History of Bolshevism ae

From the beginning of Russian Marxism until 1905

By Alan Woods

Published in Militant

International Review
MIR #29-38, 1985-1988

Reprinted by
Labor Militant
Publications 1998

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History of Bolshevism-
From the beginning of Russian Marxism until 1905

Published in Militant International Review (MIR) 1985-1988

Reprinted by Labor Militant Publications 1996

Contact Labor Militant-a Socialist Organization

PO Box 5447 LIC NY 11105
Call 1-800-655-9277.

e-mail [email protected]
 “MIR June 1985: Bolshevism Part 1

Part one in a series by Alan Woods on thehistory of Bolshevism

The birth of Russian Marxism

THE ARTICLE, TheBirth ofRussian bureaucracy and clergy and began to condition of its existance, we have the
‘Marxism, is the first in a series by look for a way out of the social im- middleclass, including the peasantry.
ALAN WOODSonthe history of the passe. However, when they looked The latter is the social class least able
Bolshevik Party. It explains how aroundfor a point of support within to acquire a socialist consciousness.
Plekhanov’s Emancipation of Labour society, they could not be attracted by Its upper reaches, the wealthy pea-
Group, ‘‘the embryo of a mighty mass the crude, backward and sant, lawyer, doctor, parliamentarian,
revolutionary party...which, within underdeveloped bourgeoisie, whilst the stand close to the bourgeoise. How-
the comparatively brief span of 34 proletariat was still in its infancy, ever, even the poorlandless peasant in
years, was destined.to lead the Rus- unorganised,politically untutored and Russia, although formally a rural pro-
sian workers and peasants to the con- small in numbers,particularly in com- letarian, had a consciousness very far
quest of power’’ was conceived and parison to the many millions of removed from his brothers in the
developed in the unfavourable condi- peasants who made up the dumb, op- cities. The one desire of the landless
tions of backward Russia of the 1870s pressed and crushing majority of Rus- peasant was to possess land, ie to
and 1880s. Future articles on the sian society. become transformed into a small
development ofBolshevism from these It was therefore understandable proprietor.
origins will appear in subsequent edi- that the revolutionary intelligentsia Under certain conditions—
tions of the MIR. should look to the ‘“‘people’’ in the per- particularly in the present epoch— the
son of the peasantry as the main massof the poor peasants can be won
ON THE 1 March 1881 the carriage of potential revolutionary force within over to the idea of collective owner-
Tsar Alexander II was passing along society. ship, as we saw in Spain in 1936, or as
the Catherine Canal in St Petersburg, In the history of human ideas, there wesee todayin certain parts of India.
when a young man suddenly threw is an ascendingline, but also a line of But the prior condition for such a
what looked like a snowball. The explo- descent. Particularly in a period of development is the revolutionary
sion that followed missed its mark, economic, social and cultural crisis movementof the working class in the
and the Tsar dismounted, unharmed to such as the period in which welive, towns. However,in Russia, the work-
speak to some wounded Cossacks. At ideas which long ago should have been ing class came to power by mobilizing
that moment, a second terrorist, consigned to the rubbish-bin of the the poor peasants, not on the basis of
Grinevetsky, rushed forward and with past make their reappearance, in- socialist slogans, but on the basis of
the words “It is too early to thank evitably under the disguise of “and to thetillers!’’ This fact, in itself,
God”, threw another bombathis feet. something entirely novel. ‘‘Le mort shows how far the mass of Russian
An hour and a half later, the Emperor saisit le vivant’’—the dead lay their peasants stood from a socialist con-
of all the Russians was dead. hands upon theliving! ciousness even in 1917.
This act marked the culmination of ' Thus, the “modern” theories of Not accidently, the classical
one of the most remarkableperiodsin - guerillaism repeat in caricatured form methodsof struggle of the proletariat
revolutionary history—a period in the antiquated ideas of the Russian are based uponcollective mass action:
which a handful of dedicated and Narodniks andterrorists. Like thelat- strikes, demonstrations, picket lines,
heroic young men and women took on ter, they try to find a base in the the general strike. On the other hand,
the combined might of the Russian peasantry of the third world, in the ‘individual terrorism-and ‘‘guerillaism”’
Tsarist state. Yet the very success of lumpenproletariat, in fact, any class in all its multiplicity of forms, are the
the terrorists in eliminatingthefigure except the proletariat. Yet Marx and methods of the petty bourgeois, par-
at the apex of the hated autocracy Engels explained that the only class ticularly the peasantry, butalso the
simultaneously dealt the death-blow to capable of carrying through the students, intellectuals and lumpen
the so-called party of the People’s Will socialist revolution and establishing a proletariat.
which had organised it. healthy workers’ state leading to a To the Narodniks, lacking in a sound
classless society was the working theoretical basis, and setting out with
The Narodniks class. Andthis is no accident. Only the a confused and amorphousconcept of
workingclass, by virtue ofits role in class relations (‘‘the people’), the
Trotsky explained the phenomenon society and in production, especially Marxist argumentof the leading role
of the Russian Narodniks(‘‘populists”’, large scale industrial production, of the proletariat sounded like so much
men of the people) as a consequence of possessesan instinctive socialist class hair-splitting. What did the working
the extreme belatedness of Russian consciousness. By contrast, the first class have to do with it? Clearly Marx
capitalism. The decay of feudal socie- principle of every other social classis and Engels had not understood the
ty proceeded faster than the formation the individualism of the property special situation in Russia!
of the bourgeoisie. owner and exploiter of labour, both big The Narodkniks, in as much as they
_ Underthese conditions, sections of and small. considered the role of the workers in
~ the intelligentsia, especially the youth, Leaving aside the bourgeoisie, the towns, regarded them as an
broke away from the nobility, 4 whosehostility to socialism is the first aberration—as “peasantsin factories”,
21
 MIR June 1985: Bolshevism Part 1
capable of playing only the role of aux- History of Russia p 404). striving with might and main to find
iliaries to the peasantry in the In the years after 1861, the peasan- a road to the socialist revolution. How
revolution—precisely the opposite to try, hemmedin byrepressive legisla- superior were these courageous at-
the real relationship of revolutionary tion on ‘‘poverty lots” and impoverish- tempts to transform society compared
class forces, as subsequent events ed by the weight of debt, staged a to all the wisdom of the “modern”
demonstrated. series of desperate local uprisings. But reformist pharisees who have long ago
the peasantry, throughouthistory, has given upall ideas offighting to change
“Going to the people” always been incapable of playing an in- society!
dependentrole in society. Capable of In a striking passage, Trotsky
The Narodniks swore by ‘‘the peo- great revolutionary courage and graphically recaptures the spirit of
ple’”’ in every other sentence. Yet they sacrifice, its efforts to shake off the these youthful pioneers: ,
remained completely isolated from the rule of the oppressor have only suc- “Young men and women, most of
peasant massestheyidolised. Inreali- ceeded whereleadership of the revolu- them former students numbering
ty, the entire movement was concen- tionary movement has been taken up about a thousand in all, carried
trated into the handsof theintelligent- by a stronger, more homogeneous and socialist propagandatoall corners of
sia: “The Populists’ worship of the consciousclass based in the towns.In the country, especially to the lower
peasant and his commune was but the the absenceofthis factor, the peasant reaches of the Volga, where they
mirror image,” wrote Trotsky,‘‘of the ‘“Sacqueries”’, from the middle ages on- sought the legacy of Pugachov* and
grandiosepretentions of the ‘intellec- wards, have inevitably suffered the Razin*, This movement, remarkable in
tual proletariat’ to the role of chief, cruellest defeats, as a result of the its scope and youthful idealism, the
if not indeedsole, instrument of pro- scattered natureof the peasantry,its true cradle of the Russian revolution,
gress. The whole history of the Rus-. lack of social cohesion and class was distinguished—as is proper to a
sian intelligentsia develops between consciousness. cradle—by extreme naivete. The pro-
these two poles of pride and self- In Russia, wherecapitalist forms of pagandists had neither a guiding
abregation—which are the short and production werestill at the embryonic organisation nor a clear programme;
long shadowsof its social weakness,”’ phase, no suchrevolutionary class ex- they had no conspiratorial experience.
(The Young Lenin p. 25, my emphasis, isted in the towns. Yet the class, or And why should they have? These
AW.) more accurately caste, of largely im- young people, having broken with
But this social weaknessof thein- poverished studentsandintellectuals, their families and schools, without pro-
telligentsia merely reflected the the “raznochintsy” (‘those without fession, personal ties, or obligations,
underdeveloped state of class relations rank’’) or “intellectual proletariat’’ and without fear either of earthly or
in Russian society. The rapid develop- proved exceptionally sensitive to the heavenly powers, seemed to
ment of industry and the creation of subterranean mood of discontent themselves theliving crystalisation of
a powerful urban working class which which lay deep within the recesses of a popular uprising. A constitution?
was to be brought about by a massive Russian life. Years later, the terrorist Parliamentarianism? Political liberty?
influx of foreign capital in the 1890s Myshkin declared at his trial that: No, they would not be swervedfrom
was still the music of an apparently “The movement of the intelligentsia the path by these western decoys.
remote future. Thrust back upontheir wasnotartificially created, but was What they wanted was a complete
own resources, the revolutionary in- the echo of popular unrest.”’ (quoted in revolution, without abridgementorin- _
telligentsia sought salvation in the Trotsky’s The Young Lenin). As termediate stages”’..
theory of a special ‘‘Russian road to always, theintelligentsia, whoseabili- (Trotsky op cit, Page 28)
socialism’’, based upon the element of ty to play an independent social role
common ownership which existed in is no greater than the peasantry,
the village communeor ‘‘mir’’.- nevertheless can act as quite an ac- *Emilian Pugachov: A Don Cossack,
The emancipation of the serf in 1861 Pugachov led a great uprising of the
curate barometer of the moods and Cossacks and serfs against the gentry in
had been brought about by thefear of tensions developing within society. 1773, in the reign of Catherine the Great.
a social explosion after the disastrous In 1861, the very year of the Eman- The rebellion initially met with success,
Crimean War (1853-56), which like the cipation, the greatRussian democratic with the mass seizure of land and the cap-
later war with Japan, revealed the writer Alexander. Herzen wrote from ture of a string of imperial fortresses. The
bankruptcy of the Tsarist regime in exile in London urging the youth of rebels took Kazan and could have taken
the form of a humiliating military Russia in the pages of his journal Moscow but, despite riots which broke out
defeat. But the Edict of Emancipation Kolokol(The Bell) to go ‘‘to the peo- in a numberof towns, the peasantrebellion
solved none of the problems and,in- proved incapable of linking up with the ur
ple!’’ The arrest of prominent ban masses against the common enemy—
deed, madethe lot of the massof the publicists like Chernyshevesky (whose the gentry and the autocracy. Although the
peasantsconsiderably worse. writings were influenced by Marx and rebels proclaimed the abolition of serfdom,
The landlords naturally made off who had a big impact on Lenin andhis they lacked a coherantpolitical programme
with the best plots of land, leaving the generation) and Dimitri Pisarev capable of creating a broad revolutionary
most barren areas to the peasants. demonstrated the impossiblity of movement of the masses. This fatal
Strategic points such as water and peaceful liberal reform. By the end of weakness, plus localist tendencies, lack of
mills were usually in the handsof the the decade of the 1860’s, the basis of organisation and discipline, eventually
landlords who forced the peasants to undermined the revolt. The rebellion
a mass revolutionary movement of disintegrated and Pugachov was executed
pay for access. Worsestill, the ‘‘free”’ populist youth had been laid.
peasants were legally tied to the “mir” in Moscow in January 1776.
which had collective responsibility for “Land and freedom”
collecting taxes. No peasant could
leave the “mir” without permission.. With the wisdom of hindsightit is * Stepan Razin: Another Cossack rebel who
Freedom of movement was hampered a simple task to expose the theoretical sailed up the Volga at the head of a pirate
fleet in 1670 calling on the peasantsto rise.
by the system of internal passports. weakness of Narodism. Yet this was Betrayed by the Ataman of the Don
The village commune;in effect, was an inevitable stage in the historically Cossacks, Razin was captured and sent to
transformed into “‘the lowest rung of progressive movement of the youth, Moscow wherehe was executed on 6 June,
the local police system.”’ (see Pares: A breaking away from liberalism and 1671.
22
 Tg these courageous and dedicated
youth, the words uttered by Herzen
made an indelible impression: ‘‘Go to
the people... That is our place....
Demonstrate. .. that from among you
will'emerge not new bureaucrats, but
soldiers of the Russian people’”’.
In the summerof 1874, hundreds of
young people from upper or middle-
class backgrounds went out to the
villages, burning with the idea of rous-
ing the peasantry to revolution. Pavel
Axelrod, one of the future founders of
Russian Marxism,recalls the radical
break which these young revolu-
tionaries had made with their class:
“Whoever wished to work for the
people had to give up university, re-
nounce his privileged condition, and George Plekhanovand Pavel Axelrod—twoofthe founders of the Emancipation of Labour
his family, turn his back even upon Group.
science and art. They had tocutall the their vague revolutionary aspirations. became a Marxist, participated in this
bonds which linked them to the Standing reality on its head, kind of activity and was able to see the
highest social classes, burn their Bakunin portrayed the ‘‘mir’’—the consequences:
bridges behind them. In one word, basic unit of the Tsarist regime in the “The factory worker who has work-
they had to voluntarily forget about village—asthe enemy of the state. All ed in the city for several years,”’ he
any possible road of retreat. The pro- that was necessary wasfor the revolu- wrote, ‘‘feels ill at ease in the country
pagandist, so to speak, hadtoeffect tionaries to goto the village and rouse and goes back to it reluctant-
a complete transformation of his inner the “instinctively revolutionary” Rus- ly...Rural customsandinstitutions
essence, so that he would feel at one sian peasants against the state and the become unendurable for a person
with the lower strata of the people, not problem would be solved, without whose personality has begun evolving
only ideologically, but also in his recourseto “‘politics”’ or any particular a little’. (Quoted in Dan’s Origins of
habitual everyday behaviour’. (From form of party organisation. The task Bolshevism, page 162).
Axelrod: The Working Class and the was not to fight for democratic “These were experienced people,
Revolutionary Movement in Russia). demands (since democracy also sincerely devoted to and profoundly
Unfortunately, this admirable represented a form of state and imbued with Populist views. But their
revolutionary spirit was founded upon therefore another expression of tyran- ‘attempts to set themselves up in the
theories which were fundamentally un- ny) but to overthrow the state ‘in countryside led to nothing. After rov-
sound. The mystical idea ofa ‘‘special general” and replace it with a volun- ing about the villages with the inten-
Russian road to socialism’’ which tary federation of local communities, tion of looking for a suitable place to
could somehow leap from feudal bar- based on the “mir”, purgedof its reac- settle down (at which some of them
barism to a classless society, skipping tionary features. were taken to be foreigners), they
the phase of capitalism, was the source Unfortunately, the contradictory : shrugged their shoulders at the whole
of an endless series of errors and elements of this theory rapidly became : business andfinished by returning to
tragedies. evident when the Narodnikyouthat- : Saratov where they established con-
A false theory inevitably leads to a tempted to put it into practice. The { tacts among the local workers. No
disaster in practice. In reality, the revolutionary exhortations of the i matter how astounded we wereby this
Narodniks were motivated by revolu- students were met withsullen suspi- alienation from the ‘people’ of its ur-
tionary voluntarism—the idea that the cion or outright hostility by the : ban children, the fact was evident, and
success of the revolution can be peasants, whofrequently handed over we had to abandontheidea of involv-
guaranteed by the iron will and deter- the newcomersto the authorities. The ing workes in a purely peasant
mination of a small group of dedicated movement of ‘going to the people’ business.” (Ibid p 162—163).
men and women. Thesubjective fac- was swiftly broken by a wave of _ Thus, by the pressureof reality, sec-
tor, of course, is decisive in human arrests—more than 700 in 1874 alone. tions of the Narodniks were forced to
history. Karl Marx explained that men It was an expensive defeat. But the comeface to face for thefirst time with
and women make their own history, heroic and spirited speeches of .de- the ‘worker question” which, expell-
but added that “‘they do not makeit fiance hurled from the dock bythear- ed by Bakuninist theories by the front
outside of the context of social and rested revolutionists served to kindle door, persistently flew back through
economic relationships established in- a new movement which began almost the window. Even at this very early
dependently of their will’. immediately. period, the Russian working class,
The attempts of the Narodnik As a crowning paradox, despite all despite the extreme smallness ofits
theoreticians to establish a “special the prejudice of the Narodnik theoreti- numbers, was beginning to set its
historical path’ for Russia, different cians, almost the only area where the stamp upon the revolutionary
from that of Western Europe in- revolutionary appeals got an echo was movement.
evitably led them down the road of amongthe despised “‘town peasants” 1

