep books that he intended looking through in the near future. On two bookstands behind the desk lay files of Russian and foreign newspapers, while a bookstand by the window contained Russian newspapers for the current month.
The walls of the study were lined with bookcases, which contained nearly 2,000 books. Part of Lenin's library was kept in a room next door to the Council of People's Commissars' anteroom. Altogether the library consisted of more than 10,000 books, pamphlets, magazines and other publications, including over 1,000 books in English, French, German and other foreign languages. Among them were the works of Marx and Engels, of Plekhanov, Bebel, Lafargue, Mehring, Rosa Luxemburg, Hegel, Feuerbach, Holbach, Campanella, Saint-Simon and the Russian revolutionary democrats Herzen, Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, and Pisarev; there were also books on history, on questions of political economy, the world economy, and the economy of Russia, on engineering, the natural sciences, military science, and other branches of knowledge. A large section of the library consisted of Russian and foreign belles lettres.
Lenin's study contained many geographical maps and atlases which he used constantly in his work. Over the sofa hung a portrait of Marx, which had been presented to Lenin by the workers of Petrograd, and a bas-relief of Stepan Khalturin. The study also contained a tall ornamental palm-tree. As Lenin wished, there were no curtains in the windows or over the doors; he did not like curtains and never allowed the blinds to be lowered. Till the last day when he worked there the furnishings of Lenin's study remained almost unchanged. Lenin got used to his study and firmly refused to move to a larger and better room.
One of the doors of the study led into the corridor, another to what was called the ``booth'', a switchboard connected with the offices and flats of the People's Commissars and members of the Central Committee, and also with the headquarters of the Red Army, with Petrograd, Kharkov and other cities. A third door led __PRINTERS_P_307_COMMENT__ 20* 307 into the conference room of the Council of People's Commissars; everyone Lenin received entered the study through the conference room and this door. The four-room flat at the end of the corridor adjoining the premises of the Council of People's Commissars was shared by Lenin, his wife and his sister, Maria Ulyanova. Lenin's small room served him both as a study and a bedroom. There was a desk by the window and an iron bedstead covered with a plaid by the wall; the plaid had been given to Lenin by his mother Maria Alexandrovna in 1910, when they last saw each other in Sweden, and Lenin treasured it. A similar simplicity was to be found in the rooms occupied by Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova, and also in the dining-room. Sometimes they ate in the kitchen. Lenin, in particular, often had dinner, supper and tea there, an old habit of his since the days of emigration.
Lenin lived and worked in the Kremlin until the spring of 1923, Lenin's flat and study in the Kremlin have been preserved to this day in their original states, as a museum. Thousands of people, from all parts of the Soviet Union, as well as our friends and guests from abroad, visit them with love and respect.
Since the spring of 1918, when Lenin had suggested it, it had become customary in Moscow for members of the Central Committee and people in responsible positions to speak regularly at public meetings. Lenin was always interested to know what questions were asked and what suggestions the workers put forward. He himself often addressed meetings and workers' conferences, sometimes twice or three times a day.
Thousands and tens of thousands of workers and Red Army men saw Lenin on the rostrum and heard his fiery appeals. As soon as the chairman mentioned Lenin's name there would be a roar of applause and loud shouts of ``Long live Ilyich! Hurrah!" Lenin would step quickly up to the rostrum, and put his watch and notes on it. But he would not speak from the rostrum. He would simply come nearer to the audience, right to the edge of the platform. His manner was natural and unaffected. His voice was loud, expressive and well modulated. He spoke quickly, but audibly and clearly.
Lenin usually spoke either entirely without notes or with only a brief outline of his speech at which he rarely glanced. But one could see that his speech or report was not made on the spur of the moment but had been carefully considered. Before every speech, writes Krupskaya, Lenin was tense and concentrated; he avoided discussion on other subjects and one could tell by his face that he was thinking out what he was going to say.
308Lenin's way of speaking was plain, without any verbal frills or affectation; there was nothing artificial or theatrical about it, no specially prepared catchwords or phrases to create an effect. His speeches won the listener with something else-their great truth, profundity, knowledge of the life and needs of the people, their irrefutable logic, unshakable conviction and ardour, their faith in the power of the people, the simplicity and clarity of their exposition. They always contained something new and Lenin would carefully explain this new idea, giving the reasons for it and not hesitating to repeat his idea over and over again.
His speeches, like his articles, were never abstract. His theoretical propositions were always bound up with life and supported by practical considerations and arguments. Lenin based himself on the simple facts and examples of life that were known to the people, and in this way he led his listeners on to an understanding of the theoretical propositions, policy and slogans of the Party. For every kind of audience he had his own special approach, arguments and method of expounding his ideas. While he was actually speaking he could sense what interested his audience, what they could not understand or what they thought most important. He was always able to judge from the degree of attention he received, from the questions and comments, from the remarks of other speakers at a conference, what mood his audience were in, to cater for their interests, and to clarify obscure points, win their attention and communicate with them. He did not steer round awkward, worrying issues or try to gloss over them. On the contrary, he put such issues squarely, in concrete terms. He made use of all the rich resources of the Russian language and loved to quote popular sayings and proverbs and recall the characters of literature. He had a hearty dislike of distortions of the Russian language, of the affected use of foreign words, and when he noticed that some speakers had a tendency towards this abuse, he wrote a short article called ``Stop Spoiling the Russian Language".
Lenin was often told that his speeches were easy to understand, and on one occasion he replied: ``I know only that whenever I took the floor 'as an orator', I always thought of the workers and peasants as my listeners. I wanted them to understand me. No matter where a Communist is speaking, he ought to think of the people, he ought to speak for them.''~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyuh Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1979, p. 31 (Russ. ed.).
309The people saw that Lenin was speaking of the things that really mattered, that deeply concerned his listeners and himself, and it was this that convinced them more than anything. Every worker, every peasant who listened to Lenin thought to himself: ``Yes, he understands us. He is one of us.'' Lenin's vivid oratory reached deep into the consciousness of the masses, fired them with enthusiasm and the desire to act, and armed them with confidence in victory over the enemy.
Lenin gave every ounce of his energy to his work. His only form of recreation were his walks in the Kremlin and the trips he took with his wife and sister to the Vorobyovy Hills and the country round Moscow. He was fond of visiting new places and would think while he drove along, enjoying the fresh air. One of his favourite spots was a wood on the bank of the River Moskva, near Barvikha.
``We would choose an out-of-the-way spot on a hill,'' his sister recalls, ``with a good view of the river and the surrounding fields, and would pass the time there till evening.... Sometimes, when we were driving through a village a bunch of fair-headed peasant children would come rushing up to our car begging to be taken for a ride. Vladimir Ilyich, who was very fond of children, would ask Gil (Lenin's chauffeur---Ed.) to pull up and the car would fill to overflowing with noisy jubilant youngsters. After driving a mile or so, we would let the children get out and they would run shouting and laughing back to their village.
``This kind of recreation was a bit primitive, but it was impossible to arrange any other at the time and we always came home refreshed and satisfied and with happy memories.''~^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Immediate TasksLenin always attached enormous importance to equipping the Party and the working class with a clear understanding of the aims and prospects of further advance. When the country gained a peaceful breathing-space, therefore, he paid special attention to drawing up a plan of socialist construction.
In the second half of March 1918, Lenin began work on an article about the tasks confronting the Soviet Government. The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government was the first big work Lenin had _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 1, p. 170.
310 written since the October Revolution. It outlines a plan of socialist construction, examines the most important problems of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, and works out the principles of the economic policy of the Soviet state. Many extremely important basic propositions that Lenin formulated in The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government are still significant today, under the conditions of a developed socialist society-a law-governed stage on the way to communism.After the proletariat had taken political power, Lenin pointed out, the Communist Party's main task was that of administering the country. This he defined as the chief link in the historical chain of events, which has to be grasped in order to hold the whole chain and thoroughly prepare the transition to socialism.
The transition to socialism, Lenin taught, demands above all organisation of the strictest country-wide accounting and control of the production and distribution of products. Without this it is impossible to ensure the planned economy that is in the very nature of socialist society, and a steady rise in the productivity of labour. Lenin particularly emphasised the significance of control and accounting in the campaign against the petty-bourgeois elements, against the survivals of capitalism in people's minds, in their attitude to work and to social property.
Besides the organisation of country-wide accounting and control Lenin considered the raising of labour productivity on a nationwide scale an equally important factor in the transition to socialism. The first requirement for raising the productivity of labour is to provide a material basis for large-scale industry: development of fuel and iron production, the engineering and chemical industries. Other important conditions for higher productivity of labour are the raising of the educational and cultural level of the population, the improvement of the discipline of the working people, their skill, their dexterity and labour productivity, and better organisation. Proceeding from the socialist principle of distribution in accordance with the quantity and quality of work, Lenin emphasised the enormous significance of the workers having a material interest in the results of their labour, in the growth of social production. In this connection he called attention to the necessity of introducing payment by the piece and a system of bonuses.
Lenin taught that an essential condition for the victory of socialism is the building up of a new, conscious sense of labour discipline, educating the people to take a communist attitude to their work. Measures of compulsion must be used in the case of those 311 who try to give society as little as possible while grabbing as much as possible for themselves.
One of Lenin's great contribution to the theory and practice of scientific communism was his elaboration of the principle of democratic centralism as the basic principle of economic management under the conditions of building socialist and communist society. Democratic centralism means combining centralised planned administration of the economy with broad participation of the masses in economic management and granting of adequate powers to the local bodies.
Lenin went on to explain that any large-scale machine industry, which forms the production foundation of socialism, and the processes of work organised on the lines of such an industry, call for absolute and strictest unity of will directing the joint labour of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. Such unity of will presupposes one-man management in industry, personal responsibility of definite persons for executive functions, for the job entrusted to them, and demands strict, conscious discipline and unquestioning obedience to the will of the managers of production during work. One-man management, Lenin emphasised, must be combined with a collegiate attitude, with active participation of the masses in discussing and solving the basic problems of managing production, with their control of the work of enterprises.
In The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government and a number of his other works and speeches Lenin paid much attention to the question of the specialists needed for the building of socialism. He considered that the heart of the problem was to create a new intelligentsia that would have its roots in the people and spring from a working people's environment. At the same time, Lenin stressed the necessity of enlisting the old, bourgeois specialists in socialist construction.
Lenin gave the first Marxist analysis of the question of the attitude of the victorious proletariat and its party to the bourgeois intelligentsia. He considered employment of the old specialists an essential part of the general task of converting the whole great store of culture, the science and technical knowledge accumulated by capitalism, from a tool of the bourgeoisie into a tool of the proletariat. The working class, he explained, could and must re-educate the bulk of the old intelligentsia, and draw engineers and technicians, agronomists, teachers, doctors, men of science and culture, and also former capitalists with experience of running large enterprises into the service of the people. This was essential in the interests of 312 economic and cultural construction, and also for training the new proletarian intelligentsia. Lenin taught Communists to be tactful with the old intelligentsia, to value and be considerate towards every specialist, even though he might still be ideologically alien to communism, as long as he worked conscientiously, and with a sound knowledge of the job.
Success of the socialist transformation of Russia presupposed the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the development and perfection of Soviet organisation. Lenin advocated developing socialist democracy to the utmost, drawing the working people into the practical work of governing the country, and cementing the ties between the Soviets and the masses of the people. Socialist democracy, Lenin explained, meant that every citizen should be so placed that he could take part in discussing state laws and in electing his representatives to governing bodies and in putting laws into effect.
Lenin's plan of socialist construction was received with hostility by the ``Left Communists'', who opposed the introduction of labour discipline, one-man management in the enterprises, the introduction of the cost-accounting principle, the employment of bourgeois specialists and the principle of material incentive. In ``~`Left-wing' Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality'', published in May 1918, Lenin showed that the ``Left Communists" were the defenders and mouthpiece of the petty bourgeoisie, that they had failed to understand the essence of the transition from capitalism to socialism, the nature and tasks of the proletarian state, the specific features of Russia's economy at that time.
At that time small commodity production was predominant in Russia's economy and the petty-bourgeois element constituted the greatest danger to the proletarian state. Under these conditions, Lenin pointed out, the main task was to subordinate the petty bourgeois to the control and accounting of the Soviet socialist state. To achieve this aim and organise large-scale production as rapidly as possible Lenin considered it expedient to utilise various forms of state capitalism, to allow some degree of compromise, to come to an agreement with capitalists who were prepared to work under the control of the socialist state. He put forward the idea that after the dictatorship of the proletariat had been established state capitalism could, in certain circumstances, serve as one of the ways of bringing about the gradual socialisation of enterprises that had remained the property of capitalists. Lenin did not rule out the possibility of the working class buying out the means of production owned by the 313 bourgeoisie. ``State capitalism" under the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin said, is capitalism allowed within definite limits by the proletarian government, which bases itself on the commanding heights of the economy, and is under the strict control of the socialist state.
The question of state capitalism under the dictatorship of the working class, which had been raised by life itself, by the concrete conditions of building socialism in that period was a new question, which had not and could not have been posed by the founders of scientific communism. Lenin's treatment of this question is an example of his creative approach to revolutionary theory. He sharply criticised the ``Left Communists'', who in this matter, too, adopted a dogmatic position and refused to see the fundamental distinction between "state capitalism" under the dictatorship of the proletariat and state capitalism under bourgeois rule.
In Soviet Russia state-capitalist enterprises never became widely developed and did not play an important part in the economy of the transition period, because the bourgeoisie, counting on restoring the bourgeois-landowner system with the help of foreign imperialists, declined to work under the control of the Soviet Government. The possibility of utilising state capitalism in building socialism was, however, confirmed in practice by the experience of other countries which took the path of socialist development.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ First Steps Towards Building SocialismIn economic construction the Party directed its attention primarily at the organisation of socialist industry.
Lenin considered it a matter of primary importance to carry through the nationalisation of large-scale industry, above all heavy industry, and to go over from workers' control to working-class, state management of production. On June 28, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars passed a decree on the nationalisation of all large-scale industry. Its implementation led to the nationalisation of large-scale and medium-scale industry for the most part. By the autumn of 1918 more than three thousand enterprises had been nationalised.
In a letter to a conference of representatives of nationalised enterprises of the machine-building industry Lenin urged them to concentrate all their energy on organising labour processes correctly, on raising the productivity of labour. He recommended sending 314 experienced workers from the best factories to other factories to help them organise work, establish firm discipline and order, accounting and control in order to save raw materials.
Lenin resolutely rebuffed the anarcho-syndicalist attitudes found among trade union workers, the attempts to hand the administration of enterprises over to the relevant trade unions. He demanded a merciless struggle ``against the syndicalist and chaotic attitude to nationalised enterprises''.^^*^^
Lenin attached prime importance to the centralised planned guidance of the economy. He wrote that communism demands and assumes the utmost centralisation of large-scale production throughout the country and that ``...only large-scale, planned construction, which aims at evenly utilising economic and business values, deserves to be called socialist''.^^**^^ Even at this stage Lenin worked out the basic principles of socialist planning, wrote about the necessity to provide for rational distribution of industry from the point of view of proximity of raw materials and maximum economy of social labour, and also concentration of production. Proceeding from the fact that the socialist national economy must be built on an advanced technical basis, he drew particular attention to the electrification of industry and transport and the utilisation of electricity in farming. Thus in the very first months of Soviet power Lenin set the electrification of the national economy as a task of programmatic importance.
In spite of the incredible difficulties the Communist Party and Soviet power embarked upon extensive economic and cultural construction. Power projects were drawn up. A programme for the development of the Ural-Kuznetsk Coalfield was worked out; a broad programme of railway building was drafted; preparatory work was begun on the construction of the Volga-Don Canal and the building of irrigation systems in Turkestan for the development of cotton-growing. Even in those days Lenin with his usual foresight stressed the enormous importance of the raw-material and power resources of the eastern regions of the country, Siberia. He gave great attention to the task of switching industry over to peaceful production, organising the repair and production of agricultural machines and equipment, and output of consumer goods. Measures were taken to develop trade between town and country, to make _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 319.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 28, p. 36.
315 use of co-operatives in the distribution of foodstuffs, and to institute a stable financial and monetary system.The Party and the Government made tremendous efforts to snatch the country out of the jaws of economic ruin and starvation. An extremely serious food crisis developed in the spring and particularly the summer of 1918. The workers of Moscow, Petrograd and other cities sometimes went for weeks on end without their bread ration; the working peasantry of the provinces that did not grow grain were also starving. The acute food shortage was caused mainly because, as a result of the intervention by the imperialist powers and the counter-revolutionary revolts, central Russia was cut off from the main grain-producing areas (the Ukraine, Siberia, and the Volga region), and the kulaks had hidden their grain and refused to sell it to the state at fixed prices. The reactionary forces hoped to bring about the fall of Soviet power through starvation. The fate of the Soviet Republic depended on the solution of the food problem.
Lenin wrestled with the problem of providing the cities with bread and found a solution in the form of new, proletarian methods of combating the famine. In May 1918, Lenin initiated and participated in the drawing up of decrees on the food situation which confirmed that the state grain monopoly was inviolable, and demanded ruthless measures to stop profiteering, and called for the strictest control and proper distribution of all grain stocks.
The papers published Lenin's letter to the Petrograd workers ``On the Famine'', in which he called upon the proletariat to organise a mass crusade against the grain profiteers, against the kulaks, against all who violated state regulations concerning the collection, transporting and distribution of grain.
It was not only the food question that was being decided in the fight for grain: the point at issue was the victory of the socialist revolution in the countryside, and hence the fate of the dictatorship of the proletariat. ``This struggle seems to be only a struggle for bread, but as a matter of fact it is a struggle for socialism,''~^^*^^ said Lenin. During the confiscation of the landed estates and the redistribution of the land the class struggle between the kulaks and the working peasantry flared up with fresh intensity. By its extensive organisational work the Bolshevik Party paved the way for the further development and deepening of the socialist revolution in the countryside.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 472.
316In the spring of 1918, when he was drawing up the plan of socialist construction, Lenin made it one of the Party's chief tasks to achieve ``a gradual but steady transition to joint tillage and largescale socialist agriculture''.^^*^^ It is worth mentioning in this connection that even then Lenin, basing himself on the fundamental ideas of Marx and Engels, was pointing out that co-operation could and should play an important part in the building of socialism because after the victory of the socialist revolution and the winning of power by the working class ``the position of the co-operatives undergoes a fundamental change''.^^**^^ Later, reasoning from the proposition about the socialist nature of co-operation under the dictatorship of the proletariat, with social ownership of the basic means of production, Lenin evolved his brilliant co-operative plan for bringing the peasants on to the path of socialism, for the voluntary amalgamation of small peasant farms into large collective farms.
Having abolished private ownership of the land, the Soviet government carried out a series of measures to reorganise agriculture along socialist lines. State socialist farms were set up on the basis of the best of the landed estates. Lenin regarded the state farms as strongholds of socialist reform of the countryside and raising of the productive forces of agriculture. The first agricultural communes and artels received support and encouragement from the Party and the Government. At Lenin's suggestion a special fund was instituted which issued grants and loans to the collective farms.
Questions of cultural construction began to figure prominently in Lenin's work as soon as Soviet power was established. In a talk with A. Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar of Education, on the tasks of the Commissariat of Education he stressed the necessity of a serious, statesmanlike approach to the work of public education and widespread development of political and educational work among the people.
Lenin considered it most important to win over the teachers to Soviet power. He made many speeches to teachers, explaining to them the policy of the Communist Party in the field of public education. The Soviet school, he said, must become a means of enlightening and educating the people, must serve the cause of building socialist society. The work of abolishing illiteracy among adults was begun. The doors of the institutions of higher learning were opened wide to the workers and peasants.
_-_-_^^*^^ Ibid., p. 153.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 215.
317Lenin was responsive to the cultural aspirations of the working people. ``Pokrovsky. Build a school. Lenin'' was his terse instruction written on a scrap of paper with barely legible letters-the letter, in which the peasants of a remote northern village complained that they had tried in vain to get the uyezd and gubernia authorities to build them a school and appealed to Lenin for help. ``Also,'' the letter said, ``we send you greetings and may you lead the proletariat well and give the bourgeois a sound beating. We have also organised a Committee of Poor Peasants^^60^^ for ourselves. It is a good thing, may the Lord give you good health. They say it was your idea.''~^^*^^
Lenin also helped the Putilov workers, who decided to organise an art studio for children at the works. When the Putilov delegates told Lenin that the Department of Public Education had advised them to postpone the project, Lenin turned to the other people in his study and said:
``Do you hear what the Putilov workers want? They want to produce their own working-class intelligentsia and they are told: 'Wait a year or so!' No delay whatsoever, the studio must be organised!"~^^**^^
The Soviet state made persistent efforts to enlist scientific and technical personnel in the work of socialist construction. Lenin warmly welcomed the decision of the Academy of Sciences to cooperate with the Soviet Government in the work of studying the country's natural resources. The Soviet Government allotted what were then large funds for scientific research, new research institutes, laboratories and experimental stations and factories were organised in the very first year of the socialist revolution.
Attaching great importance to the further development, study and propagation of Marxist theory, Lenin supported the proposal made by leading personnel of the People's Commissariat of Education on the setting up of a Marxist scientific centre-the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences, and defined the Academy's principal tasks as: publication of Marxist literature, bringing together Marxist scholars, organising social research, elaboration of current philosophical and economic problems, and teaching the social sciences from a Marxist point of view.
At the end of December 1917 the State Publishing House was set _-_-_
^^*^^ About llyich. Articles and Reminiscences by Village Correspondents, Leningrad, 1934, pp. 77, 78 (Russ. ed.).
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Lenin, Part 2, Moscow, 1957, p. 75 (Russ. ed.).
318 up. The mass publication of socio-political books, literary classics and textbooks began. Lenin showed exceptional concern for libraries, which, in his opinion, were to become genuine centres of culture and politico-educational activity.The Soviet state made great artistic treasures the property of the whole people. Lenin initiated measures for the nationalisation of invaluable art collections (one of them was the Tretyakov Gallery^^61^^), and also for the protection of artistic and historical monuments. Soon after the Government's removal to Moscow Lenin gave instructions for restoring the most important historical buildings of the Kremlin. His was the plan of "monument propaganda'', which meant the decoration of Soviet towns and cities, above all Moscow and Petrograd, by installing memorials, bas-reliefs and other sculptures, whose purpose would be to propagate the ideas of socialism, show the heroism of the working people's struggle for freedom from their oppressors, and commemorate the great men of culture.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Consolidation of Soviet PowerIn the field of state organisation Lenin considered the consolidation of Soviet power in the provinces one of the most important problems at that period. In his articles and speeches Lenin repeatedly pointed out that the Soviet Government had no intention of belittling the significance of the local authorities and limiting their rights and independence. At the same time he resolutely opposed the parochial attitude and separatism, which he regarded as the resistance of the petty-bourgeois element to centralised proletarian state administration. He considered parochial tendencies to be extremely dangerous to the building of socialism and communism.
Lenin emphasised that rapid and accurate fulfilment of all the laws and instructions of the Soviet Government played an important part in organising and regulating the activities of the organs of Soviet power.
In order to inculcate and strengthen revolutionary, Soviet legality, Lenin told the Commissariat of Justice to draw up and put into effect measures for organising and improving the work of the people's courts. He demanded ruthless action against embezzlement of public funds and bribery, profiteering and rowdyism, swindling and parasitism. "'He who does not work, neither shall he eat'-this is the practical commandment of socialism. This is how things should 319 be organised practically"~^^*^^ he wrote. Lenin proposed stern measures against bribery.
Lenin foresaw that the peaceful breathing-space might be shortlived and considered it most important to strengthen the defence potential of the Soviet land. ``The Russian Soviet Federative Republic,'' stated a resolution, passed by the Fourth Congress of Soviets, on the ratification of the Brest Treaty, ``having unanimously condemned predatory wars, from now on deems it its right and its duty to defend the socialist fatherland against all possible attacks by any of the imperialist powers.''~^^**^^
One of the important planks in the Bolshevik Party's programme had been the demand for the replacement of the standing army by a people's militia. However, experience of the revolution in Russia, and the fact that the Soviet Republic, encircled by hostile capitalist states, encountered furious armed resistance by the landowners and the bourgeoisie, decided the new approach to the problem taken by Lenin and the Party. In order to defend the gains of the socialist revolution from encroachments by internal and external enemies the Party recognised the need to create a strong and well-equipped army of the Soviet state, an army of a new type. Unlike the armies of the imperialist states, which are the mailed fist of the exploiting classes, instruments for the enslavement of their workers and peasants and the peoples of other countries, the Soviet army is an army for the liberation of the working people, an army founded and educated on the principles of proletarian internationalism.
At first the Red Army was recruited from volunteers. But by the spring of 1918, in view of the necessity of repulsing the interventionists and whiteguards, the Communist Party and the Soviet Government began making preparations for the creation of a regular centralised army on the basis of compulsory military service. Thanks to the enormous work of the Party and the revolutionary enthusiasm of the people, by the autumn of 1918 a firm foundation for a regular people's army, the Red Army, had been laid.
The Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets opened on July 4, 1918. It was the scene of a sharp struggle against the Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries, who attempted to discredit the Soviet Government's policy, came out in defence of the counter-revolutionary parties, the Mensheviks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, demanded that the campaign against the kulaks be abandoned, demanded freedom _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 414.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 201.
320 of private trade in grain and that the Poor Peasants' Committees be abolished; they also called for repudiation of the Brest Treaty.In the Council of People's Commissars' report Lenin hit back at the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and exposed and refuted their slanderous allegations. ``The whole course of events has shown" that the Communist Party and the Soviet Government ``were right in concluding the Brest peace'', he stressed. During the peaceful breathing-space the workers and peasants had overcome enormous difficulties and taken a great step forward in socialist construction. Lenin explained the necessity for the emergency measures that the Soviet Government had adopted in combating the famine, and showed that the Communist Party was steadily carrying out a policy of alliance between the working class and the rural poor and all the working peasantry.
After keen debates on the reports of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars the Congress passed by a majority vote the resolution proposed by the Communist group expressing full approval of the foreign and home policy of the Soviet Government.
On July 6, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, defeated at the Congress, started an anti-Soviet revolt. With the object of provoking war between Germany and Soviet Russia they murdered the German Ambassador Mirbach in Moscow. The Congress was adjourned and on Lenin's instructions energetic measures were taken to put down the revolt.
Within twenty-four hours all armed action by the Left SocialistRevolutionaries was suppressed. Their criminal action roused the deepest indignation among the working pebple and united them even closer with the Bolshevik Party. ``The worker and peasant masses,'' said Lenin, "have been rallying ever closer and more solidly around the Communist-Bolshevik Party, the authentic spokesman of the will of the masses.''~^^*^^ When it resumed its work on July 9, the Congress of Soviets approved the resolute measures taken by the Soviet Government to deal with the Left SocialistRevolutionaries' criminal adventure.
The Congress completed its work with an act of great significance. It approved the first Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics. Lenin headed the commission of the Party Central Committee that was entrusted with the task of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 535.
321 making the final draft of the Constitution for submission to the Fifth Congress of Soviets. On Lenin's suggestion a ``Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People" was included in the Constitution as the preamble, an article on equality of nationalities and races in the Soviet Republic was added, and certain other articles were formulated.In a speech headed ``What Does the Soviet Constitution Give the Working People'', which he made at a meeting in Moscow, and in several other speeches and works, Lenin described the world-wide significance of the Soviet Constitution. He pointed out that the Constitution had not been invented by a commission, that it was not the work of lawyers; it was a record of the experience of organisation and struggle by the proletariat against the exploiters; it gave legislative confirmation to the great gains of the working people of Soviet Russia: establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, alliance of the working class and the working peasantry, public ownership of the basic means of production, and the institution of genuine democracy, democracy for the whole people. Lenin stressed the fundamental difference between the Soviet Constitution and the constitutions of countries ruled by exploiters. All constitutions that had previously existed, he said, stood guard over the interests of the ruling classes. But the Soviet Constitution ``serves and will constantly serve the working people and is a powerful weapon in the fight for socialism''.^^*^^
Clearly stating what the Russian revolution has achieved, the Soviet Constitution reflects the ideals of the proletariat, of the working people of the whole world. ``Our Constitution,'' Lenin said later, ``will always win the sympathy of the working people. The word `Soviet' is now understood by everybody, and the Soviet Constitution has been translated into all languages and is known to every worker. He knows that it is the Constitution of working people, the political system of working people who are calling for victory over international capital, that it is a triumph we have achieved over the international imperialists.''^^**^^
The great Lenin steered the Soviet ship wisely and steadily through the storms and stress of the first months of proletarian dictatorship. Everything he did bore the inspiration of creative work, of bringing new forms of life into being. At that time Lenin had already determined the basic elements in the plan for building _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 105.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 157.
322 socialism in Russia; the creation of large-scale industry, the switchover from small farming to large-scale socialist agriculture, the realisation of a cultural revolution.Lenin's plan for starting socialist construction and its realisation by the Soviet people have been of world-historic importance. The socialist revolutions in Europe, Asia and Latin America have confirmed that the measures envisaged in this plan form an essential stage in the realisation of the general laws of building socialism. This experience will not be forgotten, Lenin wrote of the Soviet people's first steps towards socialism. ``It has gone down in history as socialism's gain, and on it the future world revolution will erect its socialist edifice.''^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 413.
[323] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Eleven __ALPHA_LVL1__ LENIN HEADS DEFENCEA nation in which the majority of the workers and peasants realise, feel and see that they are fighting for their own Soviet power, for the rule of the working people, for the cause whose victory will ensure them and their children all the benefits of culture, of all that has been created by human labour---such a nation can never be vanquished.
Lenin
The policy of the Soviet Government showed that the Bolshevik Party was doing its utmost to maintain peace and establish normal relations with the capitalist countries, and to prevent a civil war.
But Lenin's plan of peaceful socialist construction was thwarted by the imperialists and the counter-revolution at home.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Struggle Against the InterventionistsAfter the international imperialists' hope that the Russian revolution would be strangled by the German armies had been shattered, the Entente Powers launched an intervention against Soviet Russia, that is, they interfered impudently in the domestic affairs of the Soviet people. It was "export of counter-revolution" camouflaged with specious talk about democracy, ``liberation'' of the Russian people from ``anarchy'' and "Bolshevik tyranny'', and "delivering Russia from the Germans'', etc. The Entente bosses revealed their true aims in secret documents. They wanted, by armed force, to saddle the Soviet people with the old system and to divide Russia into spheres of influence in order to continue plundering her.
By the summer of 1918, the Soviet Republic was in a ring of fire. The breathing-space was over. Two forces-world imperialism and domestic counter-revolution-had joined hands to fight the Soviet Republic.
The external enemies were the British, French, U.S., Japanese, and German imperialists, who wanted not only to restore landowner and capitalist rule in Russia and suppress the socialist 324 rcvolution, but also to enslave the peoples of Russia. Operating in alliance with the foreign imperialists were the internal enemies-the capitalists, landowners and kulaks, who viciously hated Soviet power and who, with interventionist backing, made a desperate attempt to re-establish the old order.
The bourgeois-landowning counter-revolution was abetted by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who, as Lenin wrote, declared that they were for Soviet power and against the military intervention of the Entente, but in fact aided the counter-- revolution: they urged the workers to strike and the peasants to fight against food requisitioning, preached the right to trade, and in many cases openly struck deals with the Whites and the interventionists.
The Russian revolution, said Lenin, showed again with absolute clarity that when their rule and property are hanging in the balance, the exploiting classes forget all about their talk of patriotism and love of independence, sell out their country and come to terms with any foreign reactionary forces against their own people.
International imperialism was the leading force in the counterrevolutionary struggle against the Soviet Republic. Owing to tremendous support from the Entente and to its guidance the Whites were able to carry on an armed struggle against the Soviet Republic for a relatively long time, that is, for almost three years. The Entente supplied them with arms, equipment, money and military advisers. The strategic plans of the Whites were drawn up by the Allied General Headquarters and were carried out under the direction of its officers. That is why Lenin said that international imperialism was to blame for starting and dragging out the civil war in Russia.
The U.S.A. was one of the principal architects, in fact the inspirer, of the anti-Soviet intervention, in which it took an active part. Lenin called American imperialists the hangmen of Russian freedom. ``At this very moment,'' wrote Lenin, ``the American multimillionaires, these modern slaveowners, have turned an exceptionally tragic page in the bloody history of bloody imperialism by giving their approval-whether direct or indirect, open or hypocritically concealed, makes no difference-to the armed expedition launched by the brutal Anglo-Japanese imperialists for the purpose of throttling the first socialist republic.''~^^*^^
U.S. bourgeois historians have been and still are at great pains to whitewash the American monopolists, to conceal their complicity in _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Work, Vol. 28, p. 62.
325 that infamous crime and mask the role which the United States actually played in the anti-Soviet intervention. But the facts expose them and bear out Lenin's conclusion.In August 1918, the U.S. Government issued a declaration justifying the Allies' military operations in Russia. In October a `` commentary" was prepared in the U.S.A. on President Wilson's `` Fourteen Points"^^62^^; it was in effect a programme for the destruction of the Soviet system and the dismemberment of Russia. France and Britain co-ordinated with the U.S.A. all their plans for anti-Soviet intervention. The American forces, along with the British, were the mainstay of the occupation regime in northern Russia. About 9,000 U.S. men and officers took part in the anti-Soviet intervention in Russia's Far East.
Voicing the designs of world imperialism, Winston Churchill announced a ``campaign of 14 Powers" against Soviet Russia. He said that the ``Bolshevik infant must be strangled at its birth''. But the imperialists did not realise that the ``Bolshevik infant" possessed the titanic strength of a Hercules. And just as the infant Hercules strangled with his own hands the terrible serpents which his enemy had slipped into his cradle, so the young Soviet Republic crushed the monsters of international and domestic counter-revolution, thus demonstrating that the Soviet system, born of the October Revolution, is invincible.
The Communist Party came forward as a great patriotic and internationalist force. It roused the working class and all working people of Soviet Russia to a revolutionary, patriotic war against the invaders and bourgeois-landowner counter-revolutionaries. It was a war for the socialist fatherland, for the Soviet Republic, the vanguard of the world army of socialism.
The Party Central Committee, headed by Lenin, became a real military headquarters, a collective body directing the defence of the country. Lenin guided all the vast and manifold activities of the Central Committee and the Soviet Government aimed at defeating the enemy. It was under his leadership that the Party worked out its domestic and foreign policy during the war, and solved important questions related to the Soviet armed forces, to army supplies, etc. He helped to draw up strategic military plans and map out their implementation. During the civil war Lenin proved himself not only a political leader, but also an outstanding strategist, a man conversant with the art of war.
Lenin worked under an incredible strain during the foreign military intervention and the civil war.
326On arriving at his office early in the morning, he began his daily work, as V. Bonch-Bruyevich, office manager of the Council of People's Commissars, later recalled, by going quickly through the documents pertaining to the military situation, and then marking on the map the positions and movements of the Red Army and enemy units. He carefully studied General Headquarters communiques and reports, as well as operational and politico-military information from the battle fronts. He was briefed exhaustively on the war situation and the Red Army operations. Furthermore, he kept in constant touch with the commanders of the various fronts and armies. The rapidly changing situation called for a prompt solution of countless war problems. Day by day Lenin did an enormous amount of work to ensure execution of Party and Government directives. He set an example of efficient leadership not only by attending to all the more important matters concerning the conduct of the war as a whole, but also by looking deeply into all that transpired on the home and war fronts.
At the same time he addressed numerous meetings, conferences and congresses to explain the country's internal and international position and the military situation to Communists, workers, peasants and Red Army men, to reveal the sources of the strength and invincibility of Soviet power, to describe the tasks facing the country, and to inspire the people to heroic deeds on the battle fronts and at home. He put forward the slogan: ``Everything for the front! Everything for victory!''
In the summer of 1918, the Soviet Republic was in an exceptionally difficult position. The interventionists had seized threequarters of its territory. The Eastern front, where the Whites had succeeded in capturing Syzran, Samara, Simbirsk and Kazan, became the decisive front. Lenin said that the fate of the revolution was being decided there. The Central Committee decided in the latter half of July to reinforce the Eastern front. Lenin held that the situation could be improved by sending Communists and class-- conscious workers to it. He broke down the parochialism and indiscipline of Zinoviev, Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, and certain other Petrograd leaders obstructing C.C. directives to dispatch experienced Party functionaries and Petrograd workers to the Eastern front. He kept in constant touch with the Eastern front, and gave advice and instructions.
And this soon yielded results. Thanks to the steps taken by the Central Committee, the Soviet forces on the Eastern front checked the enemy advance and then took the counter-offensive.
327Lenin also followed operations on the other fronts. He regarded the speedy suppression of the kulak revolts as a most important task.
The foreign imperialists and internal counter-revolutionaries resorted to the most infamous methods in their struggle against the Soviets. They conspired to overthrow the Soviet Government and to assassinate Lenin and other leaders of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. On August 30, 1918, Lenin addressed a meeting at the Michelson (now Vladimir Ilyich) Works. Later, as he was walking to his car, Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist, fired on him several times inflicting serious wounds with notched and poisoned bullets.
Lenin's life hung on a thread. One of the bullets had lodged in his left shoulder and the other perforated the top of his left lung. He lost much blood and his pulse was very weak. The heart was somewhat displaced and there was danger of blood poisoning. The doctors had their work cut out to save his life. Lenin himself remained cool. He reassured his relatives, comrades and doctors. He kept saying with a smile: ``It's all right. This sort of thing can happen to any revolutionary.''
The dastardly attempt on Lenin's life stunned the country. The Party, workers, peasants and Red Army men, all of the Soviet people, followed the information on Lenin's condition in the newspapers with anxiety. Letters and telegrams poured in, in which the working people wished him a speedy recovery. Resolutions expressing indignation were passed at the factories, in the villages, on the war and home fronts. The people demanded that the terrorists and bourgeois-landowner counter-revolutionaries be shown no mercy. The workers and peasants rallied even more closely round the Party and the Soviet Government.
Fortunately, Lenin had a strong constitution and quickly recovered from his wounds. As soon as he felt a little better he asked to be kept informed, if only in brief, of all important matters, and when the doctors insisted that he should ``forget all about work'', he replied: ``Not at a time like this.'' A week after he was wounded, he began sending telegrams with instructions on military matters.
On September 16, the doctors allowed Lenin to resume work. He attended a Central Committee meeting and next day presided over a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars. The press carried the last bulletin on the state of his health, to which Lenin added the following: "In view of this bulletin and the fact that I feel quite 328 well, I very earnestly request that the doctors not be bothered with telephone calls and questions.'' On October 16, Lenin went for a walk in the Kremlin grounds and was filmed for a newsreel. He was annoyed when he saw that he was being filmed, and did not stop objecting to it until he was told that the workers wanted to see how he was convalescing. The newsreel was enthusiastically received all over the country. The audiences rose and broke into prolonged applause the moment Lenin appeared on the screen. Many people wept with joy.
Lenin immersed himself in work, giving his attention to the more important and pressing matters. But before long he felt that the strain was too great for him, and on the insistence of his doctors he agreed to go for a rest to a place called Gorki, in the vicinity of Moscow.
Lenin and his wife moved into a small room in a wing of the big house. Lenin spent about three weeks in Gorki. Gradually, he regained his strength and his high spirits. He rejoiced at the good news from the fronts. He also rejoiced at the growing revolutionary movement in the capitalist countries, particularly in Germany, where there was a severe political crisis.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Proletarian RevolutionLenin regarded the absence of revolutionary proletarian parties in the West European countries and the fact that the working-class movement there was dominated by reformists as the greatest danger to the revolutions maturing in those countries. He was deeply angered by the articles Kautsky published against Bolshevism at that time, and especially by the book On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which distorted Marxism and denied the necessity for a socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Considering it essential to rebut attempts at distorting and vulgarising Marxist theory, Lenin, in October and November 1918, wrote his work, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. He consistently exposed Kautsky's revisionism and treachery and the monstrous theoretical confusion, the falsifications and subterfuges that were piled high in Kautsky's book.
Lenin showed that Kautsky was distorting the essence of the matter by presenting the contrast between the position of the Right socialists and the Bolshevik-communists as ``the contrast between 329 two radically different methods: the dictatorial and the democratic''.^^*^^ He explained that it is wrong to set ``dictatorship in general" against "democracy in general''. The essence of any state in a society of antagonistic classes is the dictatorship of the economically dominant class, which uses political power to safeguard the economic foundations of its rule and suppress its class enemies.
But while the dictatorship of the exploiting classes has been, and continues to be, forcible suppression of the overwhelming majority of the population, of the working people, the force employed by the dictatorship of the working class is directed against the exploiters, who are a negligible minority of the population. The main task of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin emphasised, is not violence but the establishment of a new, socialist system.
Just as there is not, and cannot be, an abstract dictatorship, there is not, and cannot be, ``pure democracy'', democracy in general. ``~`Pure democracy' is the mendacious phrase of a liberal who wants to fool the workers,'' wrote Lenin. ``History knows of bourgeois democracy which takes the place of feudalism, and of proletarian democracy which takes the place of bourgeois democracy.''^^**^^ Bourgeois democracy is a historical advance compared with feudalism. The working class, led by its Marxist parties, and all the genuinely popular forces in the capitalist countries must resolutely defend democratic rights against the onslaught of reaction and struggle actively for their extension and for an improvement of the position of the working masses. But there is another side to the question. We must by no means forget the limited character of bourgeois democracy, which under capitalism remains, and cannot but remain, a narrow, curtailed and hypocritical democracy for the rich, for the exploiters.
In his writings and speeches, Lenin unmasked American democracy, stressing that ``nowhere is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so openly corrupt as in America''.^^***^^ The persecution of internationalists, the lynching of Negroes, bloody reprisals against strikers by mercenary bands armed by the capitalists, the oppression and strangulation of small and weak peoples, and support for the most reactionary forces throughout the world are all indications _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 232.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 242.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 486.
330 that the highly-vaunted American democracy is in fact a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, wrote Lenin.In our day the ideologists of imperialism seek to deceive the people with fairy-tales about what they call the ``free world''. They extol ``Western democracy'', claiming that it has entered a new era, the era of ``normalisation and prosperity'', that there are no longer either antagonistic classes or class struggles in the U.S.A.-, Britain and other capitalist countries, and that the bourgeois state has established ``social harmony" and shows equal concern for all its citizens.
However, no matter how much imperialist propagandists and their revisionist yes-men extol the ``charms'' of bourgeois democracy, its essence remains, as before, aimed against the working people. In our day also bourgeois democracy has the same old characteristics of which Lenin wrote, that is, unlimited power of capital, exploitation of, and lack of rights for, the working people. What is more, the reactionary forces in the United States and other capitalist countries are assaulting the gains of bourgeois democracy, trampling underfoot the constitutional rights of the people, and resorting to fascist methods of rule.
Lenin contrasted bourgeois democracy with proletarian, socialist democracy. In so doing he explained that the dictatorship of the working class, which is essential for the building and full establishment of socialism is not and cannot be ``pure democracy" either. Moreover, there cannot be ``pure democracy" in a socialist society, because it still contains class differences and vestiges of capitalism. Nor must we forget about the class struggle on the international scale, the struggle of the two systems.
Until classes are destroyed all talk of democracy in general, the freedom of the individual in general, and equality in general is either self-deception or the deception of the working people and serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, the counter-revolution.^^*^^ Having come to power the working class cannot fail to restrict democracy for the deposed exploiting classes and cannot grant freedom to counter-revolutionary, anti-socialist forces which, together with world imperialism, are seeking to make use of democratic rights for the purpose of restoring capitalism.
But while restricting democracy for a mere handful of exploiters, the dictatorship of the proletariat impels unprecedented development and the expansion of democracy for the vast majority of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 242; Vol. 31, p. 393.
331 population, for the working people. Socialist democracy is the highest type of democracy. Unlike bourgeois democracy, which confines itself to a formal proclamation of political rights and freedoms, socialist democracy actually guarantees the exercise of the social and political rights granted to all working people freed from exploitation and moral suppression.Lenin revealed the genuinely democratic essence and tremendous significance of Soviet power, pointing out that it draws the masses of people into the ``constant and unfailing, moreover, decisive participation in the democratic administration of the state''.^^*^^
Lenin's book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky has played a tremendous role in the history of the international working-class and communist movement. Its significance is determined by the fact that in it Lenin, firstly, showed the danger of Kautskyism, Kautsky's distortion of Marxism in the spirit of bourgeois liberalism, and his distortion and debasement of the teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat; secondly, he thoroughly denounced the false, hypocritical nature of bourgeois democracy praised by Kautsky; and, thirdly, he revealed strikingly and fully the historical significance of Soviet democracy.
In The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Lenin thoroughly analysed the historical experience of the October Socialist Revolution. Exposing Kautsky's falsehoods, he restored the facts and the real meaning of the revolutionary changes effected by the Soviet state; he defined and substantiated the policy of the Bolshevik Party. He spoke with the greatest pride of the Bolsheviks' loyalty to proletarian internationalism. He wrote that the Russian Communists' tactics ``were the only internationalist tactics, because they did the utmost possible in one country for the development, support and awakening of the revolution in all countries''.^^**^^ What Lenin had in mind was primarily the revolutionising effect that their example and their achievements had on the liberation movement of the world. The proletarian masses in all countries, he wrote, realised ``more and more clearly every day that Bolshevism has indicated the right road of escape from the horrors of war and imperialism, that Bolshevism can serve as a model of tactics for all''.^^***^^
In 1918, the Soviet people celebrated the first anniversary of the October Revolution. On November 6, the Extraordinary Sixth _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 465.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 292.
^^***^^ [bid., p. 293.
332 All-Russia Congress of Soviets met in session. In the report on the anniversary of the revolution, Lenin described the progress achieved by the workers and peasants of Soviet Russia in building a new life. Next day he spoke at the inauguration of a temporary monument to Marx and Engels, and then started for Red Square with a column of working people. There he delivered a speech at the unveiling of a memorial plaque to the fighters of the October Revolution and in the evening attended a meeting and concert of staff workers of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission. The news of the German revolution, which had broken out on November 9, elated Lenin. The days when the first anniversary of the October Revolution was celebrated were among the happiest in Lenin's life, wrote Nadezhda Krupskaya. __ALPHA_LVL2__ Everything for the Front!In the autumn of 1918, the international situation changed radically. The Austro-German bloc lost the war to the Entente forces and had to surrender. The revolution in Germany led to the overthrow of the monarchy. A bourgeois revolution took place in Austria-Hungary. In the circumstances Lenin considered it possible to annul the predatory Brest Treaty imposed on Soviet Russia by Kaiser Germany, and the All-Russia Central Executive Committee revoked it on November 13, 1918. The course of events clearly showed that Lenin had been absolutely right in saying that the day would come when the Brest Treaty would be null and void.
The working people of the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltic Provinces, supported by the Red Army, rose up to expel the German invaders and re-establish Soviet power.
In analysing the lessons to be learned from the defeat of the German imperialists, Lenin drew the highly important conclusion that the imperialist predators, who start wars of conquest with an eye to attaining world dominion and strangling the freedom of other nations, inevitably fail. He commented on German imperialism as follows: ``It swelled out fantastically over three-quarters of Europe, became distended and then burst, leaving behind it an awful stench.''~^^*^^ At the same time Lenin disclosed the reactionary role played by the U.S. imperialists. ``The American multimillionaires were, perhaps, richest of all, and geographically the most secure. _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 157.
333 They have profited more than all the rest. They have converted all, even the richest, countries into their tributaries. They have grabbed hundreds of billions of dollars. And every dollar is sullied with filth: the filth of the secret treaties between Britain and her 'allies', between Germany and her vassals, treaties for the division of the spoils, treaties of mutual 'aid' for oppressing the workers and persecuting the internationalist socialists.''^^*^^ Lenin described the American imperialists as the gendarmes of Europe. ``They are crushing the revolution in Austria, they are playing the gendarme, they are issuing an ultimatum to Switzerland: `You'll get no bread from us if you don't join the fight against the Bolshevik Government.' They tell Holland: `Don't you dare allow Soviet ambassadors into your country, or we'll blockade you.' Theirs is a simple weapon-the noose of famine. That is what they are using to strangle the peoples.''^^**^^Lenin's words revealing the essence of imperialism's bloody actions ring true today, too, when U.S. monopoly capital has become the biggest world exploiter, the main bulwark of modern colonialism, and American imperialism is the centre of international reaction and acts as the world gendarme. U.S. imperialism is stifling the national liberation and revolutionary movements, imposing and supporting reactionary regimes in other countries, organising sabotage against the socialist states, unleashing war in various parts of the globe, and threatening the world with nuclear war.
Reporting on the international situation to the Sixth Congress of Soviets, Lenin warned that after defeating the Austro-German bloc the Entente would expand its intervention against the Soviet Republic. And, indeed, as soon as an armistice was signed with Germany, the Allied General Headquarters drew up plans for a speedy intervention. The imperialists of Britain, France and the United States increased their aid to the White armies, and sent large forces to Soviet Russia. The invaders dispatched their navy to seize the Black Sea ports and landed troops in southern Russia and Transcaucasia.
As the breathing-space in the spring of 1918 was very brief, the bulk of the work on building up the Red Army had to be carried out at a time of bitter combat against enemies. There was an acute shortage of officers and of arms, ammunition and equipment, while the imperialists and the bourgeois-landowner counter-revolution _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 64.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 209.
334 had an ample supply of everything. A superhuman effort had to be made to overcome the famine and ensure the functioning of the transport system and the war industry. Truly titanic measures were needed to supply the urban population and the army with bread.The enemies counted on the early downfall of the Soviet government. But they miscalculated. The Soviet people, led by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government headed by Lenin, found the forces and the means to surmount the unprecedented difficulties and clear the way to victory. The All-Russia Central Executive Committee proclaimed the Soviet Republic an armed camp. The country's entire political, economic and cultural life was reorganised to meet wartime requirements. ``Once things have led to war,'' Lenin said, ``everything must be subordinated to the war effort; the entire internal life of the country must be subordinated to wartime needs; the slightest hesitation on this score is inexcusable.''~^^*^^
To defeat the interventionists and Whites, it was above all necessary to increase the numerical strength of the Red Army. The steps taken by the Party and the Government ensured proper organisation of the Army units, and consistent centralisation of the control and leadership of Red Army operations. Lenin kept close contact with the Red Army rank and file; he often addressed the men leaving for the front, and spoke with front-line soldiers.
On May 11, 1918 Lenin was present at the taking of the oath by military units in Moscow. He gave a short speech on the difference between the old, tsarist army and the new, Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and on the need to defend the Soviet Republic. On behalf of the Government he congratulated the men on their taking of the oath of allegiance to the revolution and Soviet power and wished them success in the struggle against the enemies of socialist Russia.
Lenin knew the Red Army needed good officers. He often visited military academies, schools and student groups, familiarised himself with their work, looked through the manuals used by the future officers, and spoke to trainees.
In addition to the training of Red Army commanders, Lenin considered it necessary for the Soviet Armed Forces to use military experts and officers of the old army, but to keep them under the vigilant control of army commissars and Party groups. The course of the war proved this decision to be correct. Though some of the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 133.