philosophical idealism and a mystical as they called the factory workers. Beginnings of the
view of the peasantry. The theoretical Like the modern guerillas, the sup-
confusion of Bakunin—a reflection of porters of Zemlya y Volya (“Land and workers’ movement
the very underdeveloped and incohate Freedom’) adopted the policy of tak-
class relations in Russia—found a ing revolutionary workers out of the While the Narodnik intelligentsia
ready audiance among the Narodniks, factories and sending them to the wrestled with the theoretical problems
seeking an ideological justification for countryside. Plekhanov, before he _ of the future revolution,the first stir-
23
 MIR June 1985: Bolshevism Part 1:
rings of class consciousness were Trepor which seriously wounded him, distinguish themselves from their Rus-
emerging in the urban centres. Zaslav- and then handed herself over to the sian forebears. The Narodnik ter-
sky’s Southern Russian Workers’ police. Surprisingly, the jury issued a rorists, it is asserted, believed in in-
Union arose out of a small workers’ verdict of not guilty in March 1878. dividual terrorism, substituting
discussion circle and gradually spread The assassination attempt was a clear themselves for the movement of the
from Odessa to other industrial cen- indication of the wayin which after the masses, whereas the modern pro-
tres in the south. The union, which was failure of ‘‘going to the people’, a sec- ponents of ‘‘armed struggle” or “‘ur-
influenced bythe ideas of the First In- tion of the Narodniks was turning in ban guerillaism’’ see themselves only
ternational, was broken up by arrests the direction of individual terrorism. as an armed wing of the magsstrug-
in December1875 after only a brief ex- gle, whose purposeis to detonate the
istence andits founder, Zaslavsky end- “The People’s Will’ massesinto action.
ed his life in prison. Yet the supporters of Norodnaya
A more substantial development The frustrated attempts to provoke Volya never claimed to be acting as a
was the Northern Union of Russian amass movementof the peasantry by self-sufficient movement. Their stated
Workersset upillegally in the Autumn means of propaganda gaverise to a objective wasto initiate a mass move-
of 1877 underthe leadership of Stepan _ new theory whereby Bakuninism was ment, based on the peasantry, which
Nikolaevich Khalturin, the son of a stood upon its head. From “denying would overthrow the state and in-
peasant and a joiner by trade. This politics’”” and especially political stitute socialism. Their aim was also
group had about 200 hard-core organisation, a section of the narod- supposed to be the “‘detonation”’ of the
membersandhad followers in almost niks effected a 180° turn and set up © mass movement by giving a
every key working class district of a secret, highly centralised terrorist courageous example.
Saint Petersburg, mainly among the organisation—the Narodnaya Volya, Yetpolitics has a logic of its own. All
most advanced sections of the or ‘‘People’s Will’—designed to pro- the appeals of the Narodnaya Volya in
metalworkers. But within a monthof voke a revolutionary movementof the the nameof the masses, merely serv-
the appearanceofthefirst issue ofits masses by meansof “propaganda of ed as a smokescreento reveal a deep-
illegal journal Rabochaya Zarya (The the deed”’. seated distrust in the revolutionary
Workers’ Dawn)the police had smash- The latest military humiliation of capacity of those same masses. The
ed the printshop and the bulk of the Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Turkish arguments advanced more than a cen-
membership was swept away by a War (1877-78) revealed anew the tury ago in Russia to justify terrorism
waveofarrests, hard labour, imprison- bankruptcy of the regime and gave have a strikingly similar ring to the
ment and exile. fresh heart to the opposition. The argumentsof ‘‘urban guerrilla” groups
Significant though these attempts leaders of Narodnaya Volya were in Ireland, the Middle East and South
were, they really only represented an determined to wage a war against the Africa: ‘‘we are in favour of the mass
anticipation of things to come. autocracy in a kindofterrorist single movement, but the state is too
Ideologically the worker revolu- combat which would encourage “from strong,” and so on and soforth. Thus,
tionaires were still predominately above’ the flameofrevolt. the terrorist Morozov affirmed:
under the influence of Narodnism. The The adoption of the new tactics “Observing contemporary social life
numbers theseearly organisations em- caused an open split in the movement, in Russia the conclusion is reached
braced were very small, involving on- between the terrorists and the that, because of the arbitrary conduct
ly handfuls of the most advanced followers of Lavrov who argued in and violence of the government,no ac-
workers. Nevertheless, they showed favour of a prolonged period of tivity at all is possible on behalf of the
the way,establishing a tradition of the preparation and propaganda among people. Neither freedom of expression,
independent organisation of the work- the masses. In practice, the latter nor freedom of the press exists to work
ing class upon which later generations trend was moving away from revolu- by means of persuasion. In conse-
could build. They count among the tionism, advocating the politics of quence, for every vanguard activist it
many ‘‘nameless heroes”—courageous “small deeds” and a ‘’little by little’ is necessary,first and foremost, to put
andself-sacrificing men and women by gradualist approach. The right-wing of an end to the present system of
whosetireless and anonymouslabour Narodnism was becoming in- government, and to struggle against
a firm base was laid for the future distinguishable from Liberalism, while it there is no other means than to do
mighty achievementsof their class. its more radical section prepared to it with arms in hand. As a conse-
In the meantime, the rezanants of stake everything on the force of the quence,we will fight against it in the
the Narodnik movement were attemp- bullet and the ‘‘revolutionary style of William Tell, until we reach the
ting to regroup their forces in. the chemistry’’ of nitro-glycerine. moment when wewin free institutions
towns under the banner of Zemlya y Towards the end of 1878 and the under which it will be possible for us
Volya. beginning of 1879, a wave of labour to discuss without obstacles in the
On the 6 December 1876, an illegal unrest swept through St Petersburg. press and in public meetingsall the
demonstration of anything up to The workers went to ask help from political and social questions, and
500—mainly students—assembled on “the students’. The possibility of link- decide upon them by means ofthefree
the steps of Kazan Cathedral, with ing the revolutionary movement with representation of the people.” (My em-
cries of ‘land and freedom” and ‘‘long the working class was staring the phasis A Woods).
live the socialist revolution!” The Narodniksin theface. In pointoffact, The allegedly “‘new’’ and ‘“‘modern’’
demonstration was addressed by a a “workers’ section’ of Zemlya y theories of urban guerrillaism only
young student called George Volya was set up, with Plekhanov at repeat in caricature form the old pre-
Plekhanov whose revolutionary appeal its head. But the attentions of the Marxist ideas of the Russian ter-
led to the beginning of years of exile main currents were elsewhere— rorists. It is quite ironic that these peo-
and undergroundlife. concentrated upon the feverish at- ple, who frequently lay claim to be
The following year, a younggirl, tempt to bring down the autocracy by “Marxist-Leninists’, have not the
Vera Zasulich, who had been involved . means of an organised campaign of vaguest idea that Russian Marxism
in the revolutionary movement since terror. was born out of an implacable strug-
she was 16, fired a shot at the In the recent period, attempts have gle against individual terrorism.
notorious Petersburg police chief, been made by the modern terrorists to The Russian Marxists scornfully
24
 described the terrorist as ‘‘a Liberal Redistribution’’), echoing the old oppression was stepped up, with the
with a bomb.” The Liberal fathers Narodnik idea of an agrarian revolu- suppressionofall publicationsin non-
spokefh the nameof‘‘the People’, but tion. It was from this latter organisa- Russian languages. Laws were passed
considered the latter too ignorant to tion, led by Plekhanov, that the first to strengthen the grip of the landlord
be trusted with the responsible work forces of Russian Marxism were to on his peasants. A wave of reaction
of reforming society. Their role was to emerge. swept through the schools and univer-
be reduced to passively casting a vote sities, designed to crushall forms of
every few years and looking on while Liberals recoil independent thought and break the
the Liberals in Parliament got on with rebellious spirit of the youth.
their business. The prospects for Plekhanov’s Yet contrary to the expectations of
The sons and daughters of the tendency could hardly have been more the terrorists, there was no massupris-
Liberals had nothing but contemptfor bleak. The old tactic of ‘‘going to the ing, no general movement of opposi-
Parliament. They stood for the Revolu- people” was played out. The peasants tion. Very soon,all the hopes born of
tion, and, of course,‘‘the People.’ Ex- were no more receptive to the blan- a generationof self-sacrificing heroism
cept thatthelatter, in their ignorance, dishments of the Narodniks than were reduced to ashes.
were unable to understand them. before. Many old Narodniks finally The new period of reaction inten-
Therefore, they would resort to the gave up hope and ‘voted with their sified the crisis of Narodnism. A whole
“revolutionary chemistry” of the feet’, returning to a more convivial ex- stratum of educated and well-to-do
bomb andthe revolver. But, just as istence in the towns. Narodnik leaders reacted to the
before, the role of the masses was Probably influenced by his earlier violence of the reaction by hastily
reduced to that of passive spectators. experience as head of the ‘‘workers’ repudiating the revolutionary fight
The worst thing about the terrorist sections”, Plekhanov proposed to the against autocracy. In place of this, the
policy is that it is most harmful to the members of the Cherny Peredel that “Hannibals of Liberalism” as Lenin
cause of the masses precisely whenit they should conduct agitation among scornfully styled them, argued in
succeeds. Marxism sees the revolu- the factory workers. Plekhanov sought favour of peaceful reform: the
tionary transformation of society as a links with his former worker contacts, establishmentof village co-operatives
consciousact carried out by the work- among them Stepan Khalturin of the and cultural activities ‘‘among the peo-
ing class. That which is progressiveis Northern Union of Russian Workers. ple”, or ‘‘communitypolitics”, as the
that which serves to raise the con- But the tide was running strongly in present-day Liberals have it. This
sciousness of the workers of their own favour of terrorism even amongthe ad- mean-spirited policy of ‘‘small
strength. That whichis reactionary is vanced workers. Khalturin himself deeds”—which closely resembles the
that which tends to lower the workers’ participated, in February 1880, in an “little by little’ gradualism of the
own opinion of their role. From this attempt against thelife of the Tsar. Fabians—was championed by such
point of view, the role of individual ter- The supporters of Cherny Peredel were prominent Narodnik theorists as VP
rorism is a wholly reactionary one. utterly isolated. The final blow came Vorontsev (pen-name VV) and NF
What conclusions are the workers in January 1880 when, shortly after Danielson (‘‘Nikolaya’’) against whom
supposed to draw from a spectacular- the appearanceofthefirst issue of the many of Plekhanov’s earliest (and
ly successful act of individual ter- group’s journal, the police descended best) polemics were written.
rorism? Only this: that it is possible on the underground printshop and The terrorist wing of Narodnism
mopped up practically the whole was swiftly decimated by a waveofar-
to attain their ends without any
necessity for the long and arduous organisation in Russia. The future of rests. By 1882, its centre liquidated
preparatory work of organising trade the non-terrorist trend in Narodnism, and its leaders in gaol, the Narodnik
unions, participating in strikes and as Trotsky later observed, could not be movement broke up into a thousand
other massactions, of agitation, pro- an independent phenomenon,but on- fragments.
paganda and educational work. All ly a brief and shadowy transition Yet in the hour when the death-knell
_ that would be seen as an unnecessary towards Marxism. of the old Narodnism was sounding, a
diversion, whenall that is neededis to On theotherside of the divide, the new movement was rapidly gaining
get hold of a bomb and a gun and supporters of Narodnaya Volya ap- ground in the rest of Europe, and a
“head for thehills’’. peared to be making spectacular gains.' newclass balance of forces was emerg-
The experience of terrorism and It seems incredible how an organisa- ing in backward Russiaitself.
guerrillaism in Latin America over the tion of no more than a few hundred
period of the sixties and seventies men and womencould keep the Tsar
a virtual prisoner in his own palace.
Crisis of
_lMerely repeats, with a delay of nearly
a century, the mistakes of the Russian The very successesof the terrorists, Narodnik ideology
however, contained the seeds of their
Narodniks.
"A section of the old Zemlya y Volya own disintegration. The assassination The 1880s saw the decisive victory
movement attempted to resist the of the Tsar in 1881 unleashed a reign of the ideas of Marxism in the Euro-
trend towards terrorism, but was of repression in which the terror of the pean labour movement. The present-
swept aside. An attempt to reach a individual against ministers and day Labour leaders would like to
compromise at the Voronezh congress policemen gave way to the terror of the forget the fact that the Socialist Inter-
of June 1879 failed to stop the split entire state apparatus against the national at its inception inscribed upon
which finally took place in Octoberof revolutionary movement in general. its banner the programmeof Marxism.
that year with a formal agreementof The new Procurator General, the For years, the ideas of Marx and
bothsides to dissolve the organisation. minister Pobedonostsev promised a Engels (albeit in an incomplete and
The funds were divided and bothsides reign of ‘‘iron and blood”’ to wipe out vulgarised form) had been familar to
agreed not to use the old name. The the terrorists.” A series of draconic Russian revolutionaries. Marx, and
terrorist faction adopted the nameof laws gave the government sweeping especially Engels, had enguaged in
Narodnaya Volya (‘‘The People’s new powersof arrest, censorship and . polemics with the theoreticians of
Will’), while the remnants of the old- deportation, which affected not only Narodnism. But Marxism had never
the revolutionaries, but even the most had a sizable following. Its denial of in-
school “‘village’’ Narodniks took the
name of the Cherny Peredel (‘Black moderate Liberal tendencies. National | dividual terrorism, its rejection of a
25
 =MIR June 1985: Bolshevism Part 1
special ‘Russian road to Socialism” organisation were exemplary fighters. been available, mainly on economic
and of the alledged leadingrole of the Courageous, disciplined and highly questions. Like others of his genera-
peasantry in the revolution was too moral in their personal lives, they were tion, Plekhanov was acquainted with
much for revolutionary youth to like knights in shining armour come to the Marx of Capital, which the Tsarist
swallow. In comparison with rescue the benighted masses from censors regarded as too difficult and
Bakunin’s ‘‘propagandaof the deed”’, their oppressors. Despite the utopian ‘‘academic’”’ to be dangerous. It is
the idea that Russia would have to nature of their theories, these self- doubtful whether the censors
pass through the painful school of sacrificing men and women contrast themselves could understand it, so
capitalism smackedof passivity and favourably with the modern school of how,they thought, could the workers
defeatism. terrorism whose degenerate, cynical makeheadortail of it? Now, at last,
Like the modern day “‘guerillaists’’, and barbarous methodsstink in the Plekhanov had accessto the arsenal of
the Narodniks did not understand nostrils of the working class. Marxist thought, its living method,
Marx and Engels insistence on the cen- Alas! The way to Hell is paved with the philosophy of dialectical
tral role of the proletariat in the good intentions. The attempt to cheat materialism. It was a revelation to
socialist transformation of society. history by means of the ‘subjective him
There was, however, at least good factor” led to the destruction of a Plekhanov’s study of Marxist
reason for the theoretical confusion of generation of dedicated revolutionary philosophy, the writings on the class
the Russian Narodniks. Capitalist in- youth. Narodnism had ended in a com- struggle and the materialist concep-
dustry was only justin its infancy. plete impasse. The way out was shown tion of history cast a whole newlight.
The industrial working class was by the Marxist tendency, led by on the perspectives for the revolution
numerically weak and immature, with George Valentinovich Plekhanov, who in Russia. Oneby one,the old ideas of
onefootstill in the village. Aboveall, later formed the group for the Eman- terrorism, anarchism and Narodnism
the problem of carrying out the cipation of Russian Labour. crumbled under the onslaught of
socialist revolution in a backward, The old generation of Narodniks had Marxistcriticism. He later summed up
semi-colonial peasant country was a a barely conceiled disdain for theory. the experience:
new one. Theyhadno Octoberrevolu- Insofar as they resorted to ideological ‘Anyone whodid not live through
tion behind them, no model and no argument, it was really as an after- those times with us can hardly imagine
precedentto fall back on. Despite the thought, to justify the practical twists the eagerness with which we threw
marvellous insightsin the writings of and turns of the movement. In turn ourselves into the study of Social
_ Marx and Engels, particularly in the they had put forward the idea of the Democratic literature, amidst which
writings of Engels’ old age, such as the central role of the peasantry, of the works of the German theoreticians
brilliant article ‘“‘On Social Relations Russia’s alleged ‘‘special historical > naturally occupied the first place. And
in Russia’’, the question had not been mission’’, Pan Slavism, and terrorism. the more closely we became ac-
completely worked out from a Having broken their heads against a quainted with Social Democratic
theoretical point of view. Not until the solid wall, the ideologists of Narod- literature, the more we became aware
period of 1904-1905, did Trotsky final- nism, instead of honestly admitting of the weak pointsofour earlier views,
ly solve the problem by his epoch- their mistakes and attempting to work the more we became convinced of the
making theory of the Permanent out an alternative strategy andtactic, correctness of our own revolutionary
Revolution. proceeded to re-affirm the old development. ..The theories of Marx,
The tragedy of Narodnism was that bankruptideas, and,in so doing, sank like Ariadne’s thread,led us forth from
it had set itself the task of bringing ever deeper into a morassof confusion. the labyrinth of contradictions with
about the Socialist Revolution before The first act of the new trend which our minds were stuffed, under
the objective social and economic con- represented by Plekhanov and tiny , the influence of Bakunin.”
ditions for it had matured. But noef- handful of collaborators, was to build ' Freed, for a time, from the pressures
fort of the will, no amount of courage firm foundations for the future on the’ of direct participation in the revolu-
and determination can makeanydif- basis of correct ideas, theory, tactics tionary struggle in Russia, Plekhanov
ference wherehistorical conditions are and strategy. This was the great con-! andtheothers, had the enormousad-
unfavourable. The subjective factor— tribution of Plekhanov, without which : vantageof access to literature which
even in the person of a single the future development of Bolshevism ° was unobtainable there. Plekhanov
individual—can sometimes be decisive. would have been unthinkable. recalls:
Such was the case with Lenin and ‘Personally, I can say of myself that
Trotsky in 1917. But long before this The birth of the reading of the Communist
favourable juncture came to pass, the Manifesto marks an epoch in mylife.
leaders of Russian Marxism had spent Russian Marxism I wasinspired by the Manifesto and
many long and fruitless years and there and then decided to translate it
decadesin tiny groups,isolated from Thoughstill, in his own words, ‘“‘a_ into Russian.”
the mainstream ofsociety, with no im- Narodnik to the fingertips’’, Thus began the Herculean work of
mediate prospect for success. Plekhanov sought an answer to the translating, popularising and generally
The ‘‘voluntarist’”’ methods of problems posed by the crisis of Narod- broadcasting the works of Marx and
Narodnism were an attempt to short nik ideology in a serious study of the Engels within the Russian revolu-
circuit the historical process. If history works of Marx and Engels. Forced to tionary movement. This was the em-
flee abroad in January 1880, he had bryonic phase of Russian Marxism.
was too slow, then it had to be given
a shoveby the subjective factor. If the met and dicussed with French and But before striking out decisively
masses were too steeped in ignorance German Marxists then engaged in a towards the creation of a new party,
to realise what was good for them, fierce ideological struggle with the they first had to settle accounts with
then their backwardness must be anarchists. This encounter with the the old.
made up for by the shining example of European labour movement was a Naturally enough for men and
a small, highly organised, tightly decisive turning-point in Plekhanov’s women who had only recently broken
development.
disciplined group of revolutionaries. with Narodnism, Plekhanov’s group at
From every point of view, the young In the Russian underground,only a first looked back towards the old
members of the Narodnaya Volya few works of Marx and Engels had
} .Narodnaya Volya Party in the hope of
26
 convincing their former comrades. No party with a definitely Social Capital but in the statistics of trade
doubt there was an element in the Democratic programme, the former union memberships, party branches,
group whichstill entertained illusions membersof the ‘Black Redistribution’ votes and Parliamentary factions.
on this score. People like Vera group will now form a new group—the In their isolation from the move-
Zasulich, whose history has already ’*Emancipation of Labour’ and finally ment in Russia, the Emancipation of
been mentioned; Axelrod, who had break with the old anarchist trends.”’ Labour Group membersinstinctively
been one of the organisers of the These words at the end of the an- drew closer to the mighty parties of
Narodnik organisation in Kiev; Lev G. nouncementof the establishmentof a the Socialist International. Plekhanov
Deitch who had been an active Narod- “Library of Contemporary Socialism” and his comrades wrotefor its press,
nik propagandist in the South since marks the end of onehistorical period spoke at its congresses—especially
the late seventies, and had madea dar- and the commencementof a new era. those of the German party, the party
ing escape from Kiev prison in 1878. The handful of members of the new of Marx, Engels, Liebknecht and
Such people as these would notlight- group must have experienced a fateful Bebel.
ly break with the movement to which sense of finality on reading them. It Even the support of the European
they had dedicatedtheir lives. was a courageous andirrevocable step, Social Democracy was, however,less
The experience had to be gone which initially spelled complete isola- than wholehearted. For years its
through. Butin any event, Plekhanov tion from therest of the revolutionary leaders had entertained friendly rela-
understood that the cadres of the movement, from which they were now tions with Narodnik leaders like
future Russian Marxist workers’ par- self-proclaimed outcasts. Lavrov. Privately, the Social
ty could not drop from the clouds. Ahead of them lay many years of Democratic leaders looked askance at
Narodnaya Volya represented the hard and lonely struggle in the shadow - what appeared to be no more than an
tradition of a whole generation of of tedious anonymity. It takes a eccentric sectarian splinter group. The
struggle against Tsarism. Such a peculiar kind of courage for a small sharpness of Plekhanov’s polemics
movement, steeped in the blood of minority to take a conscious decision against internationally known figures
countless revolutionary martyrs, could to struggle against the stream, of the Narodnik establishment caused
not be light-mindedly written off. isolated from the masses,in harsh con- consternation.
' Precisely because of its traditions, ditions of exile, with only the . "To tell the truth’’, wrote
the Narodnik movement, even in the slenderest resources and against ap- Plekhanov,‘‘our struggle against the
period of its degeneration , still at- parently overwhelming odds. Not for Bakunists sometimes gave rise to
tracted many of the young men and the last time, the forces of Russian fears even among the Western Social
women, confusedly seeking a road to Marxism were reducedto therole of Democrats. They considered it inop-
social revolution. Such a man was “‘a voice crying in the wilderness’’. portune. They were afraid that our pro-
Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin’s brother, ' The only thing that sustained them paganda, by causing a split in the
executed for his part in a plot against was their confidence in the ideas, revolutionary party, would weaken the
the life of Alexander III in 1887. Lenin ' theory and perspectives. This, in spite energy. of the struggle against the
himself had Narodnik sympathies and of the fact that their ideas appeared to government,”
almostcertainly began hispolitical life fly in the face of reality. The workers’ Already based on powerful parties
as a Narodnaya Volya supporter. To movement in Russia wasstill in its ear- with mass support, in their hearts the
save such peopleas this from futile ter- ly stages. True, there was the beginn- Western labour leaders were sceptical
rorist gestures wasthefirst duty of ings of a strike movement,but thatfell about the possibilities for creating a
the Russian Marxists. quite outside the scope of the revolutionary Marxist workers’ party
The group’s attemptsto find a road socialists. Such workers’ groups that in Russia. Outwardly respectful of
to the revolutionary youth in Russia existed were still dominated by Narod- Plekhanovandhis group,they private-
soon came up against a stone wall of nik ideas. Thestill feeble voice of the ly scratched their heads in bewilder-
obstacles erected by the right-wing “Emancipation of Labour Group” was ment. What wasthe pointofall these
Narodnik leaders who controlled the not heard in the factories. Even the endless disputes about obscurepoints
party press. The editors of Vestnik students, still underthe spell of anar- of theory? Wasit really necessary to
Narodnoi Voli refused even to print chist and terrorist tendencies, proved split over such questions? Whycan’t
Plekhanov’s work Socialism and the difficult enough to reach. these Russians get their act together?
Political Struggle, his pioneering work In a letter to Axelrod written as late Their sceptical attitude seemed to be
directed against anarchism. as March 1889, Plekhanov wrote: justified by the smallness of the group
Despite the smallnessofits forces, “Everyone (both ‘liberals’ and and the slowness of its progress. By
Plekhanov’s group caused alarm in the ‘socialists’) unanimously say that the comparison, the Narodniks had a
leading Narodnik cricles, which im- young people will not even listen to much bigger organisation, more
mediately tried to stifle the voice of those who speak out against terrorism. resources and infinitely greater in-
-Marxism by bureaucratic means. The .In view of this we will have to be fluence inside and outside Russia.
impossibility of a reconciliation was careful’’. Yet,in reality, the seemingly in-
now clear to everyone, and in As soon as it was formed, the Eman- significant group of Plekhanov
September 1883 the Marxists formed cipation of Labour Group was faced represented the embryo of a
the Group for the Emancipation of with sharp attacks from all sides for mighty mass revolutionary
Russian Labour. The break with the its alleged ‘betrayal’ of “revolu- party—a party which, within the
past was now complete. tionary’? Narodnism. On the other comparatively brief span of 34
hand, they derived moral comfort from years, was destined to lead the
The Emancipation of the solid achievements of European Russian workers and peasants to
Social Democracy. Theforces of Rus- the conquest of power and the
Labour group sian Marxism were small, but they establishment of the first
formed a detachmentof a mighty pro- democratic workers’ state in
“‘In changing their programme now letarian army, numberingmillions in
to one based on a struggle against ab- history.
Germany, France, Belgium. Here was
solutism, and the organisation of the a living proof of the. superiority of To be continued in future editions of the
Russian working class as a separate Marxism, not in the language of MIR.
27
 Part twoin a series of articles by Alan Woods,editor of the VW/R, on the history of the
Bolshevik Party.

A decisive decade
The writings of Plekhanov during draw a clear line of demarcation bet-
IN ‘THEBirth of Russian Marxism,’
this period served to lay the theoretical weenitself and otherpolitical tenden-
published in MIR No 29 Alan Woods
outlined how Plekhanov’s Emancipa- basis for the building of the party. cies, Marxism is alwaysaccused of the
tion of Labour Group was formedin Many of them remain classics to the hideous sin of ‘‘sectarianism”, of be-
present time, although they do not ing against “‘left unity” and so on and
1883. In part two ofa series of articles
on the History of Bolshevism he ex- receive sufficient attention by so forth. It is one of the great ironies
plains how from these apparently in- students of Marxism. Not by chance, of history that one of Plekhanov’s
significant beginnings, Marxists, in- Lenin strongly recommended there- main Narodnik critics, Tikhomirov
cluding the young Lenin, began to publication of Plekhanov’s (“NV”) who accused the group of
establish firm points of supportin the philosophical writings after the revolu- disrupting revolutionary unity and
tion, when the two men had long been submissively accepting the yoke of
growing movement of the Russian
political enemies. Socialism and the capital, himself later went over to the
workers of the 1880s and 1890s. The
Political Struggle, Our Differences, camp of Monarchist reaction. Not for
series will be continued in the next edi-
tion of the MIR. and, above all, Plekhanov’s master- the first or last time, the advocatorof
piece, On the Development of the unprincipled “‘unity’’ ended up by
Monist View of History are masterly uniting with the enemies of the work-
‘‘The revolutionary movement in re-statements of the fundamental ing class!
Russia can triumph only as a ideas of dialectical and historical The real reason for the whimpering
revolutionary movement of the materialism, for a Russian audience. of the Narodniks about “‘sectarianism”’
workers. For us there is no other These works at once laid the foun- and ‘‘splitters’”’ was the effect which
way out, nor can there be.”’ dation stone for the development of the ideas of Marxism were having on
—Plekhanov, speech to the the new party and simultaneously car- their own followers. It is difficult to
International Socialist Congress, ried out a devastating demolition iob overestimate the impact which works
Paris, 1889. on the old theories of Narodnism. like Our Differences (1885) had on the
CS Plekhanov challenged the most young revolutionaries inside Russia
prestigious ideologists of Populism to whowere avidly looking for a way out
HEGEL ONCE remarked that: a kind of theoretical single combat. of the impasse of Narodnism, which
‘‘When we want to see an oak withall was now in a phase ofself-evident
its vigour of trunk, its spreading bran- Theory is primary decadence.
ches, and mass of foliage, we are not Exiled in Switzerland, the members
satisfied to be shown an acorn in- His remorseless logic drove them into of the Emancipation of Labour Group
stead’’. Yet within the embryo of a a corner. Thebrilliant cut and thrust set about the Herculean labour of
healthy plant or animal is containedall of his polemical style was always ac- translating the works of Marx and
the genetic information necessary for companied with a razor-sharp wit, so Engels and attempting to get them in-
its future development. that even a reader convinced by to the interior. Among these numerous
It is no different with the develop- Plekhanov’s arguments might reserve translations were: ‘Ludwig Feuer-
mentof arevolutionary tendency. The for his opponenta feeling akin to that bach,’ ‘On Social Relations in Russia,’
‘‘genetic. information’’ here is which one might have for an unfor- ‘The Poverty of Philosophy,’ “The
represented by theory, which contains tunate mouse being worried bya cat. Housing Question,’ ‘Wage, Labour
within itself a rich store ct generalisa- Plekhanovwas not aman to harbour and Capital,’ ‘The Civil War in
tions based upon past experience. _ doubts about himself. Friend and foe France,’ and ‘The Communist
Theory is primary: all subsequent alike recognised in him one of the most Manifesto.’
development stems from this. Despite impressiveintellects of his time. Such The work of penetrating the move-
the smallness of its size, the a man was necessary to nurture the ment in Russia, however, proceeded
primitiveness of its organisation and still weak forces of Russian Marxism, with painful difficulty. The illegal
rather amateur methods, the Eman- to give them confidence in themselves, transportation of literature posed
cipation of Labour Group’s great con- in the ideas andin the inevitability of enormousproblems. Professional peo-
tribution was to lay down the their future triumphs. ple and students, studying abroad,
theoretical roots of the movement. Plekhanov’s onslaught threw the wereenlisted to carry illegal literature
’ Of necessity, the initial work of the Narodnik leadersinto disarray. Unable when going back homeon holiday. At
Group was confined to winning the to provide a coherent answer to the various times, members of the Group
ones and twos, of educating and train- Marxist case, they resorted to bitter were sent into Russia to establish con-
ing cadres, of hammering home the complaints and spiteful allegations tacts. Such journeys were extremely
fundamental principles of Marxism. about the new group. Vestnik Narod- hazardous and frequently ended in
“With all our hearts’’, wrote noy Voli (no 2, 1884) alleged that “‘for arrests.
Plekhanov, ‘we seek to work for the them (the Marxists) the polemic with People from the interior who manag-
creation of a literature whichis accessi- Narodnaya Volya is more topical than ed to establish direct contact with the
ble to the understanding of the whole the struggle with the Russian govern- Group were few and far between, and
peasant-worker masses; we, never- ment and with other exploiters of the regarded like gold. In 1887-8, there
theless are obliged for the time being Russian people.” / was an attempt to set up a Union of
to confine our popular literary efforts How often have Marxists heard Russian Social Democrats abroad,
to the narrowcircle of moreorless ‘in- such allegations throughout our headed by the student, Rafail
tellectual’ leaders of the working history! For the crimeof insisting on Soloveichik who had left Russia in
class’’. theoretical clarity, for attempting to 1884. But he clashed with the Group,
26
went back to Russia, was arrested in kinds of confused and semi-Narodnik
1889 and sentenced to a long term of elements. One such group published a
imprisonment, during which he small journal Svobodnaya Rossiya
becarne mentally deranged and com- whichin the leadingarticleofits first
mitted suicide. Another memberof the issue argued the impossibility of
same group, Grigor Gukovsky, a ‘“‘Organising the workers and peasants
young studentin Zurich, was arrested around revolutionary action’ and
in Aachen and handed over to the argued against putting forward ideas
tsarist government. Sentenced to which might frighten liberal sym-
prison, he also committed suicide. pathisers. 3 ,
There were many such cases. Fearful of alienating the youth
The arm of the tsarist authorities which“believed in ‘terror’ as a god’,
was long. The Group constantly faced Plekhanov against his better judge-
the danger of infiltration by police ment, bent under pressure and includ-
spies and provocateurs. One such spy ed a reference to the ‘terrorist strug-
was Christian Haupt, a worker who gle’ in thefirst draft programmeof the
wasengagedbythepolice toinfiltrate Group. It would be a simple thing now,
the Russian Social Democratic with the wisdom of hindsight to
organisations in exile. Unmasked by reproach Plekhanovfor opportunism.
the German Social Democrats as a But one has to bear in mind the ex-
police spy, Haupt was expelled from tremely difficult conditions and ex-
Switzerland. tremeisolation in which the Marxists
Worst of all was the sensation of were working at the time. Plekhanov—
complete political isolation, ag- along with Lenin, Trotsky andall Rus- personally seen people who have been
gravated by the inevitable rows and sian Marxists, stood implacably op- crushedbyhis theories. And the main
squabbles of exile life. The emigre posed to individual terrorisrn. The un- thing is his tone, bold as if he was con-
Narodniks, stung by Plekhanov’s fortunate reference was dropped in the vincedof his rightness, his negation of
criticism, gave vent to their hurt feel- second (much improved) draft and all that has gonebefore, the reduction
ings by heatedprotests at being call- never made a re-appearance in the of all predecessors to a nil—all this is
ed ‘Bakuninists’ and demands for whole history of the party. definately having an influence.4
public apologies. The overwhelming Ironically, it was precisely at this
majority of the exiles were Narodniks, time that the Narodnik leaders were Fighting against
and implacably hostile to the new hastily repudiating terrorism and mov-
group which they regarded as traitors ing over openly to the camp of the stream
and splitters. Years later, Plekhanov’s bourgeois liberalism. Ginsburg’s letter shows how,
wife recalled that ‘The Narodnaya The advocacy of terrorism and the unbeknown to the exled Marxists,
Volya people and NK Mikhailovskyat capitulation to bourgeois liberalism new groupings werecrystalising in the
that time controlled the hearts and were head andtail of the same coin. At interior, discussing the failures of the
minds of the Geneva emigres and the the bottom of the radical phrase- past, drawing up a balance sheet and
Russian students.’ 1 mongering about individual terror lay seeking a new way. Here the ideas of
the profound scepticism and Plekhanov fell upon fertile ground.
Impasse of Narodnism pessimism of the petit-bourgeois Krupskaya, in her memoirs of Lenin
revolutionary with his ingrained gives a glimpse of the kind of discus-
These weredifficult times. The old distrust of the masses. Under condi- sion which must have been com-
Narodnik trend wasin a complete im- tions of political reaction, such an monplace in undergroundcircles:
passe. Having burnt their fingers with animal can turn very quickly intoits “The conference was disguised as a
terrorism, the ‘extreme revolu- opposite. The rightward shift of the pancake party... The question came
tionaries’ effected another 180° somer- Narodnik leaders reached its up as to what ways we should take.
sault and eventually ended up in the culminating point with the open Somehowgeneral agreementwaslack-
camp of the Liberal philistines, renegacy of Tikhomirov—thetarget of ing. Someone (I believe it was
preaching a cowardly policy of ‘small manyof Plekhanov’s polemics—who in Shevlyagin) said that work on the II-
deeds’ and harmless cultural- 1888 published a pamphlet withtheti- literacy Committee was of great im-
educational work. Commenting on the tle: ‘‘Why I ceased to be a portance. Vladimir Ilyich laughed, and
decay of Narodnism Martov wrote: revolutionary’’. his laughter sounded rather harsh (I
“Thefall of the revolutionary People’s The collapse of the old revolutionary have neverheard him laugh that way
Freedom was at the same timethe col- Narodnism had a profound effect again).
lapse of Populism as a whole. Broad among the youth inside Russia, pro- ‘* “Well if anyone wants to save the
circles of the democratic intelligentsia ducing a polarisation between the pro- country by working in theIlliteracy
were profoundly demoralised and liberal reformist elements andthe best Committee’, he said, ‘let him go
disappointedin ‘politics’ and their own elements of the youth, striving to find ahead’.”’ 5
heroic mission. A modest‘cultivation’ a road to revolution. Towards the end This incident took place in 1893,
in the service of the liberal segments of 1887, SN Ginsburg having recent- when the tide had already begun to
of the possessingclasses: this was the ly returned from Russia, wrote ina turn in favour of Marxism. But for ten
sign under which the part of the in- worried tone to the Narodnik leader years previously, the Emancipationof
telligentsia that had remainedloyal to PL Lavrov:“Our Political Differences Labour Group was forced to fight a
Populism entered the grey epoch of the and Socialism and the Political Strug- weary battle against the stream. Con-
‘80s”’, 2 gle have had their influence, and a tact with Russia resembled a game of
On all sides there was retreat, strong one, which we must come to blind man’s bluff. The situation with
ideological backsliding and cowardly terms with... The importance of the the exiles could hardly have been
apostasy.In orderto find a road to the individual, the importance of the in- worse, Thefrustrations of the Group
young generation, Plekhanov was telligentsia in the revolution, are com- are shown in the correspondence of
obliged to seek collaboration with all pletely destroyed by them, and I have Plekhanov with his closest
27
MIR Autumn 1985: Bolshevism Part Two GEESE