335 ex-officers who had volunteered for service in the Red Army or had been called up turned out to be traitors, most of them were loyal to the people. Lenin took part in selecting prominent military experts and appointing them to key posts in the Red Army, and helped them in their work.Lenin assigned the army commissars, political departments and Party groups, which exercised Party leadership in the army, a leading role in consolidating the army, educating it politically and raising its efficiency. The Party sent its best men to the army as members of front or army military councils, army commissars of divisions, brigades or regiments, or members of political departments.
Lenin stressed that where political work was conducted with particular care there was no laxity among the troops, and army organisation and morale were higher and victories more numerous.
Lenin considered the leadership which the Party gave to be the source of the strength and invincibility of the Soviet Armed Forces. He said with pride that the Bolsheviks had created an army led by a vanguard of experienced Communists and that the Red Army was in the firm hands of the Party.
Lenin held that a high degree of political consciousness and iron discipline on the part of the Red Army men and the mastering of modern techniques and modern methods of warfare by the officers were essential if the Red Army was to accomplish its tasks. Military victory comes to those who are better organised and more disciplined and who use superior armaments, he wrote.
Lenin indignantly exposed the calumnies of the bourgeoisie and social-traitors about ``Red militarism''. The imperialists of the whole world, he wrote, attacked the Soviet Republic, and to repel them we organised an army which, for the first time in history, knew what it was fighting for. This is what was condemned as ``Red militarism"! Only fools or political swindlers trying to mislead the masses would accuse the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Government of militarism, Lenin stressed.^^*^^
Of the utmost importance along with the formation of a strong army, was the all-round consolidation of the Soviet home front.
The Communist Party and the Soviet Government succeeded in a short time in placing the country's economy on a war footing. In the incredibly difficult conditions of extreme economic dislocation and hunger, the Party and the Government, led by Lenin, devised and carried out a series of emergency measures known as the policy _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 66.
336 Lenin and Kalinin Phalli, 1920 Frame from a neivsreel, 1921) Lenin and GorkyThe acute shortage of food and manufactured goods compelled the Soviet state to abandon for a while the socialist principle of distribution according to labour and adopt what was in substance equalised distribution, in order to provide the Red Army and the urban population with a regular, albeit very meagre, ration.
In the face of formidable difficulties, the Communist Party and the Government organised the smooth operation of the home front. The Defence Council headed by Lenin directed the war economy of the republic; it ensured the manufacture of arms, ammunition and military equipment and the supply of food to the Red Army and the industrial centres, and took steps to improve the operation of the railways and combat the fuel shortage. The Council gave special attention to the war industry. Lenin was always kept informed on the work of the munition factories and saw to it that they were supplied with materials, fuel and skilled personnel. He encouraged the initiative of munition workers to increase output.
Lenin attached great importance to safeguarding internal security and strengthening revolutionary order. He called on the Extraordinary Commission and the working people to be more vigilant, to suppress counter-revolutionary subversion and espionage with a firm hand, to expose conspiracies and prevent sabotage.
Lenin saw the mainspring of strength for prosecuting the struggle against the interventionists and the internal counter-revolution in the political consciousness, high level of organisation and heroism of the working class and the determination of the working people to defend at all costs the freedom and independence of the Soviet Republic and the great gains of the October Socialist Revolution.
Lenin considered the fighting alliance, the friendship and mutual assistance of the peoples of Soviet Russia to be a cardinal factor in defeating the enemy. The Central Committee welcomed the wish of the independent Soviet republics to conclude a politico-military alliance, and on Lenin's suggestion adopted a decision on the military unity of the Soviet republics, providing for a single command, strict centralisation in the use of all forces and resources, and 337 unification of Red Army military supplies and the railway transport system. The proposal of the Central Committee was fully endorsed by the supreme bodies of the Soviet republics. The R.S.F.S.R., the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Byelorussia concluded a military alliance for the entire period of the socialist defensive war against the interventionists and White counter-revolutionaries.
Communists were sent to where the situation was most difficult on the war and home fronts. Lenin closely followed the course of the Party mobilisations. He took part in the distribution of the Party forces. When a Party official asked him what he was to make of his assignment to the Eastern front, Lenin replied: "Make of it what it is-a Central Committee decision. This is a time of war. Everyone should be where things are hardest."
Lenin worked indefatigably to strengthen the Party. A re-- registration of its members was carried out in 1919 to rid the Party of all the alien elements that had wormed their way into its ranks. At the same time Lenin called for reinforcing the Party with the most advanced workers and peasants devoted to the revolution.
We open our doors wide into the Party, he wrote, only to sincere supporters of communism, who are undaunted by difficulties and are prepared to make sacrifices and to give all their energies to the working-class cause. When more than 200,000 people joined the Party in response to its call during Party Week, in autumn 1919, at a particularly dangerous time during the civil war, Lenin assessed this as striking proof that the most reliable source of the Soviet power's strength and solidity lay in the innermost sections of the proletariat, in the genuine representatives of the working people.
``The mass of the working people are with us,'' he wrote. ``That is where our strength lies. That is the source of the invincibility of world communism. More new workers from among the masses for the ranks of the Party to take an independent part in building the new life-that is our method of combating all difficulties, that is our path to victory.''~^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Soviet Republic and the World ProletariatDuring the civil war Lenin wrote many letters to the workers of Western Europe and America, explaining the essence of the October Revolution and the liberative character of the Soviet people's struggle, and calling on them to act against the anti-Soviet _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 65.
338 imperialist intervention. On August 20, 1918, Lenin wrote his ``Letter to the American Workers''. In this compelling document he branded American and Anglo-French imperialism, and explained the tactics of the Bolsheviks and the great revolutionary changes carried out by the Soviet state.Giving a decisive rebuff to the slanderers, to the attacks of the bourgeois and Right Socialist press on Soviet power and the Bolshevik party, Lenin wrote: ``Let the corrupt bourgeois press shout to the whole world about every mistake our revolution makes. We are riot daunted by our mistakes. People have not become saints because the revolution has begun....
``For every hundred mistakes we commit, and which the bourgeoisie and their lackeys ... shout about to the whole world, 10,000 great and heroic deeds are performed....
``But even if the contrary were true - although I know such an assumption is wrong-even if we committed 10,000 mistakes for every 100 correct actions we performed, even in that case our revolution would be great and invincible, and so it will be in the eyes oj world history, because, for the first time, ... the real people, the vast majority of the working people, are themselves building a new life, are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organisation... For only through such mistakes will the workers and peasants learn to build the new life, learn to do without capitalists; only in this way will they hack a path for themselves - through thousands of obstacles - to victorious socialism.''^^*^^
Despite the flood of lies and slander that the bourgeois press directed at the Bolsheviks, the truth about Soviet Russia reached the hearts and minds of the working people of the whole world. A powerful mass movement in support of Soviet Russia developed in all countries. The men of the interventionist armies would not fight against the Soviet people. The workers went on strike, refused to load munitions for the Whites and set up Councils of Action under the slogan of ``Hands off Russia!''
The revolutionary upsurge in the West and the mounting protest movement in the capitalist countries against the anti-Soviet intervention proved to be a serious obstacle to the plans of the Entente. Not only were the imperialists unable to send to Russia large reinforcements, but they had to recall most of the troops already dispatched because a revolutionary ferment had started in their ranks.
The revolutionary sentiment among the foreign soldiers was _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 28, pp. 71--73.
339 promoted by the heroic efforts of the Bolshevik organisations behind the lines of the interventionist armies. In February 1919, the secretary of the French group of Communists in Moscow, Jeanne Labourbe, daughter of a famous lighter of the Paris Commune and herself an ardent revolutionary, arrived in Odessa to carry out underground work. She helped the Odessa Bolshevik Committee to set up a Foreign Collegium, which conducted extensive agitation among the French and other foreign troops. In March, the interventionists arrested Labourbe and shot her and other Bolsheviks. Lenin knew Jeanne Labourbe personally and paid high tribute to her valour. He said that her name was for the proletariat of France ``a slogan of struggle against French imperialism, for non-intervention in Russian affairs''.^^*^^ In April 1919, the sailors of the French squadron mutinied. They demanded an immediate cessation of the antiSoviet intervention, and asked to be sent back to France.As a result of defeats suffered in engagements with Soviet troops and the growth of revolutionary ferment in the ranks, interventionist units were hastily evacuated from the Ukraine and the Crimea in April 1919. The same happened later with the interventionist forces of Britain and the United States. As Lenin wrote, the attempt by the Entente to crush the Soviet Republic with its own forces, characteristic of the first stage of the international imperialist intervention in the internal affairs of the Soviet country, ended in failure.
``The victory we won in compelling the evacuation of the British and French troops,'' he said, ``was the greatest of our victories over the Entente countries. We deprived them of their soldiers. Our response to the unlimited military and technical superiority of the Entente countries was to deprive them of it through the solidarity of the working people against the imperialist governments.''^^**^^
The formation of international detachments, which fought selflessly in Russia against the interventionists and Whites, was a vivid manifestation of proletarian internationalism. The finest sons of the working people of other countries Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks, Serbs and Croats, Chinese, Bulgarians, Romanians, Germans, French, British, Americans, and others -joined the Red Army or formed their own units and gave fraternal aid to the Soviet people in their struggle for freedom and socialism. Lenin took an interest in the organisation of the international detachments, in their _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 172.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 211.
340 composition and numbers. In the autumn of 1918, the international detachments were reorganised into regular units of the Red Army. At a meeting of the Warsaw Revolutionary Regiment about to leave for the front, Lenin said that by defending in concert the gains of the first socialist revolution against exploiters, oppressors and plunderers, the revolutionaries of various nations were practising international brotherhood.For a number of years Lenin had been urging unification of the Left elements in the socialist parties and the setting up of a new, Third International. He put an accent on this task in 1918, when the rising tide of revolution brought about the appearance of Communist Parties and organisations in the capitalist countries. He launched preparations for a congress of Communist Parties, noted what parties should be represented, and formulated the basic propositions in its resolutions.^^*^^
The First Congress of the Communist International was held in Moscow early in March 1919. Fifty-two delegates from thirty countries took part. At first, before the decision to found a Third International was taken, the Congress functioned as a conference. On the proposal of a number of delegations the conference was opened by Lenin. His appearance on the rostrum was greeted with a storm of applause. The Congress delegates and guests expressed their recognition of the great services Lenin and the Bolshevik Party had rendered to the international working-class movement. The overwhelming majority supported Lenin's proposal to found the Third, Communist International immediately.
At the Congress, Lenin delivered a report on bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat. He stressed that the Communist Parties should proceed in their work from the basic premise that a socialist revolution was inevitable and that the bourgeois state would be replaced by the dictatorship of the working class, a state of a new type. The dictatorship of the proletariat, he said, is absolutely necessary for all the working people. It is only through proletarian dictatorship, he said, that the country could pass from capitalism to socialism.
The First Congress of the Communist International unanimously approved Lenin's theses on bourgeois democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Congress adopted the platform of the Communist International and addressed a manifesto to proletarians of the world, which Lenin signed on behalf of the R.C.P.(B.). In _-_-_
^^*^^ V. 1. Lenin, Collected Work.',, Vol. 42, pp. 119--21.
341 summing up the work of the Congress Lenin emphasised that Congress decisions embodied the gains the international proletarian masses had won through their struggle. The founding of the Third International was a historic event, because it provided the international proletariat with leadership in the struggle for the realisation of the age-old ideals of socialism.The fraternal parties founded the Communist International because they realised that unity of the world communist movement was essential. They were convinced that, as Lenin wrote, victory of the socialist revolution required complete confidence, the closest fraternal alliance and the greatest possible unity of action by the working class of all countries.^^*^^
Lenin closely followed the development of revolutionary events in the West. When Soviet power was set up in Bavaria, in a message saluting the Bavarian revolutionary government, he wrote of the necessity of setting up Soviets in the towns and villages, arming the proletariat and disarming the bourgeoisie, and of immediate measures to improve the conditions of the workers, farm labourers and small peasants.
The working people of Soviet Russia enthusiastically welcomed the proclamation of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in March 1919. In a radio message to Bela Kun, leader of the Hungarian Communists, Lenin pointed out the need for applying Marxism and the Russian experience creatively, and stressed that the Hungarian Soviet Government should practise proletarian dictatorship. In May, Tibor Szamuely, Commissar for Military Affairs in the Hungarian Soviet Government, came to Moscow. He was warmly welcomed by Lenin. Addressing the troops of Vsevobuch^^**^^ during their parade in Red Square on May 25, Lenin spoke of the victory of the revolution in Hungary and introduced Tibor Szamuely to the people of Moscow. It was with Szamuely that Lenin sent to Hungary his letter, "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers'', in which he explained the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
When the imperialists launched their intervention against Soviet Hungary, the Hungarian Soviet Government appealed to Lenin for help. True to her internationalist duty, Soviet Russia did all she could. Lenin issued a directive to the Revolutionary Military Council and High Command to work out a plan of military aid to, and maintain contact with, Soviet Hungary. Unfortunately, in view of _-_-_
^^*^^ See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 103.
^^**^^ General Military Training.
342 the situation that had arisen on the civil war fronts, the Red Army was unable to carry out this task. The imperialists, making use of the treacherous conduct of the Hungarian Right Socialists, crushed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. This was a heavy blow to the international working-class movement. But Lenin prophesied that the victory of reaction in Hungary would be only temporary and that it would open the eyes of hundreds of thousands of workers and spur them to fresh struggle, which would result in their complete victory.The fact that Lenin called for Soviet assistance for the German proletariat, which had raised a revolution, and for Soviet Hungary, is deeply significant. Despite the specious claims of the falsifiers of Leninism, this assistance was not ``export of revolution" but an effort to combat ``export of counter-revolution" by the imperialist powers. It was not a matter of imposing revolution on Germany. The revolution had already begun there. It was a matter of assisting the German people to throw off the rule of their own imperialists and of helping them against the Anglo-French imperialists if the need should arise.^^*^^ The question of helping Soviet Hungary also arose due to the interference of the imperialists in her affairs. Lenin believed that timely help to peoples who had risen to combat ``export of counter-revolution" and imperialism and to fight for national liberation, democracy and socialism was the internationalist duty of the socialist state and of the working people in all countries.
Drawing on the experience of the revolutions in Russia, Hungary and other countries, in a number of articles and speeches, Lenin developed the proposition regarding the variety of forms of transition to socialism in different countries, explaining that the means of winning power could not be the same in different countries, at different times and in different international situations. ``Marx,'' Lenin had written as early as 1918, ``did not commit himself, or the future leaders of the socialist revolution, to matters of form, to ways and means of bringing about the revolution. He understood perfectly well that a vast number of new problems would arise, that the whole situation would change in the course of the revolution, that the situation would change radically and often in the course of revolution.''~^^**^^
Lenin denounced the slanderous allegations of the bourgeoisie and the Right Socialists that a proletarian revolution must of _-_-_
^^*^^ See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 102.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 343.
343 necessity involve civil war, that it is bound to bring chaos and dislocation in its wake. He pointed out that the sole purpose of such allegations was to scare the people away from revolution. It was not the revolution but the imperialist war that had brought about such disasters as the destruction of industry, unemployment and starvation. As for the civil war in Soviet Russia, its instigators were the internal counter-revolution and international imperialism. If the landowners and capitalists had not offered such furious and desperate resistance, if they had not joined forces with the bourgeoisie of the whole world, Lenin pointed out, the revolution in Russia would have taken more peaceful forms.The ruling classes, Lenin noted, do not surrender their power voluntarily, and the greater or lesser degree of intensity of the class struggle, the greater or lesser extent to which the working class adopts violence during the transition from capitalism to socialism, depend not so much on the proletariat as on the resistance offered by the exploiters, and on the use of violence on their part. In countries where the bourgeoisie does not offer such furious resistance, he said, the task of the proletariat is easier; it is able to work without the violence that the imperialists and the internal counter-- revolution forced upon the Soviet state.
In Lenin's opinion, the non-peaceful form of socialist revolution was typical of the historical situation and the balance of forces then prevailing in the world. But Lenin also granted that in certain circumstances power could be won by the proletariat by peaceful means. This was evident from the early stage of the socialist revolution in Hungary, in 1919, where, as Lenin noted, the ``bourgeois government resigned voluntarily" and where the transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat was "incomparably easier and more peaceful" than in Russia. This, Lenin stressed, was a particularly important point for the working people of other countries, whom the bourgeoisie and the Right Socialists were trying to scare with the horrors of a savage struggle in the event of a socialist revolution.^^*^^
Lenin recalled Marx's proposition that in some countries a situation may arise when it would be advantageous for the bourgeoisie to agree to sell the basic means of production and for the working class to agree to ``buy'' them. Such ``transition to socialism (the transition which undoubtedly would be the most advantageous to 'the people', abstractly speaking),'' Lenin wrote, ``presumes an _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, pp. 388, 387, 271.
344 absolutely secure victory of the proletariat, the absolute hopelessness of the position of the capitalists, the absolute necessity for them to display the most scrupulous obedience and their readiness to do so''.^^*^^ But the peaceful transition of power to the working class, as the experience of the Hungarian revolution has shown, presupposes, in Lenin's opinion, a broad development of the working people's struggle against the reactionary forces, and resistance to the reformists who seek conciliation with the bourgeoisie and the landowners. No matter by what means the working class takes power, its aim is a revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into socialist society. In spite of the contentions of the reformists and revisionists, capitalism cannot grow peacefully into socialism. In all cases the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transfer of the basic means of production to the people is an essential requisite for the transition from capitalism to socialism.``Marxism,'' Lenin emphasised, ``which recognises the necessity for the class struggle, asserts that mankind can reach the goal of socialism only through the dictatorship of the proletariat.''^^**^^ This conclusion is a basic matter of principle for the entire international communist and working-class movement, for all Marxist-Leninist parties.
On March 16, Yakov Sverdlov, Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, died. His untimely death was a sad loss to the Party. Speaking at an extraordinary session of the A.R.C.E.C., Lenin described Sverdlov as an outstanding figure of the Communist Party and the Soviet state and a splendid organiser of the proletarian masses. In conclusion he stressed that the strength of the socialist revolution lay in its inexhaustible sources, and that the revolution replaced leaders who gave their lives for its victory by advancing ``groups of men to continue their cause, to continue along the road they pursued and to complete what they had begun''.^^***^^ At Lenin's suggestion, M. Kalinin was elected Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)The Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) opened in Moscow on March 18. Lenin delivered the Central Committee's report on its activities and spoke on the main questions discussed at the _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, pp. 360--61.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 355.
^^***^^ Ibid., p. 94.
345 Congress---the Party Programme, work in the countryside and the military situation.The Congress adopted the new Party Programme worked out by a commission under Lenin's guidance. Lenin drafted the main sections of the Programme. The new Programme defined the tasks of the Communist Party for the whole period of transition from capitalism to socialism and equipped the Party and the working class ideologically for the struggle in building a socialist society.
Lenin criticised Bukharin's proposal to delete from the general section of the Programme the definition of simple commodity production and pre-monopoly capitalism. He explained that this definition was necessary, because the policy of the Party with regard to the capitalist elements and the working peasantry could not be correctly framed unless the many economic systems of the transition period were taken into consideration.
At the same time, Lenin pointed out that if the Programme of the Communist Party was to have any international significance it had to ``take into account the class factors which are characteristic of the economy of all countries''.^^*^^ It should be borne in mind that "pure imperialism, without the fundamental basis of capitalism, has never existed, does not exist anywhere, and never will exist".** Even in the most developed capitalist countries pre-monopoly capitalism and small-scale commodity production exist side by side with monopoly capitalism. For this reason, socialist, bourgeois-- democratic and national liberation revolutions and peasant and general democratic movements merge in the world revolutionary process which is destroying imperialism.
It also follows that in order to define correctly the policy of the Communist Party with regard to the democratic movements, to substantiate the need for alliance between the working class and the non-proletarian masses, and to show the need for the proletariat to support democratic and national liberation movements, the Programme must contain a description not only of imperialism, but also of pre-monopoly capitalism.
At the same time Lenin pointed out that the basic questions of the Communist Party's home and foreign policy, the strategy and tactics of the world communist movement, should be regarded, first of all, from the viewpoint of the general development of society in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, of the transition _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 189. ** Ibid., p. 165.
346 from capitalism to socialism. The Programme gave an exposition of the substance of imperialism and described its tendencies, which make ``the collapse of capitalism and the transition to the highest type of social economy inevitable''.^^*^^Later developments have fully confirmed Lenin's analysis of capitalism and its highest stage, imperialism, set out in the Second Programme of the Communist Party. For this reason, the Twenty-- Second Congress of the C.P.S.U. saw fit to reproduce the pertinent propositions of the Second Programme in the Third Programme of the C.P.S.U.
The political section of the Second Programme contained a description of the Soviet political system, defined the tasks of consolidating the Soviet state and charted the development of socialist democracy. Lenin stressed that it was essential to draw all citizens into the administration of social affairs. He associated this task with the improvement of the living standard, a considerable reduction in the working day and with a rise in the general cultural standard. ``Transition through the Soviet state to the gradual abolition of the state,'' he wrote, is effected ``by systematically drawing an ever greater number of citizens, and subsequently each and every citizen, into direct and daily performance of their share of the burdens of administering the state.''^^**^^
Speaking of the Party's tasks with regard to the national question, Lenin resolutely opposed Bukharin's and Pyatakov's chauvinistic dominant-nation proposal to exclude from the Programme the point about the right of nations to self-determination. Only the granting of the right of self-determination to all nations, said Lenin, would secure the right kind of mutual relations between the working people of different nations, their trust of one another and the voluntary and equal union of the peoples. Consistently implemented, this principle would at the same time help to consolidate the international position of the Soviet land, promote the solidarity of the working people of other countries with Soviet Russia and support the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries in their struggle against imperialism. The Congress backed Lenin and rejected the anti-Bolshevik views held by Bukharin and Pyatakov.
The economic section of the Party Programme stated that it was necessary to develop to the utmost the country's productive forces _-_-_
^^*^^ C.P.S.U. in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Central Committee Plenary Meetings, 1970, Part 2, p. 40 (Russ. ed.).
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 156.
347 on the basis of a single state plan, improve socialist labour discipline and encourage the initiative and activity of the masses in economic development.The agrarian section oi the Programme envisaged a series of measures for the socialist reorganisation of agriculture. In his reports to the Eighth Party Congress, and in his speeches at the meetings and Congresses of Peasarrt Representatives, Lenin explained the necessity for collectrvising agriculture and the ways of doing it.
Lenin demonstrated that there was no escape from poverty for the small-scale farms. Only by uniting them and going over to largescale social production with the use of machines and scientific farming methods could the productivity of agricultural labour be raised and the well-being of the peasantry assured. The voluntary principle should be the basic principle of the collective farms, Lenin stressed. The peasants should not be forced to join collective farms but should be drawn into collective production gradually, by showing them the practical advantages of collective farming over individual farming. They must be convinced not merely by propaganda and agitation, but by seeing that collective and state farms are run better and by the latter's assistance to the local peasant population. The collectivisation of agriculture, Lenin pointed out, could not be realised spontaneously, without preparation. The Party and the Government must organise and direct it; the agricultural associations and co-operatives^^63^^ should be given full state support.
Lenin considered the creation of the necessary material and technical basis an essential condition for putting the bulk of the peasantry on the path of collective farming. ``If tomorrow,'' he said at the Eighth Party Congress, ''we could supply one hundred thousand first-class tractors, provide them with fuel, provide them with drivers-you know very well that this at present is sheer fantasythe middle peasant would say: T am for the communia' (i.e., for communism).''^^*^^
Questions of cultural development and of raising the living standard held a prominent place in the Party Programme. The Programme envisaged better supply of products, improvement of housing, reduction of the working day without a reduction in wages, public health measures and an extension of social security.
The Second Party Programme had a world-wide impact. It was the world's first Programme of a governing Communist Party, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 214.
348 defining the tasks and the ways of building socialist society. It constituted a new important advance in the development of revolutionary theory, and is a credit to, one might even say a scientific feat of, the Soviet Communist Party and, above all, its creator, Vladimir Lenin.The Programme of the R.C.P.fB.) was imbued with the spirit of proletarian internationalism and the idea of the unity of the national and international tasks of the working class. Lenin and the Party always regarded socialist construction in Soviet Russia as a great international task of the Soviet people, conforming to the interests of the working class of the whole world.
The decision of the Eighth Congress concerning Party policy in the countryside and its attitude towards the middle peasants was of utmost importance to the future of socialism in Russia. Already in the autumn of 1918, when the middle peasants had begun to swing over to the side of Soviet power, Lenin had expressed the idea that it was necessary to secure the support of the middle peasants and to pass from a policy of neutralisation of the middle peasant to a policy of a stable alliance with him. Taking into account the experience of the class struggle under conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, he advanced a new political slogan---``To come to an agreement with the middle peasant, while not for a moment renouncing the struggle against the kulak and at the same time firmly relying solely on the poor peasant.''~^^*^^
The theoretical propositions and practical directives set out by Lenin on the proletariat's attitude towards middle peasants alter the working class wins power are of the utmost importance, since middle peasants exist in all countries.
Lenin was greatly interested in the speeches made by provincial delegates to the Congress. When the chairman wanted to close the debate he supported the delegates' objections, and the debate was continued. He suggested that F. Panfilov, a peasant delegate, should be allowed to continue his speech after the time limit had expired. Panfilov described the situation in the countryside saying in particular that people who did not know the countryside or the needs of the peasantry were sometimes sent there as agitators. Panfilov recalls that during the interval Demyan Bedny took him to see Lenin. ``Thank you, old man,'' Lenin said, ``you have given us a lot of material.''~^^**^^ As always at congresses and conferences, Lenin _-_-_
^^*^^ V. 1. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 191.
^^**^^ Workers and Peasants of Russia about Lenin, 1958, p. 154 (Russ. cd.}.
349 mixed with the delegates during the intermissions, chatting with them about the situation in their localities and questioning them in detail about the life and mood of the middle peasants and the activities of the Communists in the villages.The military situation and military policy of the Party was one of the chief items on the agenda of the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.).
In a forceful speech at a plenary sitting, which dealt with the military question, Lenin stressed that priority must be given to the building of a regular army. The guerrilla methods must be completely eradicated and iron discipline introduced in the army. He laid special emphasis on the need for strengthening the proletarian nucleus and communist influence in the army. The resolution on the military question passed by the Congress laid the foundation of the military policy of the Communist Party.
The Eighth Party Congress ended on March 23. In closing it, Lenin made a short speech, which he concluded with the following words: "The seed sown by the Russian revolution is springing up in Europe. This imbues us with the absolute and unshakable conviction that no matter how difficult the trials that may still befall us, and no matter how great the misfortunes that may be brought upon us by that dying beast, international imperialism, that beast will perish, and socialism will triumph throughout the world.''^^*^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Decisive Victories of the Red ArmyThe year 1919 was a year of terrible trial and stress for the Soviet state. The counter-revolution had hurled enormous forces against the Soviet Republic. By the spring of 1919 the armies of the Whites and interventionists numbered more than one million men. The high command of the Allied Armies decided to strike a concerted blow with all the anti-Soviet forces and considered it necessary to ``undertake a general offensive from all the frontiers of Russia and directed concentrically towards the very heart of Bolshevism --- Moscow''.^^**^^
The enemy attacked on six fronts simultaneously. More than once the whiteguard armies, well armed by the Entente, came near to the vital centres of the Soviet Republic, creating a mortal threat to the revolution.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, pp. 224--25.
^^**^^ Historical and Diplomatic Archives.
350In this critical period Lenin's outstanding role in organising the country's defence was particularly evident. He wrote the important Party documents that became the programme for mobilising the Party and the people to defeat the enemy. Lenin called upon Communists and Soviet officials, upon all workers and peasants to brace themselves, to organise their work in a revolutionary manner, so that the Soviet Republic would actually become a united armed camp. Lenin set the Party and the Soviet organisations the task of explaining the situation to the people, of ensuring successful mobilisation, of carrying on agitation among the mobilised men and training them as quickly as possible.
Since he systematically received official military information and was directly linked by a thousand threads with the army in the field, Lenin was thoroughly conversant with the situation on the various fronts and in the armies. Lenin's writings, speeches and military correspondence contain a penetrating assessment of the situation and of the prospects of developing military operations, and reflect his ideas and precepts on the basic questions of strategy and tactics in the conduct of the war. Lenin's numerous telegrams and letters to the Commanders and the Revolutionary Military Councils of the fronts and armies, to the C.C. representatives and local Party and the Soviet bodies vividly illustrate with what profound knowledge he directed the defence of the Soviet state.
It stands to reason that Lenin was not a military specialist in the specific sense of that word. With his usual modesty, he used to say: "I do not claim in the least to know the science of war.'' But he had thoroughly studied military literature and had a good knowledge of the history of wars. Even professional soldiers were surprised to see how well Lenin grasped the most complicated and specific questions of warcraft.
His writings and military directives formulated the basic principles of new, Soviet military science, which conforms to the nature and tasks of the army of a socialist state, an army of a new type. He decided questions of military strategy proceeding from the policy and the tactics of the Communist Party. Strategy, he said, is subordinated to politics, and the two are most intimately connected. Lenin regarded the ability to determine the main military task and concentrate on carrying it out as the most important element of correct strategic leadership. Being thoroughly conversant with the political and military situation, he was able to see in time the importance of a particular front and where to direct the main attack. On the instructions of the Central Committee of the Party 351 and the Government the High Command worked out a plan for the counter-offensive of the Red Army, the carrying out of which with the support of the partisan movement helped to defeat the interventionists.
On August 24, Lenin wrote his ``Letter to the Workers and Peasants Apropos of the Victory over Kolchak'', in which he called upon the Soviet people not to rest content with the successes that had been achieved but to muster all their forces, crush and destroy the enemy, and drive Kolchak and the foreign interventionists from Siberia. Lenin pointed out the main lessons that all workers and peasants should draw from the experience of fighting Kolchak if they wanted to crush their enemies and prevent any repetition of the disasters of the Kolchak affair. It was essential, he wrote, to have a powerful Red Army, to lay in large state stocks of grain, to observe strict revolutionary order and the laws and instructions of the Soviet Government, not to forget that the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries had been Kolchak's accomplices and, above all, to consolidate in every way the alliance of the working class and the labouring peasantry.
In December 1919, the Red Army struck crushing blows at Denikin's army, liberating Kharkov, Kiev and the Donets coalfields, and launched a vigorous offensive in the direction of Rostovon-Don. On December 28, Lenin wrote his "Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine Apropos of the Victories over Denikin''. He called on them to rally all their forces to rout Denikin's army and complete the liberation of the Ukrainian workers and peasants from the oppression by landowners and capitalists.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Theoretical ProblemsWhile organising the struggle against the interventionists and Whites, Lenin did not interrupt his intensive work on theoretical questions. He re-read the works of Marx and Lngels again and again, studied political and economic literature and the history of socialism, followed the most important foreign newspapers and periodicals, wrote articles and pamphlets of great theoretical importance, and delivered speeches and lectures.
Lenin paid much attention to the work of the Yakov Sverdlov Communist University, the first higher Party school. He 352 participated in drawing up its curriculum and programme, and stressed that all instruction should be kept close to real life and practice. He frequently addressed the students of the University. In July and August 1919, he delivered two lectures on the state.
Lenin's attention at the time was focussed on the transition period from capitalism to socialism, on the dictatorship of the proletariat. In June 1919, he wrote his famous article, ``A Great Beginning'', dealing with the communist subbotniks. In the autumn, he drafted the datailed plan of a booklet to be called ``The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and wrote the article ``Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat''. His booklet, The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, was published in December 1919. In the spring of 1920, he wrote the articles, ``From the Destruction of the Old Social System to the Creation of the New" and ``From the First Subbotnik on the Moscow-Kazan Railway to the All-Russia May Day Subbotnik".
In these articles Lenin summed up the creative work of the people under the leadership of the Party, and the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and developed the Marxist teaching on the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. He elucidated the cardinal questions of the building of the new society. He emphasised the international significance of the experience of the dictatorship of the working class in Russia and considered it necessary to make that experience available to the Communists of other countries. The dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, Lenin wrote, had certain distinguishing features, because it had been established in a petty-bourgeois and economically backward country. But the basic forms of the social economy and the main class forces in Russia before the proletariat gained power had been the same as in any capitalist country, so these specific features would not affect the main issue.
Life has fully corroborated Lenin's thesis. However, there are people who call themselves Marxists but contend that Lenin's theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a purely Russian theory applicable only to Russia. All manner of revisionists and renegades from Leninism try in this way to belittle Lenin's great teaching, to narrow its importance and confine it to national limits. In reality the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the transition period from capitalism to socialism and on the dictatorship of the proletariat is a guide to action for the whole international communist movement, and takes concrete historical conditions into account.
Lenin wrote that this period is bound to combine the features and properties of both socio-economic formations and to be a __PRINTERS_P_353_COMMENT__ 23---826 353 period of struggle between the defeated, but not yet defunct, capitalism and the nascent communism. The social economy in this period has three basic divisions- socialist, capitalist and small-commodity production, which are respectively represented by three definite classes, the proletariat, which has become the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, and the petty bourgeoisie (mainly the peasantry), wavering between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
Since these classes still exist in the transition period, class struggle, contrary to the assertion of the reformists and revisionists, does not disappear, but changes its forms. With political power in its hands, the working class, far from ceasing the class struggle, uses the machinery of state to continue it.
One of the aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the attitude of the working class to its enemy, the bourgeoisie. Once in power, the working class must crush sternly, rapidly and resolutely the resistance of all exploiters-the capitalists, landowners and their lackeys. ``Whoever does not understand this,'' Lenin said, ``is not a revolutionary, and must be removed from the post of leader or adviser of the proletariat.''^^*^^ He stressed that use of violence is necessitated by the task of suppressing the resistance of the exploiting classes, and that once this has been accomplished, proletarian power would renounce ``all extraordinary measures''.^^**^^
Another aspect of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the attitude of the working class to its ally, the working peasantry. Developing Marx's teaching, Lenin reached the following important conclusion: ``The dictatorship of the proletariat,'' he 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 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 special feature of this alliance lies in the fact that the leading role in it belongs to the working class.
After gaining power the proletariat must overcome completely the wavering of the peasants and finally win them away from the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 388.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 328; cf. p. 223.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 29, p. 381.
354 bourgeoisie, draw them into socialist construction and set them on the path of large-scale socialist production. In order to do this, the working class must take into account the dual nature of the peasantry, it must distinguish between the working and the propertyowning peasant, the hired peasant worker and the peasant trader, the peasant who labours from the peasant who profiteers. ``What is needed to enable the proletariat to lead the peasants and the pettybourgeois groups in general is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of one class, its strength of organisation and discipline, its centralised power...'' Lenin wrote.^^*^^Lenin resolutely rebuffed the defenders of capitalism and all types of revisionists of Marxist teaching, who were distorting the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, claiming that it meant nothing but violence. How relevant today are Lenin's propositions aimed against the falsifiers of Marxism in the imperialist camp and their henchmen concerning the essence of the dictatorship of the working class!
``The essence of proletarian dictatorship,'' he taught, "is not in force alone, or even mainly in force. Its chief feature is the organisation and discipline of the advanced contingent of the working people, of their vanguard, of their sole leader, the proletariat, whose object is to build socialism, abolish the division of society into classes, make all members of society working people, and remove the basis for all exploitation of man by man.''^^**^^
Lenin foresaw that the constructive role of the proletarian state would keep increasing in the course of socialist construction.
Like Marx and Engels, Lenin believed that the dictatorship of the proletariat is historically transient, that it must not and would not exist for ever. The working class needs the dictatorship to create socialist society and to abolish all exploitation of man by man. ``This object,'' Lenin explained, ``cannot be achieved at one stroke. It requires a fairly long period of transition from capitalism to socialism.... That is why Marx spoke of an entire period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the period of transition from capitalism to socialism.''^^***^^ Here it is important to emphasise that, as Lenin saw it, the dictatorship of the working class would be necessary up to the final abolition of the exploiting classes and all capitalist elements, up to the transfer of the peasantry and all petty-- _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., p. 389.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 388.
^^***^^ Ibid., p. 388.
355 bourgeois strata to the path of socialism, right up to the building and establishment of socialism.In the years of Soviet power, Lenin developed his propositions on the functions of the state under socialism and during the period of the transition to communism, which he set out in his book, The State and Revolution. The socialist state, he wrote, ``is organising large-scale production ... on a national scale, is distributing labourpower among the various branches of production and the various enterprises, and is distributing among the working people large quantities of articles of consumption belonging to the state.''~^^*^^
One of the main tasks of the socialist state is to protect socialist property. ``The workers and peasants,'' Lenin wrote, ``must realise that the land and factories belong to them and they must be as careful of them as of their own property.''^^**^^ He considered it a veryimportant function of the socialist state to control the measure of labour and the measure of consumption.
At the same time, the socialist state plays a big part in guiding cultural development and educating the masses in the communist spirit. The socialist state ensures law and order and the defence of socialism. Finally, it pursues a foreign policy in the interests of strengthening socialism and developing the world revolutionary liberation movement.
Lenin considered the guiding role of the Communist Party as one of the most important law-governed regularities of the transition from capitalism to socialism and the development of socialist society.^^***^^ The experience of revolution in Russia and other countries shows that the role of the Communist Party after the gaining of power by the working class not only does not diminish, but, on the contrary, is greatly enhanced.^^****^^
``The dictatorship of the proletariat,'' Lenin wrote, ``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. The force of habit in millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force. Without a party of iron that has been tempered in the struggle, a party enjoying the confidence of all honest people in the class in question, _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, pp. 108--09.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 27, p. 225.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 44.
^^****^^ Communist International in Documents, Moscow, 1933, p. 108 (Russ. ed.).
356 a party capable of watching and influencing the mood of the masses, such a struggle cannot be waged successfully.''^^*^^Lenin strongly criticised leaders of the working class who, while recognising the dictatorship of'the proletariat in word, remained unable or unwilling to understand its significance and to put it into effect. ``The fall of the first Soviet Republic in Hungary (the first, which fell, will be followed by a second, which will be victorious) shows clearly how vast, how immense is the danger of evil,'' Lenin wrote. One of the main causes of this fall was the treachery of the ``socialists'' who ``went over to Bela Kun verbally and proclaimed themselves Communists, but who actually did not pursue a policy consonant with the dictatorship of the proletariat; they vacillated, played the coward, made advances to the bourgeoisie, and in part directly sabotaged and betrayed the proletarian revolution. Naturally, the powerful brigands of imperialism (i.e., the bourgeois governments of Britain, France, etc.) that surrounded the Hungarian Soviet Republic made good use of these vacillations within the Hungarian Soviet government and used the Rumanian butchers to crush it.
``There can be no doubt,'' Lenin continued, ``that some of the Hungarian socialists went over to Bela Kun sincerely, and sincerely proclaimed themselves Communists. But that changes nothing essential: a man who 'sincerely' proclaims himself a Communist, but who in practice vacillates and plays the coward instead of pursuing a ruthlessly firm, unswervingly determined and supremely courageous and heroic policy (and only such a policy is consonant with recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat)-such a man, in his weakness of character, vacillations and irresolution, is just as much guilty of treachery as a direct traitor.''^^**^^
The whole historical experience of the working-class movement and socialist revolutions confirms the profound truth of this conclusion. The practice of socialist transformations has shown that the taking of political power by the working class into its hands and the socialisation of the means of production create only the objective prerequisites, the objective possibilities for solving the many-faceted tasks of the creation and development of the new society. And how these possibilities are realised in practice depends first and foremost on the leadership provided by the Communist Parties, on their ability to solve the most complex tasks set by life in a Marxist, Leninist fashion.
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 44--45.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 354.
357 __ALPHA_LVL2__ ``A Great Beginning''Lenin's genius and his close grasp on life, his creative approach to Marxism and his extraordinary scientific foresight enabled him to see far into the future. He also reflected on ``a developed socialist society'', on the building of ``a complete socialist society''.^^*^^
In the early years of Soviet power the foundations of socialist society were only just being laid in our country. The first weak shoots of communism were only just appearing. But Lenin had the wonderful gift of discerning the new. He saw, appraised and supported all that was new and progressive in life. He observed these shoots and demonstrated their significance. After analysing them, he formulated fundamental propositions on socialism and communism and on the laws governing the emergence and development of the communist system. His article, ``A Great Beginning'', was particularly important in this respect.
On May 10, 1919, the workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway held the first mass subbotnik. After their working day was over, they repaired four locomotives and sixteen carriages without pay, and also unloaded several thousand poods of freight; what was more, their labour productivity was more than two and a half times the usual. Subbotniks were soon being held at other enterprises in various towns. They were the response of the working class to the call issued by the Party Central Committee ``to put your shoulder to the wheel in a truly revolutionary way''. The subbotniks were a vivid demonstration of the selfless labour of the proletariat in the rear and strikingly showed the creative bent of the governing working class and its devoted struggle to preserve and consolidate the gains of the socialist revolution.
In his article, ``A Great Beginning'', Lenin described the communist subbotniks as an event of great importance-as the ``actual beginning of communism". They showed what socialism and communism were and how the new society was to be built, demonstrated the conscious and voluntary initiative of the workers in adopting a new labour discipline, in developing labour productivity and in creating a socialist economy.
Lenin considered the development of the productive forces to be the rock-bottom problem in socialist construction and in the subsequent transition to communism. He stressed that a tremendous step forward in the development of the productive forces was necessary _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 78; Vol. 33, p. 468.
358 to bring about the complete abolition of classes, the elimination of the essential distinctions between town and country, between manual and mental labour, and to make it possible to realise the principle of communism: ``From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.'' In order that the productive forces can reach a level that makes the transition to communism possible, Lenin explained, the productivity of labour must be higher than under capitalism. ``In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system. Capitalism created a productivity of labour unknown under serfdom. Capitalism can be utterly vanquished, and will be utterly vanquished by socialism creating a new and much higher productivity of labour.''~^^*^^This conclusion was an important contribution to the Marxist teaching on communism. From it follows the idea of economic competition between the two systems: socialism and capitalism which was not only a matter of deciding the question of ``who will beat whom?" within the country, but also of starting a competition between the two systems on a world scale in order to surpass capitalism in the economic field.
Transition to communism, Lenin said, is impossible, unless we raise the productivity of labour. ``Communism'' Lenin wrote, ``is the higher productivity of labour compared with that existing under capitalism, of voluntary, class-conscious and united workers employing advanced techniques.''~^^**^^
In connection with the subbotniks, Lenin revealed the essence of communist labour and showed in what way it differs from labour under socialism. Socialism, he explained, presupposes social labour under the strict control and supervision of the state, which defines the amount of labour and its remuneration. Under communism, which develops as socialism becomes consolidated and which is the higher phase of the new society, labour will be unpaid work for the good of society performed without any thought of remuneration. Work will be an essential requirement of the healthy body. Communist subbotniks were the first embryos of such work.
Lenin considered it the prime duty of the Party and the Government to study the shoots of the new carefully and to tend them. He was quite sure that, given the support of the socialist state, ``the shoots of communism will not wither; they will grow and blossom _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 427.
^^**^^ Ibid. (Italics ours. The Authors.)
359 into complete: communism''.^^*^^ He pointed to the difference between the first and the highest phases of communist society and at the same time stressed the organic connection between them. He described socialism as ``not complete communism" and spoke of communism as ``the highest stage of socialism'', ``socialist society in its developed form" and ``socialism... when completed''.~^^**^^ Lenin foresaw the process of the development of socialism into communism and revealed its inevitability, essence and law-governed regularities. __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Breathing-space of 1920.In the fierce battles of 1919 against the White armies of Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin, and Miller, the Red Army defeated the main forces of the domestic counter-revolution and the interventionists. Soviet troops liberated the Urals, Siberia, the Ukraine, the North Caucasus and a considerable part of Turkestan. The Soviet land won a breathing-space.
The international position of the Soviet Republic improved. The Entente countries had officially lifted their blockade of Soviet Russia. The Soviet-Estonian peace treaty had been signed, followed by treaties with Latvia, Lithuania and Finland. Lenin pointed out that, in spite of their dependence on the imperialist powers, nearly all the small countries had refused to take part in their campaign, because they knew that the White generals, inspired by the Entente, were out to restore the Russian Empire and continue the policy of national oppression, while the Bolsheviks had proved in practice that they respected the independence and sovereignty of all peoples.
Lenin exposed the predatory nature of the policy pursued by the imperialist powers vis-a-vis the small countries. While paying lipservice to the freedom and independence of the small nations, the imperialists enmeshed them in financial, political and diplomatic dependence, dragging them into their military blocs and alliances, and trampling underfoot their national dignity and sovereignty. ``The Entente,'' he said, ``has already had its paws on each of the small countries. They know that when the French, American or _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 431.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 25, p. 471; Vol. 33, p. 404; Vol. 27, p. 147 and pp. 147--48.
360 British capitalists say, 'We guarantee your independence', that means in practice, 'We shall buy from you all the sources of your wealth and shall hold you in bondage.'~"~^^*^^To the foreign policy of imperialism, a policy of violence, intimidation and plunder, socialism counterposes a fundamentally new type of international relations. The Soviet state has always pursued a policy of peace, equality, respect of independence and sovereignty of all countries, and friendship and co-operation between the peoples. This, Lenin said, won the Soviet Republic the sympathy of all peoples and millions of allies in all countries. ``It means,'' he said, ``that our peace policy is approved by the vast majority of people all over the world.''~^^**^^ During the years of the foreign military intervention, the Soviet Government, on Lenin's initiative, repeatedly made peace proposals to the Entente Powers. The Seventh Congress of Soviets which was held in December 1919 reaffirmed the unswerving Soviet desire for peace and once again proposed to Britain, France, the United States of America, Italy and Japan, either jointly or separately, to begin peace negotiations at once.
Lenin described as a specific feature of the breathing-space in the early months of 1920 the fact that the military tasks had not yet been completed. The remnants of Denikin's army, under the command of General Wrangel, were entrenched in the Crimea. In the West, bourgeois-landowner Poland was threatening a campaign against Soviet Russia. In these circumstances it was impossible to demobilise the army. Moreover, during the winter of 1919--20 there was acute dislocation of the economy, the overcoming of which required intense effort. For this reason, Lenin emphasised the need to consider the specific problems of each period, and pointed out that the Party and the Soviet Government were compelled to resolve the economic problems by means of War Communism, by military methods. Hence, among other things, the various decrees on the use of Red Army units on the labour front.
In this period the Soviet state concentrated its work on the need to combat dislocation, restore the transport system, alleviate the fuel shortage, and overcome the food difficulties and gave much attention to cultural development and the work of the state apparatus. While dealing with these pressing problems, Lenin looked far ahead and pointed to the need for large-scale economic development and conversion to up-to-date industrial techniques. He _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 176.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 390.
361 suggested drawing up the first long-term plan for the development of the country's economy -- the state plan for the electrification of Soviet Russia.At Lenin's suggestion the Soviet Government set up a State Commission for the Electrification of Russia, which was instructed to draw up a plan for the economic development of Russia on the basis of the country's electrification. G. Krzhizhanovsky was made its chairman. About two hundred distinguished experts were enlisted to do the work. The purpose of the plan was to ensure the economic independence of Russia, the creation of a new technical basis, a large-scale machine industry. Lenin kept a close eye on the commission's work, read all its papers and helped it with his advice.
The Ninth Party Congress met from March 29 to April 5, 1920. It discussed the report of the Central Committee, matters of economic development, the trade union movement, etc.
Lenin sharply criticised the anti-Party ``Democratic Centralism" group, which was attacking the Central Committee line and rejecting the principle of one-man management in production established by the Soviet Government. He showed that though this group had demagogically called itself a group of ``Democratic Centralism'', its views had in fact nothing whatsoever in common with the Marxist, Bolshevik conception of democratic centralism. Hiding behind ``Left'' phrase-mongering, the ``Democratic Centralists" in effect opposed Party and state discipline, organisation, and firm leadership, and drifted into anarchy.
The Congress repulsed the ``Democratic Centralism" group and in the resolution ``The Immediate Tasks of Economic Construction" endorsed Lenin's propositions on the forms and methods of economic management.
On the last day of the Congress a group of delegates proposed that the closing session be devoted to a celebration in honour of Lenin's approaching fiftieth birthday. The proposal was met with tempestuous applause. Lenin, however, disapproved. He could not bear laudatory expressions about himself, and after two speeches left the hall. But the speeches continued. With great enthusiasm the Congress passed a resolution on the publication of Lenin's Collected Works.
During and after the Congress, Lenin spoke to the delegates and other comrades who attended it. In his memoirs, S. Budyonny fondly described his first encounter with Lenin.
``At last,'' he wrote, ``my dream was coming true. In a minute, maybe, I would see Lenin. What was he like, this Lenin, whom all 362 the ordinary people trusted so deeply, and whom they loved as their own father?
``~`What will I say to Lenin that will come from all the army men? How shall I greet him?' I wondered in a fever, and grew shy.
``In the meantime, Lenin approached us. He cast a penetrating glance at us. He proffered me his hand.
``~`So this is Budyonny?' he asked quickly, narrowing his clever eyes and examining me closely.
``~`Well, how are things, Comrade Budyonny?'
``I was confused and blurted out against my will:
``~`Good, thank God, Vladimir Ilyich!'
``~`In Russian that means very good. That's fine,' Lenin said. `So you said ``Thank God'',' he repeated, and laughed loudly and contagiously.
``My timidity vanished at once and I felt at ease.''~^^*^^
In the ensuing conversation Lenin questioned Budyonny exhaustively about the mood of the army men and the state of political work in the units, and told him about the internal and international situation. He spoke of the labour enthusiasm of the workers, and warned Budyonny of the danger of an attack by bourgeois-- landowner Poland on the Soviet country, adding that the republic had to be prepared to repel it.
Lenin considered Budyonny's rise as giving striking evidence that the Red Army was a genuinely popular army and that the revolution had brought up gifted generals from among the people.
``The main thing is,'' Lenin told Budyonny in December 1920, ``that the time has come when men from among the ordinary folk are beating the bourgeois generals. Let the imperialists feel this. You have given them a good lesson.''^^**^^
On April 22, 1920, the Communist Party and the whole Soviet people joyfully celebrated the fiftieth birthday of their leader and teacher. Lenin received many letters and telegrams containing touching congratulations and good wishes. On April 23, the Moscow Party Committee held a special meeting to mark the date. Lenin did not arrive until the meeting was nearly over. Responding to insistent requests, he made a short speech entirely dedicated to the Communist Party. Lenin stressed the big role and responsibility of the Bolshevik Party in view of the world-wide importance of the Russian revolution and the fact that Russia's working class had _-_-_
^^*^^ Pravita No. 53, February 22, 1963.
^^**^^ Sec S. M. Budyonny, The Travelled Path, Moscow, 1958, p. 280 (Russ. ed.).
363 become the vanguard of the international liberation movement of working people and was blazing the trail for mankind to a happy future. Lenin made a note of the war victories, but warned the Party against complacency. Complacency was a danger, he said, which every Communist, and the Party as a whole, should appreciate, and doubly so because still more difficult tasks, the creative tasks which ``constitute the substance of the socialist revolution'', lay ahead. Lenin hoped that the Bolsheviks would never be a party of complacent people.At the very beginning of his political activity Lenin denounced the personality cult, which is alien to Marxism, the ``theory'' of heroes and the crowd. He was convinced that socialism would be victorious, because he had deep faith in the people and, above all, the political consciousness and organisation of the working class. He regarded the working people as the true makers of history. Lenin pointed out that Marxism did not at all deny the important role of the leaders of the working class. He criticised those who refused to accept this and demagogically opposed the masses and parties to the leaders. ``Political parties,'' Lenin wrote, ``as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions and are called leaders.'' The proletariat, too, needed ``thoughtful, experienced and knowledgeable political leaders'', Lenin pointed out, stressing the importance of ``party organisation and of party leaders worthy of the name''.^^*^^ Lenin noted that to deny the necessity of working-class leaders and of the prestige of correct leadership was tantamount to denying organisation, party allegiance and party discipline.