collaborators. moral support in times of doubt and have a fundamental significance in the
Even theliterary activity of the personal crises. early years, the long, slow period of
Group wasfraught with difficulties. For two decades, the membership of theoretical preparation and tiny pro-
The Emancipation of Labour Group the Emancipation of Labour Group pagandacircles. Only ata later date,
lived in an atmosphere of continuous stayed virtually the same. Of its when the Russian Marxist movement
financial crisis. Bemg small in number, founders, VN Ignatov died too early wasfaced with the necessity of stepp-
and with limited scope for raising cash, to leave much of an imprint. Lev ing over the limitation of the pro-
they usually depended on what are Deutsch wasthe heart and soul of the paganda phase did the negative
known in the American theatrical organisational side of the work, such features of the Emancipation of
world as “angels’’, wealthy sym- as the arrangementsfor printing and Labour Group emerge. But
pathisers prepared to finance their distribution of literature. Pavel Ax- throughout the 1890s, the group
literary ventures, like V Ignatov, one elrod was an extremely talented pro- began to enjoy an enormousauthori-
of the Group’s first adherents, who pagandist who madea big impression ty in the eyes of the increasing
had providedthe funds for the Group’s on the young Lenin and Trotsky. His numbers of Marxist youth, and the
initial work. Sometimes, these people namewasfor a long time inseperable name of Piekhanov was known in
were not even socialists, such as from that of Plekhanov. every underground propagandacircle
Guryev whoput up the cash for the and every police station in Russia.
‘‘three-monthly” Sotsial Demokrat. In Vera Zasulich Despiteall the difficulties, the slow,
general, the publications of the Group patient work of the Marxists now
came out on a very irregular basis. The part played by Vera Zasulich in began to bear fruit. Marxist groups
Yet, in spite of everything, they the Group deserves a mention apart. were springing up all over Russia. In .
managed,againstall the odds, to keep Her personal courage and dedication imitation of the ELG, they called
the still weak voice of Marxism alive to the revolutionary cause was already themselves: ‘‘Leagues of Struggle for
within Russia. Under the cir- shown when,as a younggirl, she car- the Emancipation of the Working
cumstances, that represented a for- ried out her terrorist attempt on the Class’’. At the same time the move-
midable achievement. / notorious torturer Trepov. A sincere, ment of the workers was assuming a
At times, the task must have seem- warm-hearted and impulsive person, mass character.
ed well-nigh hopeless. In the summer Vera Zasulich suffered more than most
of 1885, Plekhanov wrote to Axelrod from the traumaof exile. Ever impa-
in terms verging on desperation: ‘‘But tient to close the gap between the The turn of the tide
really we are standing over an abyss Emancipation of Labour Group and
of all sorts over debts, and don’t know the new generationof revolutionaries “Well, brother, I can’t think what’s
and cannot think what to catch hold in Russia, she was forever taking up gotten into them these days, sending
of to stop ourselves falling in. It’s the cudgels on behalf of the youth, us all these political ‘muzhiks’ all of a
bad’. 6 overcoming the resistance of sudden! Before they usedto bring us
Throughout the dark days of the Plekhanov and encouraging new all upper class people and students,
’80s Plekhanovandhis family lived in initiatives—usually unsuccessful— real gentlemen. But now in walk the
extreme poverty. At times he gave with the youth groups in exile. Her likes of you—just a common
private lessons in Russian literature relationship with Plekhanov was ‘muzhik’—a worker!” 7
for a small salary, living in the paradoxical. Heavily dependent on
cheapest ‘‘pension’’ owned by a but- him for moral and political support, With these wordsthe prison warder
cher who fed him exclusively on soup she, more than anyof the others, was of the Taganskaya prison greeted the
and boiled meat! Bad food andliving not afraid to confront him with the ' arrival of MN Lyadov, one of the
conditions underminedhis health. For sharpest criticism and make him leaders of the Moscow Workers’
a while he was dangerously ill with aware of his shortcomings. Given the League in the year 1895. In his own
pleurisy, the effect of which lasted the enormous intellectual gulf between way, the old warder had grasped the
rest of his life. Plekhanov and the rest of his small profound change which had taken
Working under enormous dif- bandof followers, such a role was of place in the Russian revolutionary
ficulties, suffering remorseless inestimable value. The fact that the movement in the 1890s.
pressurefrom all sides, tne Emancipa- tetchy Plekhanov was prepared to sub- The fierce arguments between the
tion of Labour Group was held mit humbly to the rebukes of Zasulich Marxists and Narodniks aboutthein-
togetherby faith in its ideas, but also on more than one occasion indicated evitability or otherwise of the develop-
by the towering moral and political that he, more than anyone, was aware mentof capitalism in Russia were be-
authority of Plekhanov. of this fact. ing resolved in practice by the rapid
Within the Group, Plekhanovreign- The tragedy of people like Axelrod growthof industry andtheincreasing-
ed supreme. Their very isolation made and Zasulich had a two-fold character. ly apparent existenceof class polarisa-
the membersrally roundin a closely- Underdifferent historical conditions, tion within the peasantry, with the
knit circle, welded together by strong these talented individuals could have crystalisation of a class of rich
political and personal ties. Not for played a far biggerrole in the shaping peasants or ‘“‘kulaks” and a mass of
nothing did they later acquire the of events. Longyearsof isolation in ex- landless rural poor who increasingly
nickname of “The Family”. And ile had a disasterous effect upon their drifted to the townsin search of work.
Plekhanov wasthe indisputable head psychological andintellectual develop- Bythe end of the 1860s, there were
of the “household” —intellectually, he ment. Working under Plekhanov’s only 1,600 kilometresof railway lines
towered above the others, and yet shadow, their evolution became in the whole country.In the following
there existed between them a strong stultified to the extent that, when con- two decadesthis figure had increased
sense of mutual dependence born of ditions changed, they were unable to 15 times. In the ten years between
years of struggle and sacrifice in a adaptandwerelost to the revolution. 1892 and 1901, no fewer than 26,000
common cause. In such circumstances In the conditions in which the Group kilometres of railway lines were built.
it was hardly surprising that personal was compelled to work for decades Alongside the traditional industrial
andpolitical questions should become traces of a narrow propagandacircle centres of Moscow and St Petersburg,
intermixed. Plekhanov was a tower of mentality would almost inevitably new ones sprang up in areas such as
strength to the others, giving them tend to creep in. Such factors could not the Baltic, Baku and Donbass. Bet-
28
ween 1893 and 1900, the production of Asia and Latin America.
oil experienced a two-fold increase and In just 33 years—from 1865 to 1898,
that of coal went up three times. the number of factories employing
True, the development of industry over 100 workers doubled—from
did not have the organic character of 706,000 to 1,432,000. By 1914, more
the rise of capitalism in Britain, than halfof all industrial workers were
described by Marx in Capital. The actually employedin plants with over
emancipation of the serfs in 1861 pro- 500 hands, and nearly one quarter in
vided the material premise for the plants with over 1,000 hands—a far
development of capitalism. But the higher proportion than in any other
Russian bourgeoisie cameon the stage country. Already in the 1890s, seven
of history too late to take advantage big factories in the Ukraine employed
of the opportunity. The puny and two-thirds of all the metal workers in
underdeveloped forces of Russian Russia, while Baku had almostall the
capitalism could not compete with the oil workers. Indeed, until 1900, Russia
powerful developed bourgeoisie of was the largest oil producer in the
Western Europe and America. In com- world. 9
mon with the ex-colonial countries to- Nevertheless, despite the
day, Russian industry was heavily tempestuous upsurgeof industry,the
dependentuponforeign capital which general picture of Russian society re-
.exercised a crushing domination over mained one of extreme backwardness.
the economy, principally throughits The massof the populationstill lived
control of the banking andfinancial in the villages, where the rapid
system: development of class differentiation
“The confluence of industry with was given a powerful impulse by the Developmentof Capitalism in Russia
bank capital,’’ wrote Trotsky, ‘was crisis in European agriculture in the were written to settle accounts with
also accomplished in Russia with a 1880s and early 1890s. the Narodniks. Not by accident, either,
completeness you might not find in The falling price of grain ruined these works are based on the ir-
any other country. But the subjuga- whole layers of the peasantry, the ap- refutable languageof facts, figures and
tion of the industries to the banks palling nature of whose existence is arguments.
meant, for the samereasons,their sub- starkly portrayed in Chekhov’s short The development of capitalism in
jugation to the Western European stories, In the Ravine and Muzhiks. Russia also meant the development of
money market. Heavy industry (metal, Therural semi-proletariar, deprived of the proletariat which soon served
coal, oil) was almost wholly under the land, hawking his labour around the notice on the whole of society ofits in-
control of foreign finance capital, villages, became a commonsight. On tention to placeitself in the front rank
which had created for itself an aux-
iliary and intermediate system of Table 1
banks in Russia. Light industry was
following the sameroad. Foreigners 1880-84 1885-89 1890-94
ownedin general about 40 per cent of
all the stock capital of Russia, but in No of strikes 101 221 184
the leading branchesof industry that 223 170
No of workers 99
percentage wasstill higher. We can
Participating (in 1,000s)
say without exaggeration that the con-
From /storiya KPSS, Volume one, p 96
trolling shares of stock in the Russian
banks, plant and factories were to be
found abroad, the amount held in the other end of the social spectrum of the struggle for change.
England, France and Belgium being the new class of emerging rural. Thehighly concentrated character of
almost double that in Germany.’’8 capitalists, the kulaks, growingrich at Russian industry rapidly created in-
The penetration of Russian society the expense of the village poor, could dustrial armies of workers, organised
by foreign capital gave a sharp im- afford to buy land fron the old and disciplined, and placed at the
petus to economic development, shak- landowners—asituation reflected with strategic points of society and the
ing the giant out of 2,000 years of bar- great wit and insight in Chekhov’s economy. The graph of the strike
barism and into the modern era. But famous play The Cherry Orchard. movement(Table 1) clearly indicates
precisely this gaverise to an explosive In spite of all the attempts of the the rising confidence and class con-
social situation. Large numbers of Tsarist regime to shoreit up, the old sciousness of the Russian working
peasants were torn from the village community, the “‘mir’’, which class in this period.
changeless routine of village life and according to the Narodnik theoreti-
thrust into the inferno of large-scale
capitalist industry.
cians was to provide the basisfor pea- The Morozov Strike
sant socialism, was rapidly breaking
The Marxist theory of combined and up alongclass lines. Those unable to Starting in the Spring of 1880, in-
uneven development found its most find workin the village swarmed into dustry was hit by a crisis which lasted
perfect expression in the extremely the towns, providing an immensepool several years. This was a period of
complex social relations in Russia at of cheap labour for the newly establish- mass unemployment, in which the
the turn of the century. Side by side ed capitalist enterprises. employers ruthlessly pushed down the
with feudal, semi-feudal and even pre- The old debates between the Narod- already miserable wages of the
feudal modesof existence there sprang niks and Marxism were thus con- workers. In addition to all the other
up the most modern factories, built clusively settled by the march of problems, the workers were continual-
with French and British capital on the events. Not by accident, Lenin’s ly oppressed with all kinds of petty
latest models. This is precisely the earliest works, such as New Economic restrictions and arbitrary rules design-
phenomenonwenowsee in the whole Developments in Peasant Life, On the ed to keep them in subservience. Chief
of the so-called Third World, in Africa, so-called Market Question and The amongthese was the custom of impos-
29
MIR Autumn!1985: Bolshevism Part Two (a
SS

ing fines for a whole series of real or spirited defence which turned into strata, represented by people like
imagined offenses against the such a devastating indictmentof fac- Moiseyenko, were groping for ideas
employers. tory conditions that the charges were which could shedlight upon their con-
Lenin’s masterly pamphlet An Ex- quashed and the workers’ case upheld! dition.and show the way forward.
planation of the Law on Fines 10 shows The verdict of the Morozovtrial sent This movement had a two-fold
how, before 1886, a worker could: be a shock-waye throughout Russian significance. On the one hand, these
fined as muchas half of his wages. The society. Thoroughly alarmed,the reac- spontaneous outbreaks, frequently ac-
indignation and accumulated discon- tionary Moskovskiye Vedmosti pro- companied by acts of Luddism which
tent of the workersfinally exploded in tested: ‘“‘But it is dangerous to joke bore witnessto its as yet unorganised
a wave oflabour agitation in 1885—86 with the mass of the people. What and semi-conscious nature, announced
in Moscow, Vladmir and Yaroslavl, must the workersthink, following the to the world the emergenceof the Rus-
which culminated in the famousstrike not-guilty verdict of the Vladimir sian working class on the stage of
at the Nikolskoye Mill owned by TS court? The news of this decision history. On the other hand,it furnish-
Morozov. spread like lightning through the ed irrefutable proof of the correctness
The 11,000 workers at the Morozov whole of this manufacturing area. Our of the theoretical arguments of
works had their wages cut no fewer correspondent, wholeft Vladimir im- Plekhanov and the Emancipation of
than five times in two years..At the mediately after the announcementof Labour Group.In the white-heat of the
same time, swingeingfines were im- the verdict, heard of it at all the sta- class struggle, the basis was now laid
posed for singing, talking loudly, walk- tions...” 12 for the coming together of the still
ing past the manager’s office with a For the first time, the Morozov numerically weak forces of Marxism
cap on, and so on. Thesefines frequent- strike showed the enormouspotential and the powerful, but as yet incoherent
ly amounted to a quarter of a worker’s powerof the proletariat. The lesson forces of the Russian proletariat.
wage, and sometimesone-half! Final- was not lost on the Tsarist regime, From the Marxist point of view, the
ly, the workers’ patience ran out, and which, for all its support for the importanceof a strike goes far beyond
on the 7 December 1885, they staged factory-owners, decided that it would the fight for immediate demands over
a strike. have to make concessions to the hours, wages and conditions. The real
All the pent-up rage andfrustration workers. This it did on 3 June 1886 significance of strikes, even when lost,
at the years of petty vexations, theft when the Law on Fines was passed, is that the workers learn. In the course
and arbitrariness burst forth with limiting the amount which could be im- of a strike—particularly a major
elemental force. The leader of the posed and stipulating that the pro- strike—the mass of workers, their
strikes, Pyotr Anisimovich ceeds should not be appropriated by wives and families, inevitably become
Moiseyenko (1852—1923) was an ex- the employers, but be deposited in a aware of their role as a class. They
perienced revolutionary, an ex-member special benefit fund for the workers. cease to think andact like slaves, or
of Khalturin’s Northern Union, who cogs in a machine,and begin to raise
hadserved a term in Siberian exile. A The first themselves up to the stature of real
remarkable man,one of those natural
leaders of the working class,
propagandacircles human beingswith a mind andwill of
their own. Thatis the real lesson of the
Moiseyenko later wrote that: “‘I first As always,reform is a by-product of heroic strike of the British miners last
learned to understand, then to act’’. the workers’ revolutionary struggle to year, which repeats with a delay of
Nevertheless, the spontaneous nature change society. Like the “10 hour bill’ almost exactly one hundred years,
of the strike is revealed in legislation passed in Britain in the last manyof the experiences of the Russian
Moiseyenko’s own account in an an- century, the Law on Fines wasan at- proletariat.
niversary speech delivered in 1923 (he tempt to pacify the workers and pre- The stormy events of the class
joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917). vent them from moving in a revolu- struggle in their external aspects
“Wedecided,” he recalls, ‘‘that we tionary direction, while simultaneous- readily capture the imagination long
hadto gointo the factory, and then we ly trying to lean on the workers to curb after they have passed into history.
would see what else was to be done’’.11 the demandsofthe bourgeoisliberals. Butthe silent, subterranean process of
The enraged workers vented their Such “benevolent” legislation did not the development of working class
anger by smashing up the factory prevent the savage repression of consciousness—what Trotsky describ-
foodstore, where the. ‘‘truck’’ system strikes and the wholesale arrest and ed in that most memorable phrase,
operated compelling them tv buy food deportation of workers’ leaders in the “the molecular process of the develop-
at inflated prices, and the homeof the coming period ment of class consciousness’’—is all
hated foreman Shorin. Nordid the new law have the desired too easily overlooked. Yet this is the
Alarmed bythe vicience of the out- effect of dampening down thestrike most important fruit of the long and
break, the governor of Vladimir pro- movement. The Morozov strike in- arduous history of the workers’
vince drafted in troops and Cossacks. spired the workers with fresh courage, movement.
The workers presented the governor while the concessions granted by the Through their experienceof life and
with their demands, but were met with all-powerful autocracy showed what of struggle—particularly of great
repression. 600 workers were arrested. could be gained by boldly fighting for events—the masses begin to
Troops surrounded the factory and the your interests. In 1887, the total transform themselves. Beginning with
workers were forced back to work at numberof strikes exceeded those of the most active and conscious layer,
the point of a bayonet. Nevertheless, the two previous years put together. the workers become profoundly
such was the mood of the workforce Two years later, police chief Plehve discontented with their lot, and keen-
that the factory was not fully opera- was forced to report to Alexander Ill ly feel their own limitations. Defeats,
tional until one month later. ° that in turn 1889 was “richerthan still more than victories, force upon
The Morozovstrike thus ended in a 1887 and 1888in disorderscalled forth the worker-activist the burning need
defeat. .Yet the effect it had on the by factory conditions”.13 09” for a clear understandingof the work-
minds of workers all over Russia The elemental upsurgeof thestrike ings of society, of the mysteries of
transformed: the whole situation. In movement indicatedthe increasing economics and politics, .
the trial “of the strikers. held in awareness of ‘the workers of Throughouthistory,the ruling class
Vladimir in May 1886, Moiseyenko themselves as a class and a force hasheld firmly in its grasp a weapon
and the other datandients put up a within society. The more advanced far more potentthan all its armies and
30
police forces for the subjugation of the
majority: that weapon is none other
than the monopoly of the means of
culture.
Not by accident, every revolutionary
class in history has begunits assault
upon the powers-that-be by a
thoroughgoing criticism of the ideas
and culture of the old ruling class.
Thus the bourgeoisie, prior to over-
throwing the feudal monarchies, first
de-throned the spiritual monarch by
carrying out the Reformation.
Throughouthistory, of all the chains
which bind the workingclass, one of
the most powerful is ignorance. The
first blow for the emancipation of the
working class mustbe struck against
this. Through its advanced guardfirst
of all, the workingclass feels the need
to conquer ideas and theory as an
essential pre-requisite to the conquest
of power and the re-construction of
society on a new and higher.
foundation.
The growth of capitalist industry
itself produces a mighty army of the
proletariat. But even the best army Revolutionaries in prison at Kara in Siberia.
will be defeated if it lacks generals, ma-
jors and captains well schooled in the many a horny-handedfactory worker, the name ‘“‘The Party of the Russian
business of war. The stormystrike bat- fighting off mental and physical Social Democrats’’ and even began to
tles of the 1880s proclaimed to the fatigue, spent long hours wrestling publish a paper—Rabochii (‘‘The
world that the heavy battalions of the with the difficult chapters of Marx’s Worker”). However, the group did not
Russian proletariat were ready and Capitai—that same book which the last long before it was smashed by the
willing to fight. But they also reveal- tsarist censor considered too dry and police.
ed the weakness of the movement,its abstruse to represent a danger. Not for But the process wasnowtoo far ad-
spontaneous, unorganised and un- the last time, a dictatorial regime vanced to be halted by police action.
consciousnature,its lack of direction underestimated both the revolutionary The following year another Social
and leadership. The army wasthere. significance of Capital and the in- Democratic group was formed in the
What was necessary was to prepare telligence of the working class! So capital, this time with closer links with
the future general staff. This conclu- great was the workers’ desireto learn the working class. The group of PV
sion now dawnedirresistibly on the that many a volume of Capital was Tochissky included apprentices and
consciousness of the best workers. torn apart in order to distributeit, craftsmen and styled itself the
And with the serious and single- chapter by chapter, amongthelargest “Brotherhood of St Petersburg
minded approach which characterises possible numberof people. Artisans’”’.
worker-activists the world over, they Whenset beside massstrikes, bat-
settled down to learn. tles with the police and speeches from
the dock, this kind of slow, uninspir-
Poland and Lithuania
The struggle for theory ing educational work seemstopale in- Further afield in the Volga area of
to insignificance. Yet this painstaking, Central Russia, anotherof the pioneers
Despite all their efforts, the Narod- patient and arduoustask of theoretical of Russian Marxism, Nickolai
niks were completely incapable of link- education was the solid bedrock upon Fedoseyev (1871—98) organised a
‘ing up with ‘‘the people’’, nor could which Russian Marxism.wasbuilt. It group of students in Kazan,one of the
they ever hope to do so, on the basis represented enormousself-sacrifice on ; members of which was a young stu-
of false theories, programme and the part of the workers, whose achieve- dent by the nameof Vladimir Ulyanov,
methods. Yet this seemingly intrac- ments on the theoretical plane were later Lenin. This group disintegrated
table problem was now solved with every bit as important for the future when Fedoseyev was arrested in the
complete ease by the Marxists. A solid of the revolution as the struggles in summer of 1889. 14. Butthe first seeds
bridgehead was rapidly constructed to the workplace. From the cradle of the had been planted, andthefirst recruits
link the latter with the workers. mass Russian workers’ movement, the had been won,albeit in tiny handfuls,
In all the major centres of industry, indissoluble link between theory and in Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara,
studycircles, educational classes and practice was being forged. Saratov, Rostov-on-Don, and other
“Sunday schools” sprang up, pro- At the same time that Plekhanov towns in the region.
viding the seed-bed for a whole new and his collaborators were establishing The development of industry took
generation of working class revolu- the Group for the Emancipation of place very early on in the Western
tionary Marxists, the backbone of the Russian Labour abroad, the first ge- fringes of the Russian Empire, the
future party of October. nuine Social Democratic (ie Marxist) Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania.
_ Thus began the so-called period of circle appeared in St Petersburg,set- More industrialised than the East,
propagandaor “‘kruzhovshchina” (bas- up by a young Bulgarian studentcall- moreliterate, and with.astrong Ger-
ed on the Russian word for study- ed Dimiter Blagoev—the future leader man influence, these areas were quick-
circle). Here after an exhausting day’s of the Bulgarian Communist Party ly penetrated by the Social
work under appalling conditions, (1856—1924). In 1884, his group took Democracy. However, the workers’