However, only those who lean on the people, on the Party, who are conscious that they are doing the will of the people and are responsible to them, who always uphold the principle of collective leadership, can be real working-class leaders.
In Lenin's opinion it is wrong to associate the achievements of the Party and the people with the name of one man. He put down all the victories over domestic and external enemies, all the successes in socialist development to the heroic struggle, the devoted labour of the working class, the people, under the leadership of the Communist Party.
Lenin objected strongly to any adulation of his own personality, to praise of his services, and was always annoyed to see such things. _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 41, 52 and 68.
364 In September 1918, Lenin summoned a few leading comrades and told them roughly the following:``I note with deep dissatisfaction that my person is being glorified. This is annoying and harmful. All of us know that personalities have nothing to do with it. It would be awkward for myself to prohibit that sort of thing. There would also be something ridiculous and pretentious about it. It is up to you to put the brakes on unobtrusively.''~^^*^^
Or this other fact. In 1920, the commission collecting material on the history of the R.C.P.(B.) and the October Revolution decided to begin collecting exhibits for a Lenin Museum. Lenin categorically forbade this and told Olminsky, who had reported the decision to him: ``You can't imagine how unpleasant I find the constant promotion of my personality.''
Lenin's extraordinary modesty was evident at all times. To the cameraman who had been taking pictures of him on Vsevobuch Day he said: ``Take fewer pictures of me and more of those who are going to listen to me, the comrades who are going off to the front.'' Lenin's modesty is also illustrated by the following. He knew several languages, he wrote and spoke at Comintern congresses and chatted to the delegates in German, English and French, read Polish and Italian, and could understand Czech and Swedish. But in a questionnaire, in answer to the question, ``What languages do you know?" he replied: ``English, German, French --- badly, Italian---very badly.''
Lenin never broke the accepted rules and considered that they applied to him as much as to anyone else. When he asked the library of the Rumyantsev Museum (now the Lenin State Library) to send him Greek dictionaries, philosophical dictionaries and some books on philosophy, he wrote: "If, according to the rules, reference publications are not issued for home use, could not one get them for an evening, for the night, when the Library is closed. I will return them by the morning.''
During the famine of the civil war, peasants, Red Army men and people in the provinces, concerned for Lenin's health, sent him food parcels containing white flour, bacon, eggs and fruit, but Lenin readdressed them all to hospitals and children's homes, and to needy comrades.
Lenin's close contact with the working people gave him a profound understanding of their needs. Lenin was quick to respond to _-_-_
^^*^^ Izvestia No. 38, February 14, 1960 (from A. Lunacharsky's Remembrances).
365 reports from the provinces and from workers about food distress, and took immediate action. He did not tolerate an irresponsible or callous attitude to this matter.Lenin showed particular concern over food supplies for children. In 1919, the hardest year of all, decrees which he initiated were passed providing for free meals for children. ``We, adults, will go hungry,'' he said, "but we shall give the last pinch of flour, the last lump of sugar and the last piece of butter to the children. It is better for the burden of these hard times to be borne by adults; the children must be spared in every possible way.''~^^*^^
The working people had a warm affection for their leader and showed touching solicitude for him as someone near and dear to them. One day a Red Army man came to the Kremlin and handed in for Lenin half of his loaf of bread. ``Let him have something to eat,'' he said. ``These are hungry times.''
The Party and all the working people of the Soviet country made the most of the breathing-space in 1920 to heal the grave wounds inflicted by the war, to restore factories and transport, and to revive agriculture.
The Soviet people celebrated May Day with great political and labour enthusiasm. That day an All-Russia subbotnik was held. Lenin himself took part in it by helping the Kremlin Military School trainees to clear building materials out of the Kremlin. After the subbotnik he made a speech at the laying of the foundation stone for a memorial to Karl Marx in Theatre Square (now Sverdlov Square). A monument to the founder of scientific communism rises today on the spot where Lenin laid the first stone. It stands as a token of deep respect and of the gratitude that the Communist Party and the Soviet people feel to the great leader and teacher of the working class and all the working people of the world.
That same day, Lenin spoke at the laying of the foundation stone for a monument of Liberated Labour, visited the proletarian districts, spoke at workers' meetings. That day he was gay and smiling and wore a scarlet ribbon in his buttonhole; he was in a festive mood, very erect and looked young in spite of his fifty years. His speeches, vivid, full of invincible faith in the victory of the Soviet people, cheered and inspired the working people to new victories in the name of communism.
_-_-_^^*^^ N. A. Srmashko, Reminiscences of Lenin, Moscow, 1933, p. 28 (Russ. ed.).
366 __ALPHA_LVL2__ ``Left-Wing'' Communism --- an Infantile DisorderWhile directing the Communist Party and the Soviet state, Lenin devoted much attention to the problems of the international working-class and communist movement.
The Communist Parties grew and gained strength in the fierce struggle against opportunism. Lenin saw the worst danger for the working-class movement in Right opportunism, reformism and revisionism. ``Opportunism,'' he said, ``is our principal enemy. Opportunism in the upper ranks of the working-class movement is bourgeois socialism, not proletarian socialism. It has been shown in practice that working-class activists who follow the opportunist trend are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeois themselves. Without their leadership of the workers, the bourgeoisie could not remain in power.''~^^*^^ Opportunism, Lenin emphasised, must be stamped out in all parties. That was the main task. Lenin also tirelessly exposed the Centrists, who did not want to break with the avowed opportunists, and were indulgent towards their actions.
In May 1920, a delegation of British workers visited Soviet Russia. In a conversation with this delegation and in his ``Letter to the British Workers'', which he gave them to take back to Britain, Lenin branded the reactionary trade union leaders as ``faithful servants of the capitalists" and showed that on all sorts of specious pretexts they supported the imperialist policy of the British Government, condoned Britain's intervention against the Soviet Republic, maligned the Soviet system and opposed the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. He explained that sincere supporters of the emancipation of the workers from the capitalist yoke would not oppose the founding of a Communist Party, which alone was capable of educating the workers in a non-bourgeois, non-petty-- bourgeois manner, and really exposing the social-traitors.
The talk with Lenin made a deep impression on the members of the delegation. In a letter to Lenin, Ben Turner, a prominent member of the Labour Party and leader of the delegation, wrote: ``It has been to one a wonderful example of determined and scientific attempts to build a Workers' Republic. That you will succeed I am sure. That you succeed in making the New Socialist State is my heartfelt wish.''^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 231.
^^**^^ Kommuni.it No. 3, I960, p. 7.
367During April and May 1920, Lenin wrote his book, ``Left-Wing'' Communism an Infantile Disorder, which was published in June and July in Russian, English, German and French.
Lenin regarded it as the object of his book to examine the Russian experience in connection with certain current problems of international communist tactics, and to apply to the tasks and policy of the Communist Parties of other countries ``whatever is universally practicable, significant and relevant in the history and the presentday tactics of Bolshevism''.^^*^^
The experience of revolutionary struggle of the Bolshevik Party against tsarism and capitalism was of great importance for the organisation and ideological and political strengthening of the Communist Parties in other countries. The young Communist Parties did not yet possess the ability to work in the masses, their activity was affected by the burden of old Social-Democratic traditions.
At the same time the hatred for Right opportunism coupled with the lack of the necessary Marxist tempering caused many Communists to turn to petty-bourgeois ``revolutionism'' and sectarianism, that is, in the direction of ``Left'' opportunism. This found expression in the ``Lefts'\thinspace'' incorrect understanding of the relations between the Communist Party and the masses, their refusal to make use of legal means of struggle, in particular, the parliamentary platform, their ignoring of work in reactionary trade unions and cooperatives, and their refusal to see the contradictions in the enemy camp and to make any compromises.
This position of the ``Lefts'' was fraught with serious danger for Marxist parties. They could become divorced from their class basis, lose their connection with the masses and thereby deprive themselves of their main source of strength.
The social basis of ``Leftism'' is the broad stratum of petty proprietors. The petty bourgeoisie, Lenin pointed out, which under capitalism experiences constant oppression and frequently a sharp and sudden deterioration of life, easily goes over to extreme revolutionism, but is not capable of showing stamina, organisation, staunchness and discipline.
Subjectivism in appraising events, the lack of an objective approach to the prevailing situation and the conditions of the struggle, and a desire to skip stages of advance, Lenin indicated, are the distinctive features of ``Left'' opportunism. These features, he said, prompted the ``Lefts'' to reckless, unconsidered action.
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 47.
368Lenin taught that the policy and tactics of the Party must be based on a sober, strictly objective assessment of ail the class forces of a given state and other states, and also on the assessment of the experience of the revolutionary movement on a world scale. He scathingly criticised the dogmatism of the ``Lefts'' for their refusal to consider the changing situation, to develop and apply revolutionary theory creatively, and to make the most of arising opportunities in the interests of the working class. Communist Parties, Lenin pointed out, have to be flexible to the utmost in their tactics. They must have command of all the means of struggle, of ``all forms or aspects of social activity without exception'', impart new content to old forms and devise new forms of work, combine illegal and legal methods of struggle, and be ready ``for the most rapid and brusque replacement of one form by another'', to know the moods of the masses, must not rush on ahead, but also not lag behind the mass movement.
Lenin called the errors of the ``Lefts'' the ``infantile disorder of 'Left-wing' communism" and described them as errors of the growth of young, inexperienced Communist Parties, which had not yet been through the school of revolutionary struggle and not yet mastered all the forms and methods of work in the masses. He regarded the overcoming of ``~'Left-wing' communism" as an important and urgent task.
Lenin developed the proposition about the relation of the international to the national elements in the working-class movement, about the common objective laws governing socialist revolution and the distinctive features of the revolutionary movement in the various countries. The basic principles of communism, he wrote, are the same for the entire international working-class movement. But when making what are actually the same preparations for victory over the bourgeoisie, the working-class movement of every country does so in its own way. The struggle of the proletariat in every individual country has had and must inevitably have its own specific peculiarities, depending on its economy, its policy, its culture, the national composition of its population, religious divisions, historical traditions, and so on.
Communist Parties should take account of these peculiarities in their policy. Yet their role must not be exaggerated. The general law-governed regularities of the socialist revolution and socialist construction are of decisive importance. Unity of the international tactics of the communist working-class movement calls for ``the application of the fundamental principles of communism (Soviet __PRINTERS_P_369_COMMENT__ 24---826 369 power and the dictatorship of the proletariat), which will correctly modify these principles in certain particulars, correctly adapt and apply them to national and national-state distinctions''.^^*^^
Lenin's great service to the international working-class movement was that, having very early detected ``Left'' opportunism in the young Communist Parties, he revealed its harm and danger to the socialist revolution. He demonstrated that dogmatism and sectarianism were liable to do grave damage not only to a party but also to the world communist movement as a whole if they were not combated with due firmness.
``~`Left-Wing' Communism - an Infantile Disorder'' is one of the most outstanding creations of Lenin's genius and constitutes an invaluable contribution to the treasury of Marxism-Leninism. It is a model of creative Marxist theory employed in accomplishing the cardinal strategic and tactical tasks of the Communist Parties in all countries. The ideas Lenin set forth in it are of the utmost importance for the world communist movement. They are used by the Marxist-Leninist parties, and help them in the struggle for peace, for democracy, for socialism and communism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Second CongressThe Second Congress of the Comintern opened in Petrograd on July 19, 1920. It continued its work in Moscow from July 23. Lenin drafted the principal Congress resolutions-the theses on the basic tasks of the Communist International, on the national and colonial questions, the agrarian question, and also on the conditions for affiliation to the Comintern. On the opening day he and other delegates placed wreaths on the graves of the fighters for the revolution on the Field of Mars and later spoke at a meeting dedicated to the founding of a memorial to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
Just as the Congress began, an incident occurred that made a deep impression on everyone. Lenin, who had been sitting on the platform and scanning the hall, suddenly stepped down and walked up the aisle towards the back rows, where he saw an old comrade-- inarms, V. Shelgunov, a Petrograd worker revolutionary who had gone blind. They warmly embraced each other. All the delegates rose and showed their appreciation with long applause.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 92.
370At the Congress, Lenin delivered a report on the international situation and the fundamental tasks of the Comintern, took part in the work of a number of commissions, delivered the report of the commission on the national and colonial questions, and also addressed the Congress on other matters. His reports and speeches contained a deep-going analysis of the international economic and political situation and advanced extremely important propositions concerning the general crisis of the world capitalist system brought about by the First World War and the October Revolution. Lenin described this crisis as the period of the world-wide collapse of capitalism, the period of birth of socialist society. He defined the main features of the general crisis of capitalism - the division of the world into two systems, aggravation of economic contradictions and class struggle in the capitalist countries, and crisis of the imperialist colonial system.
The point pf departure for the Communist Parties of all countries, Lenin pointed out, was the appearance of the socialist system, the Soviet Socialist Republics. All developments of world politics, he said, hinge on the struggle of the two systems.
It was up to the Congress, he went on, to determine the position of the Communists in the situation created by this crisis. The main task of the day was to unite the communist forces, establish Communist Parties in every country and invigorate those already in existence, purge them of opportunist and Centrist elements, and step up revolutionary work in the thick of the working class, in the countryside and in the army.
The Congress passed the resolution on the role of the Communist Party in the proletarian revolution which confirmed the role of the Communist Party as the guiding force in the struggle of the working class, the struggle for state power and the triumph of communism, and characterised the principles of party structure and activity.
I enin emphasised that the Communist Party must be truly communist, truly political proletarian party. This was determined both by the composition of the party, ``whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers'', and also by ``the men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics. Only the latter determines whether we really have before us a political party of the proletariat.''~^^*^^
Sharp discussions developed in the Congress commissions on the agrarian and the national and colonial questions. Many delegates _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 257--58.
371 had incorrect views, inherited from the Second International, concerning these questions. Lenin took an active part in these debates, criticised erroneous propositions and helped the delegates to adopt a correct standpoint. Lenin's theses on the agrarian question, which the Congress adopted, stressed the necessity for an alliance between the working class and the labouring peasantry, maintained the idea of the leading role of the proletariat, and defined the tasks of the Communist Parties with regard to the various strata of the peasantry, both in the period of the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution and after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.Lenin attached enormous importance to the discussion of the national and colonial question. The Great October Socialist Revolution had given a powerful impetus to the national liberation movements in China, India, Indonesia, and other colonial and dependent countries. ``The period of the awakening of the East in the contemporary revolution is being succeeded by a period in which all the Eastern peoples will participate in deciding the destiny of the whole world, so as not to be simply objects of the enrichment of others. The peoples of the East are becoming alive to the need for practical action, the need for every nation to take part in shaping the destiny of all mankind.''~^^*^^
Lenin followed developments in the Asian countries very closely. The Chinese Communist Liu Zerong, who was at that time Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the LInion of Chinese Workers in Russia, recalls a conversation he had with Lenin in November 1919: ``He greeted me as warmly as he had the first time. Throughout our talk I was constantly aware of the fascinating charm of this great man. Lenin questioned me about China, about the Chinese revolution. I was young and a long way from understanding international politics, and I knew too little about events in China to be able to tell him anything new or interesting.
``But I brought away many valuable impressions from my talk with Vladimir Ilyich, from whom I heard a number of profound ideas concerning the future of China, the Chinese people's struggle against imperialism, and the importance of bringing together the peoples of China and Soviet Russia.''^^**^^
The Indian national liberation movement gathered strength under the influence of the October Revolution. A meeting of Indian _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 160.
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 5, Moscow, 1979, p. 241 (Russ. ed.).
372 revolutionaries was held on February 17, 1920. It passed a resolution, which was sent to Lenin, expressing profound gratitude to Soviet Russia for carrying on the great struggle for the liberation of the oppressed classes and peoples. In his reply to the Indian Revolutionary Association, Lenin wrote: ``I am glad to hear that the principles of self-determination and the liberation of oppressed nations from exploitation by foreign and native capitalists, proclaimed by the Workers' and Peasants' Republic, have met with such a ready response among progressive Indians, who are waging a heroic fight for freedom.'' Calling for close alliance between Moslems and non-Moslems, for solidarity of the working people of the East in the common struggle against the oppressors, he concluded his greetings with the words: ``Long live a free Asia!"^^*^^Lenin elucidated a number of important questions regarding the national liberation movement under new conditions in his report to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organisations of the Peoples of the East in November 1919.
He branded the policy of plunder and oppression pursued by the imperialist powers in the colonial and dependent countries, and warmly welcomed the national liberation movement in the East. Proceeding from the experience of the Soviet state, which was successfully beating off the armed attack of the powerful imperialist countries, he concluded that the difficult struggle for liberation of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries would be crowned with complete success. No matter how weak these peoples were, he said, or how invincible the power of the imperialist oppressors with their command of all the wonders of technology and military science seemed to be, the oppressed peoples' revolutionary war, if it really succeeded in awakening the millions of toilers and exploited, had such potentialities that the liberation of the peoples of the East became quite practicable.
Lenin set the Communist Parties and organisations of the peoples of the East the task of skilfully applying the general theory and practice of communism to the specific conditions of their own countries, where the bulk of the population were peasants and where the vestiges of medieval tyranny were yet to be destroyed. He urged that the communist teaching be translated into a language every people could understand, so that it would rouse to revolutionary activity the most backward peoples, who would merge with the workers of other countries in common struggle.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 138.
373Lenin pointed out to the Communists of the countries of the East: ``You will have to base yourselves on the bourgeois nationalism which is awakening, and must awaken, among those peoples, and which has its historical justification.''^^*^^ This nationalism has a progressive, democratic content, too, since it is directed against imperialist oppression and serves the oppressed nations' struggle for national independence. At the same time, Lenin warned that, while supporting the progressive content in bourgeois nationalism, one must not lose sight of its social essence, its limited character, and that having driven out the imperialists, one must go on to fight for the liberation of the working people from social oppression.
Lenin's theses on the national and colonial questions for the Second Congress of the Comintern were a further development of these propositions. They formulated with exceptional clarity and depth the position and tasks to be adopted by the Communist Parties in the national-colonial question.
The whole policy of the Communist Parties in this field, he wrote, should be based on bringing together the proletarians and the toiling masses of all nations and countries for joint revolutionary struggle against imperialism, for the overthrow of the landowners and the bourgeoisie. It is the duty of the Communist Parties of the metropolitan countries to fight for the liberation of the colonial and dependent peoples from ``their own" imperialist bourgeoisie, to foster among the workers of their country a genuinely fraternal attitude to the working people of the colonies. In the fight against imperialism and feudal relations, the Communists of the colonial and dependent countries must support the revolutionary national liberation movements, and enter into agreements and alliances with the bourgeois, primarily revolutionary, democrats in their countries, while maintaining the independence of the proletarian movement. At the same time, Lenin noted the contradictory attitude of the bourgeoisie of the colonial and dependent countries, its tendency towards conciliation with the imperialists and domestic reaction.
Communists, Lenin taught, must be in the front ranks of the fighters against colonial oppression. They must rally all anti-- imperialist forces. But while expressing the interests of the working people, the Communists must not confine themselves only to solving national problems. They must fight for a radical democratic solution of the agrarian question, for social progress of the country. Lenin drew attention to the ``need for a determined struggle against _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 162.
374 attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries''.^^*^^ The Communists, he said, must expose the petty-bourgeois illusion about the possibility of going over to socialism without class struggle. They must marshal the masses under the banner of scientific communism.The working class which exists or is developing in the colonies and semi-colonies will eventually play a decisive role here too, in the zone of national liberation. The alliance between the peasantry and the working class-this, in Lenin's view, was an essential condition for full success in the struggle against imperialism for genuine social progress.
Lenin pointed out that the emergence of the socialist system greatly facilitates both the winning of political independence by the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies, and their gaining of economic independence, their progressive social development. The rendering of all-round support to peoples who are fighting against imperialism or have embarked upon the path of independent development is, Lenin noted, the international duty of the socialist state. At the same time Lenin urged the peoples of colonial and dependent countries and the young national states of the East to become more closely allied with the socialist system, the Soviet Republic.
Marx and Engels expressed the idea that backward countries which had not gone through the capitalist stage of development, could make the transition to socialism given the victory of the proletarian revolution in the advanced capitalist countries. Lenin substantiated and concretised this idea in the new historical age and in the conditions of the division of the world into two systems. Basing himself on the experience of the R.C.P.(B.) in Turkestan and other national areas of Russia, he advanced and substantiated most important propositions on the fact that countries which had liberated themselves from colonial rule and in which patriarchal and feudal relations predominated could, with the help of the victorious proletariat of the advanced countries, go over to a truly popular system and ``through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage''.^^**^^
Lenin emphasised that Communists should be able to adapt both the principles of Soviet power "and the Communist Party (its membership, special tasks) to the level of the peasant countries of the colonial East.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 149.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 244.
375``This is the crux of the matter. This needs thinking about and seeking concrete answers,''~^^*^^ Lenin wrote in his notes to the report on the prospects of social revolution in the East.
Later, in November 1921, in a talk with a delegation from the Mongolian People's Republic Lenin developed the proposition on the possibility of the transition to socialism of backward countries, bypassing the capitalist stage of development.^^**^^
In Lenin's theses and speeches at the Second Comintern Congress the Marxist principles of proletarian internationalism were taken a stage further.
Proletarian internationalism demands ``that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale''. It demands unity, solidarity and fraternal assistance among the proletariat and the Communist Parties of all countries. ``Complete victory over capitalism,'' Lenin wrote, "cannot be won unless the proletariat and, following it, the mass of working people in all countries and nations throughout the world voluntarily strive for alliance and unity.''^^***^^ Lenin saw the consistent application of the principles of internationalism as the true criterion of revolutionariness in our age.
Lenin's works and speeches contain basic definitions of the principles and character of the relations between countries that have embarked on socialist development. Lenin wrote that it is necessary to strive for the closest possible political, military and economic alliance of the countries in which the proletariat has gained power. He explained that objective laws governing the world socialist system, especially the tendency ``towards the creation of a single world economy, regulated by the proletariat of all nations as an integral whole and according to a common plan'',^^****^^ require the allround economic co-operation of socialist countries.
In our time, when there exists the community of socialist countries of Europe, Asia and Latin America, the CPSU and other Marxist-Leninist parties, proceeding from Lenin's ideas and developing them, believe that the main direction in the cause of strengthening the world socialist system is the steady application of the principles of socialist internationalism, the correct combination of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 202.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 360--61.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, pp. 148, 151. (Italics ours. The Authors.}
^^****^^ Ibid., p. 147.
376 national and international tasks of socialist states, and the development of fraternal mutual assistance and mutual support.Internationalism in practice is the solidarity and mutual support of the socialist world system, the international proletariat and the national liberation movement. The most important demand of the internationalist policy of the Communist and Workers' Parties, is the all-round defence of the gains of existing socialism, a bulwark of the world revolutionary process after the division of the world into two systems. Here the main tasks fall, first and foremost, to the Communists of the socialist republics themselves. At the same time the defence of socialism is also an important task of all the detachments of the international communist movement, the solution of which is in the common interests of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism for the triumph of communist ideals. Lenin thought it necessary for a party that wished to belong to the Communist International to give selfless support to each socialist republic ``in its struggle against counter-revolutionary forces''.^^*^^
The Congress adopted the conditions of affiliation to the Communist International. These were a striking expression of Lenin's teaching concerning the proletarian party of the new type. The principle of democratic centralism should be the basic principle of the Communist International. The Communist International and its Executive Committee had to take into account the diversity of conditions under which the different parties worked and fought. The relations between the Communist Parties should be built on the basis of the equality of the national detachments of the international working class, on the basis of proletarian'internationalism, mutual trust and voluntary co-operation and co-ordination of effort in the interests of the common goals and tasks and the solidarity of the working people of all countries. The Communists of the Soviet land and Marxist-Leninists of other countries have always considered it their internationalist duty to adhere strictly to jointly framed decisions and statements adopted by the Communist Parties.
Lenin exposed the slanderous allegations made by the bourgeois ideologists and the reformists about the ``dictatorship of Moscow'' in the international communist movement, describing them as malicious deception of the workers. Yet Lenin always regarded the Russian Communist Party as one of the advanced detachments of the world communist movement, whose leading role derived from the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 210.
377 fact that it was a model of the proletarian party of the new type; it possessed tremendous experience of struggle that had international significance; under its leadership the working class of Russia had been the first in the world to carry out a victorious socialist revolution and to begin building a new society.During the Congress, and after it was over, Lenin met many of the delegates. He talked to William Gallacher, Antonin Zapotocky, Christo Kabakchiev, Marcel Cachin, Bela Kun, John Reed and others, asked them about the working-class movement in their countries, and discussed with them questions concerning the building of Communist Parties. These meetings with Lenin, and the work with him at the Congress, made an indelible impression on the delegates and played a decisive part in their political development. Many of them later became leaders of Communist Parties and prominent figures in the international working-class movement.
At one of the Congress sessions the delegates resolved to express their thoughts about Lenin in writing. The album with these entries is kept at the Central Party Archives of the Institute of MarxismLeninism, C.C. C.P.S.U.
Here are some of them:
``Theoretician and at once a man of action, Lenin is today the biggest figure in the international working-class movement,'' wrote Marcel Cachin.
``The Russian proletariat has every right to be proud of Comrade Lenin,'' we read in the hand of Antonin Zapotocky, "and can consider it their good fortune that in a revolutionary era, when there was the greatest need for this, they had Lenin.''
``Lenin, simplest, most human, and yet most far-seeing and immovable,'' wrote John Reed.
The delegates of the colonial and dependent countries wrote that Lenin had awakened in the hearts of the peoples of the East new hopes and showed them the way to happiness. ``The most noble representative of humanity,'' a delegate from India stated briefly and expressively.^^*^^
These notes vividly expressed the feeling of warm sympathy and affection which the working people of the whole world had for the young Soviet state and Lenin. No matter what the bourgeoisie did in its effort to present Lenin in a false light, no matter what slanders the reactionary press tried to heap upon him, the growing influence of Leninism could not be prevented from going beyond _-_-_
^^*^^ Istorichesky Arkhiv No. 2, 1957, pp. 12, 10, 9.
378 the borders of the Soviet land. The truth about Lenin, about his noble ideas, got through to the working people of the capitalist countries everywhere.The Communists, who came to Moscow for the Comintern congresses, told the workers of their countries about Lenin. When Marcel Cachin returned to Paris from the Second Congress, he told the workers about it. Over forty thousand people for whom the Paris circus building proved too small, thronged the neighbouring streets. They greeted Cachin with shouts of "Long live Lenin! Lond live the Soviets!" The Italian Communist, Germanetto, wrote that already in the early twenties Lenin's name was known even in the remotest villages of Italy. In some workers' families newly-born babies were named ``Lenin''. Lenin became known far and wide in both East and West.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Defeat of the Interventionists and the InternalThe peaceful breathing-space which the Soviet Republic had won, turned out to be very brief. In the spring of 1920, the imperialists of France, Britain and America organised a fresh crusade against the Soviet land. This time they involved bourgeois-- landowner Poland in their criminal adventure. The Soviet Government did its utmost to avert a conflict, but the ruling circles of Poland, at the will of their imperialist masters, rejected the Soviet peace proposals. At the end of April, the White Polish forces advanced deep into the Ukraine and occupied Kiev. International imperialism also relied on the tsarist general, Baron Wrangel, a hireling of the international counter-revolution, who in June 1920 likewise advanced from the Crimea and threatened the Donets coalfields and the Kuban.
The Communist Party and Lenin called on the Soviet people once again to concentrate on the military tasks and repulse the imperialists. ``We are not defending the right to plunder other nations,'' said Lenin, ``but are defending our proletarian revolution, and will defend it to the very end. The Russia which has been emancipated and which for two years has borne untold suffering for the sake of her Soviet revolution-that Russia we shall defend to our last drop of blood!"^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 395.
379Early in June 1920, Soviet troops launched an attack in the Ukraine, which later developed into a general offensive. The invader was expelled Irom Soviet territory. Pursuing the retreating enemy, the Red Army continued its operations on Polish territory and approached Warsaw. However, owing to mistakes of a military nature, and for various other reasons, units of the Red Army were defeated on the Vistula at the close of August 1920 and were compelled to retreat. Lenin held that one of the main reasons for the Soviet reverse was the fact that the Polish working class had been unable to support the Red Army, while the Polish peasants and the petty bourgeoisie, deceived by Pilsudski, succumbed to jingoist sentiments and sided with the ruling classes.
By the end of August the Polish advance was checked. There was a lull until September 19, when fierce fighting was resumed. A Soviet offensive was planned for the latter half of October. The Ninth All-Russia Party Conference was in session from September 22 to 25. In the C.C. Political Report and in his concluding speech, Lenin made an exhaustive analysis of the Polish war. He showed why the Red Army had suffered defeats and criticised the mistakes of the military authorities, particularly those of Trotsky. Lenin stressed that in spite of the defeats, the Soviet land was capable of carrying the war with Poland to final victory. However, in order to avoid a winter campaign and to spare the workers and peasants new hardships, Lenin pointed out, the country was prepared to offer Poland peace even on terms favourable to the latter. The conference backed Lenin's point of view and approved the text of the statement, drawn up by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee with Lenin's help, containing proposals for peace with Poland. On September 23, the statement was passed by a session of the Central Executive Committee. It was made public the following day by the Soviet delegation to the Peace Conference in Riga.
An armistice agreement containing provisional peace terms was signed by Poland and the Soviet Republic in October 1920. Soon afterwards the last groups of the interventionists and counter-- revolutionaries were mopped up. Only the Japanese interventionists in the Far East remained, but they, too, were expelled in October 1922.
The intervention and the civil war were a stern test for the young Soviet state. For three years the imperialists, confident of success, organised one campaign after another against the world's first socialist republic. The bourgeois press maintained that the days of Soviet power were numbered. These hopes were candidly expressed by 380 Robert Wilton, correspondent of The Times, when he wrote: ``From an economic point of view the continuance of the present regime is an impossibility. From a political standpoint it is equally absurd.''~^^*^^
The imperialists' calculations, however, fell through. The Soviet people overcame all difficulties and won a complete victory over the combined forces of international imperialism and the bourgeoislandowner counter-revolution. In the first open armed conflict between the two systems capitalism was defeated. The Soviet Republic stood its ground and was able to turn to peaceful socialist construction. At the cost of great sacrifices, the Soviet people and the Bolshevik Party honourably performed their internationalist duty, consolidated the victory of the socialist revolution in Russia, and upheld the mighty stronghold of the world liberation movement.
The results of the civil war fully confirmed Lenin's propositions that the character of a war and its outcome depend primarily on the internal policy and system of the belligerent country, that in any war victory ultimately depends on the morale of the masses who have to shed their blood in the field of battle. The workers and peasants of Soviet Russia knew that they were waging a just war. Hence their unprecedented mass heroism and readiness to endure unheard-of hardships, which brought them their well-earned victory.
A great historic service in the victory of the working people of the Soviet land over the combined forces of international imperialism and internal counter-revolution was rendered by the leader of the Party and the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, who directed the country's defence. In those critical years, when the fate of the peoples of the Soviet country hung in the balance, his political wisdom and genius for organisation showed themselves to the full.
_-_-_^^*^^ Robert Wilton, Russia's Agony, London, 1918, p.
[381] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Twelve __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE MAKER OF THE NEW,NEP Russia will become socialist Russia.
Lenin
After defeating the interventionists and the internal counter-- revolution, the Soviet people embarked on a period of peaceful building of socialism.
The tasks this involved were truly herculean. The foreign military intervention and the civil war aggravated greatly the dislocation caused by the preceding four years of imperialist war. In 1920, the output of large-scale industry dropped to nearly one-seventh of the 1913 figure, steel production to less than one-twentieth, and farm production to a little more than half the pre-war level. The railways were in a very bad state. The population was suffering privation and want, owing to the shortage of bread and many other prime necessities.
Lenin compared the condition of post-war Russia to that of a man who had been beaten to within an inch of his life. His heart bled for the workers and peasants. Yet he was deeply convinced that the working folk would raise the country from the ruins, and build socialism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Conversion to Peace-time ConstructionLenin gave pride of place in all Party and government affairs to socialist construction. He addressed meetings of activists in Party and government bodies, as well as meetings of workers and peasants, to explain the tasks confronting the Party and the people in the new conditions and to urge them to concentrate on economic rehabilitation.
On November 14, 1920, Lenin visited the peasants of the village of Kashino near Moscow, who had invited him for the opening of 382 an electric power station built by the local agricultural co-- operative. A rousing welcome was given to the distinguished guest in one of the village houses. The village band played the Internationale, after which the peasants installed Lenin in the seat of honour at a table set with simple peasant fare.
A lively conversation ensued. The peasants told him how they had built the power plant and what difficulties they had had to overcome. They also spoke of their needs. Lenin listened attentively, taking an interest in the most trifling details and amazing the peasants with his incisve questions and his straight-forward answers. ``He never asked an unnecessary question or missed an essential point,'' they commented afterwards.
After Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya, who had come with him, had been photographed with the peasants, an openair meeting was held at which he said that the country's economy was gradually being put in order, that factories and mills would soon go into operation, that textiles, and even machines, would be available for the peasants. He urged them to maintain strong ties with the working class and to keep in step with it. ``As we listened to him,'' Kashino people recall, ``we had the feeling that each of us was warmed by the bright rays of the sun.''^^*^^
During the three months' breathing-space in early 1920, Lenin formulated the task of rehabilitating the country's economy on a new technical basis. After the war ended, he developed and substantiated the programme for the building of the foundations of socialist economy, showing the substance and role of the material and technical basis of the new society. He demonstrated the tremendous importance of electrification in the building of socialism and communism.
Lenin advanced his famous formula: ``Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.''^^**^^
In this curt, yet unusually profound formula, Lenin defined the basic conditions, the political and economic factors for the building of communist society, and underscored that they were closely interconnected.
Communism, Lenin explained, presupposes Soviet power as the political instrument whereby the people could control all matters, for without popular control communism is inconceivable. This _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin in 5 volumes, Vol. 4, Moscow, 1979, p. 277 (Russ. cd.).
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 516.
383 secures the political side of the building of communist society. As for the economic side of communist construction, the only way to secure it is the country's electrification. Large-scale industry, primarily heavy industry, is the material and technical basis of socialism and communism, Lenin said. It is only on the basis of electrification that an industry conforming to the latest standards in technology and science can be created and developed.Lenin considered heavy industry to be the key to the socialist reorganisation of agriculture and the main condition for the elimination of the economic roots of capitalism in the countryside. He pointed out that the production of tractors and agricultural machinery creates the material basis for the conversion from small peasant agriculture to large-scale, collective machine farming, and paves the way for the elimination of kulak farms. In Lenin's opinion, the material and technical basis of socialism, once built, helps to eliminate the antithesis between town and country.
Lenin explained that the development of large-scale production based on electrification ``will be the first important stage on the road to the communist administration of public economic life''.^^*^^ The material and technical basis of communism will grow from the material and technical basis of socialism, as its continuation and development, which will enable the country to achieve a level of production "in accordance with Communist principles" - to create an abundance of material and cultural blessings, to approach distribution according to needs and to transform gradually the socialist relations of production into communist relations ol production. What is necessary is electrification of the whole country, of all branches of industry and agriculture. Lenin tied up the achievement of the world's highest productivity of labour and the task of catching up and surpassing the developed capitalist countries in the economic field, with the building of the material and technical basis of socialism, and then of communism.
Lenin pointed out that the successful building of socialism in the Soviet land and the fulfilment of the electrification plan will have an immense international impact and serve as an example for the peoples of other countries when they embark on socialism.
Lenin's ideas about the building of the material and technical basis of socialism and the country's electrification became the core of the famous GOELRO plan, the first Soviet long-term economic development plan covering a period of 10 to 15 years. The plan for _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. I.enin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, pp. 179--80.
384 electrifying Russia, framed on the initiative and under the guidance of Lenin, set the imposing task of building a reliable economic foundation for socialist society, of creating new productive forces based on the use of electricity, and of turning Russia from an agrarian country into an industrial one.The scope and audacity of the GOELRO plan will be all the more impressive if we recall the ruin, hunger and poverty that reigned in the country at the time. No wonder that in the prevailing conditions many people regarded Lenin's economic plan as a pipe dream. One of these was the well-known British writer H. G. Wells, who visited Moscow in the autumn of 1920 and had a talk with Lenin. On his return to Britain, Wells wrote his Russia in the Shadows, in which he called Lenin the ``dreamer in the Kremlin".
Wells took a sympathetic view of Soviet Russia. Although he repeatedly emphasised in his book that he was not in agreement with Marxism, he conceded, in spite of the outrageous lies and slander spread by the bourgeoisie, that the people supported Soviet power and that the Bolsheviks had embarked upon a tremendous constructive and educational effort. He was deeply impressed by Lenin, and declared that his meeting with ``this amazing little man, with his frank admission of the immensity and complication of the project of communism and his simple concentration upon its realisation" had been ``very refreshing''. Speaking with Lenin, he came to realise that ``communism ... could be enormously creative''.^^*^^ However, Lenin's plan for the electrification of Russia struck him as a ``Utopia of the electricians".
``Can one imagine,'' he wrote, ``a more courageous project in a vast flat land of forests and illiterate peasants, with no water power, with no technical skill available, and with trade and industry at the last gasp?... I cannot see anything of the sort happening in this dark crystal of Russia, but this little man at the Kremlin can; he sees the decaying railways replaced by a new electric transport, sees new roadways spreading throughout the land, sees a new and happier communist industrialism arising again.''^^**^^
Yes, Lenin with his keen foresight visualised the Russia of the future and was deeply convinced that the ``courageous'' electrification plan was realistic and feasible for it rested on a scientific foundation and the great creative powers inherent in the Soviet system _-_-_
^^*^^ H. G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows, London, pp. 138, 137.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 133, 134, 136.
385 and the people freed from the yoke of exploitation. The enemies of socialism, the philistines and the opportunists, ridiculed and sneered at the GOELRO plan, claimed it was unrealistic and tried to prevent first its adoption and then its implementation. Lenin gave a vigorous rebuff to these faint-hearts and defeatists.On Lenin's suggestion the GOELRO plan was put on the agenda of the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets. The report on the plan was delivered at the Congress by G. Krzhizhanovsky, Chairman of the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia. The ill-clad, half-starved delegates from different parts of the ruined country who filled the unheated, poorly lighted hall of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow listened with bated breath to the exposition of the fascinating and bold but feasible tasks and prospects of socialist construction delineated by Lenin's genius. The Congress unanimously approved of the plan. The working people of Soviet Russia indeed spared no effort to carry out Lenin's plan of electrification. By the end of 1935 the power output target was surpassed nearly four times over. This marked the first step along the path of electrification of the entire country which Lenin charted and along which the Party is steadfastly leading the Soviet people.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Fight Against the OppositionIn the early months of 1921, the economic situation deteriorated sharply. Crop failure and decline in cattle numbers meant greater want and destitution for the peasants. The food surplus-- requisitioning system was causing serious discontent in the countryside. The food situation grew worse. Industrial enterprises that had been set going came to a standstill because of lack of fuel. Hunger, unemployment and general weariness bred dissatisfaction also among a part of the workers. Considerable difficulties arose in view of the army demobilisation.
The class enemies took advantage of these difficulties to further their counter-revolutionary aims. Kulak revolts broke out in various parts of the country, and in a number of places the kulaks succeeded in involving in these anti-Soviet actions middle peasants who resented the surplus-requisitioning system.
In his speeches and articles of that period, Lenin probed the causes of the prevailing situation and, as always, produced a strictly objective appraisal of the facts, characterising the situation in the country as an economic, social and political crisis.
386It was chiefly caused by the objective difficulties related to conversion i'rom war to peace in a war-ravaged peasant country. At the same time these difficulties were not, and could not have been, anticipated by the Party. The conversion from war to peace created a large number of tasks and difficulties which the Party did not have the experience, training and resources to overcome. That added to the crisis. Serious errors were made in the autumn and winter of 1920 when distributing fuel and food. But the main thing was that the policy of War Communism had ceased to conform to the new conditions.
``The reason for it was,'' Lenin said, ``that in our economic offensive we had run too far ahead, that we had not provided ourselves with adequate resources, that the masses sensed what we ourselves were not then able to formulate consciously but what we admitted soon after, a few weeks later, namely, that the direct transition to purely socialist forms, to purely socialist distribution, was beyond our available strength, and that if we were unable to effect a retreat so as to confine ourselves to easier tasks, we would face disaster.''~^^*^^
Lenin was the first to see the danger and to advocate a sharp reversal in the policy of the Party. Already by February 1921 he concluded that it was necessary to initiate a new economic policy that would enable the country to overcome the economic and political difficulties, to ensure the restoration of all economic branches and the building of the economic foundation of socialist society. In outlining the tasks of the Party, Lenin always studied the prevailing facts thoroughly from various materials and personal observations. Lenin worked out this new economic policy on the basis of a profound analysis of the country's economic, social and political development in 1918--20. He made a very thorough study of the situation in the countryside. Time and again he spoke with peasant delegates and carefully read the letters sent in by peasants.
His visits to villages in Moscow Gubernia supplied Lenin with a wealth of information. He took part in a conference held on his initiative of non-Party peasant delegates to the Eighth Congress of Soviets, and, in his own words, derived very much indeed from their discussion of the most pressing issues of rural life. He sent his notes on the peasants' speeches to members of the Central Committee and the People's Commissars. In January and February 1921, he received peasants from a number of gubernias, nearly all _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 421--22.
387 of whom declared they firmly believed that the surplus-- requisitioning system had to be abolished in order to give the peasants greater material incentives to promote agriculture. These talks gave Lenin an idea of the situation in the various localities and of the mood of the peasants.``What makes Lenin great?" wrote O. Chernov, one of the peasants who visited Lenin at that time. ``It is this: He listened to me not because he regarded me as some extraordinary personality, but because through me he listened to all the peasants, and through me he sized up the whole complex situation in the villages."~^^*^^
Lenin also sought the advice of Party leaders and statesmen as well as local Party and government workers in the matter of substituting a tax in kind for surplus requisitioning. All this was strikingly characteristic of the way he exercised his leadership; it showed the importance he attached to collective opinion and to practical experience, and how attentively he listened to the voice of the people in working out Party policy.
In the beginning of February 1921, Lenin wrote his ``Rough Draft of Theses Concerning the Peasants'', in which he formulated the basic principles to be followed in substituting a tax in kind for the food surplus-requisitioning system. Instead of the existing practice of requisitioning all the peasants' surplus produce, he proposed introducing a tax in kind, determined in advance, after paying which the peasant was free to dispose of the remainder of his produce at his own discretion.
The conversion from war to peace and then to NEP took place in a situation marked by bitter struggle against opposition groups, which took advantage of the existing difficulties and came out against the Party line, using the role of the trade unions as a pretext, although this issue had been discussed and resolved by the Party. The Trotskyites and the Bukharinites forced on the Party a discussion on the role of the trade unions. Lenin was against this, believing it would only divert the Party from its pressing tasks and thus play into the hands of the enemies.
Lenin regarded Trotsky as the main instigator of the attack by the opposition. Trotsky wanted the management of the trade unions "shaken up'', the trade unions ``governmentalised'', turned into an appendage of the state machine, and the ``screws'' in the trade unions ``tightened''. Trotsky refused to take part in the commission set up by the Central Committee to determine concrete measures to _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 4, p. 310.
388 improve the work of the trade unions, formed his own group and attacked the viewpoint of the Central Committee of the Party. Lenin described Trotsky's refusal to take an active part in the work of the Central Committee commission as a ``breach of discipline" and called it ``bureaucratic, un-Soviet, un-socialist, incorrect and politically harmful''.^^*^^ In so doing Trotsky damaged ``the party, the trade union movement, the training of millions of trade union members and the Republic''.^^**^^Trotsky's factional actions were supported by Bukharin who announced that he was advancing a ``buffer platform'', but in fact sided with Trotsky. Following the Trotskyites and Bukharinites other anti-Party groups also attacked the Party.
In a number of speeches and articles Lenin gave an exposition of the anti-Party substance of the planks of the opposition groups, and the factional nature of their conduct. At the same time, he advanced and developed a number of fundamental propositions on the role of the trade unions in the system of proletarian dictatorship and on their tasks in socialist construction. These became the programme for the work of the Soviet trade unions.
Lenin emphasised that the essence of the differences with Trotsky on the trade union question lay in a ``different approach to the mass, the different way of winning it over and keeping in touch with it''. The Trotskyites wanted military methods, methods of compulsion against the masses, applied to the trade unions. The Party, on the contrary, held that persuasion should be the basic method in approaching the masses, that the trade unions, which were one of the ``transmission belts" leading from the Party to the masses, should base their activities on this method. Only by persuasion could millions of working men and women be drawn into conscious creative activity, which was the source of the strength and invincibility of the socialist revolution, of Soviet power; only on this condition was it possible to build socialism and communism. ``The greater the scope and extent of historical events,'' Lenin said, ``the greater is the number of people participating in them, and, contrariwise, the more profound the change we wish to bring about, the more must we rouse an interest and an intelligent attitude towards it, and convince more millions and tens of millions of people that it is necessary.''^^***^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 36.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 74.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 498.
389It was the duty of the trade unions, Lenin pointed out, to rally the workers to carrying out the economic and political tasks confronting the country, to work for higher labour productivity and to strengthen labour discipline, protect the working people's interests, help to improve their living conditions, and take an active part in cultural and educational work and production propaganda.
The trade unions are not a state organisation, Lenin said, they are an organisation designed for education, ``an organisation designed to draw in and to train; it is, in fact, a school: a school of administration, a school of economic management, a school of communism''.^^*^^ Being a school of communism in general, the trade unions should be, in particular, a school of management of socialist industry (and later, gradually, of agriculture as well) for the whole mass of workers, and eventually for all working people. Their task is to enlist the masses of the working people to take an active part in the work of the economic bodies and government organs connected with the economy, in drawing up economic plans, production programmes, wage scales, etc., and to advance and train administrators from among the workers and the working people in general.
Lenin made a profound analysis of the relationship between the state, the Party and the trade unions, stressing that Trotsky had radically distorted this relationship. ``The state,'' Lenin explained, ``is a sphere of coercion. It would be madness to renounce coercion, especially in the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat, so that the administrative approach and 'steerage' are indispensable. The Party is the leader, the vanguard of the proletariat, which rules directly. It is not coercion but expulsion from the Party that is the specific means of influence and the means of purging and steeling the vanguard. The trade unions are a reservoir of the state power, a school of communism and a school of management. The specific and cardinal thing in this sphere is not administration but the 'to' 'between the central state administration' (and, of course, the local as well), 'the national economy and the broad masses of the working people....''~^^**^^
Lenin gave a most convincing reply to the assertion by Trotsky and Bukharin that he was approaching the question of the trade unions politically, whereas it should be approached from the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 20.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 97--98.
390 economic point of view, the viewpoint of the growth of production. ``This is a glaring theoretical error,'' he wrote. ``...Politics is a concentrated expression of economics.... Politics must take precedence over economics. To argue otherwise is to forget the ABC of Marxism. ...The only formulation of the issue (which the Marxist standpoint allows] is: without a correct political approach to the matter the given class will be unable to stay on top, and, consequently, will be incapable of solving its production problem either.''^^*^^The essence of the discussion lay in politics, i.e., politics in relation to the trade unions. The political approach meant: if the approach to the trade unions were incorrect, this could destroy the Soviet power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was where Trotsky's line of ``shaking up" the trade unions was leading, because it would have resulted in a split in the proletariat, a split between the party and the working class, a split between the proletariat and the peasantry.
The anarcho-syndicalist platform of the so-called ``Workers' Opposition" group was also leading to the collapse of the power of the working class. This group denied the Party's leading role in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in regard to the trade unions in particular, and reduced to nought the role of the state in the building of a socialist economy.
In so doing the ``Workers' Opposition" group slandered the Party and the Soviet state, ranting on about the rule of bureaucracy, the degeneration of the ``Party bosses" and their isolation from the masses, and demagogically demanding ``freedom of criticism'', ``freedom of discussion'', etc. Lenin showed that essentially there was nothing truly working-class in this opposition, that it was really a mouthpiece of the petty-bourgeois element and that there was a connection between the ideas and slogans of the petty-- bourgeois, anarchist counter-revolution and the slogans of the ``Workers' Opposition".
Lenin sharply criticised its basic thesis that the administration of the country's economy be entrusted to an ``all-Russia congress of producers united in trade unions, which would elect the central body in charge of the entire economy of the republic".
Lenin pointed out that by using the term ``producers'', which includes proletarians, semi-proletarians and small commodity producers alike, the ``Workers' Opposition" had abandoned the Marxist position which calls for a clear-cut demarcation of class lines, _-_-_
^^*^^ Ibid., pp. 83 and 84.
391 and renounced the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leading role of the proletariat in relation to the non-proletarian working masses. Furthermore, he explained, economic development in the transition period could not be divorced from the class struggle against the capitalist elements, from the relations of the working class and the peasantry. And those are questions which only the proletarian state, guided by the policy of the Communist Party, must decide.The ``Workers' Opposition'', playing up to the mood of the backward section of the working class, declared that it was the trade unions, and not the Party, that should lead socialist construction.
Lenin resolutely rebuffed the attempts to -undermine the leading role of the Party. In his speech at the Second All-Russia Congress of Miners he said: ``We have been fighting in the Party for over twenty years, and have given the workers visual proof that the Party is a special kind of thing which needs forward-looking men prepared for sacrifice; that it does make mistakes, but corrects them; that it guides and selects men who know the way and the obstacles before us. It does not deceive the workers. It never makes promises that cannot be kept.... If we say that it is not the Party but the trade unions that put up the candidates and administrate, it may sound very democratic and might help us to catch a few votes, but not for long. It will be fatal for the dictatorship of the proletariat.... To govern you need an army of steeled revolutionary Communists. We have it, and it is called the Party.''~^^*^^
Only the Communist Party can unite, educate and organise the working class and the working masses in general, stand firm in the face of the inevitable petty-bourgeois vacillation of these masses, the inevitable traditions and recurrence of professional narrow-- mindedness and prejudices among the workers and direct the activities of the proletariat and, through it, of all other working people. The Communist Party, as the highest form of organisation of the proletariat, directs the efforts of the entire people, the activities of all government bodies, trade unions and other public organisations towards the common goal-the victory of socialism.
It is not by chance, therefore, that the enemies of socialism do not always wage an open fight against a new system, but are always opposed to the Communist Party playing the leading role in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in building socialism. _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 61, 62.
392 Communist propaganda, Lenin pointed out, should expose these tactics of the enemies of Soviet power.Today also revisionists and all manner of opponents of socialism campaign under the slogans of "democratic socialism" and " liberalisation" for democracy, but without the dictatorship of the working class, without the guiding role of the Communist Party, counting on the eventual restoration of capitalism.
This is why Lenin's great behest that the leadership of the Communist Party is the prime condition for winning state power and giving effect to the dictatorship of the proletariat is so relevant today.
By their action the Trotskyites, Bukharinites and other opposition groups created an acute crisis in the Party at the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921. Serious differences of opinion arose in the Central Committee. A sharp struggle went on in the various organisations of the Party. Lenin personally led the fight against the various factions, closely followed the manoeuvres of the opposition and showed how pernicious its views were for the Party and the working class. He was deeply convinced that the Party rank and file would see for themselves who was right. And, indeed, the Party organisations endorsed Lenin's line by an overwhelming majority of votes. The opposition suffered a complete defeat in the discussion.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The New Economic PolicyThe Tenth Party Congress took place between March 8 and 16, 1921, under Lenin's leadership. He made a report on the political activities of the C.C. R.C.P.(B.), and reports on the substitution of a tax in kind for surplus requisitioning, on the unity of the Party and the anarcho-syndicalist deviation, and spoke also about the trade unions and the fuel question. He drafted the principal resolutions. A sharp struggle ensued between the majority, which supported Lenin, and the opposition. Lenin considered it of the utmost importance to defeat all the anti-Party groups ideologically and organisationally. His energy, determination and optimism infected all the delegates.
Summing up the trade union discussion, the Tenth Congress adopted a resolution on the role and tasks of the trade unions, basically prepared by Lenin. It outlined measures for the reorganisation of all aspects of trade union work in conformity with Lenin's concept of the trade unions as ``schools of communism".
393Lenin noted that the discussion had revealed the maturity and strength of the Party, and at once exposed the true nature of the opposition as antagonistic to the Party line. He stressed that by their factional activities and their demagogic speeches the opposition groups were weakening and undermining the Party, and grinding the axe of the counter-revolution. For this reason, Lenin warned, the most trifling impairment of Party unity and factionalism of any kind, in effect, helped the class enemies who were striving to restore the power of the capitalists and landowners. Lenin pointed out that once the Communist Party has come to power, its ideological and organisational unity acquires particular importance; it ceases to be a purely inner-Party matter and becomes the basis of the solidarity of the working class and all other working people with the Party, this being an essential condition for the strength and stability of the socialist state and the victory of socialism. The tasks involved in building the communist society are very varied and complex. They can be realised only if the Communist Party, which is the leading and guiding force, stands firmly united.
In order to perform its leading role, the Communist Parly must be completely united, welded together by a single will and. iron discipline. It was in this that Lenin saw the main lesson to be drawn from the pre-- Congress discussion.
The Congress adopted a resolution on Party unity. Condemning all factional activity as impermissible and detrimental to the unity of the Party, it ordered the dissolution of all factional groups; noncompliance with this decision incurred immediate expulsion from the Party. Lenin regarded unity in the Party's leading body, the cohesion and firmness of the Central Committee, as the basic guarantee of the unity of the Party as a whole. Hence his insistence that no member of the Central Committee be permitted to engage in factional activity of any kind. On his motion, the Congress empowered the Central Committee to apply all Party penalties, not short of expulsion, to any of the C.C. members who engaged in factional activities.
Lenin's resolution on Party unity is a most important historical document. As the directive which the Party and all its bodies have followed in preserving the unity of its ranks, it played a cardinal role in the subsequent struggle against all anti-Party groups. The ideological and organisational defeat of the opposition groups in the trade union discussion was highly important for the future of socialist construction, and for the successful conversion of 394 the Party to the New Economic Policy. It was Lenin's firmness, his intolerance of opportunism and of the most trifling attempts to destroy or weaken Party unity, that played the decisive role in defeating the opposition.
In both the report on the activities of the Central Committee and the report on the substitution of a tax in kind for the food surplusrequisitioning system, Lenin gave a profound theoretical and political exposition of the need to go over to the New Economic Policy. The question of substituting a tax in kind for surplus requisitioning, he pointed out, was primarily a political question, since, essentially, it boiled down to the attitude of the working class to the peasantry. The key purpose of the New Economic Policy was to consolidate the alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry, to strengthen the dictatorship of the working class.
The forms of the alliance of the working class and the peasantry are shaped by concrete social and political conditions and the tasks confronting the Party at each stage of socialist construction. The politico-military alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry, which was of prime importance in the defeat of the internal and external enemies of Soviet power and the defence of the gains of the socialist revolution, took shape, Lenin pointed out, in the crucible of the civil war. But when the war ended and the country applied itself to peaceful labour, the old form of this alliance proved inadequate. In order to revive the war-wrecked economy and build socialism, an economic alliance had to be established between the working people of town and country, and material incentives had to be given to the peasantry. Tax in kind instead of surplus requisitioning, which gave the peasant an opportunity to dispose of his surplus produce, to sell his products and exchange them for consumer goods, laid the economic foundation for this alliance.
True, Lenin pointed out, petty farming and small private industries, coupled with free private trade, would inevitably induce a certain revival of capitalism - rebirth of the bourgeoisie in the towns and development of kulaks in the countryside. This danger should not be slighted. Lenin stressed, however, that a certain stimulation of capitalism was sufferable, without damaging the pillars of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Wielding political power and holding such commanding heights in the national economy as largescale industry, the land, the banks, the railways and foreign trade, the working class had sufficient means for keeping the capitalist elements under control, curbing their itch for exploitation, 395 preventing excessive development of bourgeois relations, and restricting and ousting the capitalist elements.
The restoration and development of large-scale socialist industry on the basis of agricultural advance would lead to the victory of socialist industry and commerce, and to the socialist reorganisation of the countryside.
Having heard Lenin's report, the Tenth Congress passed a resolution replacing the food surplus-requisitioning system with a tax in kind, which, in effect, amounted to the adoption of the New Economic Policy.
In this way the Communist Party under Lenin's leadership effected the historic turn from War Communism to the New Economic Policy-a turn in which Lenin's wisdom and foresight, his creative, truly dialectical, approach to problems oi socialist construction, and his courage, skill and ability to radically change Party policy and slogans if the changed conditions demanded it, found full expression.
After the Congress, Lenin continued to work on the New Economic Policy. He explained its substance to the Party activists and the people, and directed its implementation. He also dealt with the New Economic Policy in a number of important works and speeches in the spring-autumn of 1921, such as The Tax in Kind (The Significance of the Menu Policy and Its Conditions), ``Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution'', ``The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism'', and the report ``On the New Economic Policy" delivered at the Seventh Moscow Gubernia Party Conference.
Lenin analysed the New Economic Policy from the standpoint of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The new policy, he explained, signified a transition from the direct and complete break-up of the old, capitalist economic system to its gradual elimination, a transition from the storming of a fortress to laying protracted siege to it. This did not mean that the Party had ``abandoned its positions'', that it regarded revolutionary methods to have been a mistake and had taken a reformist stand. It was essential to see the difference between the relation of reform to revolution before the capture of power by the working class and after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. ``Before the victory of the proletariat,'' Lenin said, "reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle. After the victory (while still remaining a 'by-product' on an international scale) they are, in addition, for the country in which victory has been achieved, a necessary and legitimate 396 breathing space when, after the utmost exertion of effort, it becomes obvious that sufficient strength is lacking for the revolutionary accomplishment of some transition or another.''~^^*^^
War Communism, Lenin pointed out, was a necessity imposed by the extremely difficult conditions of the civil war. It was a temporary measure. It was impossible to go over at once from capitalism to the production and distribution of products according to communist principles. A number of transitional stages were needed in order to prepare for the transition to communism.
Lenin emphasised that the principle of distribution according to the quantity and quality oj labour, the principle of material incentives in combination with moral stimuli, was one of the most important conditions of socialist and communist construction. Lenin opposed all tendencies to equalise incomes and pointed out that neglect of the principle of material incentive was rank subjectivism which had nothing in common with Marxist policy.
The New Economic Policy was a further development of Lenin's plan for the building of socialism.
Transition to the New Economic Policy demanded new methods of economic management: that cost-accounting be introduced at state enterprises, that the latter be operated without loss, efficiently, that the principle of material incentives be consistently implemented so that the workers, peasants and intellectuals would take a personal interest in the results of their labour, in promoting production. What was meant were not only personal, but also collective incentives for factory and office workers, so that they would have a vested interest in the efficiency of their establishment.
When elaborating the New Economic Policy, Lenin believed that it was possible to make use of various forms of ``state capitalism": concessions, mixed companies, etc., with a view to controlling private capital and to achieving the speediest possible economic revival. However, it became clear in the next two or three years that the idea of state-capitalist undertakings would not work. The foreign capitalists were reluctant to put money into concessions, for they still harboured illusions that Soviet power would soon `` collapse''. What was more important, however, was that economic rehabilitation proceeded much faster than could have been foreseen in 1921. Hence it was no longer expedient to stimulate the concession form of state capitalism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 116.
397It was Lenin's firm conviction that the New Economic Policy was of international significance, for it showed the basic and general laws for all countries on their way from capitalism to socialism. He regarded the correct definition and implementation of measures essential for leading the peasantry, ensuring a durable alliance with it and gradually guiding it and other petty-bourgeois elements to the path of social production, as one of the most difficult tasks facing the victorious proletariat. ``This task which we are working on now, for the time being on our own,'' Lenin said, ``seems to be a purely Russian one, but in reality it is a task which all socialists will face. Capitalism is dying; in its death throes it can still condemn tens and hundreds of millions of people to unparalleled torment, but there is no power that can prevent its collapse. 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.''~^^*^^
History has fully confirmed Lenin's words.
The practice of communist construction in the U.S.S.R. bears out Lenin's idea that some of the main principles and methods of economic management, typical of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, will survive in socialist society and also during the transition from socialism to communism.
In drawing up and carrying out the New Economic Policy, the Communist Party had to wage an unrelenting struggle against opportunist elements. Refuting the demagogic assertions of the opposition that by going over to the New Economic Policy the Party was neglecting the rehabilitation and development of industry, Lenin pointed out that this policy was inseparably connected with the plan for the electrification and industrial development of the country. It was absurd and ridiculous to think, he said, that the Party had renounced its basic aim - the laying of a strong industrial foundation for the economy of the Soviet country. He said that no matter how drastically the Party changed its policy, it must never lose sight of the general perspective and must always have a clear view of the road to socialism and communism, and march firmly towards its goal.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 177.
398 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Further Strengthening of the PartyLenin held that successful achievement of the objectives of the New Economic Policy demanded further organisational and ideological strengthening of the Party, improvement of inner-Party work as a whole.
In an article entitled "Purging the Party" Lenin urged the expulsion of elements who had lost contact with the masses, those who had discredited the Party in the eyes of the masses, and dishonest or wavering Communists, and Mensheviks. He insisted on stricter rules of admission. Only in this way, he wrote, could the genuinely proletarian nature of the Party's membership and its leading role in the battle against the capitalist elements be ensured.
The most general of the inner-Party tasks, in Lenin's opinion, was not the quantitative extension of the Party ranks, but their qualitative improvement, communist education, the raising of the consciousness, activity, and initiative of all Party members, and also the absolute unity of the Party ranks on this basis.
Lenin made it clear that full development of inner-Party democracy implies that members must take an active part in the life of the Party, in discussing and deciding all issues pertaining to its policy, and that the methods of collective leadership must be strictly observed.
Lenin regarded criticism and self-criticism as an important instrument in the strengthening of the Party and the solving of all the tasks of socialist construction. At the same time he always denied the demagogic claims of anti-Party, anti-Soviet elements and all manner of politically immature people for "freedom of criticism''. Lenin pointed out that criticism must promote the strengthening, not the collapse of the Soviet system. Criticism, he warned, must not assume forms capable of helping the class enemies of the proletariat. Anyone who criticises should remember this and is obliged by his practical work to promote the correction of shortcomings and mistakes. Lenin strongly criticised irrelevant, slanderous ``criticism''.
Again and again Lenin stressed that it was essential to apply consistently in the Party the principle of democratic centralism, of iron discipline, strict observance of the rules and rigorous carrying out of Party decisions. Activity aimed against the Party line, against the decisions and directives of the Party, he considered incompatible with remaining within its ranks.
399 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1983/LB525/20070119/499.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.01.24) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+Lenin repeatedly stressed that to be strong and invincible the Party and the trade unions must deepen their ties with the broad mass of the people.
Contact with the people, he wrote, meant:
``Living in the midst of the people.
Knowing the people's mood.
Knowing everything.
Understanding the people.
Having the right approach.
Winning the absolute trust of the masses.
The leaders must not lose touch with the
people they lead, the vanguard must not lose
touch with the entire army of labour.''^^*^^
Lenin considered it most important for the Communists to work directly at industrial enterprises and in the villages, and for the leading functionaries to report on their work and give topical talks at public meetings of the working people. He sharply condemned the "Communist conceit'', bragging and arrogant high-handedness of those Party members who assumed that everything could be accomplished by simply issuing decrees, by mouthing generalities and by political phrase-mongering, and who neglected painstaking educational and organisational work among the masses. A Communist, Lenin said, must set an example to the non-Party people. He must be in the van of socialist construction, a model in labour, in the performance of public duties and in private life.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Rehabilitation of the EconomyThe management and the structure of the state and the Party apparatus, Lenin said, should be consistent with the economic and political tasks, and should be tested in practice and continually improved. Whenever it was economically and politically desirable, and called for by the facts, Lenin broke up outdated forms of administration audaciously and paid no heed to various local parochial considerations. At the same time he repeatedly warned against hasty, unjustified and unfounded reorganisation.
Lenin stressed that economic development and the management of production were of immense political importance and that the _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin Miscellany XXXVI, p. 389.
400 proletarian socialist state and the Communist Party should devote most of their efforts to it. ``Our main policy must now be to develop the state economically,'' Lenin emphasised in November 1920. This proposition has a strong bearing on the struggle against the modern revisionists, who, in an attempt to belittle the Party's leading role, maintain that the Party should be no more than a moral factor, a kind of educational organisation, that it should not meddle in the practical business of socialist construction, and especially in economic matters.The work of the Party bodies was reshaped to facilitate Party control of the economy. Comrades who were conversant in economy were taken on the Central Committee staff. The institution of responsible travelling inspectors was introduced. The Party took thousands of Communists from the Red Army and gave them Party appointments in the economy. Party groups at the factories were reinforced. Lenin called on Party bodies and Party cadres handling economic affairs to study economic matters closely and to manage economy competently. He pleaded that they should handle the organisation of production at first hand rather than confine themselves to good resolutions. Lenin said that ``management necessarily implies competency ... knowledge of all the conditions of production down to the last detail and of the latest technology ... is required; you must have a certain scientific training''.^^*^^
Politics, Lenin wrote, is an endless chain with an endless number of links. It is the art of a communist politician to determine the basic link in good time, the one that is the most important at the moment, to single out the central task in the chain of tasks and to concentrate the main forces and main attention on its fulfilment. Lenin was a past master in this art.
Time and again Lenin stressed the great importance of science and technology for the building of socialism. Science, he said, must help the masses create a social system without exploiters. Lenin believed that the development of science and its practical application would greatly stimulate the growth of society's productive forces. He wrote that science should keep pace with economic and cultural developments and that its close bonds with life, with production, with the tasks of socialist and communist construction, were a necessary condition for its own fruitful growth.
He gave much attention to the requirements of scientific institutions and helped them with his guidance and advice. He held in _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 428.
__PRINTERS_P_401_COMMENT__ 26---826 401 high esteem the leading Russian scientists who dedicated their endeavours to the Soviet people, men like K. Timiryazev, I. Pavlov, I. Michurin, N. Zhukovsky, K. Tsiolkovsky, I. Gubkin, and M. Bonch-Bruyevich, to mention but a few, and saw to it personally that they were provided with everything they needed for their scientific work and a decent living.Timiryazev sent Lenin a copy of his book, Science and Democracy, with this dedication: ``To highly esteemed Vladimir Ilyich Lenin from K. Timiryazev, whose good fortune it is to be his contemporary and a witness of his great work.'' In his book Timiryazev urged men of science to join forces with the working people and exposed the slander spread by the imperialists against Soviet power and the Bolsheviks. After reading the book, Lenin replied to Timiryazev: ``Dear Klimenty Arkadyevich! Many thanks to you for your book and kind words. I was simply delighted to read your remarks against the bourgeoisie and for Soviet power. I shake your hand very warmly and with all my heart wish you health, health and health again!''^^*^^
Lenin held that the socialist economy must be based on the latest achievements of science and the most advanced technology, and that the Soviet Government must constantly promote technical progress. ``We must introduce more machines everywhere, and resort to machine technology as widely as possible,''~^^**^^ he said. While raising the general productivity of labour, work must be made easier, by shifting the burden of heavy labour onto the machines and leaving only the adjusting of machines to the worker. Lenin advocated the study and use of all the latest foreign methods in science, technology and technical organisation. He said it was useful to learn from the capitalists, wherever necessary, and to adopt the worthwhile and profitable things they had.
The scientists, engineers and inventors who met Lenin were greatly impressed by his knowledge and his quick grasp of complex scientific and technological problems. Once Lenin and Maxim Gorky went to the Central Artillery Department to see a certain invention. Having listened to the inventor, Lenin asked him highly pertinent questions with such ease as if he were examining him on political subjects. The experts who were present were astounded when they later learned that it was Lenin: ``What? You don't say! How does he know so much about it? Why, we took him for an _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 445.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 31, p. 510.
402 expert! Amazing!'' On the way back Lenin said to Gorky: ``If we only could provide all these technicians with ideal conditions for work! In twenty-five years Russia would be the leading country in the world!"^^*^^This dream has come true. The Soviet Union today holds an advanced position in technology and science.
Lenin showed special concern for the development of the social sciences. In March 1922, Lenin wrote a very important article, ``On the Significance of Militant Materialism'', which was published in the journal, Pod Zjiamenem Marksi^ma (Under the Banner of Marxism). It was a sort of continuation of Lenin's major philosophical book, Materialism and Empiric-Criticism, and his Philosophical Notebooks.
In this article, Lenin defined the main tasks and purpose of the journal Pod Zjiamenem Marksizma, and formulated the chief trends that should govern philosophical work in the country, defining its goals and framing practical measures.
The idea that dialectical and historical materialism is of utmost importance for the development of the social and natural sciences, for correct understanding of the laws governing nature and society, and for the revolutionary transformation of the world was the main idea advanced. The Communists, Lenin wrote, should consistently defend Marxist philosophy and wage a systematic and irreconcilable struggle against all sorts of modern idealistic trends.
Lenin attached great importance to a conclusive elaboration of dialectics, based on a generalisation of phenomena and processes of social life, and on the achievements of natural science.
He always devoted much attention to the struggle against religious prejudices. In his article, ``On the Significance of Militant Materialism'', he specified the tasks of atheistic work in Soviet society. He demanded that atheistic propaganda should be stepped up, using a variety of forms and methods of scientific education, backed by the achievements of modern science, exposing the roots of religion, and instilling a scientific, materialistic world outlook in the people. Lenin stressed that atheistic promotion work should proceed regularly and vigorously, but only through ideological media, observing strictly the principle of freedom of conscience and seeing to it that the feelings of religious people are not hurt. Yet they should be told patiently about the fallacy of religion.
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 27!.
403 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Cultural RevolutionIn his speeches and writings Lenin advanced highly important propositions on the development of a socialist culture, on the essence of the cultural revolution and the ways of accomplishing it in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. The cultural revolution, Lenin said, represents a whole period of cultural development of the people, it implies profound changes in their thinking, ideology and spiritual life, their re-education in the spirit of socialism.
While the transfer of power into the hands of the working class is the decisive pre-condition of the cultural revolution, the cultural advancement of the people is in its turn a necessary prerequisite of the socialist reorganisation of society, the achievement of a labour productivity higher than that under capitalism, and the enlistment of the broadest masses in the administration of the state. The cultural revolution, Lenin pointed out, is effected under the leadership of the Communist Party and with the active participation of the working people themselves.
The proletarian, socialist culture does not spring up in a void. It emerges as a natural development of all the spiritual and intellectual wealth, the sum-total of knowledge created by humanity.
The training and education of the youth was always one of Lenin's principal concerns. In October 1920, he delivered at the Third All-Russia Congress of the Russian Young Communist League his historic speech, "The Tasks of the Youth Leagues'', in which he outlined the policy of the Party in the sphere of educating the rising generations of builders of communism and defined the aims and methods of Young Communist League work.
The young generation, Lenin said, is faced with the task of building a communist society on newly-cleared ground. Approaching the question from this angle, the tasks of the youth in general, and of the Young Communist League and other youth organisations in particular, could be summed up in one word: learn.
The Young Communists at the Congress were astounded. Everybody expected Lenin to speak about the international and domestic situation, about the fight against the Whites and the bandits ravaging the country, and the requisitioning of surplus produce in the countryside. Instead they heard an appeal to study. The full meaning of this was not appreciated at once. Lenin felt and understood the mood of the Congress very well. And with his usual clarity and power of conviction he elaborated his view on the tasks of the 404 youth, opening before the young people the fascinating vistas of the struggle to build communism.
What was the youth to learn, and how was it to go about it? Lenin answered his own question: The youth should learn communism. But the only way to become a Communist is by enriching one's mind with the knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind. The transition to communism presupposes reorganisation of the national economy on the basis of the latest scientific and technological achievements. This requires knowledge and the ability to apply this knowledge in practice, the ability to transform communism from ready-made formulas and programmes learned by rote into living reality, the actual building of the new society.
To learn, Lenin told his young hearers, does not mean confining oneself within the four walls of a school. They should link every step in their training and education with the working people's struggle for communism.
Closely connected with these ideas were the views Lenin expressed at the Congress on communist ethics. The old, exploiter society and its morality, Lenin said, were based on the principle that either you rob the next man or he robs you, either you work for the next man, or he works for you. ``Communist morality is based on the struggle for the consolidation and completion of communism. That is also the basis of communist training, education, and teaching. That is the reply to the question of how communism should be learnt."~^^*^^
While listening to Lenin's speech, many a Komsomol delegate thought that Lenin himself was an inspiring model of how a Communist, a man of communist society, should live and work. The distinctive features of Lenin's spiritual make-up were his loyalty to the communist cause, devotion to the struggle for the happiness of working people, love of country, internationalism, uncompromising attitude towards the enemies of communism, collectivism and labour for the benefit of all society. He was humane, respectful, sensitive and attentive to people; he loved life, he was versatile, morally pure, simple and modest, and always cheerful. Lenin was a man of great integrity. He did not tolerate egoism, ambition, envy, malice, vengeance and pettiness.
Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote that he never distinguished the personal from the public. He was the same in his work and life--- _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 295. (Italics ours.-TAe Authors.)
405 exacting to himself in small things and big. Even when settling purely personal matters, Lenin never failed to ask himself: ``What will the workers say about it?''The precepts set forth by Lenin concerning the tasks and character of the training and education of young people are to this day the guiding principles of the Soviet school system. It was the duty of the schools to help build communism, he said, to give the youth a broad general education, adequate polytechnical training, labour skills and to be an instrument for the moulding of the human personality. As Marx and Engels had done before him, Lenin laid particular emphasis on combining school instruction with productive labour. He included in the Party Programme polytechnical education for all children up to seventeen years of age, with theoretical and practical instruction in all the main branches of production, as one of the basic tasks of the schools.
The ideal future society, Lenin wrote, is inconceivable without combining education with productive labour by the young generation. Communism requires well-educated people, capable both of physical and mental labour.
Lenin was very fond of children. He liked playing with them. What is more, he knew how to win their hearts, how to talk with them. Children were also fond of him and sensed at once that he was a dear and understanding friend. Lenin regarded the children as the future. ``Often, when he spoke to children,'' Krupskaya wrote, ``he asked them half in joke and half seriously: 'You'll grow up a good Communist, won't you?' It was half a joke, of course, but it was his ardent desire that every child should grow up into a politically-conscious Communist and continue the cause for which the revolutionaries of all countries were fighting so courageously.''~^^*^^
Illiteracy was one of the principal enemies which Lenin believed had to be done away with first of all. He wanted more schools for the children and a far-flung system of schools and courses for adults. He was convinced that illiteracy could be stamped out very quickly if the people took up the matter.
Lenin had a great regard for teachers. He pointed to the need to enlist the old teachers to carry out the new tasks, to awaken their interest by posing problems of pedagogy in a new way, to attend to the intellectual development and all-round training of teachers, and to provide the conditions essential for their work. "Our _-_-_
^^*^^ N.K. Krupskaya, Stories About Lenin, 1960, p. 297 (Russ. ed.).
406 school-teacher,'' he wrote, ``should be raised to a standard he has never achieved, and cannot achieve, in bourgeois society.''~^^*^^Lenin considered the higher schools a key sector in the Soviet state's cultural work. To bring them within reach primarily of the workers and peasants, he devoted much attention to organising and consolidating workers' preparatory courses.^^64^^ At the same time he stressed the need for a complete revision of the curricula and the entire process of instruction in the higher schools, and above all improvement of instruction in the social sciences. On his initiative Institutes of Red Professors were founded in Moscow and Petrograd, which trained many theoretical workers. He also proposed a comprehensive plan for the advanced Marxist training of the best of the old college professors and instructors.
Lenin always paid much attention to enlisting women in the work of building the new life and to educating them politically. Addressing meetings and conferences of women workers and peasant women, he urged them to take an active part in the administration of the state and in economic construction. The task, he said, is to bring politics within the reach of every working woman. For a woman to be completely free and truly equal to a man, she must be relieved of domestic chores through the establishment of a large network of socialist enterprises - catering establishments, kindergartens, creches, etc. When this was done millions of women would be able to take an active part in social production and political life.
Lenin paid the highest tribute to the role played by Soviet women in the civil war and in economic rehabilitation. Proletarian women were ``great heroines'', he said.
A most important factor for successful socialist and communist construction is the ideological work of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Lenin stressed that all the ideological work of the Party, all propaganda and agitation, should be based on the political experience of economic development. The unity of ideological and organisational work, Lenin stressed, is the key principle of Party leadership. It is not enough to explain theoretically the meaning of communism; we must show how to build socialism and communism in practice. Every propagandist and agitator should also be an organiser of the people in the state and economic construction.
Lenin proposed a plan for production propaganda that called for combining political education with the efforts of the working class _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 464.
407 and all other working people to restore and develop further the national economy. In his opinion, newspapers, pamphlets and leaflets, lectures and talks on questions of production, the cinema, popularisation of the achievements of the best enterprises and leading workers, etc., could play an important role in this respect. Lenin insisted on the wide circulation of books and newspapers and the efficient functioning of libraries and reading-rooms, and pointed to the importance of the radio as a powerful means in the Party's political and cultural work. ``A newspaper that needs no paper and to which distances are no obstacle,'' is how he described the radio. Thanks to his vigorous support, a powerful radio station was put into operation in Moscow in 1922. Lenin's dream had come true the voice of the Soviet capital could now be heard by the whole country and all over the world.In the conditions of NEP, on the basis of a certain growth in capitalist elements and a strengthening of the petty-bourgeois element, hostile ideas revived and the influence of bourgeois ideology became stronger. It was during this period that Smena Vekh trend developed (named after a collection of the same title meaning ``Change of Landmarks'', published in Prague by White emigre intellectuals since July 1921). It expressed the ideology of the bourgeois counter-revolution, which, having been defeated in the open armed struggle against Soviet power, was hoping for the degeneration of the Soviet state and the Communist Party, the ``peaceful'' restoration of capitalism in Russia. The tactics of the Smena Vekh supporters were the so-called ``enveloping'', growing into the Soviet regime, the use of legal opportunities for the purpose of counter-- revoiution. They advanced the slogan of the "emancipation of the Soviets'', meaning the divorcing of state bodies from the Communist Party, and aimed at worming their way into the Soviets, changing their composition, and thereby paving the way for bourgeois democracy.
In these conditions, together with putting an end to the activity of the counter-revolutionaries, the Party's struggle against bourgeois ideology acquired particular importance.
``We must overcome resistance from the capitalists in all its forms" Lenin stated, ``not only in the military and the political spheres, but also ideological resistance, which is the most deep-seated and the strongest.''~^^*^^
Lenin fought hard for the Bolshevik party commitment of the Soviet press, following daily the work of the publishing houses, and _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 370. (Italics ours.---The Authors.)
408 newspaper and magazine editorial boards, encouraging good undertakings and criticising errors and slips,Lenin regarded art and literature as powerful factors in the building of communism. He taught us that they should be closely linked with the life of the people, deeply depict reality, truthfully and with consummate artistry carry the progressive ideas of communism to the broad masses, educate the new man, and call the working people to struggle for a good future.
Lenin defined the principles of Party leadership in art and literature. It is imperative, he said, while directing the development of art and literature, to take into account all the complex, specific features inherent in them and to refrain from dictating from above, leaving ample scope for artistic initiative, individuality and imagination as regards both form and content. At the same time he emphasised that art and literature are components of the general cause of the proletariat, of Party work as a whole, and that it is necessary for the Party to exercise leadership over them.
He wanted artists to produce works of artistic merit, ideologically sound, comprehensible to the people and corresponding to their healthy aesthetic demands. In a talk with Clara Zetkin, Nadezhda Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova, he said:
``Nor is it important what art can give to a few hundred or even a few thousand out of the total population of millions. Art belongs to the people. Its roots should go deep down into the midst of the broad working masses. It should be understood and loved by the masses. It should encompass the emotions, thoughts and will of the masses and uplift them. It should awaken and develop the artists among them.''~^^*^^
While waging an unremitting struggle against artistic trends and influences alien to communism, Lenin gave his full support to progressive Soviet writers and artists.
He had the warmest attachment for Maxim Gorky, whom he held in high esteem as a great writer, and the founder of proletarian literature. After the October Revolution he enlisted Gorky's active participation in solving the problems of cultural development, calling him ``an authority in matters of proletarian art".
As we know, there were times when Maxim Gorky lost his sense of judgement in the complex situation, fell under alien ideological influences and adopted an incorrect political position. In letters to the writer and frank talks with him Lenin criticised his errors _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 5, p. 13.
409 directly and impartially, but tactfully, and sought to dispel his illusions. With comradely advice and friendly high-principled criticism Lenin helped the writer to understand the policy of the Party and overcome his doubts and hesitation.Eye-witnesses recall how delighted Lenin always was when Gorky came from Petrograd to visit him. Many were the frank, heart-- toheart talks they had. Lenin gave every attention to Gorky's suggestions and requests and showed a constant concern for the writer's health. He took a keen interest in the work of the talented writer, seeing to it that each new book was sent to him as soon as it came off the press, and wanted to know how the books sold.
Lenin had a very high opinion of the work of A. Serafimovich.
He also liked Demyan Bedny's verse, which he considered truly proletarian, dear and comprehensible to the workers. At the same time, however, he noted the poet's shortcomings. ``He is somewhat crude,'' he observed to Gorky. ``He trails behind his readers, whereas he should be a little ahead.''
Although he criticised the futuristic tendencies in the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lenin voiced his approval of the poet when he took up a topical issue in the political life of the times and directed the barb of his satire against bureaucracy and endless meetings in the poem ``Lost in Conference''. Lenin's comment and advice played its part in Mayakovsky's development as an artist; the poet assumed a place of honour in Soviet poetry.
In the ideological education of the masses Lenin attached much importance to the cinema and the theatre. It was thanks to Lenin that the Bolshoi and Maly theatres in Moscow were able to continue functioning through the grimmest years of the civil war. Lenin had a deep admiration for the art of the actor.
With all his time taken up with work, Lenin was rarely able in those years to enjoy art. His visits to the theatre were few. The production he liked most was Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art Theatre. ``By nature,'' wrote Krupskaya, ``Lenin was a lyricist, despite his sobriety.'' He was very fond of poetry and music.
``I know of nothing finer than the Appassionata; I could listen to it every day,'' he said once after hearing Beethoven's sonatas. ``It is wonderful, superhuman music. The proud, though perhaps naive, thought always occurs to me: What miracles man can perform!"^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 268.
410 __ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin's Style of WorkLenin regarded the further strengthening of the Soviet state and the development of Soviet democracy as one of the most important tasks in the socio-political sphere. He did a great deal of work to improve the state machine, without which, in his opinion, it was impossible to manage the economy and other aspects of social life and to ensure the country's defence.
Lenin paid great attention to strengthening the Soviets. The exemplary functioning of the local bodies, he stressed, was exceedingly important for the state as a whole. Lenin devoted a great deal of attention to the study and the summing up of local experience. Hence the importance he attached to reports, especially economic reports, from local bodies. He drew up the report forms himself, checked whether they were submitted to the Council of People's Commissars in time, and studied them carefully. He instructed the local Soviets to pay more attention to practical questions of economic development and to everyday services to the working people. He frequently summoned people from the localities in order to talk with them, and made a point of ensuring that local functionaries visiting Moscow were supplied with all the information and instructions they needed for their work.
Although he believed that local organisations should enjoy wide powers, Lenin at the same time demanded that they be guided in their work by the interests of the state as a whole and strictly observe state discipline. He resolutely checked any tendency towards parochialism, such as, say, manipulations to reduce plans for a gubernia to less than it could fulfil, meeting local needs by neglecting those of the country generally, ignoring instructions from the centre, etc.
Time and again, speaking and writing on various points, Lenin stressed the importance of strengthening the ties between the state apparatus and the people, of systematic, planned and extensive work to attract thousands upon thousands of non-Party workers and peasants to running the state and building the economy, meaning that they should be elected to various elective bodies, promoted to various offices and appointed to various committees, control and checking bodies.
Lenin himself was a wonderful example of how a leader maintained close and continuous contacts with the people. Meetings and talks with workers, peasants and intellectuals, participation in and speeches at mass meetings and gatherings, at congresses and 411 conferences, and a copious mail connected Lenin by a thousand threads with the masses. He loved to mix with the people, to visit factories, towns and villages, for he wanted to see for himself how people lived, he wanted to know and feel the mood and spirit of the workers and peasants - those for whom he lived and laboured. Lenin heeded the voice of the people. He turned to them for advice and respected the experience of ordinary people.
Defining the ways and means of improving the state machinery, Lenin wrote:
``The primary, immediate task of the present day, and of the next few years, is systematically to reduce the size and the cost of the Soviet machinery of state by cutting down staffs, improving organisation, eliminating red tape and bureaucracy, and by reducing unproductive expenditure.''~^^*^^
In particular, Lenin insisted that government workers and institutions give careful attention to communications and letters received from the working people. He regarded complaints from the latter concerning the poor work of one or another institution as control from below. Administrative bodies, he stressed, should be primarily concerned with meeting the vital needs of the working people, and should act immediately on their suggestions. He would not countenance pressure being brought to bear on people who had sent in complaints to him.
Lenin considered collective leadership as the highest principle of Party and state leadership and consistently adhered to this principle in his activity. He always allotted a decisive role to Party congresses and conferences, and plenary meetings of the Central Committee, regarding them as the embodiment of the collective thinking of the Party, its tremendous political and organisational experience. He associated with them the solving of basic questions of party policy and prepared for them carefully. Lenin viewed the Central Committee as the supreme collective body of the leadership of the Party and the country between congresses. He pointed out that the Central Committee coordinates ``the activities of all the Soviet and Party institutions and all organisations of the working class'', uniting and guiding all the work of the Soviet republic. ``No important political or organisational question is decided by any state institution in _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 444.
412 our republic without the guidance of the Party's Central Committee.''~^^*^^For all his great authority and for all the breadth of his powers, Lenin never took any purely personal decisions on questions that came within the competence of bodies exercising collective leadership and that required collective discussion and solution. He strongly condemned the opinion that he alone decided all the matters in the Central Committee. "You are wrong in saying ( repeatedly) that '1 am the C.C.','' he wrote to A. A. Joffe indignantly. "This could have been written only in a state of great nervous irritation and overwork.... You should not allow yourself to be so nervous as to write such an absolutely impossible, absolutely impossible thing that I am the C.C.''^^**^^
On all important questions Lenin consulted with members of the Central Committee, People's Commissars and other leading officials. When presiding over meetings, Lenin did not claim that his opinion was indisputable, and always listened carefully to the arguments of others. All speakers were able to express their views freely. If there was the slightest divergence of opinion or proposals he always put the matter to the vote. It sometimes happened that the majority of the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decision with which Lenin did not agree. He would bow to the majority, and in cases where the question was of fundamental importance would submit it for discussion and final decision to the higher Party or Soviet body.
Lenin never acted only on the strength of his own authority; he sought to persuade others that he was right, and never failed to speak time and time again, to write to comrades who did not agree with him, several letters or notes on one and the same question, advancing more and more new arguments.
While pointing to the need for collective leadership, the collective reaching of important decisions and directives, Lenin at the same time attached great importance to the personal responsibility of each worker for the task entrusted to him. ``The main principle of administration, in the spirit of all the decisions of the R.C.P. and the central Soviet institutions, is the following:~
---a definite person is fully responsible for some specific work.''~^^***^^
The meetings of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars at which Lenin presided were a true school of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 444; Vol. 31, pp. 47--48.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 45, p. 99.
^^***^^ Ibid., Vol. 36, p. 529.
413 Party and state leadership. He considered that thorough preliminary examination of the matter at hand was the prime guarantee of fruitful deliberation and a correct solution. Before each meeting he would make a detailed study of all the relevant material and discuss the issues in question with the heads of the government departments concerned, and other officials. As for the meetings themselves, he made a point of ensuring that they proceed in a businesslike fashion, with the least possible waste of time. Opening the sittings punctually, he would see to it that the speakers did not exceed their allotted time. He had no patience with generalities unsupported by factual data and concrete suggestions, and insisted that all speakers be brief and to the point.But in spite of his strictness in the chair, the atmosphere was never strained. On the contrary, discussion was free and comradely. It was collective work in the full sense of the word. Often enough there was laughter at meetings of the Council of People's Commissars, with Lenin laughing the heartiest, for he had a good sense of humour. But the outbursts of mirth subsided as the meeting settled down again to the business at hand.
For Lenin the adoption of a correct decision was only the starting point; the most important part was its implementation. ``Any plan, even the very best, can be completely ruined by incompetent and stupid execution,'' Lenin pointed out time and time again. Through his instructions and directives, both verbal and written, Lenin taught people to work efficiently and to see every undertaking through to the end. His letters and countless notes, many of them written on scraps of paper, contained the most valuable ideas, practical advice, and sometimes entire programmes of action. While busy with political matters of cardinal importance, he took a lively interest in hundreds of thousands of seemingly minor questions, for nothing was too trifling to claim his attention if it served a useful purpose. Concrete leadership was the hallmark of Lenin's style of work.
Most important for the proper functioning of the administrative machinery, Lenin pointed out, was to select the right people for the right jobs and to check up on the fulfilment of decisions, tasks and directives. Emphasising that the Party and government cadres should always bear this in mind, he said: ``To test men and verify what has actually been done- this, this again, this alone is now the main feature of all our activities, of our whole policy.''~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Work!,, Vol. 33, p. 226.
414Lenin demanded of the Party and government bodies and of all functionaries effective verification of the fulfilment of Party and government decisions, of ``what has actually been done''. In scores of cases he personally checked up on whether a decision or directive had been carried out, either by telephoning the persons concerned or inquiring by letter. He did not tolerate formal written replies to his enquiries. He demanded a determined struggle against those who gave false information about the fulfilment of an assignment and thus deceived the Party and the state.
He saw the guarantee of success in all cases in the proper placing and employment of personnel. It was a question not of reorganising institutions, but of people, and of checking practical experience. ``Study people, search for able workers,'' Lenin wrote, ``this is now the essence; all orders and decisions without this are dirty bits of paper.''~^^*^^ For him the main criterion was always a person's political qualifications. Whenever someone was recommended to him merely as a ``good man'', he would grow impatient. ``What if he is a `good man','' he would say. ``I'd rather you told me what his political conduct is like.'' Of first importance, too, were the technical qualifications of a functionary, his conscientiousness, knowledge of the job entrusted to him, and his ability to organise the work properly. He believed that it was necessary judiciously to team up old, experienced cadres, tempered by struggle, with young people. He considered the promotion and training of new cadres to be one of the most important tasks.
Lenin was a very good judge of people. He scrutinised them closely, listened to what they had to say, grasped the crux quickly, and was able to appraise a man from various insignificant trifles. He was well acquainted with the personal qualities of the functionaries and knew how to approach them. He had the knack of spotting their strong points and putting them to use to best advantage. He was the teacher and mentor of cadres. Those who met him personally were always the richer for meeting him, and carried away a new sense of confidence and certainty in the success of the work they were engaged in. ``Those were difficult times,'' G. Krzhizhanovsky wrote. ``But what a joy it was to forge ahead hand in hand with a leader like Vladimir Ilyich and be able at difficult moments to turn to him for wise counsel!"^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 35, pp. 538--39.
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Lenin, Part 2, Moscow, 1957, p. 565.
415Lenin demanded that all functionaries should have a high sense of responsibility for the work entrusted, show initiative, self-reliance, the ability to grasp the situation as a whole and see the political significance of the questions they dealt with, as well as a businesslike, practical approach. Lenin was always sincere and outspoken. Irrespective of the rank of the person concerned, he sharply criticised incompetence, negligence and a formal approach to work; he would not tolerate intrigues and taught people to subordinate personal considerations to their work. Lenin told people the defects of their work candidly. When necessary, Lenin meted out strict punishment. Time and again, the Council of People's Commissars severely reprimanded various institutions or their heads for failure to fulfil the decisions of the Party and government in due time, or for poor organisation.
But although Lenin was highly exacting, there was nothing irritating or insulting in his treatment of people. When taking someone ``to task'', he never forgot to say a few encouraging words to him. Sharp in his reproof of defects, he encouraged good work. ``Time and time again,'' wrote Maxim Gorky about him, ``I noticed quite clearly marks of sincere admiration for the talent and moral fibre of people he had hauled over the coals the day before, admiration for their persevering hard work in the hellish conditions of 1918--1921.''^^*^^
Immersed though he was in his titanic task, Lenin took a paternal interest in the living conditions of the people around him, made a point of finding out their needs, and saw to it that they did not overwork themselves, that they had sufficient rest and attended to their health. ``There was always more than enough work,'' Krupskaya wrote later, ``but I have never heard Lenin say that he had no time when it concerned helping people.'' Yet in all this, as Gorky rightly pointed out, there was not a trace of the ``selfish concern which some clever employer might display for honest and capable employees.
``No, it was the warm consideration of a true comrade, the affection one has for one's equals.''~^^**^^
Lenin frequently wrote letters or notes to various organisations asking that help be extended to someone, and his oral instructions and requests of this nature were even more numerous. Whenever he noticed someone looking ill or exhausted he would raise the alarm _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin and Gorky, Letters, Reminiscences, Documents, 1969, p. 329 (Russ. ed.).
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 269.
416 Lenin and KtupskasaHere are two of Lenin's notes, showing his touching concern for the welfare of his comrades:
``Comrade Tsyurupa! You look ill. Without loss of time, take two months' holiday. If you do not promise this definitely, I shall complain to the Central Committee.''
To the Superintendent of All-Russia C.E.C. Houses:
``Please be sure to make available a room in the 1st House of Soviets to Comrade Cecilia Samoilovna Bobrovskaya, whom I know very well as an old Party worker. She is now living in absolutely intolerable conditions, and the doctors have ordered her to be transferred at once to one of the Houses of Soviets.
``Inform my secretariat of execution.
``V. Ulyanov (Lenin)
Chairman, Council of People's Commissars
``P.S. I have known Bobrovskaya since the epoch before 1905, and know that she is capable of living in great hardships and be reticent about it exclusively. That is why she needs urgent help.''
Here is another fact testifying to the extraordinary consideration Lenin showed to his fellow workers. Noticing that A. Khryashcheva, a member of the Collegium of the Central Statistical Board, never missed a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars which usually ended late, he wrote the following note to his secretary: ``I am sorry if Khryashcheva lives a long way off and has to come on foot.
``Tell her tactfully when you get a chance that on days when there are no questions of statistics to be discussed she can leave earlier or not come at all.''
Lenin took an interest not only in the living conditions of functionaries, but also in their state of mind. Maxim Gorky came to see him one day and found him writing a letter. Lenin begged to be excused for a moment, and continued writing.
``I am writing to a comrade in the provinces,'' he explained. ``He sounds dispirited, tired, no doubt. I must cheer him up. Good spirits are very important!"^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilj/ich Lenin, Vol. 2, p. 266.
__PRINTERS_P_417_COMMENT__ 27---826 417Lenin was sometimes visited by people who had lost faith in themselves and become discouraged by the difficulties and hardships, exasperated and tired. They invariably left him with their spirits revived and their faith restored. No one knew better than he how to inspire them with faith and self-confidence, vigour and enthusiasm.
The few instances cited above give some idea of Lenin's style of work, Lenin's principles of Party and state leadership, his concern for people.
All Lenin's activity is a splendid example of good organisation and discipline, concreteness and drive, exactingness towards personnel and at the same time a sensitive, attentive approach to them.
These are the principles by which the Communist Party and the Soviet Government are guided in their activities, in their efforts to perfect the machinery of state.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Peace ChampionThe transition to peace and the restoration of the national economy took place in an extremely complicated international situation. The imperialists were unwilling to reconcile themselves to their defeat and were hatching plans for new military ventures against the Soviet land. World reactionaries were eager to obstruct the 'Soviet people's efforts to restore their shattered economy and did everything in their power to prevent the normalisation of relations which had begun between Soviet Russia and other states. Under these adverse conditions the Soviet Government, with Lenin at its head, resolutely and consistently pursued a policy of peace and the establishment of business ties with the capitalist countries. Lenin said: "What we prize most is peace and an opportunity to devote all our efforts to restoring our economy.''~^^*^^
Lenin vigorously advocated the concept that states with differing social systems could and should coexist peacefully, and fought to avert a new world war.
Developing his idea on the competition between the two systems Lenin said that it was a ``duel between two methods, two political and economic systems-the communist and the capitalist''. ``I am convinced,'' Lenin added, "that the Soviets will overtake and _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 115.
418 outstrip the capitalists and that our gain will not be a purely economic one.''~^^*^^Lenin regarded peaceful coexistence and economic competition between the two opposing systems as a specific form of class struggle between socialism and capitalism. He described the concessions granted to the foreign capitalists as a token of coexistence and competition between the two systems. That was war on a new plane-the war of guns and tanks yields place to economic warfare.
Stressing the world-wide impact of socialist economic successes in Soviet Russia, Lenin said, ``We are now exercising our main influence on the international revolution through our economic policy. The working people of all countries without exception and without exaggeration are looking to the Soviet Russian Republic. This much has been achieved. The capitalists cannot hush up or conceal anything. That is why they so eagerly catch at our every economic mistake and weakness. The struggle in this field has now become global. Once we solve this problem, we shall have certainly and finally won on an international scale.''~^^**^^
This Leninist proposition retains its full significance today also. On the economic achievements of the Soviet people depends the defence capacity of the USSR and to a considerable extent of the whole socialist community, the possibility of counteracting the imperialist policy of aggression and war. On these achievements also depend our possibilities of supporting the revolutionary and liberation movement the world over. And on them depends the strength of the example of the new social system, which is becoming the best agitator for socialism with the working people in the capitalist countries and the peoples who have cast off colonial rule.
The Soviet Government, Lenin pointed out more than once, recognises the right of all nations to self-determination, independence and state sovereignty; it stands for equality of nations in international relations and maximum satisfaction of their progressive and just aspirations.
He attached particular importance to the establishment and promotion of friendly relations between the Soviet state and the Eastern countries. Early in 1921, treaties were signed with Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey. Lenin carefully followed the negotiations, had long talks with the Afghan mission and received the Turkish and Iranian delegations.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 456 and 458.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 32, p. 437.
__PRINTERS_P_419_COMMENT__ 27* 419On Lenin's suggestion, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs issued instructions to the plenipotentiary of the R.S.F.S.R. in Afghanistan, which, like the treaties themselves, clearly defined the principles of Soviet policy with regard to the Eastern countries and showed how radically this policy differed from that of the imperialist powers. ``...Our policy in the East,'' read the instructions, ``is not aggressive. It is a policy of peace and friendship. You must systematically in all your work lay the emphasis on this fundamental principle, and, in particular, make it the main objective of all your efforts in Kabul to develop our friendship with Afghanistan. Friendship presupposes mutual assistance, and in keeping with our desire to do our utmost to promote the development and the prosperity of a friendly Afghan state, we are prepared in this peaceful sphere to render it every possible assistance.''
The Soviet Government was anxious to establish diplomatic relations with China. The October Revolution and the just foreign policy of the Soviet Government in the East were warmly welcomed by broad sections of the Chinese population.
However, the reactionary Peking Government, under imperialist pressure, refused to sign a treaty with the R.S.F.S.R. Receiving the head of the Chinese mission on the eve of the latter's departure, Lenin expressed the hope that ties between China and Soviet Russia would be strengthened in spite of all obstacles. The People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs also sent a. letter to Sun Yat-sen, head of the National Government in Canton, tendering fraternal greetings and proposing a resumption of trade between Soviet Russia and China. In his reply, Sun Yat-sen expressed the hope that friendly relations between Soviet Russia and China would be established as soon as the reactionaries in China had been dealt with. He ended his letter with best wishes to ``my friend Lenin and to all who have done so much for the cause of human liberty".
Soviet foreign policy in the East was a powerful moral and political support to the peoples of the colonial and semi-colonial countries in their fight for freedom and independence. In this connection, Lenin pointed out that the Soviet Government was acting not only as a representative of the workers of all countries, but also as a representative of the oppressed peoples, that the Bolsheviks were creating a completely new type of international relations that would give all enslaved people the opportunity to free themselves from the imperialist yoke.
An example of the new and unprecedented type of relations between countries in which the people held the reins of government 420 was the establishment, in 1921, of fraternal relations between Soviet Russia and Mongolia, whose working masses, with the help of the Red Army, had defeated the foreign interventionists and feudal reactionaries and set up people's democratic government. During the treaty negotiations in November 1921, Lenin received a delegation from the People's Party and the Government of Mongolia, headed by Siihe-Baater, the leader of the Mongolian people. Lenin warned the delegation of the danger of imperialist encroachment on Mongolia, saying that the only correct thing the working people of Mongolia could do was to fight for state and economic independence in alliance with the workers and peasants of Soviet Russia.
Normal relations were gradually established with the capitalist countries. Lenin believed that economic ties and the development of mutually advantageous trade were principal factors in promoting peaceful coexistence between the states with different social systems. He said that the capitalist countries, too, would gain from establishing and strengthening commercial relations with Soviet Russia, that they were impelled to do so by a force greater than the desire, the will, and the decision of any hostile government or class; this ibrce, he said, was the general world-wide economic relationship.
``I know of no reason why a socialistic commonwealth like ours cannot do business indefinitely with capitalistic countries,'' Lenin said in an interview with a foreign correspondent. ``We don't mind taking their capitalistic locomotives and farming machinery, so why should they mind taking our socialistic wheat, flax and platinum. Socialistic corn tastes the same as any other corn, does it not?''^^*^^
Lenin devoted a good deal of attention to the negotiations of a trade agreement with Britain, signed in March 1921. Somewhat later a temporary trade agreement was also concluded with Germany and trade talks were held with Italy. On Lenin's initiative, the Soviet Government took steps to establish trade and diplomatic relations with the United States of America.
In 1920, a U.S. businessman and journalist, Washington Vanderlip, came to Soviet Russia to negotiate concessions, and was received by Lenin. Lenin later smilingly related that Vanderlip had told him that people in America believed Lenin bore the brand of Satan and that he ought surely to have horns. Vanderlip added _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 177.