31
MIR Autumn 1985: Bolshevism Part Two NE
movement here was immensely com- ning over the ones and twos, of ex- swept the country, causing widespread
plicated by the national question. Op- plaining, arguing, convincing, of atten- starvation in the villages and a steep
pressed by tsarist Russia, the Polish ding to the thousand-and-one mun- rise in food prices. Hungry peasants
workers and peasants had a double dane, routine day-to-day tasks of flooded into the towns,willing to ac-
yoke to bear. building an organisation, which pass cept work at any price. The resulting
In addition, the sizeable Jewish unobserved by historians, but which hardship produced a waveof strikes,
population in these areas, with its lay at the heart of a great historical especially in the Centre and Westof
numerous artisans and small enterprise.. Russia, the centres of the textile in-
businesses, lived permanently on the dustry, accompanied with clashes with
brink of the abyss. The most oppress- From propaganda police and Cossacks.
ed layer of-society, the Jewish workers
and artisans naturally provided fertile to agitation At this time, a nineteen-year old stu-
dent calléd Yuri Martov,expelled from
groundfor the spread of revolutionary Perhaps the most vivid account of St Petersburgfor revolutionary activi-
ideas. Not by accident, Jewish revolu- how these early Marxist propaganda ty, arrived in Vilno,already a thriving
tionaries provided the Marxist move- circles functioned is contained in Krup- centre of the Social Democracy.
ment with a numberofleaders out of skaya’s book about Lenin.- Contact Here, in Lithuania and Byelorussia,
all proportion to their specific weight was made through a workers’ study the Jewish workers and the wholly
within society. Cosmopolitan Vilno, circle, where the teachingof the ‘‘3 Rs’’ Russified Jewish intelligentsia was
with its large concentration of Jewish would be skilfully combined with at carrying on a kind of agitation which
workers and artisans, was one of the least the elementary ideas of socialism: was far more broadly based than the
earliest strongholds of the Social “It was a kindofsilent conspiracy. limited propaganda circle activity
Democracy in the Russian Empire. Wewere actually able to talk about common in Russia proper. They
The tsarist authorities, especially anythingin the school, 2ithough there published leaflets written in the
sensitive about unrest in the Polish was rarely a class without a spy; one language of the mass of Jewish
provinces, cracked down ruthlessly on had to refrain from using the terrible workers—Yiddish—which dealt with
the first Polish Social Democratic words‘tsar’, ‘strike’, etc and the most the immediate demandsof the masses.
groups with arrests, torture and long fundamental problemscould berefer- Watching the situation attentively |
sentences of hard labour. But the red to. But,officially, it was forbidden from afar, Plekhanov immediately
movement, like a hydra-headed to discuss anything at all: on one oc- understood that a fundamental change
monster, reacted to the loppingoff of casion they closed down the so-called was taking place which demanded a
one head by immediately sprouting recapitulatory group, because an in- shift in the methods hitherto employed
two new heads. New groupssprang up -spector who hadput in an unexpected by the Russian Marxists. The famine |
in Minsk, Warsaw and Vilno, where appearance discovered that the ten- had exposed the bankruptcy of the
Leo Jogiches (Jan Tyszka) set-up a times table was being taught there, autocracy to an unparalleled degree.
group in 1887. The Baltic soon became whereas, according to the syllabus, on- Its effects were felt by all sections of
a focal point of Marxist agitation and ly the four rules of arithmetic were society—not just. the workers and
propaganda, serving as the entry-point allowed to be taught’’. 15 peasants, but even the bourgeois
for illegal literature and cor- She goes on to describe how Lenin liberals, shaken out of the slough of
respondence between the emigre workedin thecircle: despond, began to organiserelief agen-
Emancipation of Labour Group and “Vladimir Ilyich was interested in cies to compensate for the complete
the: Marxist underground in the the minutest detail describing the con- paralysis of the state, using the local
interior. ditions andlife of the workers. Taking government ‘‘Zemvstvo” organisa-
This is a period of many names— the features separately he tions. The idea of a representative
mostly strange and unfamiliar to the endeavoured to grasp thelife of the assembly, a “‘Zemsky Sobor’’ began to
modern reader. The small groups worker as a whole—he tried to find gain ground: amongtheliberal in-
which sprang up in one town after what one could seize upon in orderbet- telligentsia. Plekhanov seized the op-
another must have appeared to the ter to approach the worker with portunity’ with both hands.
Tsarist authorities as the result of revolutionary propaganda. Mostof the In his pamphlet All-Russian Ruin
somevirulent and inexplicabic virus. intellectuals of those days badly published in Sotsial Demokrat no 4,
Through the pages of the police ar- understood the workers. An intellec- Plekhanov explained that the causes
chives, the faces and numbersofar- tual would cometo circle and read of the famine were not natural but
rested revolutionaries passed ‘with the workers a kind of lecture. For a social. Setting out from the chaotic
monotonous regularity—just so many long time a manuscript translation of situation brought aboutbythe corrup-
bacilli isolated and removed for the Engels’ booklet, The Origin of the tion and ineptitude of the tsarist
health of the body politic. Most of Family, Private Property and the authorities, he showed the need to con-
these men and women havelong pass- State, was passed round thecircles. duct widespread propaganda and
ed into obscurity. And yet upon the Vladimir Ilyich read with the workers agitation, linking the concrete
bones and nerves of these heroes and from Marx’s Capital, and explained it demands of the massesto the central
martyrs, the Russian workers’ move- to them. The secondhalf of the studies idea of the overthrow of the autocracy.
ment was painfully constructed. was devoted to workers’ questions Of course, the slogan of a ‘‘Zemsky
‘Working against tremendousodds, about their work and labour condi- Sobor” in the handsof the liberals was
under intolerable difficulties and tions. He showed them howtheir life given a completely reformist and
alwaysat personal risk, they stubborn- was linked-up with the entire structure therefore utopian character. But
ly persevered in their task. The great of society, and told them in what man- Plekhanov,displaying a keen revolu-
majority of them neverlived to see the ner the existing order could be tionary instinct, advanced this’ de-
result of their labour. They never transformed. The combination of mandas a militant, fighting slogan, as
fought in the final great battles, nor theory with practice was the particular a means of mobilising the masses and
did they see the old, hated structures feature of Vladimir Ilyich’s work in the attracting the best sections of the
of society topple. Their role was the circles. Gradually other members of democratic intelligentsia to the idea of
hardest task of all: the arduous task our circle also began to use this ap- an open struggle against Tsarism.“All
of beginning, of building the move- proach.” 16.. those honest Russians’, he wrote,
mentout of nothing, of patiently win- In 1891 and 1892, a terrible famine “who do not: belong to the world of
32
mere money-makers, kulaks, andRus- class would play the key role. While,
sianbureaucrats must at once begin at this stage, no-one yet spoke of the
to agitate for the Zemsky Sobor’’. possibility of a socialist revolution in
Plekhanov’sarticle represented the Russia, the skilful use of revolution-
first concrete attempt to cometo grips ary-democratic demands, like the con-
with the question of how‘to relate the vening of a Zemsky Sobor, undoubted-
workers’ movement to the movement ly played an importantagitational role
of other oppressed classes against the in marshalling the revolutionary forces
common enemy, tsarism. Under con- around the Marxist programme.
ditions of Tsarist enslavement, tem- The new emphasis upon mass
porary and episodic blocs with the revolutionary agitation caught many
most radical elements of the petty by surprise. Future Economists like
bourgeoisie or even the bourgeois Boris Krichevsky were not slow to
liberals were inevitable. Such criticise the Emancipation of Labour
agreements, however, in no sense Groupfor alleged ‘‘constitutionalism”’,
presupposed the existence of program- not understanding the need to advance
matic agreement. On the contrary, the democratic slogans alongside the
prior condition thereof was precisely elementary class demandsof the pro-
that every party should march under letariat. At the sametime, many of the
its own banner: ‘march separately and old hands even in Russia were reluc-
‘strike together”. tant to recognise the changed situa-
tion. The old habits of small propagan-
Revolutionary use of da circle activity died hard. In many aera} i
democratic slogans cases, the transition to mass agitation
was only accomplished after painful bring direct benefits to the workers”’.
While defending the petty bourgeois arguments and divisions. 20.
democrats against tsarist persecu- Many years later, basing himself This gives thelie to the reformist op-
tion, and occasionally arriving at upon the experience of Russian Marx- ponents of Marxism whoargue that
episodic agreementsfor practical ques- ism, Trotsky wrote that: “fivery work- the Marxists are ‘‘not interested in
tions suchas the transportation ofil- ing class party, every faction, during reform”’. On the contrary, throughout
legal literature, defence of arrested its initial stages, passes through a history, the Marxists have been in the
comrades etc, the Marxists period of pure propaganda,ie the train- forefront of the struggle for the im-
simultaneously subjected them to a ing of its cadres. The period of ex- provement of the lot of the workers,
merciless and unremittingcriticism for istence as a Marxistcircle invariably fighting for better wages and condi-
their vacillations and confusions. Such grafts habits of an abstract approach tions, shorter hours and democratic
a policy was designed to make use of onto the problems of the workers’ rights. The difference between Marx-
each and every opportunity to push movement. Whoeveris unable to step ism and reformism does not consist in
the movement forward whilst in time over the confines of this cir- the ‘acceptance’ or gtherwise of
strengthening the position of Marxism cumscribed existence becomes reforms (you only have to pose the
and the independentclass standpoint transformed into a conservative sec- question to see its patent absurdity),
of the proletariat, in the same way that tarian’’. 18. but, on the one hand,in the fact that
a mountain climberskilfully makes use In his article On the Tasks of the serious reforms can only be won by
of every chink and crevacein order to Russian Social Democrats during the mobilising the strength of the working
haul himself up to the summit. Famine in Russia (1892) Plekhanov class in struggle against the capitalists
This policy had nothing in common gave the classic Marxist definition of and their state and,on theother, that
with the latterday policies of the Men- the difference between propaganda the only way to consolidate the gains
sheviks and Stalinists who, under the: and agitation: made by the workers and to guarentee
guise of “uniting all progressive “A sect can be satisfied with pro- all their needs, is to break the power
forces”, try to subordinate the work- paganda in the narrow sense of the of Capital and carry out the socialist
ing class movement to the so-called word:a political party never... A pro- transformation of society. The latter
‘‘progressive”’ bourgeoisie. Both pagandist gives manyideas to one or is, however, unthinkable without the
Plekhanov and, especially, Lenin a few people, while an agitator gives day-to-day. struggle for advance under
poured scorn on the idea of a ‘‘People’s only one or only a few ideasbut to the capitalism which serves to organise,
Front” which a section of the Narod- massof people. .. Yet history is made train and educate the working-class,
niks were peddling even-at this time. by the masses. . . ‘hanks to agitation, preparing the groundfor the final set- ~
Before he became a Menshevik, when the necessary link between the ‘heroes’ tling of accounts with its enemies.
he still defended the ideas of revolu- andthe ‘crowd’, between ‘the masses’
tionary Marxism, Plekhanov answered and ‘their leaders’ is forged and The Vilno Programme
those whoaccused him of frightening tempered.”’ 19.
the liberals with the following rebuff: Plekhanov stressed the urgent The idea of agitation immediately
‘In any case, we consider that the necessity for the Marxists to penetrate caught the imagination of the youth
most harmful kind of‘frightening’ is the broadest layers of the masses with inside Russia. Already many of the
the frightening ofsocialists with the agitational slogans, beginning with the youngsters were growing impatient
spectre of frightening the liberals’. 17. most immediate economic demands, with the limitations of work in the pro-
The main thrust of Plekhanov’s such as the eight-hour day: pagandacircles. The trial was blazed
argument was that the ‘‘total “Thus all—even the most by the Social Democrats in the
economic ruin of our country can be backward—workerswill be clearly con- Western areas of Lithuania and
averted only by its complete political vinced that the carrying out of at least Poland, where the Lodz strike and
emancipation”. The appalling pro- _ some socialist measuresis of value to May Day demonstration of 1892 in-
blems of the massesdirectly posed the the working class... Such economic dicated the explosive nature of the
question of revolutionary struggle reforms as the shortening of the work- situation.
against tsarism,in which the working ing day are goodif only because they The success of the Vilno group led
33
MIR' Autumnl19865: Bolshevism Part Suan e
te en e
them to publish a pamphlet which
caused quite.a stir at the time: On
Agitation, written by Arkady Kremer
and Martov, became known as ‘‘The
Vilno Programme’’. Despite traces of
“spontaneism’’, the document, with its
central idea that the task of the eman-
cipation of theworking class must be
the work. of the workers themselves
aroused jot of interest in the period
1893-97 when furious discussions
were taking place everywhere on the
turn to agitation. It basically
represented a healthy reaction against
the narrow. “small circle’ mentality
and a desire to forge contacts with the
masses.
In her Memories of Lenin, Krup-
skaya recalls that:
“When the Vilno pamphlet On
Agitation appeared the following year,
the ground wasalready fully prepared
for the conducting of agitation by
leaflets. It was.only necessary to start
work. The method of agitation on the
basis of the workers’ everyday needs Members af the St Petersburg Union for the Liberation cf the Working Class. In the
became rooted deeply in our party centre is Lenin. To his left, seated, is Martov.
work. I only fully understood how
fruitful this method of work was some tions andarticles and printed them all
years later when, living as an emigre out in longhand for the hectograph. At
in France, I observed how, during the that time we didn’t even know of the Footnotes
tremendouspostal strike in Paris, the existence of typewriters.I printed the
French Socialist Party stood complete- letters with the utmostcare, consider- 1. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB
ly aside and did not intervene in the ing it a point of honour to make them Aksel’roda, p87.
strike. It was the business of the trade clear enough so that even the less 2. Quoted in T Dan's ‘The Origins of
unions, they said. They thought the literate could read our proclamations Bolshevism’ p 141.
work of the party was simply the without any trouble. It took me about 3. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB
Aksel’roda, p66. ~
political struggle. They had not the two hours to a page. Sometimes I 4. Op cit p61.
remotest notion as to the necessity for didn’t unbend myback for a week, cut- 5. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’,
connecting up the economic and in- ‘ting my workshort only for meetings pp12—138.
dustrial struggles’’. 21 and study in the groups. 6. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB
The success of the new approachis “But whata satisfied feeling I had Aksel’roda, p21.
reflected in Trotsky’s autobiography: when I received the information from 7. Bor’ba za Sozdanie Marksistskoipartii v
Rossii (1894—1904) p2.
“We found the workers more suscep- the mills and workshops that the
8. Trotsky ‘History of the Russian Revolu-
tible to revolutionary propaganda workers read voraciously the tion’, p82.
than we had ever in our wildest . mysterious sheets printed in purple 9. Figures from T Dan ‘The Origins of
dreams imagined. The amazingeffec- ink, passing them about from hand to Bolshevism’, p150 and BH Sumner ‘Survey
tiveness of our workfairly intoxicated hand as they discussed them! They of Russian History’ pp324—331.
us. From revolutionary tales. we knew pictured the author as some strange 10. Lenin, ‘Collected Works, Volume 2’,
that the workers won over by pro- and mighty person who in some pp29-—73.
pagandawereusually to be counted in mysterious way had penetrated into 11. Speech reprinted in ‘‘Nachalo
single numbers. A revolutionary who the mills and knew what wasgoing on Rabochego Dvizheniya i Rasprostranie
converted two or three men to in the workshops, and twenty-four Marksisma v Rossii (1883—1894) p96.
12. Lenin, ‘Collected Works, Volume2’, p88.
socialism thought he had done a good hours later passed his comment on 13. [storiya KPSS, Volume One, p100.
job of work, whereas with us, the events in newly-printed handbills’’. 22 14. Many years later, in December 1922,
number of workers who joined or By meansofa bold participation Lenin was to write a brief note on
wanted to join the groups seemed to in agitation, the influence of Marx- Fedoseyev to the Party History Commis-
be unlimited. The only shortage was ism grew by leaps and bounds ston in which he described his old mentor
in the matter of instruction and in as “this exceptionally talented and excep-
among ever wider layers of the tionally devoted revolutionary”. Lenin, ‘Col-
literature. The teachers had to snatch
from each otherin turn thesinglesoil-
working class. Despite the lected Works, Volume 33’, pp432—3.
ed copy of the Communist Manifesto smallness of their forces and the - 15. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’, p6.
by Marx and Engels that had been tremendously difficult objective 16. Krupskaya, Op cit pp 6—7.
situation, the Marxists had at last 17, Plekhanov, Sochineniya Volume 1, p403.
translated by. many hands in Odessa, 18. Trotsky, ‘Writings 1935-36’, p153.
with many gaps and mutilations of the broken down the barriers 19. Quoted in VAkimou, ‘On the Dilemmas
text. . separating them from the masses. of Russian Marxism’, p17.
“Soon we “ began to produce a The road was now open for- the 20. Op cit, p17.
literature of our own: this was, proper- creation of a strong united party 21. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’,‘p?.
ly speaking, the beginning of my of the Russian proletariat. 22.2 Trotsky * me si
revolutionary work, which almost coin- Part three ofAlan Woods’ series of qiticloe
cided with the start of my revolu- on the History of Bolshevism will appear
tionary activities. I wrote proclama- in the next edition of the MIR.

34
 : - The history:‘of Bolshevism— as
“Part 3 in a series of articles by Alan Woods, Editor of the MIR

Economism, Revisionismand
“LegalMarxism”
THROUGHOUT THEdecade of the established. Lenin participated as a
1890s the graph of the strike move- lecturer in these circles under the
ment continued on the upturn. Andat pseudonym,Nikolai Petrovich.
the heart of the movement stood St The transition from propaganda in
Petersburg. Here were the heavy bat- small groups to mass agitation was
tallions of Russian labour—the metal not carried out painlessly or without
workers, 80 per cent of whom were internal strains and tensions. For
concentrated in big factories like the many, the.underground had becomea |
Putilov works. A relatively high pro- wayoflife. It had a certain routine to
portion of the Petersburgproletarians which one became accustomed. A pro-
were literate—74 per cent against 60 longed period of existence in small,
per cent for the rest of Russia. undergroundcircles fostered a certain
Lenin had arrived in Petersburglate narrow “‘circle-mentality”. Paradox-
in the autumn of 1893 and began to ically, despite the difficulties and
play a leading role in the small group dangers, it had a certain “‘cozy’’ side.
of Petersburg Social Democrats, which The conditionsofcircle life did not de-
was only just recovering from the ar- mand much outward-going activity.
rest of its leader, Mikhail Ivanovich One moved exclusively among com-
Brusnyev. The orientation of the rades:or advanced workers, in circles
group can be seen from Brusnyev’s where everyone knew practically
own words: “Our mainand fundament- everyoneelse. On the contrary, agita-
al role (was to) turn the participants tion among the masses seemedlike a
.in the workers’ circles into fully leap in the dark. Routine habit would
developed: and conscious. social be disrupted, ideas and methods
democrats, who could in many ways radically altered. No wonder the pro- ly the new methodswere accepted, and
replace the intellectual’ propagan- posal was met with mistrust and obtained striking results.
dists.””! hostility on the part of a layer of the In the absenceof a large, organised
“‘old men”’. Krasin and SI Radchenko legal trade union movement,the small
The turn to agitation warned of dire consequencesif the new forces of Marxism wereable to play a
tactic, were pursued: it. would under- role out of all proportion to their size.
Thus, the baste. waslaid for a ge- mine the underground work, cause The small hectographedleaflets met a
nuinely © working- class Marxist mass arrests, put comradesin danger, ready response. Often the mere ap-
organisation in the capital. Already by disorganise the work,etc. s pearanceof theseleaflets would suffice
1891, the group was able to mobilise The question of the “‘new turn’’ was to plunge a whole factory into a fer-
100 people at the funeral of the old thrashed out,first of all in the narrow ment anddiscussion, exercising a ma-
revolutionary NV Shelgunov. There circles of the veterans, and then jor influence on the course ofa dispute.
were contactsin the big factories and presented for discussion at broader
all the main workers’ districts. The gatherings of workers, where extracts “Legal Marxism’
work had been started by young from Kremer’s pamphlet On Agitation
students, but gradually the class com- wereread out and debated. Precisely the success of this agita-
position of the group underwent a The changed conditions brought tion soon attracted the attention of the
change. The students’ painstakingly about by the strike wave provided the tsarist police. Well aware of the ex-
set about the task of creating eae small forces of Marxism with colossal plosive. mood of the workers in
class cadres or ‘‘Russian Bebels’”, opportunities tospread their influence. Petersburg, the authorities developed
they expressedit. - - Yet in theinitial period, opportunities a healthy respect for what these
After the waveof arrests iuuieecar- were frequently missed because of the leaflets could achieve: When, in
ried off Brusnyev and manyothers in resistence of the’more conservative February and April of 1896 a leaflet
1892, the group had been reorganised layers to thenew methods. Thus, dur- appeared voicing the demandsof the
by SI Radchenko.It included a group ing ‘the: important strike of 2,000 - workers in the shipbuilding yards in
of students from the Technical In- weavers in ‘Tvanovno-Voznesensk in Petersburg, the Minister of the In-
stitute, some of whomwere destined October 1895, the leaders of thelocal terior, fearing a strike, ordered an in-
toplaya signficantrole in the develop- Workers’ League initially opposed the vestigation, which advised the port
ment of the party,’including Krup- proposal ‘that they should send commander to concede the workers’
skaya and Krzhizhanovsky. © agitators to contactthe strikers, and demands.
The basicmethod of the group was’ approach other factories to organise _ However, the Marxists did not limit
to organise study circles‘ of workers support for the strike. Eventually a themselves to agitation on economic
from the main factories. ‘Through in- compromise solution was reached that questions, but also tried to place
dividual worker contacts, others were the League wouldaccept no respon- political ideas before the workers.
drawn into the circle. The’originalcon- sibility for the’ strike but’ thatin- After the arrests of December 1895,
tacts “developed *‘theoretically°‘and dividual members wouldbe allowedto the Petersburg, group published the
themselves becameorganisers-of‘other participate’attheir ownrisk! Similar leaflet: “What is a socialist and a
circles, In'this-way an éver-wider net- disputes: arose in’ ‘practically every political criminal?” In thefirst period
work of’ worker studycircles” was Social Democratic circle. But gradual- of agitation, while setting out from the
33
MIR Spring 1
1986: Bolshevism Part,Thee:
SA TE EI