421 that he would have to tell them as an eye-witness that this was not true. By that time the more far-sighted and sober-minded U.S. capitalists realised that whatever nonsense the bourgeois press might write about the Bolsheviks, one could and should negotiate with them. However, at that time the United States rejected the Soviet Government's offer to establish trade relations.Lenin wisely guided the foreign policy of the Soviet state. G. Chicherin, the then People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, writing about this aspect of Lenin's activities, tells us: ``Vladimir Ilyich always made a most brilliant analysis of the diplomatic situation, grasping the essence of every question at once and giving it the broadest political elucidation. His advice (often he would even suggest the wording of a reply to a foreign government) might serve as a model of diplomatic skill and flexibility.''~^^*^^
Lenin's perspicacity and his profound understanding of the balance of forces on the international scene were clearly manifested during the international economic conference in Genoa in 1922. He was appointed chairman of the Soviet delegation to this conference. He intended to go to Genoa to present the Soviet position in person, but pressure of other government duties and the unsatisfactory condition of his health prevented him from going. However, the Central Committee directives written by Lenin, and his letters and telegrams to Chicherin defined in detail the tasks and the behaviour of the Soviet representatives at the Genoa Conference.
Lenin pointed out that the Soviet delegation had a twofold mission: firstly, to fight for peace and economic co-operation among the nations, and, secondly, to secure the establishment of business relations between Soviet Russia and the capitalist countries. Accordingly, Lenin worked out a set of proposals, which the Soviet delegation submitted to the conference. A statement read by Chicherin at the first plenary sitting of the conference pointed out that the present historical epoch made "the parallel existence of the old system and the burgeoning new social system quite possible''. The conditions for the peaceful coexistence of the states with different social systems, it said, were: non-interference in internal affairs, non-aggression, complete equality, mutual advantage, resolution of conflicts by peaceful means and economic, political and cultural cooperation. The proposal for a general reduction of armaments was the most important point made in the Soviet declaration, which was worked out on Lenin's instructions.
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 3, pp. 477--78.
422The Russian delegation, Chicherin told the conference on April 10, 1922, intended ``to propose a general reduction of armaments and to support any other proposals aimed at alleviating the burden imposed by militarism, provided the armed forces of all states be reduced and the existing rules of warfare be supplemented by a total prohibition of its most barbarous forms, namely, poison gases, aerial warfare, etc., and especially the use of weapons of destruction against the civilian population".
``Russia,'' he said, ``is naturally prepared to effect a reduction of her own armaments on terms of full and unqualified reciprocity and on the provision of corresponding guarantees against any attack or intervention in her internal affairs.''~^^*^^
Such was Lenin's platform of struggle for peace, the noble traditions of which have been and still are continued by Soviet foreign policy.
The Soviet delegation at the Genoa Conference, wrote Lenin, should not insist on presenting its broad programme in the form of an ultimatum.
``You do not want an extensive one, let's have a narrower one....
``We shall accept even the narrowest one, but we shall not accept anything disadvantageous. We shall not submit to ultimatums. If you want only 'to trade'-let's have it, but we shall not buy a pig in a poke, and will not make any deal without calculating any 'claims' to the last kopek." Warning the Soviet delegation that any fundamental concessions or curtailing of the rights of the Soviet state were out of the question, Lenin wrote: ``We are not the least bit afraid of a break down: we shall have an even better conference tomorrow. Isolation and blockade will no longer intimidate us, nor will intervention.''~^^**^^
The imperialist governments at the Genoa Conference demanded that the Soviet state pay all the debts of the tsarist government and return to the foreign capitalists the factories nationalised after the October Revolution. What they actually wanted was the restoration of private ownership of industrial enterprises, and the abolition of the state ownership established in Russia. Acting on Lenin's instructions, the Soviet delegation repelled the imperialist incursions on the sovereignty of the Soviet state and rejected their impudent demands, which were aimed at the economic and political enslavement of the Soviet Republic, abolition of the Soviet power and _-_-_
^^*^^ Documents on U.S.S.R. Foreign Policy, Vol. V, Moscow, 1961, p. 193 (Russ. ed.).
^^**^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 45, p. 463.
423 reduction of Russia to a semi-colonial appendage of world capitalism.Moreover, by pursuing a firm and at once flexible policy, the Soviet delegation was able to take advantage of the deep-going contradictions within the imperialist camp to prevent the capitalist states from forming a united front against the Soviet Republic. In the course of the conference, a Soviet-German treaty providing for restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the R.S.F.S.R. and Germany and the development of mutually advantageous economic relations, was signed at Rapallo (Italy).
Noting that the Treaty of Rapallo was founded on the principle of peaceful coexistence of the two systems, Lenin drew the important conclusion that such peaceful, businesslike ralations based on equality between states with different social systems offered the only correct way out of the international difficulties, the chaos and danger of war.^^*^^
Striking evidence of the peaceful policy of the Soviet state was Lenin's proposal to include in the agenda of the Third Session of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee (Ninth Convocation) in May 1922 the question of reducing the Red Army.
Characterising the general line of Soviet foreign policy, Lenin told Stalin in August 1922:
``Our path is the correct one: we stand for peace and agreement, but we are opposed to shackles and shackling terms in agreements. We must grip the helm firmly and steer our own course, submitting neither to flattery nor intimidation.''
The socialist state, Lenin said, can and must, if necessary, make compromises with the bourgeois states in foreign policy. The important thing is that a compromise made by a socialist state should benefit socialism and meet the common basic interests of the international liberation movement, the interests of progress and peace.
A compromise implies reciprocal concessions. While recognising political concessions on our part, Lenin noted that these should not be made ``unless we receive in return more or less equivalent concessions from the international bourgeoisie to Soviet Russia, or to the other contingents of the international proletariat which is fighting capitalism''.^^**^^
With the object of peaceful coexistence the socialist state is prepared to make certain concessions in its relations with the capitalist _-_-_
^^*^^ Cf. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 356--57.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 332.
424 countries. It stands to reason, however, that these concessions should not affect the principles of communism, the foundations of proletarian power, and that they should not injure the sovereignty of the socialist state.In view of the famine in Russia, Lenin considered it necessary for the country to take advantage of every possible opportunity to obtain food from abroad. But the Soviet Government repulsed the attempts of U.S., British and French capitalists to undermine Soviet sovereignty and interfere in the domestic affairs of the Soviet Republic under the guise of ``help to the hungry''. Lenin referred indignantly to the ``foul American traders" of the American Relief Administration,^^65^^ and pointed out that they should ``absolutely refrain not only from political but also from administrative interference''. The Soviet Government also firmly rejected the demand of the International Aid Russia Committee of the Supreme Allied Council to control distribution of the food it sent and to dispatch a ``committee of experts" to Soviet Russia. Lenin described this as an attempt to set up a ``cloak and dagger committee" and was deeply annoyed by the Allied demand. ``There can be no question of yielding here,'' he wrote to the Political Bureau, and suggested sending in reply ``a sharply worded note of refusal''.^^*^^ Such a note was, indeed, dispatched.
Lenin proceeded from the fact that recognition by Communists of the need and possibility of the peaceful coexistence of the two systems does not exclude but presupposes the struggle between socialism and capitalism, exposure of imperialism and an irreconcilable struggle against bourgeois ideology, the socialist state's support of national liberation movements and the class struggle of the working people in capitalist countries.
In Lenin's opinion peaceful coexistence depended not only on the attitude of the Soviet Government, but also on that of the capitalist governments. Peaceful coexistence of the two systems would be enduring only if the policy of peace were mutual. Lenin warned the imperialist governments that the Soviet Republic would never submit to diktat or pressure, that it was not afraid of threats.
Lenin called on the Party and the working people to strengthen the defensive might of the Soviet state, since there were influential parties, politicians and financial magnates in the capitalist countries who wanted war and were planning to launch a new attack against the Soviet Republic.
_-_-_^^*^^ Ibid., Vol. 45, p. 254; Vol. 42, p. 340.
425Lenin denounced unjust imperialist wars. He described world wars as a foul crime and a betrayal of civilisation and culture. He warned that the use of powerful technological gains for the annihilation of millions of people and the employment of the productive forces for war would inevitably undermine the very foundations of human society.
What Lenin said applies doubly to our time, when the scientific and technological revolution, actuated in the military field by the development of thermonuclear weapons, has created the threat of total destruction to entire countries and nations if the imperialists should start a new world war.
Lenin never tired of urging vigorous struggle against imperialist wars. He stressed the need for ``the greatest possible number of the simplest and most obvious decisions and measures that would certainly lead to peace, if not to the complete elimination of the war danger''.^^*^^ Lenin pointed out that the masses played the decisive role in the prevention of war.
Lenin said that the victory of socialist revolution in a few countries would create the possibility of preventing world wars.^^**^^ Developments have borne out Lenin's conjecture. World war has ceased to be inevitable since socialist revolutions have triumphed in a number of European and Asian countries, a world socialist system has arisen and grown stronger and a powerful peace movement has developed all over the world. In our time world war can be prevented. Acting on Lenin's ideas, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Government have advanced a programme of general and complete disarmament under strict international control as the most radical way of securing lasting peace. True to Lenin's principles, the Soviet Communist Party holds high the banner of peace and international friendship.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Third Congress of the Communist InternationalThe Third Congress of the Communist International was held in the latter part of June and the beginning of July 1921. Lenin was elected its honorary chairman.
The key item on the agenda of the Third Congress was the question of the ways of the further development of the communist _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 386.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 40; Vol. 33, pp. 112, 132.
426 movement, the strategy and tactics of the Communist International.Lenin gave a profound analysis of the balance of class forces at the international level. Firstly, international imperialism had proved incapable of strangling Soviet Russia and had been compelled to recognise or half-recognise it, to enter into commercial relations with it. The Soviet Republic was exerting a powerful influence on the development of the international liberation movement of the working people. Secondly, the working class of the capitalist countries had already set up Communist Parties everywhere, which ``are growing, making steady progress towards winning the majority of the proletariat in each country''. Thirdly, the working masses of the colonial and semi-colonial countries, which form the vast majority of the earth's population, ``are now acting as independent revolutionary factors''. In these countries a great deal of combustible material had accumulated and it was quite likely therefore that ``insurrections, great battles and revolutions may break out there sooner or later, and very suddenly too''.^^*^^
Lenin attached special importance to the attaining of an alliance of the working class with the peasantry in the capitalist countries, in the colonies and semi-colonies, and also on a world-wide scale, in the form of an alliance of the whole international working class with the peasantry of the colonies, semi-colonies, and young national states that had freed themselves from imperialist rule.
Today, when the mighty scientific and technological revolution is in progress, the result of which in the developed capitalist countries is a rapid reduction in the size of the rural population and, at the same time, a rise in the numbers and role of the intelligentsia and the middle strata, revisionists maintain that for the majority of these countries Lenin's proposition on the alliance of the working class with the peasantry has lost its significance. This is not true. The working peasantry remains the main ally of the working class. Here it must be noted that Lenin, in speaking of the peasantry, also had in mind petty-bourgeois strata in general. Thus, in drawing attention to the fact that the need for ensuring a firm alliance of the working class with the peasantry is one of the most difficult tasks of the proletarian revolution and socialist construction, which will confront all capitalist countries with, perhaps, the sole exception of Britain, Lenin explained:
``However, even in regard to Britain it must not be forgotten that, while the small tenant farmers there constitute only a very _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 454 and 478--79.
427 small class, the percentage of workers and office employees who enjoy a petty-bourgeois standard of living is exceptionally high, due to the actual enslavement of hundreds of millions of people in Britain's colonial possessions.``Hence, from the standpoint of development of the world proletarian revolution as a single process, the epoch Russia is passing through is significant as a practical test and a verification of the policy of a proletariat in power towards the mass of the petty bourgeoisie.''~^^*^^
With regard to the intelligentsia, Lenin frequently stressed the need to draw it into the emancipation struggle of the proletariat. In a letter to Charles P. Steinmetz, the famous American specialist in power engineering, Lenin remarked that ``in all the countries of the world there is growing-more slowly than one would like, but irresistibly and unswervingly - the number of representatives of science, technology, art, who are becoming convinced of the necessity of replacing capitalism by a different socio-economic system...''.^^**^^
As Lenin pointed out in his speeches at the Third Congress, the changes in the world that had taken place since the last congress, such as the capitalist offensive against the working class, the defeat of the revolutionary actions of the proletariat in a number of countries in 1920--21, and the clear indications of a slowing down in the development of the revolutionary movement as a whole, called for a radical modification of tactics on the part of the Communist Parties. By the time of the Third Congress, the number of Communist Parties had grown substantially: the Congress was attended by delegates from 48 parties. But this army of Communists, Lenin wrote, was still poorly organised and poorly versed in the art of revolutionary leadership. It was necessary to re-orient the work of the Communist Parties, placing the accent on struggle to win over the masses, to rally them around the working-class vanguard, to win over the majority of the proletariat.
However, ``Left'' elements underestimated the need for systematic, persistent day-to-day work among the masses and instead preached the so-called ``theory of offensive'', the substance of which was that the Party should always adhere to offensive tactics regardless of whether the necessary objective conditions for revolutionary action _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, p. 456.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 35, p. 552.
428 existed or whether the Party had the support of the broad working masses.Discussion of the question of tactics at the Congress centred on the theses drawn up by the Russian delegation, which took account of the opinions of other delegations. Lenin's speech at the Congress in defence of the theses on the tactics of the Communist International is an example of the art of persuasion. Everywhere Lenin waged the ideological struggle in differentiated form. It was one thing when it was directed against the class enemy, against the ideological henchmen of capitalism. And another thing when it concerned the struggle of ideas within the communist movement; in this case Lenin saw it as his task not only to fight against mistaken and harmful views, but also primarily to draw back to correct positions in the movement comrades who had temporarily strayed; here he regarded comradely polemics as the main method. The congresses of the Communist International were characterised by free, democratic discussion of problems, collective drafting of documents, and truly comradely, equal co-operation of the representatives of the Communist Parties. Today also the CPSU and its Central Committee are guided by these Leninist principles in their mutual relations with fraternal parties and in their activity at international meetings of Communists.
Lenin completely demolished all the arguments of the ``Lefts''. The tactics of the Communist Parties, he said, had to be based on the fact that the first wave of revolution was on the ebb and the second had not yet risen. The Communists had to realise that the pace of revolutionary development had slackened, they had to learn from the experience of defeats and prepare for the new revolutionary upsurge. The principal task of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries was to win over the majority of the working class, of all working people, to the side of communism, and anyone who failed to understand this was seriously damaging the communist movement.
Subjecting the notorious ``theory of offensive" to annihilating criticism, Lenin pointed out that this ``theory'' was nothing but a petty-bourgeois view on revolution, which was fraught with disastrous setbacks for the Communist Parties and the working class, and which at the same time placed a dangerous weapon into the hands of the reformist, Right-wing opportunist elements. It was not a question of whether revolutionary action was permissible or not. This could not be questioned by a revolutionary party. It was a question of whether the conditions were ripe for revolutionary action, of whether such action was desirable and timely in a given 429 situation. In order to win the revolution and to retain power, Lenin taught, the Party must have the majority of the working people behind it -meaning not only the majority of the working class, but also the majority of the exploited and the oppressed. And to gain the support of the majority of the working people, it is necessary to work out the right tactics in the fight to win the masses, to learn to lead the revolutionary movement.
Lenin's speech convinced the wavering delegates of the need for the Communist Parties to turn towards the masses. The theses on the tactics of the Communist International were adopted by the Congress.
The agenda of the Congress included the question of organisation, of the methods and content of the work of the Communist Parties. O. Kuusinen was assigned the task of drafting the theses on this question. ``This task,'' Kuusinen wrote later, ``was carried out partly on the personal advice of Comrade Lenin, and partly by drawing on the plentiful direction in articles he had previously written.''~^^*^^ Lenin read the draft and made a number of remarks, suggesting among other things, that the draft deal in greater detail with the need for everyday revolutionary work on the part of every Party member, and with the work of the Communist Parties among the masses of the unorganised and organised proletariat, and also the non-proletarian sections of the working people. After the draft had been edited with the participation of the German Communist Wilhelm Konen, the theses were submitted for discussion to the Congress and adopted.
Many of the delegates at the Congress had never seen Lenin and now, after hearing him speak and having a chance to talk to him, were all struck by the fact that they had never met anyone like him before. The French Communist, Paul Vaillant-Couturier, wrote:
``Vladimir Ilyich was and still is the personification of ceaseless activity, and at the same time a Marxist from head to foot. Contact with him had the effect of a gust of wind sweeping into a stuffy room; it refreshed the mind burdened by prejudice and formal doctrines....
``Lenin, the intellectual, could think like a worker. Lenin, the orator, spoke without rhetoric or bombast. The man who had shaken the whole world, whose mind was constantly absorbing all that constituted the living breath of that world, this man to the end _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin and the International Working-Class Movement. Reminiscences, Vol. I, Moscow, 1934, p. 56 (Russ. ed.).
430 of his life preserved a remarkable ability to feel and to think like a Chinese coolie or a Negro porter. The oppressed Annamite or Hindu were as much an open book to him as the Leningrad metalworker, the Paris textile worker, the miner from New Virginia. Lenin was the perfect type of the new man; he was for us the prototype of the future.''~^^*^^Lenin elaborated the idea of the united working-class front adopted by the Communist Parties. ``The purpose and sense of the tactics of the united front,'' wrote Lenin, ``consist in drawing more and more masses of the workers into the struggle against capital even if it means making repeated offers to the leaders of the II and II~1/2 Internationals^^66^^ to wage this struggle together.''^^**^^ At Lenin's suggestion and in line with his precepts the Executive Committee of the Communist International worked out the theses on the united working-class front and on the attitude to workers belonging to the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals, as well as to workers supporting anarcho-syndicalist organisations.
The question of the united front came sharply to the fore in the beginning of 1922 in connection with the preparations for a conference of the three Internationals-the Second, the Two-and-a-Half and the Communist. Lenin held that this conference would give the Communists an opportunity to extend the struggle for working-class unity, and expose the erroneous political position of the Right-wing socialists. Briefing the Comintern delegates to the conference, he pointed out that for the sake of reaching agreement discussion should be confined to the least controversial questions.
In the articles ``New Times and Old Mistakes in a New Guise" and ``Notes of a Publicist'', in letters to members of the workingclass movement and the Communist Parties of different countries-to Thomas Bell, German Communists, and Polish Communists, and also in other documents, Lenin explained the importance of the decisions of the Third Congress of the Communist International, questions of the building of truly communist, truly revolutionary parties - parties of a new type, their strategy and tactics. Lenin again stressed the need for a struggle on two fronts-both against petty-bourgeois reformism concealed behind democratic and socialist phraseology, and against petty-bourgeois revolutionism-- menacing, blustering and boastful in words, but a mere bubble of disunity, disruption and brainlessness in deeds-taking account of _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 5, p. 413.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 411.
431 changes in the forms of Right-wing and ``Left-wing'' opportunism in a given concrete situation.^^*^^In January 1922, the First Congress of Revolutionary Organisations of the Far East was held in Moscow, attended by delegates from China, Japan, Indonesia and Mongolia. Lenin, whose health did not permit him to be present at the Congress, invited delegates to his home. As Sen Katayama, founder of the Communist Party of Japan, subsequently related, Lenin spoke to each of the delegations in turn, so that all of them heard each other's questions and Lenin's replies to them. He discussed with each delegation the specific questions of interest to the given country and problems relating to the Far East as a whole. Above all he stressed the need to unite the revolutionary forces of all countries in the struggle against imperialism.
Lenin, writes Sen Katayama, ``was very attentive to everyone who spoke to him. He was also a very good listener. His answers satisfied and encouraged everyone. We all felt perfectly at ease with him. He was a fine conversationalist and all of us were interested in everything he had to say. Comrade Lenin gave many useful suggestions and advice to each delegation in this brief but extremely important talk with the Congress delegates''.^^**^^
Strong, indissoluble links bound the Soviet people and the working people of the whole world. Lenin's party really has done the utmost possible in its country for the development, support and awakening of revolution in all countries. In their turn, the popular masses of the capitalist, colonial and dependent countries have selflessly supported the world's first socialist republic.
The Soviet people's efforts to restore their devastated economy and build a new society evoked the greatest admiration, sympathy, and support of working people the world over.
``...We do not believe what is in the subsidised capitalist press, against Russia and you,'' an American worker, named S. Kane, wrote in a letter to Lenin. ``We believe, that it is no more a Paradise in Russia, for the Parasites, Exploiters and other Crooks and Scoundrels, like here in this Country, but it dawns here sure. It takes a while, till the masses are Educated, where their Interests are. Ignorance of the masses is the great curse, whereby the Capitalist Scoundrels and their hirelings, are able to exist yet.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 21.
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich I^nin, Vol. 5, p. 438.
432``Keep on, in the good work, for a free world for the Workers, we are, the workers, with you, and do our best, for the good cause.''^^*^^
A movement to aid Soviet Russia in her fight against famine and economic dislocation had been started at that time among the workers in the capitalist countries. A number of groups of foreign workers came to Russia to help restore the national economy. Lenin deeply appreciated this tangible manifestation of proletarian internationalism and stressed the significance of the fraternal support which the workers of the whole world were rendering the Soviet country in building up its socialist economy.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Economic Retreat Ends.Lenin worked strenuously, with nearly no rest. Though he himself constantly urged his comrades to take proper care of their health, he brushed aside all appeals made to him to take a good rest himself, insisting that for the time being what he called `` current repairs" would suffice. By the end of 1921, however, his health deteriorated. The years of underground work and emigration, extreme overwork and, especially, the effects of the serious wound in 1918, took their toll. On December 6, 1921, he was given a vacation and moved to Gorki. ``I am terribly tired. I've got insomnia. I am going away for treatment,'' he wrote to Maxim Gorky.
On several occasions he went for a brief holiday to the village of Kostino (now the town of Kaliningrad, Moscow Region), where he stayed in a peasant cottage. He rose early and went for walks. One of his favourite routes led to a grove of century-old oaks not far from the cottage. Sometimes he would take a shovel and clear of snow the paths around the house. Occasionally he went out shooting. But nothing could take his mind off his work. He liked to meet and talk with the peasants. Every day he received a large package of newspapers, letters and documents of all kinds from Moscow. All this kept him busy, and the light in the window of his cottage would burn deep into the night.
At the end of December, the Eleventh All-Russia Party Conference and the Ninth Congress of Soviets were held. Lenin was unable to attend the conference, but came to the Congress and took an active part in it.
_-_-_^^*^^ Kommunist No. 3, 1960, p. 4.
__PRINTERS_P_433_COMMENT__ 28---826 433On December 31, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee adopted a decision granting Lenin six weeks' leave, which was subsequently extended until the Eleventh Congress of the Party. But in all these months Lenin continued to examine all important matters. He wrote articles and drafted directives and decisions, took part in the meetings of the Political Bureau and Plenary Meetings of the Central Committee, gave instructions over the telephone, and met leading Party and government functionaries.
Lenin prepared vigorously for the Eleventh Congress of the Party. He took part in drafting decisions on the basic questions and drew up an outline for the Central Committee's political report. In submitting this plan to the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee, Lenin asked that he be excused from attending it on grounds of ill health, adding that if his presence were required for elucidating the plan he would certainly appear at ``two or three hours' notice''. This is another of the many instances demonstrating Lenin's deep respect for the Central Committee as a collective organ of leadership.
The Congress opened on March 27, 1922. Lenin delivered the opening speech and the political report of the Central Committee. He said that the results of the first year of the New Economic Policy had fully confirmed its worth. He advanced a new task-to halt the economic retreat and pass over to preparations for a decisive offensive against the capitalist elements.
Lenin noted that a desperate struggle was going on between socialism and capitalism in which the question, ``who will beat whom'', was being decided, and expressed his deep conviction that the socialist element would prove the stronger and would inevitably beat the capitalist element. The New Economic Policy fully guaranteed, both economically and politically, the possibility of building the foundations of a socialist economy. The main thing now was to learn how to run the economy properly in order to defeat private capital. The fate of Soviet power, the fate of socialism itself, depended on it.
In the political report of the Central Committee and in his summing up, Lenin revealed and sharply criticised the shortcomings in the conduct of the New Economic Policy, the Party's guidance of the economy, and the work of the government machinery. He said that the Party is invincible when it is not afraid of criticism and self-criticism, does not cover up its shortcomings and rectifies them. ``The proletariat,'' he said, ``is not afraid to admit that certain things in the revolution went off magnificently, and that others went awry. All the revolutionary parties 434 that have perished so far, perished because they became conceited, because they failed to see the source of their strength and feared to discuss their weaknesses. We, however, shall not perish, because we are not afraid to discuss our weaknesses and will learn to overcome them.''~^^*^^
The Congress approved the political and organisational policy of the Central Committee which guaranteed the Party's unity in solving the basic problems of the revolution.
Continuous ill health prevented Lenin from ending his leave of absence. He suffered from severe headaches which his doctors believed to be due to the bullets still lodged in his body since the attempt on his life in 1918. It was decided to remove one of the bullets (the doctors would not risk interfering with the other). On April 23, 1922, the operation was performed.
On May 20, on the insistence of his doctors, who felt that he was in need of a period of convalescence and medical treatment, Lenin moved to Gorki. On leaving, he asked the heads of the central institutions to keep him informed of the most important affairs, the fulfilment of the principal decisions, campaign plans and other matters. But shortly afterward his health deteriorated sharply. Sclerosis of the brain brought about his first severe attack of illness. His right hand and right leg were almost paralysed and his speech partially impaired. The best doctors were called to his bedside.
Toward the middle of June, his condition improved. In July, his doctors permitted him to receive his closest associates, read books, and later on, newspapers. He asked for books, resumed his business correspondence and gradually took a hold on current affairs.
On October 2, 1922, he returned to Moscow and set to work. His return to work was a source of great joy to the Party and to the working people generally. In letters of greeting to him, the workers and peasants begged him to take good care of himself and to follow doctors' orders.
At the insistence of the doctors, his working hours were now limited: he was permitted to work from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 6 to 8 p.m., provided he took a day-off in the middle of the week (besides Sundays) for a complete rest.
But Lenin chafed under these restrictions. L. Fotieva, his secretary, tells us that he would come to his office at 9.30 in the morning, and when the secretaries looked in to see what he was doing, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works. Vol. 33, p. 311.
__PRINTERS_P_435_COMMENT__ 28* 435 he would smile and say: ``I'm not working, I'm just reading.''~^^*^^ At a quarter to eleven he would summon his secretary, listen to her report on documents received and issue a few instructions. By 11 o'clock, when his ``legal'' working day began, he would be working as intensively as usual. During the afternoon break, and sometimes at the end of the day as well, he would take a folder of papers home with him, returning them the next day with notes and comments. As a matter of fact, his so-called ``rest days" differed but little from his working days.``His mind worked constantly at high tension,'' wrote Nadezhda Krupskaya. ``I remember when his last fatal illness was approaching the doctors insisted on a strict routine, ordering him to lie down for two hours after dinner. Ilyich at first submitted to their orders, but was sceptical about the doctors' demands. 'They can't prevent me from thinking,' he once said. And indeed, whether he was lying in bed, or out walking, or simply conversing on ordinary everyday subjects his mind was constantly occupied with the cause to which he had dedicated his whole life, all of his energies, his every living minute.''~^^**^^
For two and a half months after his return to work, before the second attack in December 1922, Lenin worked essentially at the same high pressure as before. The following brief secretarial note on his work from October 2 to December 16 has been preserved: ``Wrote 224 business letters and notes, received 171 people (125 calls), and presided at 32 meetings and conferences of the Council of People's Commissars, Council of Labour and Defence, the Political Bureau and various commissions.''
In this period Lenin continued to study problems arising from the New Economic Policy, directed economic and cultural development, and handled numerous problems related to industry, agriculture, finance and trade, public education, the work of the government bodies and the foreign policy of the Soviet state.
In 1921, Lenin had laid the accent on trade and agriculture. Now that some progress had been made in these spheres he concentrated attention on developing industry, primarily heavy industry, as the basis for the building of socialism and building up the country's defence potential.
Lenin considered that the financial aspect was the most difficult problem of socialist industrialisation. In the capitalist countries, he _-_-_
^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vol. 4, p. 448.
^^**^^ N.K. Krupskaya, Stories About Lenin, 1979, p. 66.
436 pointed out, heavy industry was usually developed with the help of loans. But the imperialists did not want to grant the Soviet country loans or credits. Nor did the foreign capitalists agree to lease concessions. The boycott of the Soviet Republic by the entire bourgeoisie and all the governments was still making itself felt. The Soviet people had only their own resources to rely on. In Lenin's opinion industrialisation could be financed by drawing on incomes from foreign and domestic trade, profits from light industry and taxation, primarily taxation of the Nepmen, and also by reducing the administrative apparatus and economising stringently.Thanks to the New Economic Policy the Soviet state had been able to accumulate its first 20 million gold rubles, which were to be used exclusively for the restoration and expansion of heavy industry.
Lenin attached great importance to the foreign trade monopoly as a lever of socialist development. He regarded it as a crucial economic factor, and pointed out that nothing but foreign trade monopoly, coupled with planned government regulation of imports and exports, could safeguard the as yet weak Soviet economy from an invasion of foreign capital, secure the rehabilitation and development of domestic industries and obtain the profits and gold necessary for the country's industrialisation. He stressed that the monopoly on foreign trade was particularly important in view of the New Economic Policy, and the fierce attacks made on it by the foreign imperialists and capitalist elements at home.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Formation of the UnionQuestions relating to the national policy of the Party occupied a prominent place in Lenin's activities. The transition to peaceful socialist construction brought out a number of new problems in this sphere. The Tenth Party Congress decision charged the Party with the task of doing away with the inequality of the formerly oppressed peoples, drawing them into the work of building socialism, helping the working people of the non-Russian nationalities to develop and consolidate the Soviet system in their own areas, and ensuring the promotion of their economy and national cultures.
Lenin supervised the practical implementation of the Communist Party's national policy, directing the activity of the Party and state bodies in the Union and Autonomous Republics and concerning 437 himself with the welfare of all the peoples of the Soviet land. Pointing to the need for winning the confidence and trust of the formerly oppressed peoples, Lenin emphasised the tremendous international significance of the correct solution of the national question in the Soviet land. ``This is a world-wide question, and that is no exaggeration,'' he wrote. ``...It will have an effect on India and the East, it is no joke, it calk for exceptional caution.''~^^*^^
The tasks of socialist construction that faced the country after the war called for the further consolidation and development of the union of Soviet peoples. The interests of socialism, Lenin pointed out as early as the end of 1919, require complete confidence and close alliance between the working people of different countries and nations. Capital is an international force. To defeat it, the workers need international alliance and fraternal international solidarity. The Communists, he said, oppose national enmity, national strife and national exclusiveness. They are internationalists and strive for close unity among the workers and peasants of all nations.
While striving for international unity, Lenin warned, Communists should, however, be cautious, patient and flexible with regard to the survivals of national mistrust. ``We want a voluntary union of nations,'' Lenin stressed, ``a union which precludes any coercion of one nation by another-a union founded on complete confidence, on a clear recognition of brotherly unity, on absolutely voluntary consent. Such a union cannot be effected at one stroke; we have to work towards it with the greatest patience and circumspection, so as not to spoil matters and not to arouse distrust, and so that the distrust inherited from centuries of landowner and capitalist oppression, centuries of private property and the enmity caused by its divisions and redivisions may have a chance to wear off.''^^**^^
In 1920--21, the Soviet Republics extended and strengthened their federal ties. The R.S.F.S.R., Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Transcaucasian Soviet Republics concluded treaties with one another, which besides the unification of armed forces provided for economic co-operation. In the new situation, however, during the all-round development of socialism, relations along these lines between the Soviet Republics were no longer adequate.
It was before the October Revolution that Lenin first broached the idea of creating a united federative state when power in the multi-national country would be seized by the working class. He _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 45, p. 298.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 30, p. 293.
438 elaborated on this idea exhaustively after the Revolution. Lenin made a profoundly reasoned stand in favour of integrating the independent Soviet Republics in a union. He summed up the basic provisions on this score in the summer of 1920 in his ``Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions''. In the first place, he wrote, ``without the closest alliance" between the Soviet Republics it would be impossible to safeguard their existence under the conditions of capitalist encirclement. Secondly, ``a close economic alliance between the Soviet Republics is necessary, otherwise the productive forces which have been ruined by imperialism cannot be restored and the well-being of the working people cannot be ensured''.^^*^^ Thirdly, such an alliance would make it possible to create a single socialist economy developing according to a common plan. The union of the Soviet Republics, he said, should be achieved through federation. ``The feasibility of federation,'' he wrote, ``has already been demonstrated in practice both by the relations between the R.S.F.S.R. and other Soviet Republics ... and by the relations within the R.S.F.S.R. ...In recognising that federation is a transitional form to complete unity, it is necessary to strive for ever closer federal unity.''^^**^^ An imperative condition of such federation, he stressed, was mutual confidence and the voluntary consent of the republics joining it.The foundation of a multi-national socialist state was dictated by the objective course of historical development. The tasks of building socialism and strengthening defence capacity, the common interests of the working people of the different nationalities, and their striving to unite their efforts and to fraternal co-operation --- all these circumstances demanded the unification of the Soviet republics into a single united state capable of ensuring external security, economic prosperity, and freedom of national development for the peoples. The broad popular masses supported the further strengthening of the union of Soviet republics. The main exponent of the tendencies towards unification, and the driving force of this process was the working class. This genuinely democratic, unifying movement was led by the Communist Party.
Expressing the hopes of the popular masses, the central Party organs of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Transcaucasion Federation in the spring and summer of 1922 raised the question of the need for settling the mutual relations between these republics and _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 147.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 146 and 147.
439 the R.S.F.S.R. with the aim of developing and strengthening their federative links.Basing himself on the principles of Soviet federalism which he had worked out earlier, and summing up experience of national development in the country, Lenin defined the specific form of unionthe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - based on the voluntary unification of equal and independent Soviet Republics. This was a major contribution to Marxist theory and to the practice of socialist construction. He conceived of a new type of multi-national state and, at once, a new type of federative proletarian state a united multi-national socialist state, a voluntary union of equal and sovereign nations governed by the principles of proletarian internationalism.
Lenin's idea of the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was warmly supported by the working class, the labouring peasantry and the progressive intelligentsia. The masses of the working people of all nationalities expressed the iron will and determination to ally their forces and resources for the attainment of the common aim-the building of socialism and communism. Decisions on unification were taken at the congresses of the Soviets of all the republics.
On December 30, 1922 the First All-Union Congress of Soviets was held. Lenin was ill and did not attend it. But all the work of the Congress, which elected Lenin as its honorary chairman, was the embodiment of his ideas. The Congress approved the Declaration and the Treaty of Union. The voluntary joining together of the Soviet republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a striking expression of their socialist sovereignty and became its reliable guarantee. Thus under Lenin's leadership a multi-national socialist state was created, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The formation of the USSR in terms of political significance and socio-economic consequences holds an outstanding place in the history of the Soviet state. This historic event is a convincing victory of the ideas of proletarian internationalism, the fruitful result of the implementation of Leninist national policy of the Communist Party. The formation of the Soviet Union was one of the decisive factors that ensured favourable conditions for the reorganisation of society on socialist principles, the upsurge in the economy and culture of all the Soviet republics, and the strengthening of the defence capacity and international position of this multi-national state of the working people.
440 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolution.The Fourth Congress of the Communist International opened on November 5, 1922, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution. The opening was held in Petrograd, after which the Congress continued its work in Moscow. Lenin did a great deal of work on preparing for the Congress. As head of the Bureau of the R.C.P.(B.) Delegation he was in charge of all its activity and took an active part in drafting the most important Congress decisions. He prepared carefully for his speech at the Congress, drawing up two plans of his report, in Russian and German. On November 13, Lenin delivered a report to the Congress, entitled, ``Five Years of the Russian Revolution and the Prospects of the World Revolution".
The delegates who thronged the Grand Hall of the Kremlin Palace waited eagerly for Lenin to appear. The Congress was attended by 408 delegates, representing 58 Communist Parties, as well as several other parties and international organisations. A thunderous ovation broke out when Lenin entered the hall. The delegates rose to their feet and the Internationale rang out in many languages. At last Lenin mounted the rostrum and the audience settled down to listen to his speech.
``Lenin's thoughts,'' the well-known Danish writer Martin Andersen-Nexo, who was present at the Congress, subsequently recalled, ``flowed limpid and clear, even when he touched upon great human problems and showed with a clarity comprehensible to one and all that the future is inevitably and assuredly developing out of the present. He seemed to be living all these human lives himself...
``~`This is a real man,' a Norwegian worker beside me whispered. 'He looks like any of us, yet he sees a thousand times farther!'~"~^^*^^
In his speech Lenin summarised the five years of development of the socialist revolution in Russia, explained the essence of NEP and what it had accomplished, and outlined the tasks confronting the Communists of the Soviet land. The successes of Soviet power, Lenin said, showed that the policy of the Bolshevik Party was correct and proved that the Soviet state was capable of developing trade, maintaining a strong position in agriculture and industry, and moving steadily forward.
_-_-_^^*^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, Vol. .''), pp. 474 and 475.
441Speaking of the prospects of the revolutionary liberation movement and the tasks of the Communist Parties, Lenin drew the attention of the delegates to the need for a creative, not a dogmatic, approach to the experience of the Bolshevik Party and the lessons of the Russian revolution. The Communists of all countries must learn in order that they may really understand the organisation, structure, method, and content of revolutionary work.
Lenin's speech made a profound impression on the Congress delegates and guests. When he finished speaking, they rose as one man to applaud and cheer the leader and teacher of the working people of the world. Shouts of ``Long live our Comrade Lenin!" were heard on all sides in different languages.
The Congress agenda contained an item on the programme of the Communist International. In the discussion of the draft programmes the question of transition and limited demands as a way of leading the masses to socialist revolution aroused lively debate. Lenin considered that the Congress should strongly condemn ``both the attempts to represent the inclusion of limited demands in the programme as opportunism, and all and any attempts to use limited demands to obscure and side-track the basic revolutionary task.... The general programme should clearly state the basic historical types of transition demands of the national parties depending on cardinal differences of economic structures, as for example, Britain and India, and such like.''~^^*^^ Lenin's ideas formed the basis of the Congress resolution on the programme of the Communist International.
During the Congress, Lenin met a number of delegations from different Communist Parties. He talked with the German delegation about the formation of a workers' government in Germany and its character. ``I vividly remember that talk,'' recalls Walter Ulbricht, ``and how Lenin at once grasped the essence of the matter. He would not be diverted by secondary questions. Nothing of any importance escaped his attention. He talked to us with his customary fervour but, at the same time, patiently and convincingly.
``We were particularly impressed by the ease and friendliness of his attitude towards all the comrades. Our talk with Lenin gave us fresh courage and confidence, and showed us how to draw conclusions for practical work after a thorough appraisal of the situation.''~^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 428.
^^**^^ Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, Vol. 5, p. 444.
442In his talk with the delegates of the Italian Communist Party, Lenin asked them about their Party work, from what towns and provinces they came and how the workers lived. Speaking of the methods of fighting the fascists, who had seized power in Italy, he drew attention to the need for skilful united front tactics and emphasised that in order to win over the masses the Italian Communists should also work in the fascist trade unions.
Somewhat later, in connection with the Second Congress of the Trade Union International, Lenin had a talk with G. Monmousseau and P. Semard, leaders of the French General Confederation of Labour. They discussed the question of drawing the broad masses of the workers into the revolutionary trade unions, strengthening ties between the Communist Party and the trade unions and making the French Communist Party a mass party.
Lenin's talks with representatives of the fraternal parties, like his report to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, were permeated with the firm belief that the international communist movement would continue to grow, and that the future belonged to it.
On November 20, 1922, Lenin addressed a joint plenary session of the Moscow Soviet and all the district Soviets of the capital. This was Lenin's last public appearance. Lenin's speech was imbued with deep, indestructible faith in the strength of the Communist Party and the people. He stressed forcefully once again that the Party was able to cope, and would cope, with the most important tasks of socialist construction, and that the Communists had to live up to, and would surely live up to, the trust put in them by the people.
``...Difficult as this task may be,'' Lenin said in conclusion, ``new as it may be compared with our previous task, and numerous as the difficulties may be that it entails, we shall all-not in a day, but in a few years-all of us together fulfil it whatever the cost, so that NEP Russia will become socialist Russia.''~^^*^^
These remarkably prophetic words were met by a storm of applause expressive of the Soviet people's profound love for Lenin, their confidence in him, in the Communist Party and its policy.
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 443.
[443] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Thirteen __ALPHA_LVL1__ LAST YEAR OF LENIN'S LIFE AND WORK __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.] __NOTE__ Quote is between LVL1 and LVL2.Indeed, the power of the state over all large-scale means of production, political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of the peasantry, etc.-is this not all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society?
Lenin
The high tension at which Lenin had been working again affected his health in the latter half of November 1922. The doctors insisted that he restrict his working hours. But he was in the centre of things all the same, guiding the Party and the country.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Last Letters and Articles.The Central Party Archives of the Institute of MarxismLeninism, C.C. C.P.S.U., preserves the journal of Lenin's duty secretaries from November 21, 1922 to March 6, 1923.^^*^^
It contains revealing facts about the last period of Lenin's life, showing how courageously Lenin resisted his grave illness day after day and devoted all his strength to the cause of the Party and the working class. It is a most moving account.
On December 7, on his doctors' advice, he went for a few days' rest to Gorki. But he did not stop working. He examined draft decisions of the Political Bureau and dictated the draft of a decision to provide schools with bread, the ``Proposal for the Plenum Regarding the Politbureau Standing Order'', and ``Proposals Concerning the Work Routine of the Deputy Chairmen and the Chairman of the C.P.C.''. He also wrote a letter to Constantino Lazzari, a prominent leader of the Italian Socialist Party, and drew up the plan of his report to the forthcoming Tenth All-Russia Congress of Soviets. The plan indicates that he intended to deal with issues he later discussed in some of his final articles- co-operatives, machinery of state, etc.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Worki, Vol. 42, pp. 463--94.
444On December 12, Lenin returned to Moscow. In the morning of December 13, Lenin had two consecutive attacks, and doctors were summoned to his bedside. Lenin was deeply alarmed at the deterioration in his health. It says in his medical record that ``it was very difficult to prevail on Lenin not to speak at any sittings and to stop work for the time being. Finally he agreed and said he would begin winding up his affairs at once''. For a few days Lenin worked at home. He dictated letters, issued instructions and received various comrades, trying to finish the most urgent business.
In the evening of December 15, Lenin dictated a letter to Stalin for the information of the members of the C.C. concerning his speech at the forthcoming Congress of Soviets, in which he opposed procrastination in the discussion of the foreign trade monopoly at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee. He also dictated a letter to Trotsky about Trotsky's speech in support of the foreign trade monopoly at the coming Plenary Meeting. In his letter to the members of the Central Committee, Lenin wrote: ``I have now finished winding up my affairs and can leave with my mind in peace.... Only one circumstance still worries me very much; it is that it will be impossible for me to speak at the Congress of Soviets. My doctors are coming on Tuesday and we shall see if there is even a small chance of my speaking. I would consider it a great inconvenience to miss the opportunity of speaking, to say the least.''~^^*^^ Lenin asked that provisions be made for him to speak at the Congress, but that someone else should prepare to speak in case he could not be there.
However, there was a further deterioration in Lenin's health, and he was unable to take part in the Congress of Soviets. On the night of December 15, he had another severe attack, which lasted over 30 minutes. In spite of this, before the doctors arrived, Lenin dictated to Krupskaya one more letter about the work of the deputy Chairmen of the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Labour and Defence. In the evening, Krupskaya telephoned the Secretariat of the C.P.C. on Lenin's behalf and asked them to inform Stalin that Lenin would not be able to speak at the Congress of Soviets.
In the next few days Lenin's health deteriorated still more. His right arm and leg would not function. He could no longer examine current affairs. But he continued working all the same. He dictated letters and articles, and prepared for the Twelfth Party Congress.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 460.
445Subsequently, Krupskaya described Lenin as ``a very alert, persevering and self-controlled man. An optimist''. ``His usual, dominant state of mind was one of tense concentration,'' she wrote. He `` controlled himself superbly'', was ``critical of what he did and very exacting, but hated agonising self-analysis" and was ``a real fighter'', ``bold and courageous".
Lenin was his own self even when very ill. His mind was lucid, his will-power strong, his optimism at its peak. He did not waste time reflecting on his illness. He was concerned for the present and future of the Soviet land, the prospects and the ways of building socialism in Russia, for the Party and the means of strengthening it, and for the world revolutionary movement.
Lenin knew perfectly well that his illness was dangerous and told his doctors time and again that he realised it could end fatally at any hour. Knowing that he could any day become incapacitated, he made up his mind to dictate some letters and articles in order to record ideas which he considered ``of the utmost importance''. He wanted to sum up the great gains of the Bolshevik Party, the Russian working class, the Soviet people, and the international proletariat, and to examine the outlook for socialism, for the liberation of the working people and of the peoples oppressed by the imperialists. The fact that he suspected these letters and articles would be his last, makes them, in a way, Lenin's political testament.
On December 23, Lenin asked his doctors for permission to dictate for five minutes because a certain matter troubled him and robbed him of his sleep. When they complied, he summoned M. Volodicheva, his stenographer, and said: ``I want to dictate a letter to the Congress. Please take it down!" For four minutes Lenin dictated the first part of a most important document, ``Letter to the Congress".
``He dictated quickly, but was obviously ill,'' Volodicheva wrote in the Secretaries' Journal. ``After he stopped dictating he asked me what day it was. He also asked me why I looked so pale and why I was not at the Congress.^^67^^ He regretted having kept me from attending it. I received no other instruction.''
On the following day, Lenin asked to be allowed to continue dictating. The doctors objected, but according to his sister, Maria Ulyanova, he threatened to refuse all medical treatment unless he was permitted to dictate his ``diary'', as he called his notes, for at least a short time every day. ``Work was life for him, and idleness was death,'' said Professor Ferster, under whose care Lenin was.
After consulting the doctors the following decision was taken: 446 ``1. Vladimir Ilyich may dictate daily for five to ten minutes, but what he dictates should not be correspondence and he should not expect any replies. Visitors are forbidden. 2. To avoid giving him food for thought and alarm neither his friends nor members of his family should tell Vladimir Ilyich any political news.''
On December 24, Lenin dictated the second part of his ``Letter to the Congress'', warned that what he had dictated was absolutely secret. He then added another order. Much later, in 1929, Volodicheva revealed that he had in that instruction directed her to indicate on the wax-sealed envelopes in which he wanted his notes kept that ``they could be opened only by V. I. Lenin or, in the event of his death, by Nadezhda Krupskaya''. On December 25 and 26, Lenin continued dictating his ``Letter to the Congress''. On December 29, he dictated a reference ``Addition to the Section on Increasing the Number of C.C. Members'', and on January 4, 1923, an addition to the notes made on December 24. During December 27--31, Lenin dictated the letters ``Granting Legislative Functions to the State Planning Commission" and ``The Question of Nationalities or `Autonomisation'\thinspace''.
Between January 2 and February 9, 1923, Lenin dictated a number of articles, namely: ``Pages from a Diary'', ``On Co-- operation'', ``Our Revolution (Apropos of N. Sukhanov's Notes)'', ``How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Recommendation to the Twelfth Party Congress)'', and `` Better Fewer, But Better".^^68^^
While working on his articles, Lenin asked for books on co-- operatives, the scientific organisation of labour, foreign relations, imperialism, and other matters, and also requested specific information.
Lenin's work on his last articles and letters was a truly heroic achievement. It is hard to tell what effort it cost him. At first, he was allowed to dictate for five to ten minutes, and later for not more than 30 to 40 minutes a day. So he had to hurry if he wanted to say all he had to say. Besides, he was unaccustomed to dictating to a stenographer, for as a rule he wrote his letters and articles himself. Lenin said he was ``accustomed to seeing his manuscript in front of him, stopping, pausing to think over difficult passages, in which he had 'got stuck', walking up and down the room, even running away to take a walk somewhere; that even now he often felt like seizing a pencil and writing or introducing corrections himself.''~^^*^^ Dictating called for additional effort. Lenin had to consider _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, pp. 489--90.
447 beforehand what he wanted to say, for he could not afford to waste any time while dictating. But his perseverance surmounted these difficulties. Volodicheva wrote in the Secretaries' Journal on February 2, ``Dictates, as always, excellently: without halts, seldom at a loss for words, speaks, gesticulating, rather than dictates.''A will of iron, and his awareness of the responsibility that rested on him, his concern for the future of Russia and the further development of the Soviet land, gave him strength to overcome pain and to achieve more than seemed humanly possible. In something like six weeks Lenin produced a number of important works. Like all his other writings, his last letters and articles are strikingly deep, lucid, logical, down to earth and to the point.
He was content with what he had written. The pertinent entry in his medical record says that after reading what he had dictated on December 31 -it was a letter entitled ``The Question of Nationalities or 'Autonomisation'~"---``Lenin was pleased with his work''. On February 9, after reading the concluding part of his article, ``Better Fewer, But Better'', which he had dictated the day before, he said to Volodicheva: ``I think I've made a good job of it.''
``I had the impression,'' Volodicheva wrote, ``that he was very pleased with that part of his article.''~^^*^^
Lenin's last articles and letters are invaluable. They are integrally connected, develop ideas contained in previous works and speeches, and really represent a single work setting forth in general outline the programme of the socialist transformation of Russia in the light of the general prospects of the world liberation movement. They are imbued with fatherly concern for the interests and needs of the Soviet working people and the building of a happy life for the ordinary people of the world.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Socialism Shall Win in the U.S.S.R.The future of socialism in the Soviet Union was the basic question on which Lenin focussed attention. In his article, ``Our Revolution (Apropos of N. Sukhanov's Notes)'', he exposed the dogmatism and pedantry of the leaders of the Second International and the Mensheviks, who argued that Russia lacked the objective requisites for socialist revolution, that it had not yet attained the level of the productive forces and of culture that made socialism possible, _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 42, p. 492.
448 that the Bolsheviks had carried out the socialist revolution contrary to the laws of historical development, etc.Lenin showed that they had completely departed from Marxism, that they did not understand its substance. He considered it essential to demonstrate that their arguments were absolutely untenable.
Although they called themselves Marxists, the Right socialists, Lenin stressed, did not understand the fundamental feature of Marxism, namely, its revolutionary dialectics. Being cowardly reformists and afraid to break with the bourgeoisie, they recognised only one path of development, the path taken by Western Europe. They completely failed to understand the fact that, while world history as a whole is governed by general objective laws, it is by no means unlikely, but, on the contrary, presumed, that certain periods of development may have peculiarities either in form or the sequence of this development.
A case in point was Russia, where the First World War created a revolutionary situation and where, in spite of the country's technical and economic backwardness as compared with the other capitalist countries, the conditions matured for the victory of the socialist revolution. The situation that had arisen enabled the Bolsheviks to combine the working-class movement with the "peasant war" of which Marx had spoken in his time. By their anti-popular, imperialist policy the bourgeoisie had brought the people and the country to the brink of catastrophe and the only way out for the workers and the peasants was a socialist revolution and the transfer of power to the proletariat. The situation multiplied the strength of the working people, intensified their hatred for those responsible for the war and fired their revolutionary enthusiasm. At the head of the working class of Russia marched the tried and tested Bolshevik Party which was able to appreciate the requirements of the historical moment and knew in what direction to lead the masses.
As Lenin pointed out, the subsequent revolutions in the countries of the East, which had a greater diversity of social conditions, would introduce in the history of the liberation movement of the working people even more peculiar features than had the Russian revolution.
Lenin rejected utterly the bourgeois-Menshevik thesis that it is reckless to undertake socialist reconstruction of society in a country still culturally and economically backward.
Lenin's criticism of the contention that the victory of socialism was impossible in Russia was aimed not only at the West European reformists and the Mensheviks, but also at the sceptics and __PRINTERS_P_449_COMMENT__ 29---826 449 opportunists inside the Party. It was the time, 1922, when Trotsky wrote that socialism could not be built in one country, within ``the national confines of one state'', that the working class of Russia, having assumed power, would inevitably come into hostile collision with the peasantry and that the creation of a socialist economy in Russia would not be possible until after the victory of the proletariat in the leading countries of Europe.
In his last writings, Lenin denied these defeatist and essentially Menshevik conclusions of the Trotskyites. In his article ``On Cooperation" he again stressed that Russia had ``all that is necessary to build a complete socialist society": a proletarian state, large-scale production in ther hands of the Soviet state, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, and the leadership of the working class in this alliance. ``It is still not the building of socialist society,'' wrote Lenin, ``but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for it.''~^^*^^
This important proposition was of tremendous historical significance. When Soviet Russia was taking her first steps in building a new society and many did not yet clearly see how the country would advance towards socialism, Lenin opened for the Party and the people broad vistas and charted the right course that would bring them to the victory of socialism.
He drew attention to the great difficulties that attended the building of socialism in the U.S.S.R. The imperialist powers organised intervention and blockade of the Soviet Republic; they did all they could to throw the country back economically; they took advantage of the civil war in Russia to ruin the country as much as possible, reckoning that if they could not destroy the Soviet system they could at least make its progress towards socialism more difficult.
In the circumstances, Lenin taught, it should be the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government to safeguard the existence of the Soviet Republic and prevent the imperialists from crushing it, preserve peace as long as possible and accomplish the socialist transformation of the country. To achieve this it was necessary to consolidate the proletarian power, strengthen the alliance of the working class and the peasantry and the leading role of the working class in it, transform Russia into a highly developed industrial power, switch the peasantry to the path of large-scale socialist farming, steadily raise the material well-being and cultural level of the people, improve the machinery of state, guard the unity _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 468.
450 of the Party, and pursue a correct, flexible foreign policy. This, Lenin said, is ``the general plan of our work, of our policy, of our tactics, of our strategy''.^^*^^Lenin held that the Soviet land would become- the base of the socialist reconstruction of the life of all mankind. He was certain that once the Russian proletariat, allied with the peasants, will have built socialism, this would be an inspiration and model for all working people of the world.
Lenin's plan of building socialism and its implementation were aimed at the creation of a fully developed socialist society. It was a comprehensive plan, a plan of ``economic and social development".
In his last articles and letters Lenin developed further the teaching on the building of socialism. He left us a conclusive plan for the building of socialist society and the advance to the approaches of communism.
He elucidated questions related to the building of the material and technical basis of socialism and defined the fundamentals of economic administration. He attached immense importance to the economic problems of socialist and communist construction.
Lenin considered that the planning agencies had to play a big part in the framing of Party and government economic policy and were to become a scientific centre handling the basic questions of the country's economic planning.
Lenin again drew attention to the need to introduce scientific organisation of labour, in particular administrative work, and urged Party and state officials to master ``the fundamentals of management''.^^**^^
In his last articles Lenin again stressed that the country's industrialisation, with priority development of heavy industry, was of decisive importance in building socialism. The working class must create a large-scale industry on the basis of an enduring alliance with the peasantry, while steadily improving the well-being of the working people of town and country. This, he said, could not be done by ``colonising'' and ruining the small commodity producer, as the Trotskyites proposed.
Lenin's programme of the socialist reconstruction of agriculture was an important part of his plan of building socialism. He demonstrated that two forms of socialist enterprises-state farms and _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 501.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 482 and 491.
451 collective farms-were the most suitable in the socialist transformation of the countryside in a country with a more or less numerous class of small producers.We owe it to Lenin that he charted ways and means for the solution of the most difficult task of the proletarian revolution, second only to the conquest of political power by the working class-that of drawing millions of peasants, who were both petty proprietors and labourers, into socialist construction, and getting them to convert from small individual farms to large-scale collective farming. He pointed out that the way to do so was to organise the small peasant farms into co-operatives.
In his wonderful article ``On Co-operation'', Lenin summed up the development of co-operatives and the founding of the first collective peasant farms in Soviet Russia, and drew up his co-operative plan for the reconstruction of peasant life along socialist lines.
In that period many of the Party's practical workers did not understand, and underrated, the role of co-operatives in socialist construction. The Trotskyites and other opportunist elements rejected in general the possibility of using the co-operatives as the principal means of switching the peasantry to the path of socialism. Lenin opposed these views and wrote about the vast, exceptional importance of co-operation in building a socialist society. He explained that under conditions of the dictatorship of the working class, when the economic commanding heights were in the hands of the proletarian state, co-operative enterprises did not differ from socialist enterprises. Lenin assigned the leading role to public, or state property, which he described as being consistently socialist, i.e., the most perfect form of socialist property, since-it represented a higher form of socialisation of production. At the same time, he emphasised that the co-operative form of property was also socialist and that, in conjunction with public, state property, it constituted the economic basis of socialist society.
Lenin explained why co-operation was the only right way of bringing the bulk of the peasantry to socialism. First, co-operation combined the personal interests of the peasant with public interests, with control of these personal interests by the state and their subordination to the interests of society. Second, the application of various forms of co-operation-first in marketing and supply, and later in production-made it possible to introduce gradually the principles of collectivism in farming. Co-operation was therefore the " simplest, easiest and most acceptable to the peasant" way of going over to a new system, to collective production. And this was the most 452 important thing, for socialism had to be built in such a way ``that every small peasant could take part in it".
``If the whole of the peasantry had been organised in co-- operatives,'' Lenin wrote, ``we would by now have been standing with both feet on the soil of socialism.''~^^*^^ He estimated that it would take a whole historical era, one or two decades, to accomplish this task, for the necessary material and technical basis had to be created first and the cultural level of the peasants had to be raised considerably before the bulk of the peasants could be organised in co-operatives.
Outlining the tasks of the Party and the Soviet state in promoting the co-operative movement, Lenin emphasised that the transition from small peasant farming to large-scale social production must not be haphazard and spontaneous. This transition was possible only if the proletarian state provided all-round assistance and guidance to the co-operatives, if the town assists the countryside, and if all sections of the working class joined in the socialist reconstruction of the countryside.
Lenin's co-operative plan was an important step in the development of Marxism, in the development of Lenin's teaching on the victory of socialism in the U.S.S.R. and the building of communism. It became the concrete programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its further efforts of reconstructing agriculture along socialist lines. Lenin's co-operative plan is of international significance for it is the only way the socialist reconstruction of small commodity production can be accomplished. In the countries of the socialist community, the Communist and Workers' Parties creatively apply the principles of Lenin's co-operative plan to the concrete conditions of their countries and are successfully coping with the task of the socialist reconstruction of agriculture.
In his last articles, Lenin laid special emphasis on the cultural revolution, one of the basic tasks of socialist construction, on universal literacy and the development of a people's intelligentsia and of science. In his article, ``Pages from a Diary'', Lenin expressed confidence that the problems of cultural development would be successfully solved, because the people of Russia were very interested in real culture and because the Soviet state handled the problems of culture with deep insight. The social system in the Soviet Republic, Lenin pointed out, is based on the co-operation of two classesthe workers and the peasants.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 468 and 474.
453It was the crucial task of the Party, he said, to maintain the leading role of the working class with respect to the peasants and to retain the trust of the peasants with respect to the workers for this was what the fate of the Republic depended on.
He considered the relationship between town and country to be a fundamental political question of decisive importance for socialist revolution. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat the towns were introducing into the countryside up-to-date machinery, effecting a fundamental improvement in the condition of the working peasants, drawing them into active public and political life, and bringing them advanced culture. All this could be amplified and extended, Lenin said, by introducing deliberate planning and regularity. It was vital, he added, to establish close contact and comradely relations between the city workers and the village labourers, close contacts between urban and village Party cells. This, he emphasised, was one of the basic tasks of the working class after it won power.
Lenin attached immense importance to the establishment of correct relations between the peoples inhabiting the U.S.S.R., devoting to this problem his letter "The Question of Nationalities or `Autonomisation'~".
Lenin said that further consolidation of the U.S.S.R. was a most important task. ``Firstly'' he wrote, ``we must maintain and strengthen the union of socialist republics. Of this there can be no doubt.''~^^*^^ The union of the republics, he said, was necessary most of all to protect the gains of socialism from the imperialist intrigues. It was necessary, too, for the whole world liberation movement.
Secondly, Lenin noted that the centralism on a country-wide scale should be combined with the sovereignty of every union republic and described this as a necessary condition for the unification and fraternal friendship of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.
Lenin emphasised strongly that the equality of nations should not be merely legal and formal, but also factual. The internationalism of the big nations that previously oppressed others should consist not only in observing the formal equality of nations, but also in selfless assistance to the previously oppressed smaller nations in achieving factual equality by raising the level of their economic and cultural development. He always condemned every departure from the principles of proletarian internationalism both towards dominantnation chauvinism and towards local nationalism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 609.
454As far back as 1919, Lenin wrote that the Russian Communists ``should severely punish the slightest manifestation of Great-- Russian nationalism in their own midst''. He pointed out that, being essentially a betrayal of communism, Great-Russian nationalism did untold harm, disuniting the Russian Communists and Communists of other nationalities, and thereby grinding the axe of their class enemies.
Lenin also emphasised the danger of local nationalism, of national egoism, of the propagation of national exclusiveness, of the tendency of disrupting or weakening the close alliance and friendship of the non-Russian and Russian nations, of disrupting and weakening the political, military and economic alliance of socialist republics.
The best way of building confidence among Communists of different nations, Lenin pointed out, was to battle jointly, shoulder to shoulder, for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the building of socialism and communism, against nationalism of all hues.
Full equality, sincerity, mutual respect, friendship, fraternal cooperation and mutual assistance-this is what must characterise relations between nations.
In the concluding part of his letter, Lenin pointed out once again that the proper conduct of the national policy in the U.S.S.R. was incalculably important not only for the Soviet land, but for the world communist movement as a whole, and for the many millions of Asians who would in the near future come to the forefront 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.''^^*^^
Acting on Lenin's instructions, the Communist Party has solved the national question in the best possible way. It has secured consolidation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, fraternal friendship of the peoples, and the flowering of their economy and culture. It has combined comprehensive development of every nation and the extension of the rights of the national Soviet Republics with measures aimed at closer co-operation between them, at mutual assistance, and at the coming together of the peoples.
The Communist Party is determined to maintain the principles of internationalism in the relations between different nationalities. It acts always on Lenin's proposition that ``the proletariat cannot _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 611.
455 support any consecration of nationalism; on the contrary, it supports everything that helps to obliterate national distinctions and remove national barriers; it supports everything that makes the ties between nationalities closer and closer, or tends to merge nations. To act differently means siding with reactionary nationalist philistinism''.^^*^^Every Soviet Republic, says the Programme of the C.P.S.U., can prosper and develop only in the great family of the fraternal socialist nations of the U.S.S.R.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Cherish Party UnityIn his articles, ``How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection" and ``Better Fewer, But Better'', Lenin outlined and substantiated a number of measures for improving the machinery of state. He proposed utilising the Party's best forces, enlisting the advanced workers and trained, educated personnel for this very important and urgent matter. Disclosing the defects in the work of Soviet institutions he advanced the task of ``reducing our state apparatus to the utmost degree of economy'', ``removing from it all traces of extravagance'', tirelessly securing an improvement in the ``machinery of state, from the higher state institutions to the lower local bodies'', placing its entire activity on a scientific basis.
Lenin considered that the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, the organisation and work of which had to be radically changed, was to play a great role in improving the state apparatus. He proposed the establishment of a united control body which would secure competent and effective supervision and strengthen the bonds between the Party and the state machinery, on the one hand, and the masses, on the other, greatly improve the administration machinery, the implementation of Party policy, and promote the success of socialist construction.
The Twelfth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) acted on Lenin's suggestion and set up a joint Central Control Commission and Workers' and Peasants' Inspection which played a great role in the struggle to strengthen the unity of the Party, in improving the Soviet state apparatus, and in the successful solving of the tasks of socialist construction in the country.
Lenin's last articles and letters show that he was strongly dedicated to the idea of strengthening the Party's ideological and _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 20, pp. 35--36.
456 organisational unity. He regarded the Party as the guiding force of Soviet society capable of uniting the people and leading them in socialist construction. These matters were uppermost in his mind, and it is no accident, of course, that the ``Letter to the Congress'', which dealt with the Party, was the first programme document he dictated after he fell ill.In his ``Letter to the Congress" and the related articles, ``How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Recommendation to the Twelfth Party Congress)" and ``Better Fewer, But Better'', Lenin examined the basic problems of the Party, its unity, the role of its Central Committee, the need for collective leadership, and the bonds between the Party and the masses, the distribution of leading functionaries. These were all questions of paramount importance for the future of the Party, its efficiency and, consequently, the future of communist construction.
The early years of Soviet power had demonstrated, Lenin pointed out, that the stability of the proletarian dictatorship and the successful accomplishment of its tasks depended on the strength and unity of the Communist Party, the vanguard of the working class.
He pointed out that the stability and cohesion of the Party's leading body, the Central Committee, was an essential condition for Party unity, because the minute the Party leadership showed instability this would be sure to affect the situation within the Party. As one of the measures designed to remove the danger of a possible split because of differences between Party leaders, Lenin proposed that the number of Central Committee members be increased to several score, even as many as a hundred, chiefly by inducting experienced, politically active workers. This was necessary ``to prevent conflicts between small sections of the C.C. from acquiring excessive importance for the future of the Party''.^^*^^ The greater number of members would, at the same time, add to the prestige and role of the Central Committee as a collective body guiding the Party and the country. It would help train more Party cadres and improve the Party apparatus.
In the article ``How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection" Lenin suggested enlarging the Central Control Commission and connecting its work with that of the Central Committee. Members of the Central Control Commission should take part in the regular plenary meetings of the Central Committee _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 593.
457 and a certain number of the former should also attend sittings of the C.C. Political Bureau. This, Lenin believed, would make the work of the Central Committee smoother and more systematic.In his ``Letter to the Congress" Lenin also examined Party stability from the standpoint of the personal qualities of some of the Central Committee members drawing special attention to their shortcomings and mistakes.^^*^^
Lenin pointed to Trotsky's ``non-Bolshevism'', mentioned his struggle against the Central Committee and wrote that Trotsky was a person who ``has displayed excessive self-assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work".
Trotsky's fierce struggle against the Bolsheviks before 1917 and his opportunist, splitting activity after joining the Party-his demand to postpone the armed uprising till the Second Congress of Soviets, his treacherous behaviour during the conclusion of the Brest Peace Treaty, his belittling the role of the Communists in the Red Army and his attempts to withdraw military organs from the Party's control, his anti-Party stand in the trade union discussion, his repeated attacks on the C.C.'s policy and decisions and Lenin's theory of a socialist revolution, all this proves Lenin's words about ``Trotsky's non-Bolshevism".
In his letter Lenin also characterised Stalin. Considering him as a prominent Party leader and pointing to his shortcomings, Lenin wrote:
``Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.''
Lenin suggested that the comrades ``think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead 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 wrote the letter for the Twelfth Party Congress. The first part of it, dictated on December 23, 1922, in which he dwelt on the need of enlarging the number of C.C. members, was dispatched to Stalin on the same day, which fact is recorded in the ``Register of _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 36, pp. 594--95.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 595 and 596.
458 Lenin's Letters, Notes and Instructions''. The notes made on December 24 and 25, 1922, and on January 4, 1923, containing character sketches of C.C. members, were, according to Lenin's will, turned over by Nadezhda Krupskaya to the Central Committee after Lenin's death, on May 18, 1924, a few days before the opening of the Thirteenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.). Krupskaya wrote in the minute on the handing over of these documents:``I have turned over the notes which Vladimir Ilyich dictated during his illness from December 23 to January 23. There were thirteen separate notes. This does not include the notes on the national question (which are at present in the keeping of Maria Ilyinichna).
``Some of these notes have been published (on the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection and about Sukhanov). The notes dated December 24 and 25, 1922, and January 4, 1923, are among the unpublished ones and contain character sketches of some Central Committee members. It was Vladimir Ilyich's express wish that these particular notes be submitted to the next Party Congress after his death.
``N. Krupskaya"~^^*^^
On hearing the communication of the commission appointed to study Lenin's papers, a plenary meeting of the Central Committee, held on May 21, 1924, adopted the following decision:
``In accordance with Lenin's wish, the said documents shall be put before the Congress. They shall be read separately to the delegations with the provision that they are not to be reproduced. The documents shall be read to the delegations by members of the commission which studied Lenin's papers.''
At the Thirteenth Party Congress, which met in May 1924 during the acute aggravation of the struggle against Trotskyism, Lenin's letter was discussed by the Congress delegations. Bearing in mind the important role of Stalin in repulsing the Trotskyite attacks on Leninism and his authority in the Party and trusting that he would take into account Lenin's critical remarks, the delegations expressed themselves in favour of Stalin retaining the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee.
Lenin's proposals on enlarging the C.C. and other measures designed to secure Party unity and collective leadership were taken _-_-_
^^*^^ Central Party Archives of Institute of Marxism-Leninism.
459 into account by the Central Committee when preparing for the Twelfth Congress in its special theses on the reorganisation and improvement of the Party's governing bodies.Trotsky opposed Lenin's plan of reinforcing the C.C. and increasing its membership. As the documents show, he sent a letter to members of the Political Bureau on February 13, 1923, in which he based his objections on the plea that if the Party's leading body were enlarged to 50 members it would be deprived of ``the necessary organisational form and stability''. Trotsky's objections were over-ruled by the Plenary Meeting of the C.C. in February 1923, but he continued to insist on his own proposal, which was the very opposite of Lenin's. However, all his efforts were rejected by the Central Committee.
Lenin's suggestion to increase the membership of the C.C. became a law for the Communist Party.
The enlargement of the Central Committee was highly important. It enhanced the role of the Central Committee in the guidance of the Party and country and helped to crush the anti-Party groups which emerged after the death of Lenin and launched a bitter struggle against the Party line.
The solid Leninist core in the Central Committee repelled all opportunist attacks on Leninism. The Communist Party won a complete victory over the opposition groups. In a long and bitter struggle against the enemies of Leninism, it forged the solid unity which is a characteristic feature of the Party's internal organisation. True to the behests of Lenin, the Central Committee and the whole army of Communists guard the unity of the Party, resolutely repulsing the slightest attempt to weaken this unity and rallying the Party to put into practice Lenin's general political line.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Development of the World RevolutionThe immense historical significance of Lenin's last writings lies in the fact that they substantiated the general line of the Communist Party in building a developed socialist society in the USSR, and thoroughly analysed the question of the paths the world liberation movement of the working people would follow, the question which was most pressing at the time.
In 1918--20, when a sharp revolutionary crisis developed in the West, Lenin thought that the prospects of world socialism depended in the main on the victory of the revolutionary movement in the principal European countries.
460The course of events showed that the development of the world liberation movement was more complicated and slower than had been expected. The revolutions in Germany and Hungary and the revolutionary actions of the proletariat in a number of other countries had been defeated. Lenin wrote that the ruling circles of the capitalist victor-countries took advantage of their victory in the First World War to make a few concessions to ``their'' oppressed classes. These concessions ``insignificant though they are, nevertheless retard the revolutionary movement in those countries and create some semblance of 'class truce'\thinspace''.^^*^^
A big part in saving the sinking ship of capitalism was played by the reformists and revisionists of Marxism, who helped the reactionary forces to suppress the revolutionary movement of the working people. They intimidated the proletariat of Western Europe with talk about the ``price of revolution" and argued that the capitalist system could be ``improved'' and that socialism could be achieved through the peaceful evolution of capitalism. The reformists described the difficulties and economic dislocation in Soviet Russia as the ``price of revolution'', and glossed over the fact that these difficulties had been caused primarily by the imperialist war, foreign military intervention and the fierce resistance of home counter-- revolution.
Lenin emphasised that the slowing down of the revolutionary movement in the West European countries did not mean, as the reformists and revisionists alleged, that the Bolsheviks had made a mistake when they advanced the proposition that socialism would inevitably triumph on a world scale.
The West European capitalist countries, Lenin went on to say, were moving towards socialist revolution not by ``the gradual `maturing' of socialism" in them. At the same time India, China and other countries of the East ``have been completely jolted out of the rut. Their development has definitely shifted to general European capitalist lines''. A proletariat had come into being in those countries, the democratic forces had grown stronger and more united, the national consciousness of the peoples had increased. There began ``the general European ferment''. As Lenin wrote, a 1905 of its own was irresistibly and rapidly approaching in the East.
Lenin demonstrated the immense impact the national liberation movement had on the final victory of socialism throughout the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, pp. 498--99.
461 world. In 1921, he wrote that the First World War and the establishment of Soviet power in Russia had definitely converted the working people of the colonial and semi-colonial countries ``into an active factor in world politics and in the revolutionary destruction of imperialism''. ``It is perfectly clear,'' he wrote, ``that in the impending decisive battles in the world revolution, the movement of the majority of the population of the globe, initially directed towards national liberation, will turn against capitalism and imperialism and will, perhaps, play a much more revolutionary part than we expect.''~^^*^^Enlarging on this thesis in his last article, ``Better Fewer, But Better'', Lenin wrote that the countries of the East ``have been drawn into a process of development that must lead to a crisis in the whole of world capitalism''.^^**^^
The break-up of the colonial system would mean the collapse of imperialism's positions in the rear, the loss of its reserves; it would mean that the imperialists would be deprived of the opportunity to siphon out, through the plunder of their colonies, the enormous superprofits they used for the reformist corruption of a certain section of the proletariat in the capitalist countries. This would inevitably lead to a sharpening of class contradictions and intensify the working-class struggle in those countries for the victory of socialism. Lenin pointed out time and again that for a number of reasons it would be harder to begin socialist revolutions in the developed Western capitalist countries than in Russia. But he was certain that they were inevitable.
Noting the great role of the national liberation movement in the development of world revolution, Lenin considered that it would be ridiculous to exclude the proletariat of Europe and America from the revolutionary forces.^^***^^ He attached decisive importance to the working class, the international working-class movement.
The main thing, as Lenin constantly pointed out, was the creation of a united revolutionary front of the international workingclass and national liberation movements. He stressed the correctness of the slogan advanced by the Communist International, ``Workers of all countries and all oppressed peoples, unite!'', remarking that it corresponded to the new historical conditions.^^****^^
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 454--55, 482.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 33, p. 499.
^^***^^ See ibid., p. 351.
^^****^^ See ibid., Vol. 31, p. 453.
462The rallying of the main revolutionary forces-the socialist system, to which belongs the decisive role in the world revolutionary process, the international working class, the national liberation movement, and the unity of action of the Communist Parties of all countries on the basis of Marxism and the principles of proletarian internationalism-this is the only true path, pointed out by Lenin, to victory in the struggle against imperialism for peace, national independence, social progress, democracy and socialism.
This, in general outline, is the content of Lenin's last articles and letters. In wealth of ideas and importance of the theoretical propositions advanced in them, they occupy an outstanding place in Lenin's ideological legacy. These works illumined for many decades ahead the path of the Soviet land to communism and the prospects for the development of mankind as a whole. They were and still are of vital importance for our Party, for the Communist and Workers' Parties of all the socialist countries, and for the international communist movement as a whole.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ At GorkiLenin hoped that he would be able to take part in the coming Twelfth Congress of the Party and planned to address it. On March 10, 1923, however, he had another and the most severe attack, which led to a loss of speech and further paralysis of the right arm and leg. On March 14, a government communication was published stating that the health of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had deteriorated sharply. In view of this the Government deemed it necessary that medical bulletins on the condition of his health be published.
In April 1923, the Party held its Twelfth Congress. This was the first congress since the October Revolution that Lenin was unable to attend. However, the preparation for the Congress and the Congress itself took guidance from Lenin's last articles and letters. On February 21, the C.C. Plenary Meeting examined the theses on the national and organisational questions and decided not to publish them until Lenin sees them (with the doctors' permission). If Lenin disapproved of them, an emergency plenary meeting could be called to re-examine them. Lenin's articles ``How We Should Reorganise the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection (Recommendation to the Twelfth Party Congress)" and ``Better Fewer, But Better" were discussed in the press and by Party organisations, and approved by the Communists.
463This shows that the claims of bourgeois writers that Lenin was no longer able to work and no longer influenced Party and government affairs in the latter period of his life were absurd and malicious inventions.
Here is what Y. Bumazhny, Secretary of the Bryansk Gubernia Party Committee, said on this score in his speech at the Congress: ``Comrades, I think the debate on the C.C. report should first deal with Comrade Lenin's articles, because Comrade Lenin has done almost as much for the Twelfth Congress as he did for the previous congresses in the way of preparation. I would go so far as to say he has done more, and not only in the sense of preparing for it, but also in shaping its decisions, because, considering Lenin's recent condition, his articles are, in effect, a political report and have outlined the immediate tasks facing the Party, Soviet power and the Communist International.''~^^*^^
Lenin's sturdy constitution resisted the ailment stubbornly. In the first half of May 1923, his condition improved somewhat and on May 15, a fine sunny day, he was taken by car to Gorki. At his request he was put in the room which he had occupied before his illness, the most simply furnished one in the house. Fresh air and good care had a beneficial effect, and towards the end of July, Lenin began steadily to recuperate. He slept more soundly, his appetite improved. He was able to sit up and before long he could walk and take daily airings in the park in his wheel-chair. His state of mind, Krupskaya wrote later, changed completely. He "joked a lot, and laughed'', and even hummed the Internationale and other revolutionary songs.
During his illness Lenin was sustained by the deep love and fond care of the Party and the people. At their meetings, workers, peasants and Red Army men never failed to inquire about Lenin's health. Every piece of good news from Gorki was received with joy by the working people. Thousands of letters and telegrams wishing Lenin rapid recovery were received by the Central Committee, the Council of People's Commissars, the press, and Lenin personally.
Many of the letters contained all kinds of medical advice. Their writers said they would gladly donate their blood for their beloved leader. Communists and non-Party people alike wrote, ``We are ready to give our lives that he may get well and be able to work.''
_-_-_^^*^^ Twelfth Congress uf the R.C.P.(B.). Verbatim Report, April 17--25, 1923, Moscow, 1968, p. 105 (Russ. cd.).
464The doctors said of Lenin that he was a ``most remarkable patient''. With the will-power and persistence typical of him, Lenin strove to conquer his illness. This is one of the reasons he improved in health so markedly towards the close of 1923. Lenin's principal object in those months was to regain his speech and to learn to write with his left hand. He applied himself to the task with extraordinary tenacity and, much to his joy, made steady progress. A speech specialist said he was sure Lenin would talk again.
Lenin's desk stood beside a window. He liked to look at Gorki. He had good contacts with the peasants there, and saw to it that electricity was installed in the village and that the peasants were supplied with seeds and machinery.
All this time Lenin kept his attention focussed on the affairs of the country, the work of the Party and people. He insisted on being given Pravda and Izvestia. After a look at the headlines he would ask Nadezhda Krupskaya to read the editorials, news items and articles to him.
Lenin also kept abreast of new publications. Usually, he examined the packages of books that came to Gorki, selecting those which interested him most, such as literature dealing with the scientific organisation of labour, the magazine Pod ^namenem Marksizma, reference books, and atlases. In the evenings Nadezhda Krupskaya would read fiction to him. Saltykov-Shchedrin was one of the authors. Lenin liked Gorky's book My Universities. He always inquired after Maxim Gorky and was very much upset on learning of his illness. Lenin also greatly enjoyed poetry: the verses of Demyan Bedny, Beranger and other revolutionary poets.
``As I read to him,'' Krupskaya recalls, ``he would look pensively out of the window at the setting sun. I recall the verse ending with the line: 'The Communards will never, never be slaves.'
``I read as though vowing to Ilyich that we should never, never surrender the gains of the revolution....''~^^*^^
Lenin enjoyed watching newsreels, particularly Soviet ones. He was keenly interested in the All-Russia Agricultural Exhibition. On his request the assistant manager of the Gorki State Farm went to the Exhibition and then told Lenin about his impressions and also about the work of the state farm. When two tractors were brought to the farm Lenin watched them at work. Afterwards, well pleased with their performance, he shook the hand of their driver.
_-_-_^^*^^ N. K. Krupskaya. Stories About Lenin, 1979, p. 96.
__PRINTERS_P_465_COMMENT__ 30---826 465On October 18, 1923, Lenin decided to visit Moscow. Nadezhda Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova accompanied him. He was in high spirits during the trip. When they drove into the city he removed his cap and waved it in greeting. In the Kremlin, he went to his apartment, looked into the meeting-hall of the Council of People's Commissars and then went to his office. On the following day he drove through the city, visiting the Agricultural Exhibition. In the Kremlin, he took a few books from his bookcase and returned to Gorki. This was Lenin's last visit to Moscow.
Even when very ill, Lenin showed concern for his relatives and friends and the people around him. He was very fond of Nadezhda Krupskaya and Maria Ilyinichna, and watched over their health. He saw to it that there was absolute quiet in the house after lunch, when Nadezhda Krupskaya had her afternoon rest. He always asked the doctors and the rest of the medical personnel how they were and inquired whether visitors from the city had been given a meal. He was very fond of children. When a party was arranged for the children of Gorki on New Year's Eve, Lenin sat in the hall watching them at play, enjoying their concert and sharing in their merriment. When his relatives thought the noise might tire him, he said the children should not be interrupted in their games.
Krupskaya wrote to Maxim Gorky about Lenin's last weeks: ``Up to his death, he was the same a man of tremendous willpower and self-control, who laughed and joked and was tenderly solicitous of others.''~^^*^^
In the latter half of October 1923 Lenin's health deteriorated again, although he felt well enough to continue his daily routine. Krupskaya read the papers to him every day. He followed closely the discussion which Trotsky and his supporters forced on the Party in the autumn of 1923. The Trotskyites slandered the Central Committee, demanded freedom for factions and groups in the Party and urged economic concessions to foreign capital. The Party rebuffed the Trotskyites firmly. The Thirteenth Party Conference held on January 16--18, 1924, condemned Trotskyism as a petty-bourgeois deviation and an attempt to revise Leninism, and endorsed the Leninist line of the Central Committee.
During the discussion Lenin familiarised himself with the principal documents published in Pravda and literature dealing with it. There is every reason to assume that Krupskaya opposed the Trotsky line with Lenin's knowledge. After the conference opened, _-_-_
^^*^^ Lenin and Gorky, Letters, Reminiscences, Documents, 1969, p. 265 (Russ. ed.).
466 Lenin wanted the account of it read to him from beginning to end. ``When Lenin appeared excited on Saturday (January 19.--- Auth.)" Krupskaya wrote later, ``I told him the resolutions were passed unanimously. We spent Saturday and Sunday reading them. Lenin listened very attentively, and asked questions from time to time.''It appeared that Lenin was on the road to recovery. He was even expected to be up and about by summer. When opening the Eleventh All-Russia Congress of Soviets on January 19, 1924, Mikhail Kalinin informed the delegates that the leading specialists attending Lenin hoped that he would return to government and political work. The delegates received this news with stormy applause and cheers.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Death of LeninBut the hopes that Lenin would recover were dashed on January 21, 1924, when a sharp deterioration set in suddenly. At 6.50 p.m. Lenin died. The medical report stated that Lenin had suffered from cerebrosclerosis caused by mental overstrain. The direct cause of death was cerebral haemorrhage. Superhuman exertion and incessant work had cut short Lenin's life prematurely.
On the night of January 21, the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) called an emergency Plenary Meeting. On January 22, at 6 a.m., the radio announced the sad tidings to the country and the whole world. The government communication on Lenin's death said: ``He is no longer with us, but his cause lives on. Acting on the will of the masses, the Soviet Government will carry on the work of Vladimir Ilyich and will advance along the path charted by him. The Soviet state stands firmly at its post, on guard over the gains of the proletarian revolution."^^69^^
On the following day the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) published an appeal ``To the Party, to All Working People''. It enumerated Lenin's historic services to the Party and the country, to the world proletariat and to all progressive mankind. It stressed the immortality of Lenin's cause and called on Communists and all working people to follow Lenin's behests, to unite even more closely round the Communist Party.
``Never since Marx,'' the appeal said, ``has the history of the great liberation movement of the proletariat produced such a titanic figure as our departed leader, teacher and friend. All that is truly great and heroic in the proletariat---a fearless mind, a will of iron, unbending, persistent and able to surmount all obstacles, __PRINTERS_P_467_COMMENT__ 30* 467 a burning, undying hatred of slavery and oppression, a revolutionary passion that moves mountains, boundless faith in the creative energies of the masses, vast organisational genius-all this found splendid embodiment in Lenin, whose name has become the symbol of the new world from East to West, from North to South....
``But his physical death is not the death of his cause. Lenin lives on in the heart of every member of our Party. Every member of our Party is a part of Lenin. The whole of our Communist family is the collective embodiment of Lenin.... The death of our teacher, a heavy blow, will unite our ranks even more closely. We are marching against capital in a solid militant chain and no force on earth will be able to prevent our ultimate victory.
``This victory will be the finest monument to Comrade Lenin, to the man whom, as their best friend, the masses called their `Ilyich'.
``Long live our Party and may it ever be victorious!
``Long live the working class!''
On January 23, the Executive Committee of the Communist International issued an appeal which ended with the words:
``We address the millions of our comrades in struggle in all parts of the world with the appeal: follow the behests of Lenin which continue to live on in his Party and in everything he created in his lifetime. Fight the way Lenin fought and like Lenin you will be victorious."~^^70^^
On January 21--23, members of the Party Central Committee and of the Government, delegations from the Eleventh All-Russia Congress of Soviets and from the working people of Moscow went to Gorki to bid farewell to Lenin. They were joined by the peasants from the surrounding villages. On January 23, Lenin's body was brought by special train to Moscow and placed in the Hall of Columns of the House of Trade Unions where the people came to pay tribute to Vladimir Ilyich.
Workers, peasants, Red Army men, intellectuals, students, people of diverse nationalities, delegations of working people from all over the world moved in an endless stream past the bier in solemn silence, broken from time to time by restrained sobbing. Each of them slowed down by the bier to take a last look at Lenin, to commit his precious features to memory. All the streets adjacent to the House of Trade Unions were filled with slowly moving columns of people, who had come, in spite of the bitter January frost of - 30° C., to bid farewell to their great leader. Fires were built in the streets at which the people, standing in the queues, warmed themselves. They queued for hours in order to have two or 468 three minutes in the Hall of Columns to bid a final ``farewell'' to Lenin. Over 900,000 people passed through the Hall of Columns during the four days and nights that Lenin lay in state.
At memorial meetings held at all enterprises, military units, institutions and in the countryside, workers and peasants, Red Army men, men of science and art expressed their deep grief over the premature, irreparable loss and assured the Communist Party of their absolute trust in it. They promised the Central Committee and the Soviet Government that they would devote all their energies to carrying out Lenin's behests.
The Second All-Union Congress of Soviets opened on January 26. It was dedicated to the memory of the great leader and teacher of the working people. Opening the Congress, Kalinin, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the U.S.S.R., said that the Soviet Government would steadfastly follow the directives of Lenin in its home and foreign policy.
The Second Congress of Soviets unanimously passed a decision to perpetuate the memory of Lenin and addressed an appeal to the workers of the world. It emphasised that wide circulation of his works would be the best monument to Lenin, for it would bring the ideas of communism within the reach of all. It entrusted the Lenin Institute with the publication as soon as possible of a popular edition of Lenin's selected works in millions of copies and in various languages and also with the preparation for publication, on a strictly scientific basis, of his collected works. The Congress likewise resolved, in compliance with the request of the Petrograd Soviet supported by the workers of the city's factories and plants, to rename Petrograd, the cradle of the proletarian revolution, into Leningrad.
Meeting the wishes of the working people the Congress also decided to preserve Lenin's body in a mausoleum to be specially built for the purpose near the Kremlin wall in Red Square, beside the common graves of the fighters of the October Revolution. Soviet scientists, in response to the wishes of the people, solved a most difficult problem; they developed a method of embalming which would make it possible to preserve Lenin's body over the years.
On the morning of January 27, 1924, Lenin's body was transferred from the House of Trade Unions to the Red Square and placed on a specially built platform, past which the working people of Moscow and numerous delegations from all parts of the Soviet Union marched. At 4 o'clock the coffin was installed in the 469 Mausoleum to the accompaniment of solemn music and thousands of factory whistles and gun salvoes.
Motor vehicles and trains came to a five-minute standstill, work stopped at plants and factories in the Soviet Union as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was laid to rest. On the day of Lenin's funeral the workers in many capitalist countries declared a five-minute work stoppage. In deep sorrow the working people of the whole world bade farewell to their teacher, their best friend and protector.
Communist Parties abroad sent letters of condolence to the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.) in which they expressed their grief and declared their adherence to the principles of proletarian internationalism and their steadfast determination to follow the behests of Lenin. Memorial meetings and manifestations were held in Berlin, Paris, London, New York, Prague, Warsaw and in many other cities. No repressions or persecutions could deter the workers and the ordinary folk from expressing their solidarity with the Soviet people.
Lenin's death came as a heavy blow to the working masses of the oppressed East, which was awakening to a new life. The news of his death was received with profound grief by the Chinese people. A mass meeting was held in Peking. In Canton, then the revolutionary centre of China, three days' mourning was declared. Speaking at a memorial meeting, Sun Yat-sen said:
``Through the ages of world history thousands of leaders and scholars appeared who spoke eloquent words, but these remained but words. You, Lenin, were an exception. You not only spoke and taught us, but translated your words into deeds. You created a newcountry. You showed us the road of joint struggle.... You, great man that you are, will live on in the memories of the oppressed peoples through the centuries.''
Large sections of the population of India, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Korea, Indochina, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran, the Arab countries and the countries of Latin America expressed their grief at the death of Lenin.
The imperialists, Whites and reactionaries of all hues made no attempt to conceal their joy. They reckoned that the death of the leader of the Communist Party and the Soviet people would result in a split in the Party and the collapse of the Soviet system. However, the expectations of the enemies of the Soviet Republic did not materialise.
Although the Party and the people were overwhelmed by grief, the death of Lenin did not cause panic or confusion in their ranks. 470 On the contrary. In those days of profound distress, the working people of the Soviet land displayed exceptional firmness, courage and self-control and united even more closely round the Communist Party and its Central Committee. A mass movement arose among the working people to join the Communist Party. Over 240,000 new members were admitted to the Party; they were the foremost section of the working class, the most class-conscious, devoted and disciplined. This was the historic Lenin Enrolment.
Under the banner of Leninism, under the leadership of the Central Committee, the Communist Party has confidently guided the Soviet people towards the fulfilment of Lenin's behests and towards the victory of socialism and communism.
[471] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter Fourteen __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE TRIUMPH OF THE GREAT IDEASThe victory of communism is inevitable. Communism will triumph.
Lenin, the brilliant continuer of the teaching of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, has gone down in history as the great leader of the October Socialist Revolution, the organiser and guide of the major revolutionary accomplishments of our age, which marked the turning of mankind to socialism and communism.
The life and activity of Lenin will serve always as an inspiring example to revolutionary fighters for freedom, democracy, socialism and the happiness of the working people. Today we have every reason to apply to Lenin's teaching the same words that he used to describe the teaching of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: it is an all-powerful teaching, because it is true. 1'he victory of the October Revolution and the whole course of world history over subsequent decades prove irrefutably that history is developing in accordance with the laws discovered by Marxism-Leninism.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Leninism --- the Marxism of the Modern AgeAt the turn of the century capitalism entered its last, imperialist stage. The revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism became an urgent need of social development. The Great October Socialist Revolution, the main event of the 20th century, which changed radically the political and socio-economic face of Russia, raised the international liberation movement to a new, higher level. There began a new age, about which Lenin wrote shortly after the Great October Revolution: ``The abolition of capitalism and its vestiges, and the establishment of the fundamentals of the 472 communist order comprise the content of the new era of world history that has set in.''~^^*^^
The Communist Party has developed Lenin's definition of the age in relation to modern conditions. The CPSU Programme states: ``Our epoch, whose main content is the transition from capitalism to socialism, is an epoch of struggle between two opposing social systems, an epoch of socialist and national-liberation revolutions, of the breakdown of imperialism and the abolition of the colonial system, an epoch of the transition of more and more peoples to the socialist path, of the triumph of socialism and communism on a world-wide scale.''~^^**^^
Lenin stood at the sources of the new epoch in world history. From the standpoint of creative Marxism he revealed the fundamental laws and perspectives of social development, enriching revolutionary theory with new conclusions and theses of world-historic importance.
In the new historical conditions he developed creatively the Marxist teaching on the world-historic mission of the working class, the hegemony of the proletariat, the socialist revolution and the Soviet state, the proletarian party of a new type, and the class allies of the proletariat in the struggle for democracy and socialism. Lenin's theory of the world revolutionary process, his theses on the principles of the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems and on the defence of the socialist Homeland are a most important contribution to Marxism.
The summit of Lenin's scientific creative work was his teaching on the ways of building socialism and communism. He elaborated theories on the agrarian and national questions and on the indissoluble link of social and national liberation, and created the scientific foundations for the national policy of the Communist Party, the principles of proletarian internationalism.
By his writings Lenin enriched all the component parts of Marxism: philosophy, political economy and scientific communism. He developed the fundamental propositions of dialectical and historical materialism, philosophically generalising the achievements of the natural sciences in the late 19th and early 20th century and the new phenomena and processes of social development. Of tremendous importance is Lenin's teaching on imperialism as the highest _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 392.
^^**^^ The Road to Communism, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1961, p. 449.
473 and last stage of capitalism, and his creation of the principles of political economy of socialism. Lenin profoundly analysed the problem of the unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionarypractice.Marxist-Leninist theory is the philosophical and methodological basis of the policy of the CPSU, a mighty weapon of the revolutionaries of all lands. It provides the main principles, without which scientific analysis of the concrete historical situation and the reaching of correct political decisions is inconceivable. ``Marxism means being able to determine what policy to pursue in what conditions,''^^*^^ Lenin wrote.
Leninism, the Leninist stage in the development of revolutionary theory, is rightly called the new, higher stage of Marxism, the Marxism of the modern age. Marxism-Leninism is an eternally alive, integral and creatively developing teaching that generalises the historical experience of the working class and the peoples of all countries. Loyally to Marxism-Leninism, the great, single, international teaching, is a guarantee of the further successes of the communist movement throughout the world.
The Leninist stage in the history of Marxism is not confined to Lenin's lifetime.
Lenin's ideas are creatively developed by the CPSU and the fraternal parties, the whole collective thinking of the world communist movement.
Leninism is the most progressive and influential ideology in the modern world. Lenin's writings are the most widely disseminated on our planet. They are published in over 130 languages; 367 translations of his works were made in various countries in 1981. Their editions run into hundreds of millions of copies. People in all the countries read them and learn from them how to live and fight.
In the modern age Marxism-Leninism is intensifying its resolute struggle against bourgeois ideology. Overcoming the fierce resistance of its enemies, Marxism-Leninism emerges victorious from each skirmish with the foe. ``The progress of Marxism,'' Lenin wrote, ``the fact that its ideas are spreading and taking firm hold among the working class, inevitably increase the frequency and intensity of these bourgeois attacks on Marxism, which becomes stronger, more hardened and more vigorous every time it is ' annihilated' by official science.''^^**^^
_-_-_^^*^^ Central Party Archives.
^^**^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 31.
474Lenin constantly warned that bourgeois ideology and revisionism would penetrate the ranks of the workers' parties and cause vacillation among the unstable elements, and that such a phenomenon was inevitable until capitalism collapsed. History and the present day confirm that Lenin was right to urge Marxists to be vigilant and to fight irreconcilably against bourgeois ideology, revisionism and opportunism.
Modern bourgeois ideologists, opportunists and revisionists lay the main stress in the struggle against Marxism-Leninism on depriving the latter of its revolutionary content. They seek to remove from Marxist-Leninist teaching the idea that the working class is the leading force of the revolutionary struggle, of the world liberation movement. Revisionists of all stripes deny the need for socialist revolution and the establishment of the power of the working class and its allies, and oppose the transfer of the most important means of production to public ownership and the leading role of the Communist Party.
In their efforts to disarm the working class ideologically and organisationally, to disorganise and paralyse its struggle for the social transformation of the world and to set it on the path of capitulation to imperialism, the revisionists attempt to deny the international importance of existing socialism.
Lenin always fought against the ossification of thought, against revisionism and dogmatism, for a creative approach to revolutionary theory. Dogmatists and pedants regarded the creative development of Marxism as a departure from revolutionary traditions. Replying to them, Lenin wrote: ``The need to maintain revolutionary traditions demands at the same time an analysis of the conditions of their application, and not the simple repetition of revolutionary slogans which are meaningful in special conditions.''~^^*^^
Modern bourgeois falsifiers and revisionists are particularly subtle in their attempts to undermine the unity, the integrity, of MarxistLeninist teaching by contrasting Lenin with Marx. They seek to represent Marx as an objectivist who relied on the spontaneous course of history and denied the need of revolution for the transition from capitalism to socialism. Lenin, unlike Marx, is portraved as a subjectivist, Blanquist and voluntarist^^71^^ who allegedly believed that the revolutionary, violent actions of a small conspiratorial _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Complete Works, Filth Russian Ldition, Vol. 16, p. 474.
475 group were the main driving force of the historical process. This distorted interpretation of Marxism and its higher stage, Leninism, is a malicious slander of Marxism-Leninism.Today Leninism is at the very centre of the ideological struggle. Bourgeois ideologists and revisionists seek to portray Leninism as a ``purely Russian" phenomenon and thereby deprive it of its international importance. Lenin's main arena of activity was Russia. No one will deny this. But as a Marxist Lenin was a consistent internationalist. He viewed the main problems of Russia in the light of world history, taking into account its experience and lessons, and the workers' movement in Russia as part of the international revolutionary workers' movement. Lenin fought for a socialist Russia, but he saw the revolution in Russia as a component part of the world revolutionary movement. ``Lenin's teaching,'' said Leonid Brezhnev, "incorporated everything that had been produced by mankind's best minds, generalising and fusing into a single whole the worldwide experience of the working people's class struggle.''~^^*^^
The great international significance of Leninism lies in the fact that, having emerged on the firm base of Marxism, it:~
generalised the experience of the three revolutions in Russia, which played a great role in the destiny of the peoples of the country. These revolutions, particularly the Great October Socialist Revolution, which laid the foundation for the transition from capitalism to socialism, were of immense international significance and strongly influenced the development of the revolutionary movement in all the countries of the world;~
substantiated the main lines of the advance of the masses towards socialism and armed the Communist Party with a plan for socialist construction. A model of the scientific, comprehensive and realistic approach to solving a task of world historical importance, this plan provides for the development of productive forces, the creation of the material and technical base of socialism, the transformation of social relations, and the remoulding of people's spiritual world;`
teaches people to adopt an internationalist attitude to the experience of existing socialism, that is, to be able to distinguish what is general and international in the experience of building socialism in each individual country and make creative use of this in concrete _-_-_
^^*^^ L.I.Brezhnev, following Lenin's Course, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p. 262.
476 historical conditions. Lenin pointed out that the general plays a decisive role, but it always manifests itself through the concrete and particular in this or that historical situation. He believed that all nations would come to socialism, but not all in exactly the same way, each would contribute something of its own, new and nationally specific;~showed in practice the way to create a multi-national socialist state as the main instrument of building socialism, the experience of which is an example to all fighters for social and national liberation; revealed fully the importance of the unity of the international and national tasks of the working class and of all working people;~
generalised in the new historical epoch the experience not only of the Russian, but also of the international revolutionary movement, substantiated the need for an organic inter-relation between the main streams of the world revolutionary process: existing socialism, the workers' and communist movement of the non-socialist countries, and the national liberation ancl revolutionary-democratic movements;~
provided an ideological basis for the education of communists, the working class, and all working people in the spirit of loyalty to the cause of socialism and communism, proletarian internationalism and the noble principles of international solidarity in the fight for the peace, security and freedom of the peoples and for democracy and social progress.
``Lenin's rich ideological heritage,'' reads the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the 110th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, ``the revolutionary critical spirit of his teaching, his consistency and firmness in the defence of the basic principles of Marxism against opportunist distortions, the whole of his life serve as an inexhaustible source of revolutionary thought and revolutionary action for the modern international communist, workers' and national liberation movements.''~^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ On the 110th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU of December 13, 1979, Moscow, 1979, p. 4 (Russ. ed.).
477 __ALPHA_LVL2__ The Victory of Socialism in the USSRThe victory of socialism in the USSR is a victory of Lenin s great ideas, the result of the creative activity of the working class, of all the working masses, led and inspired by the Communist Party.
In advancing the thesis of the possibility of the victory of socialism in the Land of the Soviets, Lenin elaborated concrete ways and forms of the transition from capitalism to socialism, and outlined a scientifically based programme for the building of the new society. Lenin's forecasts, daring dreams, and wise, noble ideas and behests were realised in the Soviet Union in an uiiprecedentedly short time, in spite of the most difficult conditions.
Socialism has opened up unlimited prospects for the development of productive forces and the growth of the creative activity of the masses in the building of the new life, for raising the material and cultural level of the working people.
The industrialisation of the country, the collectivisation of agriculture and the cultural revolution raised the USSR to a higher level of historical development and helped the Soviet people to perform an immortal feat in the name of socialism in the Great Patriotic War. Under the leadership of the Communist Party they not only defended their own independence, but by defeating Hitler's Germany and Japanese militarism, saved the peoples of the world from the threat of fascist enslavement. As a result favourable conditions developed for the formation of a world socialist system. The victory of the Soviet people over fascism in the Great Patriotic War had an immense revolutionising influence on the fate of all mankind.
In accordance with Lenin s prevision the Soviet Union became the first country in history to pave the way to socialism. Today many peoples of the world are advancing along it.
The decisions of the 25th and 26th CPSU Congresses were a new and striking expression of the triumph of Leninism. Their conclusions and substantiated programme represent Leninism in action, Leninism successfully applied in the modern conditions of building communism.
The main trend in the development of socialism has always been and remains the service of the working people. Lenin recommended that everything necessary be done to ensure ``full well-being and 478 free, all-round development for all the members of society''.^^*^^ Such is the noble aim of socialism. It is being successfully attained and has already yielded more fruit in a few decades than the whole of preceding history has and could have done.