immediate grievances
of the workers, . doiigpisent of a‘genuine
s se illegal Mer: upon efsoonssetamination. _ one_.can
every attempt was madetoraise the ist journal could serve to mend the already discern the outline of future
workers’ horizons to broad political damage done bythe ‘Legal Marxists’ and more portentious disputes.
questions,linking the struggle for im- and their. shadow, the Economists. The basic idea underlyingthe¢argu-
mediate demandsto the central objec- This ‘was the great achievement a ment of Struveand co consisted in the
tive of the overthrow of the autocracy. Lenin’s Iskra. following: the material conditions for
The growing influence of Marxist Nevertheless, despite all the- pro- socialism are absent in Russia, a
ideas amongtheintelligentsia produc- blems and overheads,the collaboration : ‘backward, semi-feudal country. The
ed a peculiar phenomenon. The young with the ‘Legal Marxists’ was a useful struggle against Tsarism is a struggle
bourgeoisie was strivingto find a voice and, in any case, unavoidable stage in for bourgeois democracy, not
of its own, to assert its own interests the development of the movement in socialism. The workers’ party should
and provide atheoretical justification the early days..The great majority of therefore set aside ail ‘impossiblist’ il-
for theinevitability: of capitalist those who flirted with Marxism in lusions andrealistically rely upon the
development.in Russia. Certain of the their youthlater broke with the move- goodoffices of ‘progressive’ bourgeois
ideas put forward by Marxism in the ment and passed overto the side of liberals to usher in the new order.
struggle against..Narodnism were. reaction. But. at the time they played Such,in essence, is the futuretheory
eagerlygrasped bya section of the in- an indispensablerole.’ of Menshevism and Stalinism (in-
tellectual _spokesmen* of the In point of fact, some,at least of the cluding its latest and most repulsive
bourgeoisie. Forashort time, “Marx- “legal Marxists’? appeared to have variant represented by Professor
ism” in a. bowdlerised, academic form, undergone a genuine conversion. It Hobsbawm andfriends). ;
enjoyed a.certain vogue among “left’’- was all too easy to explain away short- The problem ofthe real natureof the
liberal professors. | *™ comingsin their mode of expression by Russian revolution was solved by Leon
This situation offered certain the exigencies of legal work, the need Trotsky in 1904—5 in his writings on
possibilities for the’ Marxists, who to escape detection, arrest and so on. the Permanent Revolution. But in an
were permitted tc write in the pages Their services were extremely useful. embryonic form the two fundamental-
of legal bourgeois journals like Novoe So long as the main tasks of the move- ly opposing conceptions of the
Slovo, Nachalo’.and .Samarsky ment were of a moreorless theoretical revolution—reform or revolution, class
Vestnik—alwaysprovided they did character, and directed mainly against collaboration or an independent pro-
not “go too far’’, of course. In this way the Narodnik enemies of the letarian _policy—had already made
there arose ‘the strange hybrid bourgeoisie, this collaboration,in fact, their appearance in the polemics of
monstrosity of “legal Marxism”’, the proceeded on a moreorless satisfac- Lenin and Plekhanov against the
main representatives of which were PB tory basis.It was a “legal Marxist’’-— Legal Marxist and Economist trends
Struve, MI Tugan-Baranovsky, SN Struve—who wrote the manifesto of in the second half of the 1890s.
Bulgakov and NA Berdyayev. the first congress of the RSDLP! At this time, no-one who considered
In theinitial stages, when the forces himself a Marxist questioned the idea
of Marxism were small and lackingin
influence, and the socialist revolution
‘Fellow travellers’ that Russia was on the eve of a
bourgeois-democratic revolution. This
was as yet the music ofan apparently In reality, these people were merely idea flowed from the entire objective,
distant future, these well-to-do intellec- what later became known as ‘“‘fellow socio-economic and historical situa-
tual dillettantes seemed actually to travellers”. Despite their intellectual tion. The main struggle was against
represent a definite trendin Russian flirtation with Marxism, in their the autocracy, against feudal bar-
Marxism. Given the appalling dif- lifestyle and psychology they remain- barism and the heritage of
ficulties of the illegal revolutionary ed firmly rooted in an alien class. “bureaucratic and serf culture’, as
movement, their services were readi- Manyyears later Struve was to sum- Lenin was later to describe it. The cen-
ly accepted. They gave money,col- up the mentality of the ‘legal Marx- tral plank of the Marxists’ argument
laborated inthe publication of Marx- ists” in the following passage: against the Narodniks was precisely —
ist literature and, in the absence of a “Socialism, to tell the truth, never the inevitability of a capitalist phase
real Marxist press, facilitated the ap- aroused the slightest emotion in me, of development and the impossibility
pearance of Marxist views,albeit in a still less attraction. ..Socialism in- of a special independent pathof‘‘pea-
watered-down form,in the pagesofall- terested me mainly ‘as an ideological sant socialism” in Russia: . .
Russian legal journals. force—which...could.. be directed From the standpoint of the “legal
-- Given the immensedifficulties ofil- either to the conquest of civil and Marxists’ there was nothing to object
legality, it-wasclearly necessaryto ex- political freedoms or against them’’.’ to in all this. The prospectof a socialist
ploit each and everylegal opening to Theirs was an. anaemic and. revolution was reduced to a hazy.
spread the ideas of Marxism. What emasculated view of Marxism,a “‘de- theoretical prospect. sometime in the
could ‘not be: saidopenlyinlegal cafinated”. Marxism, lacking life, dim and distant future. For. the in-
publicationscould be supplemented by struggle and revolutionary vitality. tellectual travelling companions of
the undergroundparty press. Thus,for Notaccidentally, the ‘‘legal Marxists” Marxism, such a ‘‘perspective” was
many. years, the Russian Marxists rejected dialectics, in favour of Neo- quite safe, and basically committed
could ‘not. ‘call’ themselves* ‘Social Kantian philosophy... Despite its ap- them to nothing. To them,the revolu-
Democrats’, buthad to use phrases pearance of- uniqueness, and the tionary aspect of Marxism seemed.
like: ‘Consistent Democrats’ instead. somewhatspecial role it played in the quite unreal, whereas the economic.
AsTrotskypointedout many years early days of the movementinRussia, argumentsabout theinevitable vic-
later, they, did not. get. off scot-free the same kind_ofabstract, undialec- tory of capitalism.in: Russia “seemed
-“A’ numberof . people ticalandessentially non-revolutionary pre-eminently ‘practical’. _.
associated se theparty turned out “Marxism” regularly re-appears in the With every fibre of his being, Lenin
. --*consistent rarified atmosphere ofthe universities distrusted. .the . dry, .-. academic,
ofallcountries, at every stage inthe caricatures which turned. Marxismiin-
consistent—butnot’at’allMarxists! development. ofthe movement:- to_something lifeless, . passive and:
For the development: of a:‘healthy On‘the face of it, theideas:ef ihe essentially anti-revolutionary. Asearly,
Marxistcurrentitisnecessary. above ‘LegalMarxists” maynowappear to as the autumnof .1895 therewas. a.
all to be able to say what is. Only the be of merely historical interest. Yet, heated controversy among the
34
Petersburg Marxists, with Lenin,
Stakov and Radchenko on oneside and
Struve, Potresov and Klassov on the
other.
In April of that year, Struve had
written his Critical Comments on the
Question of Russia’s Economic Dev-
elopment. Takingas his starting-point
an undeniable fact—ie. the backward
and primitive level of Russian society
in comparison to developed
capitalism—Struve’s one-sided
method—more akin to sophism than
Marxist dialectics—in the given
historical context, undoubtedly ex-
pressed a trend (albeit unconscious)
which,carried to its logical conclusion,
spelled the subordination of the pro-
letariat to the bourgeoisie. Such
phrases as “Let us admit our lack of Yulius Martov, above. Lenin in 1897,
culture and take lessons from right.
capitalism’ provoked Lenin to reply in
his work: The Economic Content of ple of years earlier: trueof Struve, even in his best period.
Narodnism andthe Criticism ofit in “And what does the Russian work- Like many of the intellectual fellow
MrStruve’s book,’ written under the ing class not need? It is completely travellers of Marxism, Struve never
name of K Tulin, in an anthology deprived of what its comrades abroad came to terms with dialectics. This
which was burned by the censor. freely and peacefully makeuseof: par- fundamental theoretical weakness,
ticipation in the runningof the state, alongside the usual middle-class
Lenin and Struve freedom of the written and spoken hankering after the flesh-pots, the lik-
word, freedom of association and ing for an easy existence and an
In her memoirs, Krupskayarecalls assembly—in a word, ail those organic incapacity for personal
that Struve ‘‘was himself a Social- weapons and means by which the sacrifice, serve to explain his subse-
Democratof a sort at that time’’ but West European and American pro- quent development.
adds that “he was quite incapable of letariat is improvingits position while Struve broke with Marxism. In 1905
doing any work in the organisation, struggling for its ultimate emancipa- he joined the bourgeois Cadet Party
leave alone underground work,butit tion, against private ownership and and ended his days as a White emigré.
flattered him, no doubt, to becalled on capitalism—for socialism. Berdyayev ended up as an apologist
for advice.’’* These few lines faithful- “But the Russian proletariat can on- for religious mysticism. The others
ly convey the essenceof this layer of ly conquer the political freedom it underwent a similar transformation.
bourgeois and middle class intellec- needs by itself alone.. Struve’s 1898 Manifesto, with its
tuals who “‘travelled’’ with the party, “The further you go to the East of harsh condemnation of the Russian
considering themselvesto be of it, but Europe, the weaker, more cowardly bourgeoisie thus constitutes an
never really being in it, and always and baser the bourgeoisie becomes in ironically appropriate epitaph on the
‘with one foot in another camp. the political field, and the greater the phenomenon of “Legal Marxism’’.
Through the mediumofthis layer the cultural and political tasks which fall
pressure of alien’ classes were, un- to the lot of the proletariat. On its own The St Petersburg League
consciously or half-consciously, strong shoulders the Russian working
broughtto bear with dire results upon class must and doesbear the cause of By 1895, Lenin’s group had built a
the young and immature forces of winning political freedom. This is an fairly solid organisation. There was a
Marxism. indispensable, thoughonlya first, step committee of 10-16, which organised
Yet for all his instinctive distrust of towards the realisation of the great the work of between 20 and 30
Struve, Lenin was. prepared to col- historical mission of the proletariat, workers’ study circles, with about
laborate with him. One of the towards the creation of a social order 100-150 contacts.* The group was con-
hallmarks of Lenin’s genius as a in which therewill be no room for the nected to the workers’ circles through
revolutionary leader and organiser was exploitation of man by man:’’* area organisers. By the endof the year,
precisely his ability to work patiently Struve’s evolution to the left was it was active in practically all the
with people of all kinds, and to draw partly the result of the general move- workers’ districts. In November, a
the best from them in theinterests of ment of the intelligentsia, underthe decisive step was taken when a newly
building the movement. While making pressure of the working class in the established Social Democratic group,
no concessions to political mistakes, stormy period ofthe ‘nineties, in the including Yulius Martov,fused with
and striving to correct them, Lenin direction of Marxism,and partly of the the ‘‘veterans’’ to-form the St
recognised Struve’s ability and did his pressureof ideological criticism from PetersburgLeague of Struggle for the
best to make useof his talent. Under Lenin. and, to some extent, Plekhan- Emancipation of Labour—a name
the pressure of relentless criticism, ov. There is no doubt that Lenin in- which was adopted in solidarity with
Struve, for a time, veered to the left. itially hoped to win him over, recognis- Plekhanov’s Emancipation of Labour
Someofhis writings of this period,in- ing the role such a capable intellectual Group. A division of labour was
cluding the Manifesto of the First Con- could play. But it may be doubted that established in the group’s activities. SI
gress, bear striking witness to this such. an outcome was..ever likely. and LN Radchenko werein charge of
fact. There is little doubt that the Marx once said :about the poet, finance and contact with groups of
withering criticism of the Russian Goethe, whom hegreatlyadmired, revolutionary-minded ‘intellectuals.
bourgeoisie in these lines echoed the that he had “‘the Philistine’s tail hang- Ponamaryovattended to the technical
fierce controversies with Lenin a cou- ing down behind him’’. The same was side—printing leaflets, etc. AA
35°
 MIR Spring 1986: Bolshevism Part Three aa