``The main source of all our victories lies in the indestructible unity of the Party and people, in the ability of Communists, as Lenin put it, to draw close to and to a certain extent merge with the broad mass of the working people, to enhance their energy, heroism and enthusiasm, concentrating their revolutionary efforts on the most important immediate tasks. The Party acted in this Leninist way during the building and defence of socialism in one country, which was in hostile capitalist encirclement. It acted thus in the creation of the world's first society of developed socialism. And it will continue to act thus.''^^**^^
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The Leninist Party---the Guiding ForceIn creating a party of a new type, Lenin saw it as the advance guard and guiding force of the working class and all working people in the struggle to overthrow tsarism and the capitalist system and to build socialism and communism. ``We see in the independent, uncompromising Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism's victory,''^^***^^ Lenin said.
The Party is successfully performing its leading and guiding role in the development of socialist society. In labour and in battle, in days of joy and days of bitter ordeals our Party is always together with the people. By its selfless devotion to the people the Party has won their love, gratitude and trust; its authority among the people is unlimited. Lenin's words that the Party exercises its political leadership ``by virtue of authority, energy, greater experience, greater versatility, and greater talent'',^^****^^ have been fully confirmed.
The historical experience of the CPSU and other fraternal communist
parties of the socialist countries shows that in the process of building a new
society the guiding role of the Marxist-Leninist party does not decrease but
constantly increases. This is one of the most important laws of socialist
_-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 54. ^^**^^ On the 110th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ihich Lenin. Resolution of the
Central Committee of the CPSU of December 13, 1979, p. 5. ^^***^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 159.
^^****^^ Ibid., Vol. 6, p. 242.
The enemies of socialism, imperialist ideologists and all manner of revisionists are bitterly attacking the Communist Party. Their attack is spearheaded at the ideological and organisational foundations of the party, its strategy and tactics, its policies, and the Leninist principle of democratic centralism. The revisionists allege that the Communist Party should guide the struggle of the proletariat only up to the victory of the socialist revolution, and after this victory the guiding role of the Party becomes superfluous and the Party itself should be kept only for performing educational functions. Such revisionist arguments aimed at liquidating the Party are readily supported by all anti-socialist elements.
As the dimensions of communist construction increase and its tasks become more complex and an ever broader mass of the people is drawn into it, the role of the Communist Party---the guiding and directing force of society-naturally grows. The CPSU and its Central Committee are steadily taking steps to improve the forms and methods of their activity, to ensure observance of the Leninist norms of Party life and principles of Party leadership, the all-round development of democracy within the Party, higher demands on each Communist, and the strengthening of the unity and solidarity of the Party ranks.
The CPSU stands on this position and defends it in the struggle against various forms of revisionism on the question of the guiding role of the Party in socialist society. This fundamental position of the CPSU, its uncompromising struggle for the purity of MarxistLeninist teaching on the Party, is of international importance and gives Communists and millions of working people a correct orientation.
A most important, invaluable contribution to the creative development of Marxism-Leninism is made by the international communist movement. And this is only natural. Lenin remarked that revolutionary theory develops from the sum total of the revolutionary experience and revolutionary thought of all the countries of the world. The innovatory activity of the Marxist-Leninist parties found expression in the policy documents of the international meetings and conferences of Communist and Workers' Parties of 1957, 1960 and 1969 and also in the decisions of the Meeting of Communist Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean Basin (Havana, 1975), the Conference of European Communist and Workers' Parties (1976), the Meeting of European Communist and Workers' 480 Parties (1980), and the documents and decisions of congresses of Marxist-Leninist parties, and the writings of their leaders.
The CPSU and the fraternal parties pay great attention to the study and generalisation of the experience of the international communist, workers' and national liberation movement, and the development of young states which have freed themselves from colonialism; the study of the forms and methods of their struggle against imperialism. The CPSU greatly values the achievements of Marxist-Leninist thought in the fraternal Communist Parties and seeks to take them into account in its theoretical and practical activity, supports the constant exchange of experiences, opinions, and views, and creative, widespread discussion of the most important questions of the present day.
The international significance of the building of communism in the Soviet Union lies in the fact that it reveals in practice the main trend of world social development, showing all mankind the way to communism, the most progressive society on earth.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ The World Community of Socialist Countries---The classics of scientific communism taught that only after the victory of the socialist revolution would the proletariat be able to destroy national isolation and establish international brotherhood between the different nations. History has confirmed this theoretical conclusion of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: ``For the peoples to be able truly to unite, they must have common interests. And in order that their interests may become common, the existing property relations must be done away with, for these property relations involve the exploitation of some nations by others.''^^*^^
The birthplace of the October Revolution was the first country where the victory of socialism was attained. The Mongolian People's Republic embarked on the path of non-capitalist development, and then of socialist construction. Then the number of countries building socialism increased considerably. The defeat of German fascism and Japanese militarism in the Second World War, in which the Soviet Union played a decisive part, created favourable conditions for overthrowing the power of the capitalists and landowners by the peoples of a number of countries. Today socialism has become a reality in a large group of countries of Europe, Asia _-_-_
^^*^^ K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p. 388.
__PRINTERS_P_481_COMMENT__ 31---826 481 and Latin America, the population of which amounts to hundreds of millions.There can be no doubt that in the course of the popular democratic and socialist revolutions in these countries a decisive factor in their victory was the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist parties in the revolutionary struggle of the masses on the basis of a scientifically substantiated strategy and tactics, the loyalty of Communists to Marxist-Leninist teaching, their ability to develop and apply it creatively to the concrete historical conditions of this or that country.
Following Lenin's behests, the CPSU and the other fraternal parties pay unflagging attention to the further all-round development of co-operation, the strengthening of the friendship and alliance of the socialist countries. The stronger the solidarity of the sovereign fraternal states, the more comprehensive and profound their interaction, the more actively socialism influences the course of world development.
The world socialist community, allied on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and socialist internationalism, is the decisive factor of world history. It is the vanguard of social progress, the most dynamic, stable economic and political force, a bulwark of the peace and security of the peoples. It plays a leading role in world politics and is the striking embodiment and triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism.
The growing power and example of world socialism arc promoting the international revolutionary and liberation movement. The victorious revolution in Cuba has led to the formation of the first socialist state in Latin America. The historic victory of the Vietnamese people and the reunification of the country into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an important milestone in the struggle for peace and progress in Asia. As a result of the successful operations of the patriotic forces in Laos the family of socialist states has received yet another new member. The forces of progress and democracy have triumphed in a number of other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and they have embarked on the path of non-capitalist, socialist-oriented development. The world community of the fraternal peoples of the socialist countries has strengthened perceptibly. Allied by a close unity of aims and ideals under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, it has become a powerful factor in the solution of the most complex constructive tasks in each country.
The power and vitality of this new type of international alliance stems from loyalty to the great ideas of Karl Marx, Frederick 482 Engcls and Vladimir Lenin, class solidarity, ideological and poli' ical unity, and the close cohesion of the Communist arid Workers' Parties. An example of this solidarity is the co-operation of the fraternal countries within the framework of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, based on the Leninist principles of international solidarity.
In their relations the countries of the socialist community are guided by the Leninist principles of the co-operation of socialist nations. They co-ordinate and unite their efforts in the most important spheres of economics, politics and culture. This co-operation is based on full equality of rights of both large and small countries, non-intervention in one another's internal affairs, respect for national sovereignty and territorial inviolability, and performance of international duty for the purpose of maintaining and strengthening the world socialist system. The implementation of Lenin's principles has powerfully accelerated social progress, which opens up broad prospects for new successes of each country and of the socialist community as a whole in the building ot socialism and communism.
The countries of the socialist community have accumulated a wealth of experience in building socialism and communism that demonstrates the triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism. This experience is constantly increasing and has become an international possession. In these conditions of good will and mutual assistance to one another, and strictly observing the principle of full equality, the fraternal countries are increasingly extending their co-operation in all spheres and exchanging experience. The comprehensive programme of socialist economic integration, aimed at the all-round progressive development of the fraternal countries and the increasingly extensive use of such a powerful factor as the combining of the advantages of socialism with the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution-is being implemented more and more successfully.
The ideological co-operation of the parties of the fraternal countries is constantly expanding and improving, particularly in the struggle for the purity of Marxist-Leninist teaching, against bourgeois ideologists and all manner of revisionists. The foreign policy activity of the community of socialist countries, which is a key factor of modern world development, the main bulwark of peace, democracy and social progress, is acquiring ever greater international importance.
__PRINTERS_P_483_COMMENT__ 31* 483The fraternal countries have successfully solved the task of laying the foundations of socialism. Most of them have already entered the period of struggle for the building of a developed socialist society. The successes scored by the countries of the socialist community are the living embodiment of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, and are of major historical importance for the world.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Leninism---the Great Banner``This path of ours is the right one, for it is the path which, sooner or later, all other countries must inevitably take.''~^^*^^ These prophetic words of Lenin's are being fully confirmed by life itself.
The cause of the revolutionary renewal of the world, begun by the October Revolution and embodied in the victory of socialism in the USSR, has been successfully continued by the victories of socialist revolutions in a number of countries in Europe, Asia and America. The workers' movement is gaining new victories in the capitalist countries. Under the blows of the national liberation movement the colonial system of imperialism has collapsed. The anti-- imperialist struggle of the working masses of the whole world is spreading. All this is striking proof of the truth and invincible strength of Leninism, which has become the banner of the peoples of all lands in the struggle for peace, democracy and socialism. ``Imperialism can neither regain its lost historical initiative nor reverse world development. The main direction of mankind's development is determined by the world socialist system, the international working class, all revolutionary forces.''^^**^^
The development of socialist revolutions and the building of socialism in different countries takes place on the basis of general laws. Profound understanding of these laws and their creative application in practice with due account of the national features of individual countries, and the search for more expedient forms and methods of building the new society-this is the position of Marxists-Leninists. These general laws have been scientifically substantiated by Lenin, specified and developed by the CPSU and the _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 161.
^^**^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, Peace and Socialism Publishers, Prague, 1969, p. 13.
484 fraternal Communist Parties, and tested by the experience of the USSR and other socialist countries.Lenin pointed out that the experience of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the building of socialism in the Land of the Soviets was influencing all countries, and would continue to do so. ``It is the Russian model,'' he wrote, "that reveals to all countries something-and something highly significant-of their near and inevitable future.''~^^*^^
At the same time Lenin warned against automatically transferring the experience of the socialist revolution in Russia and considered it essential in applying the general laws of the transition to socialism to take into account the unique and special features of the development in each country.
The experience accumulated in the socialist countries shows that given the general laws of the building of the new society, its forms and methods are very diverse. They are being improved and deepened, and changed in accordance with new conditions and new requirements. However, the improvement of the forms and methods of socialist construction or their replacement by new ones, far from excluding general laws, leads only to their wider and fuller use.
In spite of historical experience some revisionist ``theoreticians'' seek to prove that each country must have its own path to socialism, a path not determined by laws common to all countries. In an effort to belittle and discredit the practice of socialist construction in the USSR and other countries the revisionists argue that each country must have a kind of ``national model of socialism''. However, no matter what high-sounding phrases the inventors of such ``models'' may use to disguise their real intentions, they are in fact attacking Marxism-Leninism, denying its international importance, exaggerating national peculiarities, and in fact adopting the position of gradual deformation of the socialist system and restoration of the capitalist order.
The change in the balance of forces on the world arena in favour of socialism shows that the dreams of the bourgeoisie to restore their former dominion in the world have been shattered. State monopoly capitalism, which seeks to adjust itself to modern historical conditions, cannot get rid of the contradictions which are becoming more acute and causing an upsurge of the anti-monopolist struggle. In this struggle, which is assuming increasingly broad dimensions and _-_-_
^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 22.
485 uniting many millions of working people, the working class is acting as their leading and main force. The CPSU is consistently pursuing a policy of unity, international solidarity with the workers' movement in the capitalist countries.The great vital strength of Lenin's teaching is vividly demonstrated by the growth of the international communist movement, which has turned into a truly world-wide political force, the most influential one of the present time. Today tens of millions of Communists in the ranks of more than 90 Communist and Workers' Parties are living and fighting for the happy future of mankind, for the triumph of Lenin's ideas. For this great army of Communists Leninism is an indispensable weapon in their activity. The growth in the forces of communism is an objective historical law of the world revolutionary process. Overcoming all the obstacles on its path, communism will inevitably emerge victorious throughout the world.
The main and irreconcilable enemy of Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the imperialist bourgeoisie, its various economic, political and philosophical theories. The bourgeoisie and its agents are making use of their old, poisonous weapon-nationalism-in the struggle against Marxism-Leninism.
A characteristic feature of modern Right-wing and ``Left-wing'' revisionism is its renunciation of proletarian internationalism and its going over in fact to the position of nationalism. No matter how much the revisionists of this or that country try to mask their nationalistic position, it leads to the undermining of the unity and solidarity of the socialist countries, the Marxist-Leninist parties, and all revolutionary forces. Therefore a relentless struggle against revisionist sallies and nationalistic tendencies, for the strengthening of the unity of the international communist movement and the consolidation of the friendship and solidarity of the socialist countries, the international solidarity of the working people, is the most important guarantee of thwarting the imperialist policy of aggression, violence and war, and a true pledge of a successful struggle under the banner of Leninism for the establishment of communism.
The Marxist-Leninist parties counterpose to nationalism and chauvinism in all their manifestations the socialist international idea of the brotherhood and friendship of nations. Lenin taught that correctly understood national interests do not contradict international socialist interests. On the contrary, only the consistent practical application of the principles of proletarian, socialist internationalism makes it possible to guarantee the national interests of this or that 486 people, this or that country. ``There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism,'' Lenin wrote, ``and that is-working wholeheartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one's own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country, without exception.''~^^*^^
In our day the attitude to the principles of proletarian, socialist internationalism is an indicator of the correctness of the policy of each Communist Party and its loyalty to the teaching of Marxism-leninism.
The CPSU is waging a struggle for the unity of the socialist countries and the international communist movement on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, for the strengthening of peace throughout the world.
Today, in spite of the real achievements in strengthening peace the struggle for maintaining and deepening of the process of detente is encountering difficulties, a growing resistance on the part of imperialist forces. Militaristic and reactionary circles in imperialist countries are activising their attacks on detente and seeking to change the balance of forces in the world in their favour. They are stepping up the arms race, blatantly interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, and organising all manner of ideological diversions with the aim of whipping up hostility towards the Soviet people, the ideas of socialism, and the national liberation movement.
The USSR, the socialist countries, and all peace-loving forces the world over are fighting resolutely for freedom, progress and a lasting peace, for universal disarmament to make detente the leading tendency in international relations and to thwart the plans of aggressive circles.
Lenin's idea of the alliance of the working class of the advanced countries and the peoples of the dependent states is being successfully put into effect. His forecast that the movement to socialism in the world would take place by means of combining the growing power of the socialist countries, the proletarian revolution in the capitalist countries, and the national liberation struggle is coming true. The powerful national liberation movement in Asia and Africa, as a result of which the colonial system of imperialism has collapsed and dozens of independent national states have emerged, and also the struggle for the free national development and social progress in the countries of Latin _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Cullecteii Works, Vol. 24, p. 75.
487 America are yet further proof of the correctness of Lenin's scientific conclusions on the ways of development of the world revolutionary process. The fact of the existence of the Soviet Union, its successes, and the growth of the forces of the world socialist system are having a profound influence on the development of the national liberation movement.The progressive transformations in the countries that have thrown off colonial rule are taking place amid bitter skirmishes with imperialists who attempt to direct the young states along the capitalist path. But the peoples of these countries are becoming increasingly aware that the complete victory of the national liberation revolution and the abolition of age-old backwardness can be achieved, as Lenin taught, only by following the non-capitalist way of development, which envisages the building of socialism. The historical experience of the previously backward peoples of Russia shows that with the support and aid of the more developed socialist nations they have succeeded in by-passing the painful stage of capitalism and building socialism. This experience is of international significance.
Guided by the teaching of Lenin, the Soviet Union is steadily applying the principle of internationalism, warmly greeting the liberation of peoples from colonialism and rendering them friendly disinterested assistance in developing their industry, technology and sciences, and promoting their cultural growth.
``All the experience of world socialism and of the working-class and national liberation movements has confirmed the world significance of Marxist-Leninist teaching. The victory of the socialist revolution in a group of countries, the emergence of the world socialist system, the gains of the working-class movement in capitalist countries, the appearance of peoples of former colonial and semicolonial countries in the arena of socio-political development as independent agents, and the unprecedented upsurge of the struggle against imperialism-all this is proof that Leninism is historically correct and expresses the fundamental needs of the modern age.''^^*^^
Socialism brings mankind salvation from war-the terrible scourge of the peoples, inherent in all exploiter societies, particularly in the age of imperialism. To put an end to wars and establish a lasting peace on earth-this is the programme aim of Communists. Building communism the Soviet people is vitally interested _-_-_
^^*^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, p. 41.
488 in preserving peace. ``All our politics and propaganda are directed towards putting an end to war and in no way towards driving nations to war,'' Lenin stressed.^^*^^The principle of the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, advanced and substantiated by Lenin, is finding increasing application in practical relations between states and in the successful implementation of the Peace Programme drawn up by the 24th Party Congress and further developed in the decisions of subsequent CPSU Congresses. Yet the desire to unleash new wars is inherent in imperialism. Lenin's thesis that as long as imperialism survives there will be soil for aggressive wars remains valid today. As Lenin said ``whoever forgets about the danger that is constantly threatening us and will never cease as long as world imperialism exists, whoever forgets about this forgets about our working people's republic''.^^**^^ He showed constant concern for increasing the defence capacity of the Soviet state.
We live in an age when there are powerful forces guarding peace. The concerted actions of the Soviet Union, the other socialist countries, the international working class and all the working people who defend the cause of peace can avert a world war. ``To curb the aggressors and liberate mankind from imperialism is the mission of the working class, of all the anti-imperialist forces fighting for peace, democracy, national independence and socialism.''^^***^^
From the very first days of its existence the Land of the Soviets has consistently fought for peace. During the days of the October Revolution Lenin declared: ``We promise the workers and peasants to do all we can for peace. This we shall do.''^^****^^ The CPSU is faithfully carrying out Lenin's behest, tirelessly fighting for peace throughout the world.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ Lenin's Cause Is InvincibleMankind has now entered a significant period of history when the process of revolutionary transformations is taking place at a rapid pace. No matter how imperialist circles seek to impede the liberation struggle of the peoples, no one can prevent the advance of mankind to socialism.
_-_-_^^*^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 470.
^^**^^ Ibid., pp. 519--20.
^^***^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, p. 21.
^^****^^ V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 379.
489Lenin's activity, his great, noble ideas, have influenced and will increasingly influence the course of world events, the destiny of all mankind. The advance of the peoples of the world along the path of progress, liberation from social and national oppression and destructive wars, and the struggle of the peoples for peace and socialism are indissolubly linked with the name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. All the major revolutionary events of the twentieth century are associated with his name and his teaching.
Under the influence of Leninism there have grown up generations of Communists selflessly devoted to the working class, the working people and the communist cause. The name of Lenin lives on in the hearts of the workers, among the broad mass of working people and progressive people the whole world over.
Lenin's great liberating ideas are spreading ever more widely on our planet. The name of Lenin is known and loved in all parts of the world; millions and millions of people are striving to live and fight like Lenin, to build life according to Lenin's behests.
The giant figure of Lenin towers in the history of mankind as that of the greatest of the men of our epoch, the man who showed all the peoples of the world the road to genuine freedom and happiness. The brilliant genius of Lenin, the great teacher of the working people of the world, illumines mankind's road to communism. Lenin's ideas shape the destiny of generations.
The immortal image of Lenin, his great, high-minded ideas inspire the people in their struggle against the sinister forces of reaction, evil and oppression, for the establishment and consolidation of society upon a groundwork of true justice, true equality of men, a society in which free, all-round development of the individual, the full satisfaction of people's material and spiritual requirements will be secured.
It is the highest ideal of the contemporary generation to work and build a new life as Lenin taught.
Lenin's great ideas, creatively developed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist parties, are being put into practice, and are winning immortality. Their triumph throughout the world is inevitable, because they reflect the objective and progressive march of history, heralding the bright future to which all mankind is advancing.
Lenin's name and his teaching will live down the ages.
Lenin's cause is invincible!
490 __ALPHA_LVL1__ NOTES [491] ~ [492] 1~Raznochintsi (commoners)-group of intellectuals drawn from various social estates in Russia at the end of the 18th-19th centuries, which was not registered legally and advocated bourgeois-democratic and revolutionary-democratic ideology,
p. 11
~^^2^^ Now the world-famous House-Museum of V. I. Lenin in Ulyanovsk. p. 14
3~Secondary school in Russia where Greek and Latin were taught in addition to modern languages.
p. 14
~^^4^^ Narodnaya Volya (People's Will)-the most important trend in the Russian revolutionary movement at the end of 1870s. Its programme included abolition of autocracy, demand for democratic freedoms, transfer of land to peasants.
p. 16
~^^5^^ The house where the Ulyanov family lived in 1888--89 is now the HouseMuseum of V.I. Lenin.
p. 20
6~In Alakayevka and Kuibyshev where the Ulyanov family lived, the HouseMuseums of V.I. Lenin were opened.
p. 22
~^^7^^ Liberal Namdmks--- participants in the Russian emancipation movement of the latter half of the 19th century, Utopian socialists, adherents of peaceful social and political reforms.
p. 24
~^^8^^ ^emstvos--- elective bodies of local self-government in Russia in the 19th century in charge of education, medical care, road building, etc. The electoral system ensured that they were dominated by landowners; abolished in 1918 by the decree of the Soviet government.
p. 26
~^^9^^ Letter from Marx to Engels of April 16, 1856 (see K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1975, p. 86).
p. 38
~^^10^^ Carets-Constitutional Democrats, members of the main party of the liberalmonarchist bourgeoisie in Russia in 1905--17. Supported the imperialist tsarist policy in the First World War, took an openly counter-revolutionary stand in 493 the bourgeois Provisional government and alter the October Soeiali.st Revolution. The Cadet party was banned by the Soviet government.
p. 39
~^^11^^ Whiteguards armed military units and illegal military organisations during the Civil War and foreign intervention against Soviet Russia.
p. 39
12~Free Economic Society the first Russian scientific society, (bunded in 1765 in St. Petersburg, discussed economic problems.
p. 48
~^^13^^ Now Shushenskoye is a large district centre in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. In 1938 the House-Museum of V.I.Lenin was opened there. In accordance with the general reconstruction plan part of Shushenskoye was turned into a reserve memorial zone. It consists of the houses where Lenin lived and the adjacent part of the village. p. >l
~^^14^^ Corvee economy an economy based on the unpaid compulsory labour of peasants who used their own implements. It was legally abolished in Russia in 1882 but in fact existed till the October Revolution.
p. 60
15~A memorial museum has been opened in the premises of the printshop. The Socialist United Party of Germany presented the Central Lenin Museum in Moscow with a model of a printingprcss with which hkra was printed.
p. 74
16~A reference to Lenin's article "The Workers' Party and the Peasantry".
~^^17^^ Lenin used more than 160 pseudonyms for conspiratorial reasons.
p. 78
18~Frey one of Lenin's pseudonyms.
p. 80
19~Zasulich, Vera Ivanovna. See Name Index.
p. 80
20~The cut-oil lands were strips of land which the landowners had cut off for themselves from the peasant allotments when serfdom was abolished. p. 81
~^^21^^ The Peasant Reform of 1861 the main bourgeois reform of the 1860--70s, abolished serfdom in Russia. It was carried out by the tsarist government in the interests of serf-owning landowners whose land property was retained. The landowners took over a considerable part of the peasants' lands and left worse plots for the peasants who responded to this reform by mass riots. The unsolved social and economic contradictions led to the aggravation of the class struggle.
p. 81
~^^22^^ Socialist-Revolutionaries (S.R.s) members of the Left bourgeois-democrat itparty in Russia in 1901--23. They expressed the interests of petty bourgeoisie. After the February bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1917 the S.R.s and Mcnsheviks were the main supporters of the counter-revolutionary Provisional government, and their leaders became its members. Late in November 1917 the Left wing of the S.R. party set up an independent party of Left S.R.s (see Note 57). In the years of armed intervention and the Cavil War (1918--20) S.R.s organised anti-Soviet riots and committed terroristic acts against
494 the leaders of the Soviet state and the Communist Party. By 1923 the S.R. party dissolved.p. 89
~^^23^^ Bund (the General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia) --- an opportunist petty-bourgeois nationalist party, founded in 1897. Supported the Economists, Mcnsheviks, liquidators, Trotskyites. After the October Revolution the Bund leaders joined the counter-revolution. In 1921 the party dissolved.
p. 94
24~Centrists, Cenlrism an ideological and political movement which emerged in the struggle between the reformist and revolutionary trends in the Second International. The Centrists tried to smooth over the irreconcilable contradictions between these trends by a compromise with opportunism. Kautskyism represents the concentrated form of Ccntrism on the international scene. Trotskyism and Left-wing Menshevism were a variety of Centrism in Russia.
p. 95
25~The Council of the 1'artji one of the leading party centres of the RSDLP, set
u
up at the Second Congress Editorial Board of the Central Organ. ordinate the activity of the CC and thep. 102
~^^26^^ Conciliators- Trotsky's supporters on the question of the Party structure and his demand to convene the Plenary Meeting of the CC which, in their opinion, had to solve the problem of "conciliating factions'', i.e., to destroy the Party.
p. 105
~^^27^^ The memorial plaque "Vladimir llyich Ulyanov-Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, lived in this house in 1904--05" was put up on this house in 1967.
p. 106
~^^28^^ Militant organisations of Bolsheviks under the local Party committees commanded the detachments of armed workers in the revolution of 1905--07. In 1917 they headed the creation of the Red Guard.
p. 130
~^^29^^ The Duma a representative institution which the government was forced to convene as a result of the revolutionary events of 1905. Formally the Duma was a legislative body but actually it possessed no real power. Elections to the Duma were neither direct, nor equal nor universal. Bolsheviks participated in the elections to the Third and Fourth Durnas in order to have their representatives there.
Nominally the Duma continued to exist until October 1917.
p. 133
30~Anarchists, anarchism a petty-bourgeois socio-political trend that advocates the immediate destruction of all state power and rejects the political struggle of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat and political parties. Anarchists are opponents of Marxism and of the communist movement.
p. 138
31~Black Hundreds pogrom monarchist organisations in 1905--07, formed for the struggle against the revolutionary movement.
p. 139
32~Fideism a religious world outlook maintaining that a faith is primary to reason.
p. 158
495 33~Now the Lenin Museum.
p. 160
~^^34^^ A reference to the Menshevik newspaper Pravda (Vienna), Trotsky's factional organ; it appeared in Vienna from 1908 to 1912. Under the guise of " nonfactionalism" the newspaper took a liquidationist stand on all main issues. In 1912 Trotsky and his Pravda were organisers of the anti-Party August bloc.
p. 162
~^^35^^ Ultimatumists - a variety of Otzovists. In 1908 a group of former Bolsheviks formed a faction which came out with an ultimatum demanding that the Social-Democratic members of the Duma should submit to the CC of the Party and be recalled in case of insubordination.
p. 163
~^^36^^ Pro-Party Mensheviks, led by Plekhanov, were for the preservation and strengthening of the illegal Party organisation and formed a bloc with the Bolsheviks. They took part in the work of local Party organisations and contributed to Bolshevik newspapers.
Lenin called for closer relations with pro-Party Mensheviks and stressed that agreement with them was possible on the basis of uncompromised struggle against liquidators. Lenin's tactics for a bloc with the Plekhanovites followed by the majority of Menshevik workers in Russia helped increase Bolshevik influence in legal workers' organisations.
p. 166
~^^37^^ British Labour Party - one of the two leading parties in the country, the most influential party in the Socialist International. It was founded in 1900, includes mainly workers and is headed by right-wing reformists.
p. 167
~^^38^^ Stolypins agrarian reform - bourgeois reform of peasant land tenure in Russia, named after the Minister P. A. Stolypin. Its aim was to remedy the land shortage while retaining landowners' tenure, to speed up the stratification in the countryside and create an additional social foothold for the autocracy-the kulaks. The reform was a failure.
p. 171
~^^39^^ Tmdoviks (``Labour group'') - small petty-bourgeois democratic faction of peasant deputies and Narodnik intellectuals in the Duma. After the Great October Socialist Revolution it backed the counter-revolution.
p. 181
~^^40^^ Popular Socialists-petty-bourgeois party in Russia in 1906--18. In June 1917 united with Trudoviks. After the October Revolution participated in counter-- revolutionary organisations and anti-Soviet conspiracies.
p. 181
41~Curia---in some bourgeois electoral systems a category of voters grouped according to social-estate and property qualifications.
P- 181
~^^42^^ The three basic revolutionary slogans: democratic republic, confiscation of landed estates and eight-hour day.
P- 184
~^^43^^ The theory of a "broad section" an opportunist theory, adherents of which sought to unite Bolsheviks and unprincipled, mixed elements under the guise of ``non-factionalism''. This was a direct attempt to liquidate the revolutionary proletarian party.
P' "^
496~^^44^^ Liquidators - an opportunist trend, the Right wing of Menshevism, emerged in 1907. They called for liquidation of the illegal revolutionary proletarian party and the organisation of legal reformist party. Expelled from the Party in 1912.
Bundists-see Note 2j.
Vperyod-ists - members of the Vperyod group formed in the Party in 1909. They rejected the Bolshevik tactics of combining legal and illegal forms of work in the masses and tried to combine Marxism and religion The group dissolved in 1913
``
p. 193
45~Defenasts social-chauvinists. In the years of the First World War the Mensheviks headed by G. Plekhanov adopted a defencist position. They advocated the idea of ``non-resistance'' to war, called for support of the tsarist government in its war efforts and defended the war to the victorious end, considering it inadmissible for the proletariat to take any revolutionary actions against the government during the war time.
p. 198
46~Tesnyaki (close Socialists) - Bulgarian Social-Democrats in 1903--19, who took the Marxist stand (contrary to the opportunists-wide (Shiroki) Socialists). In 1919 the Tesnyaki party-the Bulgarian Workers' Social-Democratic Party-was renamed the Bulgarian Communist Party.
p. 205
~^^47^^ Junius (Lat.-younger)-the pseudonym of Rosa Luxemburg.
The article "The Junius Pamphlet" was written by Lenin in connection with the publication of Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet The Crisis of the SocialDemocracy,
p. 209
~^^48^^ The Socialist Propaganda League in the USA was formed within the Socialist Party in 1915; it took the stand of the Zimmerwald Left, the revolutionary elements began to rally round it. During the military intervention it put out the slogan "Hands off Soviet Russia!".
p. 223
49~Anarcho-Syndicalism-an opportunist trend in the working-class movement that rejects political struggle and the leading role of workers' political parties. It considers trade unions the highest form of organisation of the working class, which must possess the means of production, and a general economic strike the highest form of struggle.
p. 224
~^^50^^ This Party Card has not been found and probably has not survived. Lenin's Party cards issued to him in 1920 and 1922 are kept in the Central Party Archives of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CC CPSU. When Party cards were exchanged in spring 1927 card No. 0000001 was made out to V.I. Lenin, the founder and leader of the Communist Party. Since then Party card No. 1 has been assigned to V.I. Lenin in perpetuity.
p. 237
~^^51^^ Blanquism-a. political movement named after Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-- 1881), a French revolutionary and Utopian communist. Generally the term denotes the tactics of sectarians in the revolutionary movement who considered that a small group of conspirators not connected with the revolutionary class could carry out a victorious uprising even when there was no revolutionary situation.
p. 243
497 52~Constituent Assembly- a parliamentary institution in Russia. Before the October revolution the bourgeoisie hampered the formation of this body of bourgeoisdemocratic legality, and after October 1917 tried to use it for the destruction of the revolution and seizure of power. At the sitting of the Constituent Assembly which took place in Petrograd on January 5(18), 1918 the counterrevolutionary majority openly opposed the recognition of the Soviet power and its decrees.
On the night of January 6(19) the All-Russia Central Executive Committee adopted a decree on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.
p. 256
~^^53^^ The Military Organisation under the CC RSDLP(B) led the
Party organisations in the army and the Navy in April 1917-March 1918. It
contributed greatly to the ideological and political education of soldiers, and
armed and trained the Red Guard detachments.
p. 272
54~Vnlost- the lowest territorial administrative unit in pre-revolutionary Russia. It was part of an uyezd, which in turn was part of gubernia.
p. 279
55~Peasant Mandate on the Land includes 242 local mandates given by peasants to delegates to the First All-Russia Congress of Peasant Deputies. The mandate contained the demand to confiscate all landowners' land and transfer it to local government bodies, which coincided with the Bolshevik programme. This mandate became the basis for the Decree on Peace, one of the first decrees of Soviet power. In this connection the Mensheviks accused Bolsheviks of carrying out the Socialist-Revolutionary land programme. Countering these attacks Lenin said that it was not important who had written the mandate and that the democratic government could not ignore the resolutions of the people. Lenin did not conceal his disagreement with separate points of the mandate, but proposed taking it as a basis of the agrarian programme of the October Revolution.
p. 279
56~Labour standard the amount of land a family could farm by itself; subsistence standard the amount of land needed to provide a harvest sufficient to keep a family at subsistence level.
p. 280
57~Left Socialist-Revolutionaries - a petty-bourgeois party of Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries (internationalists) organised in December 1917. Before that the Left S.R.s existed as the Left wing of the S.R. party (see Note 22). At the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets the Left S.R.s voted together with the Bolsheviks on the main items on the agenda, but they turned down the Bolsheviks' proposal to join the government.
With the development of the socialist revolution in the countryside antiSoviet sentiments grew stronger among the Left S.R.s. Having lost its influenceon the peasantry the party ceased to exist.
p. 286
58~"Left Communists" an anti-Party group; emerged early in 1918, opposed the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty and called for a "revolutionary war'', thus mortally threatening Soviet power. Lenin and his associates had to carry on a persistent struggle in the CC of the Party against Trotsky and the "Left Communists" in order to secure the ratification of the peace treaty with Germany and to save the Soviet republic in this way.
498The ``Left Communists" also took a wrong stand on some questions of economic construction.
By June 1918 they had completely lost their influence.
p. 298
59~The Central Rada, a bourgeois nationalist organisation set up in Kiev in April 1917 at a Congress of Ukrainian bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties and groups. Alter the victory of (he Great October Socialist Revolution the Rada declared itself the supreme organ "of the Ukrainian People's Republic" and embarked upon open opposition to Soviet power.
The Qiiadiuple Alliance, a bloc of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, which opposed the countries of Quadruple Entente (Britain, France, Russia and Italy!, during the First World War.
p. 299
60~Committees of I'imr Peasants were formed in Russia in 1918. In many districts they were actually the organs ol stale power, distributed land and agricultural implements and coniiscated grain from the kulaks. At the end ol 1918 they transferred their functions to the village Soviets.
p. 318
61~The 'I t'elyakor Callery in Moscow the museum of Russian and Soviet art. It was founded in 1856 by Pavel Tretyakov as a private collection, but was donated to Moscow in 1892. The Gallery possesses the most valuable collections of Russian icon painting of the llth to 17th centuries and Russian painting of the 18th to early 20th centuries and also of sculpture, graphic art, and the works of Soviet artists.
p. 319
62~"Fourteen Points" the "peace programme" advanced by U.S. President Wilson in January 1918 to counter the Soviet Decree on Peace. Behind the phrases about "free trade'', "free seas" and solving the colonial question it was aimed at the establishment of U.S. supremacy in international affairs.
p. 326
63~The agricultural associations ``artels'' for the joint cultivation of the land, a form of agricultural production cooperation during the first years of Soviet power. Land plots and labour were joint. The associations were transformed into collective farms in the late 1920s and early 1930s. There are agricultural production cooperatives of the same kind in the GDR, Hungary and other socialist countries.
Agricultural cooperatives voluntary cooperative organisations in the USSR uniting peasants for the development of the large-scale socialist economy based on the publicly owned means of production and collective labour.
p. 348
64~Workers' prepaiatotv courses general educational institutions in the USSR in 1919--40 which prepared young people with no secondary education for higher educational establishments.
p. 407
~^^65^^ The ARA (American Relief Administration) was organised in 1919 to help European countries that suffered in the First World War; il was used to consolidate US positions in Europe. In 1921 when there was famine in the Volga region the ARA's activity was permitted in Soviet Russia; often pursued aims hostile to the Soviet stale.
P- 425
66~The Two-and-a-Half International the international opportunist organisation 499 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1983/LB525/20070119/525.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.01.24) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ founded in Vienna in 1921 at the conference of Centrist parties and groups which had temporarily withdrawn from the Second International under the pressure of the revolutionary-minded working masses. Hiding behind revolutionary phraseology the parties of the Two-and-a-Half International pursued a divisive policy on the most important issues of the world proletarian movement. In 1923 the Two-and-a-Half International merged with the Berne International to form the Socialist Labour International.
p. 431
67~A reference to the Tenth All-Russia Congress of Soviets.
p. 446
68~The article "Better Fewer, But Better" was completed on March 2. p. 447
69~The government communication on V.I. Lenin's death was published in special issues of Pravda and Izvestia on January 22, 1924.
p. 467
~^^70^^ The appeal of the CC RCP(B), "To the Party, to All Working People" and the appeal of the Executive Committee of the Communist International were published in special issues of Pravda and Izsestia on January 23, 1924.
p. 468
~^^71^^ Subjectivism - world outlook which ignores the objective laws governing nature and society; the philosophical basis of revisionism and voluntarism in politics.
Voluntarism-arbitrary activity by persons who ignore the objective laws governing the historical process.
p. 475
[500] __ALPHA_LVL1__ INDEXES [501] ~ [502]Adler, Victor (1852--1918) an organiser and leader of the Austrian Socialncmocratie Party; adopted a Centrist position during World War I; Austrian Minister lor Foreign Affairs in 1918. 197
Akimov, Vladimir Petwvich (1872--1921) member of the Russian Social-- Democratic movement from 1890s, an ideologist of Economism, Menshevik after 1903; abandoned politics in 1907.-95
Alexander HI (Romanov) (1845--1894) Russian Emperor (1881--94); represented the most conservative Russian circles; brutally suppressed the revolutionary-democratic and workingclass movement and promoted despotism and police tyranny. 16
Alexeyev, Mikhail Vasilyevich (1857-- 1918)-Russian general, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army in March-May 1917; headed the White Guard Volunteer Army after October 1917 Revolution. 197
Alexinsky, Grigory Alexeyevich (b. 1879) member of the Russian Social-- Democratic movement; joined Bolsheviks in 1905; a leader of the antiParty Vperyod (Forward) group from 1908; lied abroad in 1918 and sided with extreme reactionaries. 162, 250
Andersen-Nexo, Martin (1869--1954) Danish writer, member of the Communist Party of Denmark from 1919; participated in the work of the Fourth Comintern Congress in November 1922.-441
Andreyev, Andrei Andreyevich (1895-- 1971)-Soviet statesman and Party functionary, Bolshevik from 1914. 278
Andreyeva, Maria Fyodorovna (1868-- 1958) - well-known Russian actress and public figure, wife and associate of Maxim Gorky.-128, 138, 146
Aristotle (384--322 B.C.)-Greek philosopher and scientist; vacillated between materialism and idealism. 207
Armand, Inessa (Yelizaveta Fyodorovna^^*^^) (1874--1920) prominent figure in the Russian and international revolutionary movement, Bolshevik from 1904. 174, 194, 211, 232
Avenarius, Richard (1843--1896) reactionary German philosopher, subjective idealist, a founder of empiriocriticism. 150
Axelrod, Pavel Bonsovich (1850--1928)--- joined the Russian revolutionary movement in the early 1870s, Narodnik; member of Iskra editorial board from 1900, a Menshevik leader from 1903, liquidator; emigrated after October 1917. 72, 79^ 80. 198
_-_-_^^*^^ Real names are given in brackets.
503B
Babushkin, Ivan Vasilyevich (1873--1906) worker, professional revolutionary, Bolshevik; delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra; led armed uprising in Chita; was shot by officers of a punitive expedition in 1906.-30, 33, 49, 71, 77
Bagotsky, Sergei Justinovich (1879--1953) doctor, active participant in revolutionary movement; joined the revolutionary proletarian Social-- Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in 1910; organiser of Soviet health service after October 1917. -197
Barboni, Tito-Italian social-- chauvinist.-204
Bauer, Bruno (1809--1882)-German idealist philosopher, bourgeois radical in political views.-44
Bauer, Otto (1882--1938) - a leader of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party and Second International, ideologist of Austrian Marxism, a form of revisionism; an organiser and leader of the Two-and-a-Half International (1921--23) and the Socialist Labour International (1923-- 40).-238
Bazarov (Rtidnev), Vladimir Alexandrovich (1874--1939)-Russian philosopher and economist, member of the Social-Democratic Party from 1896; advocated ``god-building'' and empirio-criticism in the years of reaction (1907--10J.-150
Bebel, August (1840--1913)-a founder and leader of the German SocialDemocratic Party and the Second International; passionate anti-- militarist.-140, 142, 188, 307
Bedny, Demyan (Pridvorov, Tejim Alexeyevich) (1883--1945)-Soviet poet and writer, pioneer of socialist
__COLUMN2__ realism, Party member from 1912. 349, 410, 465Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770--1827) German composer, pianist and conductor. -410
Belinsky, Yissarion Grigoryevich (1811-- 1848) Russian revolutionary democrat, literary critic and writer; materialist philosopher.-16, 307
Bell, Thomas (1882--1940) -British Communist; joined the Independent Labour Party in 1900; a founder of the Communist Party of Great Britain, delegate to the Third, Sixth and Seventh Comintern congresses. --- 431
Beranger. Pierre Jean (1780--1857)--- French poet; famous for his satires on the Napoleonic regime; Utopian socialist.-465
Berkeley, George (1685--1753) - Anglican bishop in Cloyhe (Ireland); reactionary philosopher, subjective idealist.-153
Bernstein, Eduard (1850--1932) an opportunist leader of German SocialDemocrats and the Second International; ideologist of revisionism.--- 62--63, 66, 82, 96, 141
Bissotati, leonida (1857--1920) -a reformist leader of the Italian Socialist Party (1892--1912), expelled in 1912 for supporting the aggressive ItaloTurkish war; one of the founders of the Socialist Reformist Party. -178
Blagoev, Dimitr (1856--1924)-- prominent Russian and Bulgarian revolutionary, first propagandist of Marxism in Bulgaria, founder of the Bulgarian Social-Democratic Party (1891), the Tcsnyaki Party (1903) and the Communist Party of Bulgaria (1919) .-205
Blank, Alexander Dmitriyevich-Lenin's grandfather; doctor, laid the foun-
504 dations of physiotherapy in Russian medicine.- 12Blomqvist, Arthur (1878--1951)-worker, in 1917 member of workers' organisation uniting Swedes in Finland. -258
Bobrovskaya (^elikson), Cecilia Samoilovna (1876--1960) -Russian revolutionary, delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra; engaged in Party work from 1920.-91, 417
Bogdanov (Malinovsky) Alexander Alexandrovich (1873--1928)-doctor, philosopher and economist, Russian revolutionary; initially a Bolshevik, then, since 1908 an ``otzovist'' and leader of the Vperyod group; organised and directed the Institute of Blood Transfusion in 1926; died after performing a medical experiment on himself. -106, 150, 162
Bonch-Bruyevich, Mikhail Alexandrovich (1888--1940)-Soviet scientist, supervised electronic tubes production in Soviet Russia, commissioned the world's first powerful Comintern radio station in Moscow (1922).-402
Bonch-Bruyevich, Vladimir Dmitriyevich (1873--1955)-Soviet statesman and Party functionary, historian; organiser of several Bolshevik newspapers and publishing houses.-127, 136, 238, 249, 278, 327
Borg, Valter (d. 1918) - Finnish Social-Democrat, then Communist; supervised the passage of revolutionary emigres to Sweden.-143
Braun, Adolf (1862--1929)-German Social-Democrat, an editor of Vorwarts in the 1890s, author of several works on the trade-union movement.-74
Breslav, Boris Abramovich (1882--1943) Russian revolutionary, held various Party posts after October 1917. 173
Buchanan, George William (1854--1924)--- British diplomat; as Ambassador to Russia (1910--18), he helped Russian
__COLUMN2__ reactionaries to combat the maturing revolution; took part in organising counter-revolutionary conspiracies after the October 1917 Socialist Revolution. 250Budyonny, Semyon Mikhailovich (1883-- 1973)-Soviet military leader, hero of Civil War (1918--20) and Great Patriotic War (1941--45).-362, 363
Bukharin, Nikolai hanovich (1888-- 1938;-Russian Social-Democrat publicist and economist; opposed Lenin on the question of the state, on proletarian dictatorship and the right of nations to self-- determination; after October 1917 led the anti-Party group of Left Communists and, later, the Right opposition in the Party; was expelled from the Party in 1937 for antiParty activities.-227, 346, 347, 389,
390Bulgakov, Sergei Mkolayevich (1871-- 1944)-Russian economist, philosopher and theologist; emigrated to Paris in 1923.-63
Bumazhny, Yefim Osipovich (b. 1894)--- Russian revolutionary; secretary of the Bryansk Gubernia Party committee in 1923.-464
Butlerov, Alexander Mikhailovich (1828-- 1886)-Russian chemist; supported the introduction of higher education for women. - 16
Cochin, Marcel (1869--1958)-- outstanding leader of the French and international communist movement, a founder of the French Communist Party (1920); participant in the Resistance (1940--44); director of L' Humanite (1918--58). -128, 142,378,379
Campanella, Tommazo (1568--1639)--- Italian philosopher, poet and politician, founder of Utopian communism.-307
505Chekhov, Anton Pavlovtch (1860--1904) Russian writer; his works had a considerable impact on the development of Russian and world litcrature.-93, 410
Chernov, 0. /.-Siberian peasant, member of the peasant board of the newspaper Bednota (The Poor) from 1921.-388
Chernov, Viktor Mikhailovich (1873-- 1952)-an organiser and theoretician of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, member of the bourgeois Provisional Government in 1917; White Guard emigre.-108
Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich (1828-- 1889) - Russian revolutionary democrat, Utopian socialist, materialist philosopher, writer and literary critic; his work was highly thought of by Marx, Engels and Lenin. -16, 20, 55, 92, 153, 307
Chicherin, Georgi Vasilyevich (1872-- 1936)-Russian revolutionary; in 1904--18 carried out revolutionary work abroad. After the October Revolution Soviet statesman and Party functionary; People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1918--30), signed the Brest Peace Treaty on behalf of the Soviet Government.-422--23
Chkheidze, Nikolai Semyonovich (1864-- 1926)-a Menshevik leader, White Guard emigre from 1921.-204, 250
Chugurin, Ivan Dmitriyevich (1883--1947)--- worker; revolutionary and subsequently Bolshevik, member of the Board of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka).-237
Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-- 1965)-British statesman, Prime Minister (1940--45 and 1951--55); leader of the Conservative Party, instigator of Cold War policy after World War II. 326
Cluseret, Gustave Paul (1823--1900)
__COLUMN2__ member of the Paris Commune in 1871; directed its defensive operations. 115D
Dan (Gurvich), Fyodor llywh (1871-- 1947) - Russian Social-Democrat and a Menshevik leader; exiled abroad for anti-Soviet activities in 1922.-166, 243
David, Eduard (1863--1930) an opportunist leader of German SocialDemocratic Party; attempted to revise Marxist agrarian theory and prove the soundness of the small peasant economy.-141
Debs, Eugene (1855--1926) an organiser of the American Socialist Party (1900--01), took an internationalist stand during World War I and was subjected to reprisals. - 205
Denikin, Anton hanovich (1872--1947)--- Russian lieutenant-general, a chief organiser of counter-revolution in Russia; White Guard emigre from 1920.-352, 360, 361
Diamant, Hermann - Austrian SocialDemocrat, deputy to the Austrian Parliament during World War I.-197
Diderot, Denis (1713--1784) -French writer and materialist philosopher, member of the French Enlightenment and head of the Encyclopaedists; an ideologist of 18th-century French revolutionary bourgeoisie; remained an idealist in explaining social phenomena.-153
Dietz, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm (1842-- 1922)-German Social-Democrat, head of the Party publishers that printed works by Marx and Engels.-74
Dietzgen, Josef (1828--1888) - German Social-Democrat, leather worker who independently arrived at dialectical materialism. 153
506DtihrHgetnm-Gherea, Cun.tlanlin ( 1855-- 1920) literary critic, writer and sociologist, an organiser ol Social-- Democratic groups and the SocialDemocratic Labour Partv in Romania (1893). 170
Dubrolyubov, .\ikulai Ate\androvich (1836-- 1861) Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, literary critic and journalist; opposed monarchy and serfdom; advocated peasant revolution.-13, 16, 20, 307
Dubrovinsky, lo.sif Fyodorovich (1877-- 1913) Russian Social-Democrat, Bolshevik; delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra; directed Moscow armed uprising in 1905.-145
Dzi'rz/iimky, Felix Edmundovich (1877-- 1923) outstanding leader of the Communist Party and Soviet state, Russian and Polish revolutionary; Chairman of the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka) after 1917.-271, 292
E
Kn«ber», Oscar Alexandrmich (1874-- 1955) of Finnish descent, worker at the Putilov Works, Petrograd; was exiled to Eastern Siberia for revolutionary activities in October 1897. 53
Engels, Frederick (1820--1895) - founder of scientific communism, leader of the world proletariat, friend and associate of Marx; jointly with Marx developed dialectical and historical materialism. 5, 6, 7, 9, 20, 25, 35, 44, 47, 52, 53, 55, 74, 83, 8(5, 96, 100, 115, 131, 153, 154, 157, 172, 175, 208, 213, 215, 219, 232, 240, 242, 243, 257, 262, 267, 269, 307, 317, 332, 352, 355, 375, 406, 172, 481, 482
__COLUMN2__F
Fedoseyev, .Mkoiai t'evgrq/ovich (1871-- 1898) one of the first Russian Marxist theoreticians; died in exile. --- 20, 22, 26
Ferslrr, 0 if rid (1873--1941) German neurologist and neurosurgeon. 446
Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804--1872)-- German materialist philosopher whose ideas served as a theoretical source of Marxist philosophy. 153, 207, 307
Fnjanova, Margarita Vasilyevna (1883-- 1976) Russian revolutionary, subsequently a Bolshevik; her Petrograd flat was used by Lenin when he was hiding in July and October 1917; teacher after October 1917.-269, 271, 274
Fotieva, Lidiya Alexandrovna (1881--1975) Russian revolutionary and Bolshevik, Lenin's secretary and secretary of the Council of People's Commissars after October 1917; worked in the Central Lenin Museum in Moscow after 1938.-435.
Gallacher, William (1881--1965) -- outstanding leader of the British and international communist movement, President of the Communist Party of Great Britain (1956--63). 378
Gapon, Georgi Apollonovich (1870--1906) priest, agent-provocateur of the tsarist secret police; was exposed by a group of workers and hanged. Ill
Grrmanetto, Giovanni (1885--1959) Italian writer, member of the Italian working-class movement and of the Italian Communist Party; resided in the USSR in 1930--46.-379
Gil, Steflan h'a-imiroriih (1888--1966) Lenin's chauffeur (1917--24). 310
507Gogol, Nikolai Vusilyevich (1809--1852) --- Russian writer who influenced the development of critical realism in Russian literature.- 16
Goldman, Lev haakovich (1877--1939)--- Russian revolutionary, organised clandestine print shop to publish Social-Democratic literature in Kishinyov in May 1901; joined the Mensheviks in 1905; abandoned politics after the October 1917 revolution and later held several administrative posts.-79
Gorky, Maxim (Pes/ikov, Alexei Maximovich) (1868--1936)-Soviet writer and public figure, pioneer of socialist realism in Soviet literature.-97, 128, 138, 139, 140, 146, 152--53, 184, 402--03, 409, 410, 416, 417, 433, 466
Gramsci, Antonio (1891--1937)-- prominent figure in the Italian and international communist movement, organiser and leader of the Communist Party of Italy, Marxist theoretician; was arrested for revolutionary activities in 1926 and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment by a fascist court in 1928.-226
Grimlund, Otto (d. 1969)-Swedish journalist, member of Social-- Democratic youth organisation.-236
Grimm, Robert (1881--1956)-a leader of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party and the Second International; Centrist, helped to create the Two-and-a-Half International.- 204, 232
Gubkin, Ivan Mikhailovich (1871--1939) --- Soviet academician, geologist, organiser of several educational and research institutes.-402
Guesde, Jules Basile Mathieu (1845-- 1922)-founding member of the French Workers' Party and a leader of the French Socialist Party formed in 1905; prominent figure in the Second International, Centrist.-198
__COLUMN2__H
Haase, Hugo (1863--1919) Chairman of the German Social-Democratic Party (1911--17), Centrist; helped suppress the November 1918 revolution in Germany.- 198
Hanecki, Yakub Slanislavovich (1879-- 1937)-prominent figure in Polish and Russian revolutionary movement, a leader of the Social-- Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania in 1903--09. -197, 236
Haywood, William Dudley (1869--1928)--- member of the US labour movement, socialist, subsequently a Communist.- 142
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-- 1831)-classical German philosopher; his service to philosophy consisted in a thorough elaboration of idealist dialectics-a theoretical source of dialectical materialism .-52. 207--08, 307
Helvetius, Claude Adtien (1715--1771)--- French materialist philosopher, ideologist of 18th-century French revolutionary bourgeoisie.-52
Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich (1812--1870) --- Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, writer and journalist-16, 55, 307
Holbach, Paul Henry (1723--1789)--- French materialist philosopher and atheist, ideologist of the French revolutionary bourgeoisie.-52, 307
Hugo, Victor Marie (1802--1885)--- French novelist; his works were highly acclaimed by progressive 19 thcentury Russian writers.-160
Hyndman, Henry Mayers (1842--1921)--- an organiser of the British Socialist Party, reformist; left the Party in 1916, supported anti-Soviet intervention (1918--20). 198
508Jalava, Hugo Enkovich (1874--1950 jmember of the Russian Social-- Democratic movement, engine-driver of the locomotive No. 293 on which Lenin twice crossed the Finnish border in 1917. 256, 257, 269, 271
Janson, Wilhelm (1877--1923)-member of the German socialist movement, Swedish by birth, opportunist; Attache of the Swedish Mission in Berlin after 1919.-235
Jaures, Jean (1859--1914)-leader of the French Socialist Party and its Right, reformist wing from 1905, founder of L'Humanite in 1904; led unremitting struggle against colonialism, militarism and war; was killed by a French chauvinist on July 31, 1914, on the eve of World War I.-142
Jqffe, Adolf Abramovich (1883--1927)--- began his revolutionary activity in late 19th century, Soviet statesman and Party functionary.-413
Jogiches, Leo-see Jyszka, Jan
Joliot-Cune, Frederic (1900--1958)--- French physicist and public figure, member of the French Communist Party; took an active part in the French Resistance and world peace movement, received the Nobel and International Lenin Prize lor Strengthening Peace Among Nations; his name is given to the Gold Peace Medal; was first President of the World Peace Council (1950).--- 159
K
Kabakchiev, Christo (1878--1940) -- prominent figure in the Bulgarian and international communist movement, member of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1919; from 1927 lived in the USSR and worked in the Comintern. 378
__COLUMN2__Kalinin, Mikhail Ivanovich (1875--1946)--- Russian revolutionary, delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra; an organiser of Pravda; a prominent Soviet statesman and Party functionary after October 1917 Revolution: Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee after 1919 and Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet from 1938.--- 38, 271, 345, 467, 469
Kallio, Kustaa.-258
Kahke, Emile Georgiyevich (1888--1938)--- metal worker, took an active part in the revolutionary movement in Russia and Finland; after October 1917 worked in Finnish organisations of the RCP(B) in Petrograd and later in Karelia.-257
Kamenev (Rosenjeld), Lev Borisovich (1883--1936) -member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement; was on editorial boards of the Bolshevik newspapers Proletary and Pravda, and in the Central Committee Political Bureau; repeatedly opposed Party policy on socialist revolution and Leninist Party home policy; expelled from the Party in 1934 for anti-Party activities.-271, 272
Kamkov (Kats), Boris Davidovich (1885-- 1938) - an organiser of the counterrevolutionary revolt of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow in 1918; was arrested and sentenced to three years' imprisonment; subsequently held various administrative posts.-301
Kane, S. -432
Kant, Immartuel (1724--1804)-founder of classical German philosophy; his theory of knowledge combined materialism with idealism and admitted objectively existing "things-in-- themselves"-i. e. non-cognisable things.--- 52, 63
Kaplan, Fanny.- 328
509Karpinsky, Vyacheslav Alexeyeinch i,1880-- 1965) prominent figure in the Russian revolutionary movement, journalist, contributor to the Bolshevik newspapers Vperyod, Proletary and Pravda, author of several books on Lenin and Leninist theory; engaged in propaganda and research from 1937. 108, 145
Kasprowicz, Jan (1860--1926) Polish poet; his realist poetry was devoted to peasant life; increasingly religious and mystical after 1905. 197
Kautskji, Karl (1854--1938) a leader and theoretician of the German Socialist-Democratic Party and Second International; originally a Marxist, before World War I he adopted a conciliatory attitude towards revisionism; at the outbreak of war, he departed from Marxism and became the ideologist of Centrism ( Kautskyism), the most dangerous form of opportunism. 63, 120, 138, 150. 167, 194, 198, 204, 206--07, 212, 218, 261, 329, 332
K'erensky, Alexander lyodorovich (1881-- 1970) -Socialist-Revolutionary, rabid social-chauvinist during World War I; after the February 1917 bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia became Prime Minister of the bourgeois Provisional Government and Supreme Commander-in-Chief; fought against Soviet power after the October Revolution; in 1918 lied abroad. 249, 270
K'haltunn, Step/in Mikolaytvich (1857-- 1882) one of the first Russian revolutionary workers. 307
Khryashcheva, A. 1. (1868--1934) statistician, chief of the Agricultural Census Department of the Central Statistical Board, 1918--26. 417
Kibalchich, Nikolai Ivamnch (1853--1881) --- revolutionary Narodnik; took part in assassinating Alexander II; worked out the project of a jet plane __COLUMN2__ while in prison; was hanged in 1881. 17
K\'irkova, Tina (1872--1947) prominent figure in the Bulgarian workingclass movement, a leader of the Bulgarian socialist women's movement. 169
h'oenen, Wilhelm (1886--1963) a leader of the German and international communist movement, member of the Communist Party of Germany from 1920, delegate to the Third Congress of the Comintern. 430.
h'olarov, Vasil (1877--1950) a leader of the Bulgarian and international communist movement, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party (1919--23), General Secretary of the Comintern Executive Committee in 1922--24. 223
Kolchak, Alexander Vasilyevich (1873-- 1920) tsarist admiral, a ringleader of Russian counter-revolution in 1918--19; with the aid of the Entente and US imperialists headed the military bourgeois-landowner dictatorship in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East after October 1917; was taken prisoner and shot in February 1920.-352, 360
Kollontai, Alexandra Mikhailomn (1872-- 1952) prominent Communist and Soviet statesman, the first woman diplomat, Soviet Ambassador to Sweden. 205, 233
Koski, Axel Adolfovich (1877--1952) journalist and photographer, correspondent of' 7vomit^^1^^.* (Tile Worker], organ of the Social-Democratic Party of Finland. 258
Krasikov, I'yotr Ananyemch (1870--1939) professional revolutionary, Bolshevik, lawyer; held various posts in supreme judicial bodies after October 1917. 94
fiinsin, Lt'onid ttonsonch (1870--1926)
510 member of the Russian Social-- Democratic movement from 1890; Soviet Party functionary and statesman, held responsible government and diplomatic posts after October 1917. 127, 136Krokhmal, Viktor .Nikolayevich (1873-- 1933) member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement, delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra\ Menshevik; held several administrative posts after October 1917. 69
Krumbugel, L. 153
hrupskaya, .Ha.dez.hda honstantinovna (1869--1939) prominent Russian Party functionary and public figure, wife and associate of Lenin, secretary of Iskra, Vperyod, Proletary and Sotsial-Demokrat editorial boards; theoretician and organiser of Soviet education. 32, 33, 45, 49, 53--55, 56, 59, 63, 69, 71, 73, 75, 80, 82, 88, 89, 91, 92, 102, 105, 115, 143, 144, 160, 161, 165, 174, 175, 180, 187, 188, 193, 197, 201, 222, 22.3, 224, 230, 234, 235, 252, 258, 269, 292, 293, 298, 306, 308, 310, 329, 333, 383, 405, 406, 409, 410, 416, 436, 445--46, 447, 459, 464--65, 466--67
hmpskaya, Telizaveta Vasilyevna (1842-- 1915) Nadezhda Konstantinovna's mother; aided revolutionaries in their work. 54, 69, 160, 187
Krupiky, Konstantin Ignalovich (1838-- 1883) Nadezhda Konstantinovna's father; military lawyer, member of the Russian Officers' Committee in Poland; helped insurgents during the Polish uprising of 1863--64. 32
Krylenko, .\ikulai Vasilyevich (1885-- 1938) member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement, Supreme Commander-in-Chief and member of the Committee for Military and Naval Affairs in 1917--18.-271
Krzhizhanovsky, Gleb Maximilianovich (1872--1959)-member of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (1895), prominent Party functionary and Soviet statesman, scientist, Chairman of the State Commission for the Electrification of Russia 'GOELRO) in 1920.- 45, 49, 55, 56, 78, 362, 386, 415
Kun, ISela (1886--1939)- prominent figure in the Hungarian and international communist movement, an organiser and leader of the Hungarian Communist Party; was brought to Russia as a prisoner-of-war in 1916; joined the Bolshevik Party, took part in suppressing the Moscow revolt of Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries in 1918. 342, 357, 378
Kuusela, Karl (1869--1918) actor, director of the workers' theatre in Vaasa (Finland). 258
Kuusinen, Otto (1881--1964) prominent figure in the Finnish and international communist movement, member of the Communist Party and Left-wing leader of the Finnish Social-Democrats from 1914, Chairman of the Comintern Executive Committee (1921--39).-267--68, 430
Labourbe, Jeanne Marie (1877--1919) organiser and secretary of the French communist group in Moscow in 1918; shot by the French interventionists in Odessa. 340
Lajargue, [.aura (1845--1911) --- prominent figure in the French workingclass movement, daughter of Marx; active in promoting Marxism in France; together with her husband Paul Lafargue, translated into French the Manifesto of the Com-
511 munist Party and several other works by Marx and Engels.-160La/argue, Paul (1842--191 1) -a founder of the French Workers' Party, member of the First International; journalist, one of the first advocates of scientific communism in France, friend and associate of Marx and Engels.-43, 128, 153, 160, 307
Lalayants, Isaak Khristoforovich (1870-- 1933) -member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement; superintended the Iskra print shop in Geneva.-25
Langemn, Paul (1872--1946) -French physicist and progressive public figure; joined the French Communist Party in 1944; took an active part in the anti-fascist movement during World War 1 1. -159
Latukka, Juho K. (1884--1925) -Finnish journalist, Social-Democrat, later Communist.- 268
Lazzari, Constantino (1857--1927) -a founder of the Italian Socialist Party and its General Secretary (1912--19); supported Soviet Russia after the October 1917 Socialist Revolution. -444
Ledebour, Georg (1850--1947) -an organiser and leader of the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany which supported blatant chauvinists.- 223
Lefrancflis, Gustave (1826- 1901) -- participant in the 1848 revolution in France, member of the Paris Commune (1871) and the First International, author of the book on the Paris Commune.- 43
Legien, Karl (1861--1920) -German right-wing Social -Democrat and trade-union leader; revisionist.- 198
Leiteizen, Davidovich (1874-- 1919) -prominent figure in the Russian revolutionary movement, __COLUMN2__ contributor to Iskra, ^.arya, Proletary and other Bolshevik newspapers. 136
Lengnik, Friedrich Wilhelmovich (1873-- 1936) -professional revolutionary, Bolshevik; after the October 1917 Revolution engaged in Party, government, and later, scientific work. 51--52
I^rmontov, Mikhail Yuryevich (1814-- 1841) - Russian poet; killed in a duel.-16, 55, 92
Leshchenko, Dmitri Ilyich (1876--1939) Russian Social-Democrat; member of editorial boards of the Bolshevik newspapers Volna (Wave), Ekho (Echo), ^vezda (Star) and Pravda (The r™//rJ.-256
Lieber (Goldman), Mikhail Isaakovich (1880--1937) -member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement, a Menshevik leader; abandoned politics after October 1917.-95, 247
Liebknecht, Karl (1871--1919)-- outstanding leader of the German and international working-class movement, a founder of the Communist Party of Germany in 1918, son of Wilhelm Liebknecht; brutally murdered by counter-- revolutionaries.-128, 206, 370
Liebknecht, Wilhelm (1826--1900)-an organiser and leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, active participant in the work of the First International; a founder and leader of the Second International; passionate fighter against aggression and militarism; father of Karl Liebknecht.-44
Liu %erong (b. 1892)-Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Workers' Union in Russia; delegate to the First and Second Comintern congresses.-372
Longuct, Jean (1876--1938)-Centrist leader of the Socialist Party of
512 France, grandson of Marx; took a pacifist stand during World War I and condemned the armed intervention in Soviet Russia; participated in the anti-fascist movement in the 1930s, advocated rapprochement with Communists.-204Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasilyevich (1875-- 1933)-member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement from 1895; preached ``god-building'' in 1908--10; prominent statesman and Party functionary, literary critic and writer; organiser of Soviet education system.-108, 127, 128, 146, 150, 162
Luxemburg, Rosa (1871--1919)-- prominent in the German, Polish and international working-class movement, a leader and theoretician of Polish Social-Democrats and the left, radical wing of the German Social-Democratic Party, a founder of the Communist Party of Germany; committed errors on the issue of imperialism and the national question; was brutally murdered by counter-revolutionaries.-73, 128, 138, 141, 142, 143, 153, 176, 191, 206, 227, 307, 370
M
MacDonald, James Ramsey (1866--1937)--- an organiser and leader of the British Labour Party, Prime Minister (1924 and 1929--31); during his premiership the British Government established diplomatic relations with the USSR.-198
Much, Ernst (1838--1916)-reactionary Austrian philosopher, subjective idealist; together with Avenarius, was the chief proponent of empiriocriticism.-150, 153
Marchlewski, Julian Jusefovich (1866-- 1925)-prominent in the Russian and international revolutionary movement, an organiser of the So-
__COLUMN2__ cial-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and the Spartacus League in Germany; resided in the USSR after October 1917; was the Chairman of the International Red Aid.-74, 206Martov, L. (Tsederbaum, Tuli Osipovich) (1873--1923) - Russian revolutionary; Menshevik leader after 1903, opposed the October Revolution; emigre after 1920, an organiser of the Two-and-a-Half International.--- 45, 72, 95, 97--98, 103, 118, 166, 198, 202, 204
Martynov (Piker, Alexander Samoilovich) (1865--1935) -Russian revolutionary, Menshevik after 1903; journalist after the October Socialist Revolution in 1917.-95, 118
Marx, Karl (1818--1883)-great thinker and leader of the world proletariat, founder of scientific communism; developed dialectical and historical materialism which revolutionised philosophy.-5, 6, 7, 9, 15, 20, 25, 31, 32, 35--38, 39, 43, 47, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 63, 66, 74, 86, 88, 96, 100, 115, 119, 123, 131, 144, 148, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 175, 191, 192, 204, 206, 208, 209, 213, 215, 219, 232, 240, 242, 243, 257, 262, 267, 269, 289, 307, 317, 332, 343, 344, 352, 355, 366, 375, 406, 449, 467, 472, 475, 481, 482
Maslov, Pyotr Pavlovich (1867--1946)--- Russian economist; in a number of works on the agrarian question revised fundamental principles of Marxist political economy.---134
Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1893--1930)-Soviet poet and publicist.-410
Mehring, Franz (1846--1919)-a leftwing leader of the German SocialDemocratic Party and a founder of the Communist Party of Germany; author of the History of German Social-Democracy in four volumes and
__PRINTERS_P_512_COMMENT__ 33---826 513 the first biography of Karl Marx. 153, 206, 307Mekhonoshin, Konslantin Alexandrovich (1889--1938)-Russian Social-- Democrat, Bolshevik; member of the Petrograd Revolutionary Military Committee in October 1917 and of the All-Russia Board of the Red Army after January 1918.-277
Menager.-lld
Mendeleyev, Dmitri Ivanovich (1834-- 1907)-Russian chemist, educationalist and progressive public figure, professor at St. Petersburg University; discovered the periodic law of chemical elements; retired in protest at infringement of student rights.-17
Michel, Louise (1830--1905) -member of the Paris Commune in 1871, fought against the Versailles army on the barricades.-90
Michurin, Ivan Vladimirovich (1855-- 1935)-Soviet biologist; bred more than 300 new fruit varieties.-402
Mikhailovsky, Nikolai Konstantinovich (1842--1904) - Russian sociologist and writer, Narodnik; opposed Marxism in late 1890s.-25
Miller, Yevgeny tCarlovich (1867--1937)--- lieutenant-general in the tsarist army, one of the chief leaders of counter-revolution in 1918; emigrated in 1920, Chairman of the anti-Soviet Russian General Military Union in Paris from 1930 .-360
Mirbach, Wilhelm (1871--1918)--- German diplomat, Ambassador to Moscow from April 1918; his assassination by Left Socialist-- Revolutionaries signalled the beginning of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries' revolt.-321
Mitskevich, Sergei Ivanovich (1869--1944) prominent Soviet statesman and Communist Party functionary, doc-
tor and writer; helped to form Bolshevik groups in Moscow and, after October 1917, organised Soviet health care.- 28
Modratek, Frantiiek (1871--1960) -Czech worker, Social-Democrat; Lenin used his address in 1900--01 to forward illegal correspondence to Russia.-73
Mormousseau, Gaston (1883--1960) French Communist, Secretary of the French General Confederation of Labour in 1945--60.-443
Montigus, Gaston (d. 1953)-son of a Paris Communard, folk singer in Paris working suburbs; subsequently police informer.-160
Mussolini, Benito (1883--1945)-Italian fascist dictator (1922--43); started his political career in the Italian Socialist Party, from which he was expelled in 1914; organised the Fascist Party in 1919; the Mussolini Government pursued an aggressive foreign policy and, together with Hitler's Germany, unleashed World War II; Mussolini was executed in 1945 by a sentence of the Court Martial of the Committee of National Liberation of Northern Italy.-205
514 1919 and murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.---167O
Okhotnikov, N. M.-15
Olminsky, Mikhail Stepanovich (1863-- 1933)-Russian revolutionary, Bolshevik; literary critic and journalist, member of Pravda editorial board after 1918.-106, 108--09, 127, 365
Onufriev, Tevgeni Petrovich.-\ld
Orjonikidze,Grigori Konstantinovich (1886-- 1937)-Bolshevik from 1903; prominent Soviet statesman, a political leader in the Red Army during Civil War; headed the struggle for establishing Soviet power in the Northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia; later held several responsible Party and government posts.-175, 251, 256
Orkan, Wladislaw (Smrecynski, Franti<Sek) (1875--1930)-Polish novelist; in his writings exposed social antagonisms in the countryside.-97
__COLUMN2__ and German Social-Democratic movement, Menshevik after 1903; proponent of the anti-Marxist permanent revolution theory later used by Trotskyism; left politics in 1918.-123Pavlov, Ivan Petrooich (1849--1936)-- Soviet physiologist, founder of the materialist teaching of higher nervous activity. 402
Pieck, Wilhelm (1876--1960)-prominent in the German and international communist movement, a founder of the Communist Party of Germany (1918) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (1946); first President of the GDR.-206
Pilsudski, Jdsef (1867--1935) Marshal, actual dictator of Poland after the coup he had organised in May 1926; directed military operations against Soviet Russia in 1920; Prime Minister (1926--28 and 1930) .-380
Pisarev, Dmitri Ivanovich (1840--1868) Russian literary critic and journalist, revolutionary democrat, philosopher.-16, 55, 307
Flatten, Friedrich (\ 883--1942) - Swiss socialist, a founder of the Communist Party of Switzerland (1921); lived in the USSR after 1923.-233, 234, 235, 293
Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinomch (1856-- 1918) a prominent figure in the Russian and international SocialDemocratic movement, philosopher and propagandist of Marxism; a Menshevik leader after 1903. While disapproving of the October 1917 Socialist Revolution, he took no part in counter-revolutionary activities. Plekhanov's philosophical works and revolutionary activities at the turn of the century were highly thought of by Lenin.-20, 21, 43, 44, 62, 64, 72, 79--81, 90, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100, 105, 118, 134, 140, 153, 163, 166, 169, 198, 201, 207, 243, 307
N
Panftloa, F. £.-349
Pannekoek, Anton (1873--1960)-- prominent figure in the Dutch workingclass movement, founder of the newspaper De Tribune, left-wing organ of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party of Holland; a member of the Communist Party of Holland (1918--21), holding ultra-left, sectarian views; left the Communist Party in 1921 and retired from active politics.- 205, 227
Parviainen, L. P. - 258 Parviainen, P. G. -258
Parvus (Gel/and), Alexander Lvovich (1869--1924) - member of the Russian
Nekrasov, Nikolai Alexeyevich (1821-- 1878) -Russian poet; democrat.- 16, 20, 55, 92
Nogin, Viktor Pavlovich (1878--1924) professional revolutionary, prominent Soviet statesman and Communist Party functionary; delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra; People's Commissar for Trade and Industry after October 1917.-251
Noske, Gustav (1868--1946)-German right Social-Democrat responsible for white terror in January-March
515Pokrovsky, Ivan Petrovich (1872--1963)--- Russian revolutionary; sided with the Bolshevik group of the SocialDemocratic faction in the Third Duma.-318
Popov, Ivan Fyodorovich (1886--1957)--- Social-Democrat, man of letters; prisoner-of-war in Germany during World War I; on his return to Soviet Russia in 1918 was sent to Switzerland as commercial agent.--- 194
Potresov, Alexander Mkolayevich (1869-- 1934) -Russian revolutionary, member of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class and of Iskra editorial board; a Menshevik leader after 1903; emigre after October 1917.--- 45, 72, 75
Pressemane, Adrien (1879--1929) -French socialist, Centrist during World War I.-204
Prominsky, Ivan Lukich (1859--1923)--- Polish Social-Democrat .-53
Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich (1799-- 1837)-Russian poet.-16, 55, 74, 92
Pyatakov, Georgi Leonidovich (1890--1937)--- Russian Social-Democrat; took an anti-Leninist stance on some topical issues of Party policy; expelled from the Party in 1936 for anti-Party activities.-220, 227, 230, 347
__COLUMN2__ delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra', held responsible government posts after the October 1917 Revolution.-86Radchenko, Stepan Ivanavich (1869--1911)--- prominent in the Russian revolutionary movement, an organiser and leader of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class;' abandoned active Party work after 1906. 45
Rahja, Eino Abramovich (1885--1936)--- worker, prominent in the Russian and Finnish revolutionary movement, a founder of the Communist Party of Finland; Lenin's bodyguard in 1917; served in the Red Army after 1919.-256--57, 258, 269, 271, 274
Rakovsky, Khristian Georgievich (1873-- 1941)---took part in the Social-- Democratic movement of Bulgaria, Romania, Switzerland and France from the early 1890s; resided in the USSR; one of the active members of the opposition' in the CPSU; expelled from the Party in 1938.-204
Reed, John (1887--1920)-American writer and journalist, war correspondent in Europe during World War I; was in Petrograd when the October Socialist Revolution occurred, depicted these events in his book Ten Days That Shook the World; subsequently a Communist, member of the Comintern Executive Committee after 1919.-278, 378
Roland-Hoist, Hmriette (1869--1952)--- Dutch writer and political figure, socialist and from 1918 member of the Communist Party; later sided with the Trotskyists. -204
Rovio, Gustos Semyonovich (1887--1938)--- member of the Russian and Finnish Social-Democratic movement, police chief in Helsingfors in April 1917;
516 took an active part in the workers' revolution in Finland in 1918.-258, 267 __COLUMN2__Pravda war correspondent during the Civil War.-410
Shakespeare, William (1564--1616)-- English poet and playwright of the late Renaissance.-160
Shelgunov, Vasily Andreyevich (1867--1939) -one of the first Russian SocialDemocrats; participant in the 1905--07, February and October 1917 revolutions and the Civil War.-30, 370
Shlyapnikov, Alexander Gavrilovich (1885-- 1937)-Communist Party member from 1901; Chairman of the Central Committee of the All-Russia Metal-Workers' Union (1919--22).-202, 205
Shotman, Alexander Vasilyevich (1880-- 1937)-Russian revolutionary, Bolshevik; Lenin's contact when he was hiding in Razliv; worked in the Council of People's Commissars after 1918.-256--57, 258
Shukht, Apollon Alexandrovich (1860-- 1933)-member of Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) organisation, carried on revolutionary work in the tsarist army; teacher following the October 1917 Revolution.-24
Silvin, Mikhail Alexandrovich (1874-- 1955)-Social-Democrat, delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra; abandoned Party work after 1908.--- 29
Skvortsov-Stepanov, Ivan Ivamvich (1870-- 1928) -Social-Democrat, journalist; engaged in publishing from 1919.--- 153
Sokolnikov, Grigori Yakovlevich (1888-- 1939) - Russian Social-Democrat; carried on Party work in Moscow and abroad; expelled from the Party in 1936 for anti-Party activities.-273
Sponli, E.I. (1866--1931)-member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement from the 1890s. 42
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy (1760--1825) - French philosopher and Utopian socialist; his teaching served as a theoretical source of scientific communism .-307
Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Tevgrafovich (1826--1889)-Russian satirist, democrat.-16, 92, 465
Scheidemann, Philipp (1865--1939)-a right-wing leader of the German Social-Democratic Party .-198
Schwarz., Isaak krailevich (1879--1951)--- member of the Russian Social-- Democratic movement from 1899; took part in the struggle for Soviet power in the Ukraine; Soviet statesman and Communist Party functionary.-175
Semard, Pierre (1887--1942)-prominent figure in the French and international communist movement, founder of the French Communist Party (1920) and its General Secretary (1924--30).-443
Semashko, Nikolai Alexandrovich (1874-- 1949)-member of the Russian Social-Democratic movement, doctor; organiser of Soviet health service after October 1917.-174
Sembat, Marcel (1862--1922) -a reformist leader of the French Socialist Party .-198
Sen Katayama (1859--1933)-prominent figure in the Japanese and international communist movement, organiser of the Communist Party of Japan (1922), member of the Presidium of the Comintern Executive Committee from 1922.-432
Serafimovich (Popov), Alexander Serafimovich (1863--1949)-Soviet writer,
Quelch, Harry (1858--1913)-a leader of the British Social-Democratic Federation, then of the British Socialist Party which was formed on its basis in 1911; proponent of Marxism.-88
Radchenko, Ivan Ivamvich (1874--1942)--- Russian Social-Democrat, Bolshevik;
517Stalin (Jugashvili), Joseph Vissarionovich (1879--1953) a leader of the Russian Communist Party and the Soviet state, as well as of the international communist and working-class movement; theoretician and propagandist of Marxism-Leninism; played a prominent part in building socialism in the USSR, combating Trotskyists and right opportunists, and facilitating Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War (1941--45); at the same time committed theoretical and political errors and gross violation of socialist laws and departed from Leninist standards of Party and government activities. Stalin's personality cult was condemned by the CPSU as alien to Marxism-- Leninism. 246, 251, 271, 273, 424, 445, 458, 459
Starkov, Vasily Vasilyevich (1869--1925) Social-Democrat, an organiser and leader of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class; abandoned Party work after 1907 .-45
Slasova, Telena Dmitriyevna (1873--1966) professional revolutionary; delivered and distributed Leninist Iskra; following the October Revolution was Secretary of the Bolshevik Party Central Committee and later worked in the Comintern and International Red Aid.-136, 251
Steinmetz, Charles Proteus (1865--1923) specialist in power engineering; emigrated from Germany to the USA in 1889; chief engineer in charge of large' power plant projects in General Electric Company; welcomed the social transformations in Russia in a letter to Lenin of February 16, 1922. 428
Stolyfrin, Pyotr Arkadievich (1862--1911) --- Russian statesman; helped to organ-
__COLUMN2__ ise the counter-revolutionary coup d'etat of June 3, 1907; introduced a reactionary agrarian, so-called Stolypin, reform.- 140, 148Strom, Fredrik (1880--1948)-Swedish Left Social-Democrat and journalist; Secretary of the Social-Democratic Party (1911--16) and of the Communist Party of Sweden (1921--24). 236
Struve, Pyotr Berngardovich (1870--1944) - Russian economist, philosopher and journalist, theoretician of "legal Marxism''; White Guard emigre following the October Revolution. 40, 63
Sudekum, Albert (1871--1944) an opportunist leader of the German Social-Democratic Party; revisionist. 198
Suhe Baatar, Damdiny (1893--1923) founder of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, leader of the People's revolution in Mongolia in 1921.-421
Sukhanov, JV. (Gimmer, Nikolai Nikolayevich) (1882--1940) - Russian economist and journalist; Socialist-- Revolutionary after 1903 and Menshevik from 1917; was imprisoned in 1931 for being a member of a counter-revolutionary Menshevik organisation.-459
Sun rat-sen (1866--1925) -Chinese revolutionary democrat, first provisional President of the Chinese Republic (January 1-April 1, 1912) .-182, 420, 470
Sverdlov, Takov Mikhmlovich (1885-- 1919)-prominent Soviet statesman and Party functionary; took an active part in preparing and carrying out the October Socialist Revolution; elected Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee after its victory.-271, 273, 345, 352
518Svidersky, Alexei Ivanovich (1878--1933)--- a leader of the struggle for establishing Soviet power in Ufa.-69
Szamuely, Tibor (1890--1919)-helped to organise the Communist Party of Hungary; as prisoner-of-war in Russia took part in organising the Hungarian group of the RCP(B) and suppressing the Left SocialistRevolutionary revolt in Moscow in 1918.-342
T
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich (1840--1893) Russian composer.- 93
Terner, Ben.-367
Thomas, Albert (1878--1932)-French politician, social-reformer, an organiser of the Berne (Second) International.-198
Thorez, Maurice (1900--1964)-- prominent in the French and international communist movement, General Secretary of the French Communist Party after 1930 and President of the Comintern Executive Committee in 1935--45 .-225
Timiryazev, Klemenly Arkadyevich (1843-- 1920) -Russian natural scientist, one of the first proponents of Darwinism in Russia.-402
Togliatti, Palmira (1893--1964)-- prominent in the Italian and international communist movement, a founder of the Italian Communist Party and its General Secretary from 1926.-226
Tolstoy, Lev Mikolayevich (1828--1910)--- Russian writer.- 16, 92
Trotsky (Bronstein), Lev Davidovich (1879--1940)-member of the revolutionary movement from 1897; Menshevik after 1903, ideologist and leader of the opportunist trend in the RSDLP; member of the Bolshevik Party from 1917; waged a bitter factional struggle against the Party's general line from 1923, for
__COLUMN2__ which he was expelled from Party ranks in 1927; in 1929 exiled abroad for anti-Soviet activities.-95, 97, 123--24, 165, 169, 193, 204, 220, 221, 273, 298, 300, 380, 388--89, 390, 445, 450, 460, 466Tsereteli, Irakly Georgiyevich (1881--1959) - a Menshevik leader, Minister of the Interior in the bourgeois Provisional Government in 1917; White Guard emigre after 1921.-243, 247--48, 250
Tsiolkovsky, Komtantin Eduardovich (1857--1935) -Soviet scientist and inventor in aerodynamics, father of modern space flights.-402
Tskhakaya, Mikhail Grigoryevich (1865-- 1950) Soviet statesman and Communist Party functionary, one of the leaders in the struggle for establishing Soviet power in Georgia; held responsible government posts after October 1917, member of the Comintern Executive Committee.-118, 236
Tsymupa, Alexander Dmitriyevich (1870-- 1928)-Soviet statesman and Communist Party functionary, helped organise, deliver and distribute Leninist Iskra; held responsible government posts in the Council of People's Commissars from 1917.-69, 417
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich (1818--1883)--- Russian writer.-16
Tyszka, Jan (Jogiches, Leo) (1867--1919) prominent figure in Polish and German working-class movement, an organiser and leader of the SocialDemocratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania; arrested in March 1919 and murdered in a Berlin prison.-206
U
Ulbricht, Walter (1893--1973)-- prominent in the German and interna-
519 tional communist movement, a founder of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and its General Secretary, 1953--71.-442Ulyanov, Alexander Ilyich (1866--1887)--- Lenin's elder brother, an organiser and leader of the terrorist group of Narodnaya Volya (People's Will); took part in preparing the assassination of Alexander III on March 1, 1887. 13, 14, 15, 16--17, 20, 34, 43, 45, 170
Ulyanov, Dmitry Hyich (1874--1943)--- professional revolutionary, Bolshevik, qualified physician; Lenin's younger brother; engaged in Party and government work after the October 1917 Revolution.-13, 23, 28
Ulyanov, ttya Nikolayevich (1831--1886) --- Lenin's father; Russian educationalist, democrat; organised public education in Simbirsk Gubernia; supported universal, free education.--- 11--13, 14, 16
Ulyanov, Nikolai Vasilyevich- Lenin's grandfather.- 11
Ulyanova, Maria Alexandrovna (1835-- 1916) -Lenin's mother; a woman of exceptional pedagogical abilities, who had a considerable influence on her children; was their confidante and shared their revolutionary aspirations.-^, 13, 14, 16, 17, 51, 52, 71, 89, 170, 238, 308
Ulyanova, Maria Ilyinichna (1878--1937) --- Lenin's youngest sister, professional revolutionary, Bolshevik; prominent figure of the Communist Party and Soviet state; took an active part in the work of Leninist hkra', member of the Pravda editorial board and its Secretary following the October 1917 Revolution.-13, 170, 201, 293, 308, 310, 409, 446, 459, 466
Ulyanova, Olga Ilyinichna (1871--1891)--- Lenin's sister, studied at the Higher Courses for Women in St. Petersburg; died of typhoid.- 13, 23, 238
Usenius, Arthur- Finnish worker, participant in the revolutionary movement in Finland.-258
520 cial-Democratic movement from 1895; Soviet statesman and Communist Party functionary, doctor.-194Vollmar, Georg (1850--1922)-an opportunist leader of the German SocialDemocrats.- 167
Volodicheva, Maria Akimovna (1881-- 1973) -Bolshevik from 1917; worked in the secretariat of the Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B) in 1917; Assistant Secretary in the Council of People's Commissars after the October Revolution.-446, 447, 448
Vorontsov, Vastly Pavlovich (1847--1918)--- Russian economist, sociologist and writer; an ideologist of liberal Narodism who advocated peaceful socio-political reforms.-25, 34--35
Vorovsky, Vatslav Vatslavovich (1871-- 1923)-Soviet statesman and prominent Party figure, journalist, contributor to the Bolshevik newspapers hkra, Vperyod, Proletary and Pravda; one of the first Marxist literary critics; Soviet Ambassador to Scandinavia from November 1917, plenipotentiary in Italy from 1921; assassinated by White Guards in Lausanne, Switzerland.-108, 127. 136
Wilson, Thomas Woodrow (1856--1924)--- twenty-eighth President of the USA (1913--21); passed a number of laws which, irrespective of their formally liberal character, were advantageous to the monopolies; initiated US participation in World War I; took part in organising the anti-- Soviet intervention.-326
Wilton, Robert.-381
Wrangel, Pyotr Nikolayevich (1878--1928) -Baron, tsarist general, a counterrevolutionary ringleader during the Civil War; organiser and President of the anti-Soviet Russian General Military Union which united Russian White Guard military groups and alliances set up in various countries in 1924--28.-361, 379
Y
Yazykov, Nikolai Mikhailovich (1803-- 1847)-Russian lyrical poet, friend of Alexander Pushkin.-23
Telizarov, Mark Timofeyevich (1863-- 1919) -professional revolutionary; Soviet statesman, People's Commissar of Railways in 1917--18-- 22--23, 252
Yelizarova-Ulyanova, Anna Ilyinichna (1864--1935)-Lc.iin's elder sister, professional revolutionary, Communist Party functionary, member of the editorial boards of the Bolshevik newspaper Vperyod and the magazine Rabotnitsa (Working Woman); secretary of Pravda; in 1918--21 worked in the People's Commissariat of Education; took an active fart in setting up the Lenin Institute and worked there; wrote a number of books of reminiscences about Lenin.-13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 35, 52, 63, 71, 89, 252
Yemelyanov, Nikolai Alexandrovich (1872-- 1958)-revolutionary worker; held government and administrative posts after 1917.-252--53, 256--57
V
Vaillant-Couturier, Paul (1892--1937)--- French writer and prominent figure of the French communist movement, a founder of the French Communist Party, editor-in-chief of UHumanile from 1926.-430
Vanderlip, Washington B. (b. 1866)--- engineer representing American industrialists who came to Soviet Russia in 1920 proposing to negotiate petrol and coal concessions in Kamchatka.-421
Vandervelde, Emile (1866--1938) -Belgian Socialist, reformist leader of the Belgian Workers' Party from mid-1890s; Chairman of the International Socialist Bureau of the Second International after 1900 .-198
Vaneyev, Anatoly Alexandrovich (1872-- 1899)-an organiser and leader of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class: exiled to Siberia in 1897.--- 45, 47, 56
Van Kol, Henrik (Henry) Hubert (1852--1925)-a founder and leader of the Dutch Social-Democratic Party, reformist; champion of colonialism.-141
Verhaeren, Emile (1855--1916)-Belgian poet and playwright; exposed social contradictions in bourgeois society .-160
Viik, Karl Harold (1883--1946)-Finnish Social-Democrat who joined the revolutionary government, the Council of People's Deputies, during the workers' revolution in Finland in 1918.-258
Vladimirsky, Mikhail Fyodorovich (1874-- 1951)-member of the Russian So-
W
Wagner, Nikolai Petrovich (1829--1907)--- Russian zoologist and writer.-16
Wells, Herbert George (1866--1946)--- English writer specialising in science fiction.- 385
Wijnkoop, David (1877--1941)-Dutch left-wing Social-Democrat, founder and Chairman of the Communist Party of Holland (1918); in 1926 expelled from its ranks for sectarianism; re-admitted to the Party in 1930 and its Central Committee member from 1935.- 205
521Tudenich, .Nikolai Nikolayevich (1862-- 1933)-army general, a major organiser of counter-revolution during the Civil War; emigre after 1920.-360
Yuzhakov, Sergei Nikolayevich (1849-- 1910) Russian economist and writer, liberal Narodnik, a leading member of the editorial board of the magazine Russkqye Bogalstvo (Russian Wealth).-25
Z
Zaporozhets, Pyolr Kuzrnich (1873--1905) --- Russian Social-Democrat, an organiser and leader of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. -45
Zapotocky, Antonin (1884--1957)-- prominent in the Czechoslovak and international communist movement; member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and its Central Committee from 1921; Prime Minister in 1948--53 and President from 1953.-378
Zasulich, Vera hanoona (1849--1919)--- prominent Russian revolutionary, member of editorial board of the Bolshevik newspapers Iskra and Zarya (Dawn) from 1900; adopted a Menshevik stance in 1903.-70, 72, 79--80
Zetkin, Clara (1857--1933)-prominent in the German and international communist movement, a founder of the Communist Party of Germany,
__COLUMN2__ member of the Comintern Executive Committee Presidium, organiser and leader of the Second International; initiated the First International Women's Conference in 1907; headed the International Women's Secretariat in the Comintern.-402 Zhukovsky, Nikolai Yegorovtch (1847-- 1921) - Russian scientist, founder of modern aerodynamics.-402Zinoviev (Radomysbky), (irigory Yevseyevich (1883--1936) - Russian Social-- Democrat; resided abroad in 1908--17, worked on the editorial boards of Sotsial-Demokrat (Social Democrat), the Party's Central Organ, and the newspaper Proletary (Proletarian); member of the Central Committee Political Bureau and Chairman of the Comintern Executive Committee after the October Revolution; repeatedly opposed the Party's Leninist policy and was expelled in 1934 for factional activities.-253, 271, 272, 327
Zola, Emile (1840--1902)-French writer.-55
Zubatov, Sergei Vasilyevich (1864--1917)--- colonel of gendarmes, head of the Moscow secret police department; inspirer of Zubatovism, a form of the tsarism's struggle against the working-class movement in 1901--03, consisting in setting up policesponsored legal workers' groups.-78, 111
[522] __ALPHA_LVL1__Cri du peuple --- French socialist daily published in Paris in February-May 1871, and later from October 1883 to February 1889.---17
Daily News --- bourgeois newspaper published in London in 1846--1928.---17
Ekho (Echo) --- legal Bolshevik daily run by Lenin and published instead of Vperyod in St. Petersburg in July 1906.---130
Iskra (The Spark) ---satirical weekly magazine published in St. Petersburg in 1859--73. It opposed serfdom from a revolutionary-- democratic standpoint.---16
Iskra (The Spark)---the first All-Russia political newspaper founded by Lenin and published under his editorship from December 24,^^*^^ 1900 to November 1, 1903 first in Leipzig, then Munich, London and Geneva. It played a decisive part in the struggle for a Marxist party, for the unification of Social-- Democratic committees in Russia. After the Second RSDLP Congress in 1903 the paper was taken over by Mensheviks and published until October 1905.---70--72, 74--79, 81, 87, 88, 91, 93--95, 99--103, 108, 109, 116, 118, 120, 184
Izvestia (News) ---socio-political daily __COLUMN2__ published from February 28, 1917. Its full title since 1977 is Izvestia Sorjeta Narodnykh Deputatov SSSR (News Bulletin of the Soviet of People's Deputies); it has a morning and an evening issues since 1960.---465, 467
Justice---a daily founded in London in 1884 as the central organ of the British Social Democratic Federation; it became the newspaper of the British Socialist Party in 1911 and later, in 1916, the mouthpiece of the minority, expressing social-chauvinist views; continued to be published until 1925. The newspaper Iskra was set in the Justice print shop in 1902--03.---88
Kazarma (The Barracks) ---illegal newspaper of the Military Organisation of the St. Petersburg Party Committee, it was published in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Finland from December 15, 1906 to March 1907; its premises were vandalised by police.---125
Leipziger Volkszeitung- left-wing daily of the German Social-Democratic Party published between 1894 and 1933. It became the mouthpiece of right-wing Social-Democrats in 1922.---120
Molodaya Rossiya (Young Russia) --- a _-_-_
^^*^^ All dates are given in New Style.
523 socio-political and literary newspaper, the legal organ of St. Petersburg Social-Democratic students; was published in January-November 1906.---136Mysl (Thought)--- legal Bolshevik philosophical and socio-economic monthly published with Lenin as its de facto editor in Moscow from December 1910 to April 1911 when it was closed down by the authorities. --- 172, 177
Nash Put (Our Path) ---legal Bolshevik daily published in Moscow in August and September 1913 under Lenin's editorship; was closed down by the authorities.--- 184
Die Neue Zeit--- magazine of the German Social-Democratic Party published in Stuttgart between 1883 and 1923 and edited by Karl Kautsky until 1917; from 1885 to 1895 published a number of articles by Engels; during World War I the magazine took a Centrist stand and supported social-chauvinists---62, 150, 153, 166
Novaya Zhizn (New Life) --- the first legal Bolshevik newspaper published in St. Petersburg in October-- December 1905; Lenin supervised its activities from November 1905; was closed down by the authorities on December 12, 1905.--- 127, 128, 129
Partiyniye Izvestia (Party News)--- illegal newspaper of the party's United Central Committee, published in St. Petersburg from February to March 1906.---133
Pod Zjumenem Marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism) ---philosophical and socio-economic magazine published in Moscow from 1922 to 1944. ---403, 465
Pravda (The Truth) ---socio-political daily, organ of the CPSU Central Committee, founded by Lenin in May 1912; the tsarist government closed the paper down eight times __COLUMN2__ between 1912 and 1914 and banned it on July 21, 1914; after the February 1917 Revolution the paper resumed publication, but it changed its title several times; it appeared as Pravda again after the October 1917 Revolution.---178, 179--84, 187, .188, 195, 197, 238, 239, 243, 250, 259, 465, 466, 467, 468
Proletary (Proletarian)---illegal Bolshevik weekly, the central organ of the RSDLP, published in Geneva from May to November 1905 under Lenin's editorship.---119, 120
Proletary (Proletarian) --- illegal Bolshevik newspaper, which was virtually the Party central Organ, published under Lenin's editorship between 1906 and 1909, first in Vyborg, and later in Geneva and Paris.---136, 143, 146, 158, 160, 164, 184
Proletary (Proletarian) --- Bolshevik paper which came out in August and September 1917 in place of Pravda, suppressed by the Provisional Government.---259
Prosvesficheniye (Enlightenment) --- legal Bolshevik theoretical monthly founded by Lenin in St. Petersburg in December 1911, replacing the magazine Mysl; banned by the tsarist government in June 1914, but resumed publication in the autumn of 1917.---184
Przedswit (Dawn) --- newspaper of the Polish Socialist Party, published in Geneva, London, Paris, Warsaw, Cracow between 1881 and 1905.---17
Przeglqd Socjaldemokratyczny (Social-- Democratic Review) --- magazine published by Polish Social-Democrats in Cracow from 1902 to 1904 and from 1908 to 1910 with Rosa Luxemburg's participation.--- 149
Rabochaya Gazeta ( Workers' Newspaper) --- illegal Social-Democratic newspaper founded in Kiev in August 1897; 524 had its premises destroyed by the police in 1899 .---172
Rabochaya Gazeta (Workers' Newspaper) --- illegal Bolshevik popular newspaper published in Paris from November 1910 to July 1912 under Lenin's guidance; declared the official organ of the Central Committee by the Sixth (Prague) All-Russia RSDLP Conference in January 1912.---172
Rabocheye Dyelo (Workers' Cause)--- illegal newspaper of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, which never actually appeared: the first issue, due to come out in December 1895, was confiscated.---64
Rabocheye Dyelo (Workers' Cause)--- irregular magazine published by Russian Economists abroad from April 1899 to February 1902.---64
Rabochy (Worker) ---Bolshevik newspaper published in September 1917 to replace Pravda, closed down by the Provisional Government.---259
Rabochy i Soldat (Worker and Soldier) --- Bolshevik newspaper published in Petrograd in August 1917 to replace Pravda and Soldatskaya Pravda banned by the Provisional Government.---276
Rabochy Put (Workers' Path) ---central organ of the Bolshevik Party published in Petrograd from September 16 to November 8, 1917 in place of the Pravda banned by the Provisional Government.---272
Rabotnik (Working Man) ---irregular collection of the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad published on Lenin's initiative in Geneva from 1896 to 1899.---43, 44, 47
Rabotnitsa (Working Woman) ---socio-- political and literary magazine initiated by Lenin in St. Petersburg in March 1914; printed in Moscow since 1923 .---184
__COLUMN2__Russkoye Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth) --- scientific, literary and political monthly founded in Moscow in 1876 and later published in St. Petersburg; after the 1905--07 revolution adopted a position intermediate between the Socialist Revolutionaries and Cadets.---35
Samarskaya Gazeta (Samara Newspaper) --- liberal daily published in Samara (now Kuibyshev) from 1884 to 1912.---22
La Sentinelle --- newspaper of the Swiss Social-Democrats in Neuchatel, La Chaux-de-Fonds (1890--1905 and after 1911).---204
Severnaya Pravda (Northern Truth)---a title of Pravda in August and September 1913.---188
Smena Vekh (Change of Landmarks)-- counter-revolutionary magazine published by White Guard emigres in Prague in 1921--22.---408
Sotsial-Demokrat (Social-Democrat)--- illegal Bolshevik newspaper published from February 1908 to January 1917 in Vilna, St. Petersburg, Paris and Geneva.---162, 163, 166, 177, 180, 200, 202
Der Sozialdemokrat---illegal newspaper, the central organ of German SocialDemocrats, published from 1879 to 1890 first in Zurich and then in London.---17
Sozialistische Monatshefte --- chief periodical of opportunist German SocialDemocrats and mouthpiece of international opportunism published in Berlin from 1897 to 1933.---150
The Times---British conservative bourgeois newspaper published in London since 1785.---381
De Tribune --- left-wing newspaper of the Social-Democratic Party of Holland published in Amsterdam from 1907 to 1940; organ of the Communist Party of Holland from 1918.---205
525Tyo (Labour)---workers' newspaper published in Vyborg. 268
Ty\"omies (Worker) --- organ of the Finnish Social-Democratic P.arty published in Helsingfors from 1895 to 1918.--- 258
Volna (The Wave)--- legal Bolshevik daily published in St. Petersburg from April 26 to May 24, 1906; edited by Lenin from issue No. 9; banned by the authorities and later was succeeded by the newspaper Vperyod.---130
Voprosy Strakhovamya (Insurance Issues) --- legal Bolshevik daily magazine published under the direction of the Party's Central Committee in St. Petersburg from October 26, 1913 to July 12, 1914 and from February 20, 1915 to March 1918 with a circulation of 3,000-5,000; Lenin headed its editorial boards in Russia and abroad.---184
Vorbote--- theoretical journal of the Zimmerwald Left, published in Berne in January-April 1916.--- 224
Vorw\"arts---newspaper, central organ of the German Social-Democratic Party __COLUMN2__ published in Berlin in 1876--1933 (except 1878--90). ---46, 166, 169, 188
Vperyod (forward) --- the first Bolshevik weekly, published in Geneva in January-May 1905; Lenin headed its editorial board; it followed in the footsteps of Leninist Iskra and campaigned for a stronger party.--- 108--09, 114--15, 117, 120, 184
Vperyod (Forward) --- legal Bolshevik daily, directed by Lenin and published in St. Petersburg in June 1906; succeeded Volna and was banned by the authorities.--- 130
Zarya (Dawn) --- Russian Marxist popular scientific journal published by the Leninist hkra editorial board in Stuttgart in 1901--02.--- 70, 74, 78
Zhivoye Slovo (Living Word) --- BlackHundred newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1916 to 1917.--- 250
Zvezda (Star) --- legal Bolshevik newspaper, organ of the Social-Democratic faction in Third Duma, directed by Lenin and published in St. Petersburg from December 29, 1910 to May 5, 1912; paved the way for Pravda.---172, 177, 179
[526] __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END]REQUEST TO READERS
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