Vanyeyev maintained contact with the of the most backward layers of the make them realise through their own
underground printshops run by a working class, arguing that political experienceof struggle the necessity for
group of Petersburg Narodniks, and so ideas were ‘‘too difficult’’ for the a complete social overturn.
on. Gradually, a leadership crystalis- masses, and that, anyway,politics was Local agitational leaflets were too
-ed around Lenin, Martov, Krzhiz- of no concern to the workersinterested limited in their scope to do this. What
hanovsky, Starkov and Vanyeyev. in improving their economic was needed was a Marxist paper which
The moreorless rapid growth of the conditions. would not only reflect the life and
Petersburg Leaguereflected a change How many times have these same struggles of the proletariat but would
in the objective situation. - arguments been used by right wing also present the workers with a
The young people, mostly new trade union leaders to justify the generalization of that experience, in
recruits with little understanding of policies of class collaboration? ‘‘The other words, a revolutionary political
Marxist theory, threw themselves en- workersare not interested in politics!’ organ which would serve to unite the
thusiastically into the work of factory “No politics here, please!’’ The fact strike movement with the revolu-
agitation, mostly on ‘‘bread and but- that there never has been, and never tionary movement against the
ter” issues. This had spectacular can be, such a thing as an ‘‘apolitical”’ autocracy.
results, meeting with instant success trade union,is of no concern to them. In the winter of 1894—95, at a
among even the most benighted,il- Behindthe attemptsto “keep politics meeting in Petersburg of represen-
literate and- oppressed layers of the out”’ of the unionsis the idea of subor- tatives of Social Democratic groups
_ Class: dinating them to the political enemies from variousparts of Russia, a resolu-
A major strike wave gripped the of Labour. As Lenin waslater to ex- tion was passed in favour of a more
capital, especially in the textile sector. plain, ‘non-political’ trade unionism is popular literature for workers to be
In just one strike, according to Fyodr yellow trade unionism, a device by published abroad. Lenin and EI Sponti
Dan, the League put out more than 30 which the bourgeoisie infiltrate, cor- from the Moscow Workers’ Union
leaflets.’ Agitation was conducted as rupt and manipulate the organisations were maderesponsible for negotiating
a dialogue with the workers. The of the working class. The only way to this question with Plekhanov’s Group
League would carefully listen to prevent this from happening is by for the Emancipaton of Labour.
workers’ grievances, take noteof their fighting for working-class politics In the spring of 1895, first Sponti
demands and collect reports of the within the unions, the highest expres- and then Lenin went to Switzerland to
struggles in different factories. They sion of which is scientific socialism, establish contact-with the Group. The
would then “return” this information Marxism. impact caused among the emigrés by
to the workersin an agitational form, The proletariat is the most this breakthrough is conveyed in the
together with organizational direc- homogeneousclassin society. Yet it is correspondence of Plekhanov and
tives, exposures of the manoeuvres of not wholly homogeneous. There are Axelrod:
management andthe authorities, and different layers which draw different “The arrival of EI Sponti and then,
appeals for support. Thus, the strike
movementof the ’90’s became a gigan-
tic preparatory schoolof struggle, ser- . The practical successesof agitation seduced these ‘activists’
ving to educate a whole generation of seeking an easy way out of the complex problems of late) E)
workers and Marxists. revolutionary party . . arguing that political ideas were ‘too dif-
The striking success of the strike ficult’ for the meee and that politics was of) no concern to
movement exercised a powerful in- workers. . . For Marxists, however, the central task is first to win
fluence upon the minds of the youth over the most advancedlayers of the workers in order through
andtheintelligentsia, which was mov-
them to win over the masses. There are no short cuts.
ing away from the discredited ideas of
Narodnism and terrorism. New
recruits entered the movement. But conclusionsat different times.It is a to a much greater degree, of VI Lenin-
the general theoretical level was commontrick of reformists to try to: Ulyanov,were a great eventin thelife
lowered. play off the more backward and of the Group for the Emancipation of
The battle against the old narrow, politically inert layers of the working Labour; they werepractically the first
propaganda-circle mentality had been class against the most active and con- Social Democrats who had arrived
won. Butin their eagerness toextend scious sections. For Marxists, abroad with a request from those who
the mass influence of the. Social however, the central task is first to win were carrying out the active work of
Democracy through the vehicle of over the most advanced layers of the the Social Democratic circles for
economic agitation, a section of the workers,in order through them to win businesslike negotiations with the
more impressionable students werein- over the masses. There are no short Group’’.*
clined to present the issue in a one- cuts. It is a question of patiently work- Uptill this moment, the membersof
sided way._ ing and patiently explaining to win the exiled Emancipation of Labour
Thus, in 1895—6 there appearediin over a majority, beginning with the ad- Group had been reduced to therole of
Petersburg a group in the Technolog- vanced workers. helpless onlookers and commentators
ical Institute led by the energetic _ For the first generation of Russian on the great struggles taking place in
medical student KM Takhtarev who, Marxists economic agitation was on- Russia. The experience of past failures
began to argue that the Social ly one part of the work, which always with people coming from the. interior
Democrats should not see themselves linked agitation with propaganda and had also made them wary. But the
as ‘leading’ the workers but. only as tried to draw out the broaderissues. newcomers soon convinced them that
‘serving’ them by. helping. out in The League had succeededin winning there now existed a real basis for the
strikes. over members from the old Narodnik spread of Marxist ideas in Russia. The
Thepractical successes of agitation movementby: arguing a political case. forces of the young generation joined
seduced these ‘activistsseeking an On: the other: hand, the main task in hands with the exiled veterans. The
easy way out of the complex problem relation to the strike movement was, two emissaries returned to Russia with
of building a revolutionary Party. At while setting out from existing levels a: commitment on -the' part of the
first, almost imperceptibly, they began of consciousness,to raisethe level of Group to begin. the- publication of a
to adapt themselvestothe prejudices understanding of the workers and to Marxist journal—Rabotnik: (‘The
36
Worker’). The future of Russian Marx-
ism seemed assured. :
However,shortly after his return to
Russia in early December 1895, the
Petersburg League was hit by massar-
rests which eliminated nearly half the
leadership, including Lenin himself. In
a courageous attempt to deceive the
police into thinking they had arrested
the wrong people, the remaining
leaders, with Martov at their head,
issued a mimeographed proclamation
to the workers: ‘‘The League of Strug-
gle... will carry onits work. The police
have failed. The workers’ movement
will not be smashed byarrests and ex-
ile: the strikes and struggles will not
end until the complete liberation of the
workingclass from thecapitalist yoke
is achieved.’’® Therusefailed, and on
5 January 1896, Martov and the Zasulich and Axelrod.
others were arrested.
worked-out theory or policy, in favour of ‘‘revising’’ Marxism. Just
Beginnings of Economism represented an ill-defined mood among like the Hattersleys, Kinnocks and
certain layers of, particularly, the stu- Gonzalezes of today, Bernstein argued
Such was the growth inthe influence dent youth which had entered the that Marxism was “‘out of date”; the
of the Marxists, that the arrested Social Democracy in the ’90s, and who concentration of industrial production,
leaders were very quickly replaced. lacked the same solid theoretical he alleged, was taking place at a much
Furthermore, by skilful use of con- grounding that had characterised the slower pace than had been foreseen by
spiratorial methods, Lenin was able to earlier generation of Russian Marxists. Marx; the great number of small
retain some contact with the League The phenomenon was aot confined businesses showed the vitality of
even from inside prison. But the quali- to Russia. The same controversies private enterprise (‘‘small is
ty of the leadership had suffered a began to surface in the emigration beautiful’, as they say nowadays!); in-
severe blow. towardsthe end of 1897, when SN Pro- stead of polarization between workers
The arrest of the most experienced kokovich, who uptill then had been and capitalists, the presence of
and theoretically trained members collaborating with the Emancipation numerousintermediate strata means
meantthat the leadership of the group of Labour Group, began to raise that society is much more complex
tended to fall now to young andinex- similar differences. This must have (‘‘the new middle classes’’); in place of
perienced members. The tendency led been a painful blow to the Group, at “the anarchy of production’’,
by the student Takhtarev swiftly gain- a moment when at last it looked as capitalism was capable of being con-
ed the ascendency over the ‘old though their collaboration with the trolled to the extent that crises were
timers’’, who everywhere were pushed youth inside Russia was proceeding on less frequent and less severe (Keyne-
to-one side. . a sound basis. Anxious to avoid a sianism and “‘managed capitalism”’);
As frequently happens, a serious break, at first Plekhanov adopted an and the workingclass, apart from be-
political difference first expressed unusually conciliatory tone. In let- ing a minority of society was only in-
itself on a seemingly accidental secon- ter to Axelrod dated the 1 January terested in the immediate improve-
dary issue. Before being sent into 1898, he wrote: ‘‘. ..We must publish mentof its material conditions of ex-
Siberian exile, in February 1897 Lenin his work on agitation: in my view it’s istence (“upwardly mobile’’).
and several other leaders were allow- not bad, and we must encourage
ed three days in Petersburg to put ‘young talents’ otherwise you know Bernstein's revisionism
their affairs in order. They used the they’ll be complaining that we keep
time to hold a discussion with leading them down.’’!” From these few examples of Berns-
members of the League, at which a Possibly, the “economist” devia- tein’s thoughts, it is perfectly plain
sharp disagreement emerged on the tions of a part of the Russianyouth how pathetically unoriginal are the
question of a “‘workers’ fund” organis- could have been put down to a case of supposedly ‘‘modern”’ theories of the
ed on non-political lines. Without de- ideological measles, wereit not for the present-day Labour leaders. They are
nying the possibility of work in such fact that they coincided with a far not even remotely aware that their
areas, Lenin, supported by Martov more serious international “new” ideas are clumsy plagiarisms of
and others, placed the main stress on phenomenon. Within days of writing notions (far more ably) expressed by
the need to build up the League of these lines to Axelrod, Plekhanov was Bernstein 88 years ago.
Struggle .as a_ revolutionary horrified to read an article by Berns- Of course, these ideas did not drop
organisation. tein, the prominent German Social from the sky. They reflected the
Whatlay behindthe attitudes of the Democratic leader, on the 50th an- pressure of a prolonged period of
“youngsters’’ was an opportunist niversary of the Communist Manifesto capitalist economic upswing which
desire to find a “short cut’’ to the which questioned the basic ideas of lasted for nearly two decades, coming
masses, an impatient desire to reap Marxism. ‘‘Why, this is a complete to an end with the First World War.
where they had not sown, together denial both of revolutionary tactics This period of relative social calm and
with a barely-concealed contempt for and of communism,’’. wrote Plekhanov, also of relative improvements in the
theory. Such, in broad outline, were “Those articles nearly made meill’. living standardsof at least the upper
the common features of all the dif- But this was only the opening shot layers of the proletariat in Germany,”
ferent varieties of “Economism”’, a in a sustained campaign which Berns- Britain, France and Belgium gaverise
phenomenon which, more than a tein waged in the German party press to the illusion that capitalism waswell
37
 MIR Spring 1986: Bolshevism Part Three aaa

on the way to solving its fundamental following terms: “‘I am mostinterested flicts became more frequent.
contradictions. The rapid growth in in your opinion of Eddie. Indeed, I’m The students soon seized on what
powerand influence of the workers’ afraid we’re losing him. . . However, I was, admittedly, the weak side of the
parties and trade unions also spawn- havestill not given him upas a bad job Emancipation of Labour Group’s ac-
ed a new caste of union officials, and I hope that when he enters into tivities: organisation. They began to
parliamentarians, town councillors and personal—if only written—contact pick holes on organisational questions,
party bureaucrats who,in their living with us, then something of the old demandingto see the accounts which
conditions and outlook, became pro- fighter will return to our Hamlet(sic), were certainly in a chaotic state.
gressively removed from the people and he will once again direct his Having scored a point here, the
they were supposec to represent. This criticism against the enemy and not ‘youth’ went on to otherissues. In his
stratum, reasonably well-off and lull- against us’’.'' biography of. Plekhanov, SH Baron
ed by the apparent success of Whenfinally pushed and prodded by sumsuptheir criticisms of the Eman-
capitalism, provided the social base for Plekhanov. to make a public reply, cipatior of Labour Group: “‘Was not
revisionism, a petit-bourgeois reaction Kautsky was careful to invest this the dedication of the Group’s principal
against the storm and stress of the with the softest possible tone, almost figure, Plekhanov, to abstract
class struggle, a yearning for the apologising for taking him up: “‘Bern- theoretical and philosophical works a
creature comforts and thedesire for a stein has obliged us to re-consider patent demonstrationofhis alienation
peaceful and harmonioustransition to things and,for that, we should thank from Russian reality?. .. Arguing that
‘socialism’ in a suitably dim and dis- him.’’!? Enfuriated by this, Plekhanov they had lost contact with the situa-
tant future. wrote an open letter to Kautsky with tion in Russia and wereill-informed
Axelrod’s reaction to Bernstein’s ar- the title: Why should we thank. him? concerning its needs, the veteran
ticles in Die Neue Zeit wasinitially in which, among other things, he Marxists were disqualified from
more tolerant than Plekhanov, who sharply posed the question: ‘‘Whowill leading the movement. Even if the
was outraged by them. bury whom? Will Bernstein bury the Group had a morerealistic vision of
In fact, both Axelrod and Zasulich Social Democracy, or the Social the demands of the time, their
were shaken to the point of Democracy, Bernstein?’’!? slowness and inefficiency rendered
demoralisation by the controversy. While the members of the Eman- them incapableof fulfilling the leading
These people had sterling qualities, cipation of Labour Group reacted rcie to which it laid claim. While the
but theoretical depth was not among sharply to Bernstein’s attempt to reins continuedin its hands, essential
them. They were stunned by Berns- water down the revolutionary tasks could not be attended to. Those
tein’s renegacy. The impressionable teachings of Marx,he had his admirers who had founded and given a greatin-
Vera Zasulich, in particular, was amongthe Russians. Beforethis, the itial impetus to the movement had
tormented by doubts. Only Plekhanov ‘Economist’ deviations lacked a become converted into an obstacle.
remained absolutely firm,rallying his coherent theoretical content. Now, Yet they refused to make way for
colleagues and launching himself into beginning with the exiles, they eager- those who were better qualified, and
the affray. His articles against Berns- ly seized on Bernstein’s ideas as a who had both a clear awareness of the
tein and Konrad Schmidt (on justification for their opportunist necessities, and the energies essential
philosophy, in defence of dialectical tendencies. for dealing with them. Anothersimilar
materialism) show Plekhanov at his accusation they made towards them
finest: an indefatigable fighter in Economist controversy was that the hypercritical attitude of
defence of the fundamental ideas of the Group andits intolerance towards
Marxism. The problem arose in the Union of divergent opinions impeded the
The most prominent representatives Russian Social Democrats, an emigré, development of new literary minds
of the left-wing of the SPD, Rosa Lux- organisation set up in 1894, mainly urgently needed by the move-
emburg and Parvus, launcheda fierce composed of students whohad recent- ment... Organising the opposition to
counter-attack. But what shocked ly joined the Marxist movement. The the veterans, attacking their
Plekhanov more than anything else Union was organisationally indepen- prerogatives, showing scant respect.
was the reaction of Kautsky. Genera!- dent of the Emancipation of Labour for their authority, the critics unleash-
ly regarded as the guardian of Marx- Group, and had effective control of ed a kindof guerrilla war against the
ist orthodoxy par excellence Kautsky contacts with Russia. They were Group. What they clearly intended
was also a personal friend of responsible for collecting funds, the was to reduce the power of the
Plekhanov. But now he not only per- print shop, organising the transporta- veterans, and maybe they even
mitted the use of the journal of which tion of clandestine literature and main- thought about displacing them com-
- he was editor for this anti-Marxist taining contacts with the interior. pletely and themselves taking over the
diatribe, but also he initially refrain- However,in order to preserveits con- leadership of the movement.”’'‘
ed from criticising Bernstein in print. trol of the ideological field, the Eman- To some extent, the tensions bet-
In the light of subsequenthistory, cipation of Labour Groupinsisted on ween the Emancipation of Labour
Kautsky’s silence was signficant. For the right to edit the Union’s publica- Group and the newer generation of
all his scholarly theses on revolution tions, including the journal Rabotnik. young people from Russia were com-
and the class struggle, Kautsky’s Thedifficult problem of striking the prehensible. Having conducted a stub-
Marxism had an abstract, scholastic correct balance between. experience born struggle for Marxist, theory,
character. Whereas Plekhanov regard- and youth is a recurrent one in the Plekhanov was reluctant to take a
ed Bernstein as an enemyto be attack- history of revolutionary movements. chance on allowing the newcomers to
~ ed, unmasked and,if necessary, driven A large part of the initial friction bet- participate in literary and theoretical
out, Kautsky still saw him as an err- ween the two groups undoubtedly work. The subsequentpolitical evolu-
- ing companion, whosetheoretical ec- sprang from the resentment of the tion of the latter showed that
centricities ought not to spoil an ‘youth’at the political protagonism of Plekhanov had good groundsfor ap-
agreeably friendly relationship. Plekhanov.Theyfelt slighted and ‘put prehension... On. the. other: hand,’
Kautsky’s attitude is clearly reveal- down’bythe‘old timers’, and resented’ Plekhanov. was. not .the easiest in-
ed in a letter he wrote to Axelrod on the rigorous ideological control exer- dividual to work with. His aristocratic
the 9 March 1898, congratulating him cised over them. Despite Plekhanov’s aloofness andlack of sensitivity rankl-
on his articles against Bernstein in the attempts to be conciliatory, the con- ed and gave cause for resentment,
38
 especially among younger colleagues workers’ movement,’’!° .
whose feathers he systematically ruffl- The basic idea expressed iin these
ed. Not for nothing did the young lines is that workers cannot unders-
Trotsky, who later also fell foul of the tand and do not need ‘politics’. The
old man, characterise him as ‘‘maitre logic of this is that the revolutionary
de toutes les nuances de froideur’’ party is an irrelevance. Behind the
master offrostinessin all its shadings. demagogic advocacy of the in-
However, whatlay behind this cam- dependenceof the workers from the
paign was the egotism of the in- ‘intellectual’ leadershipis really the in-
telligentisa, aggravated by the usual dependence of the workers from Marx-
frustrations, personal conflicts and ex- ism. The danger implicit in this idea
aggerationsof exile life. On the other was clear. If the Economists’
hand, the contempt for theory, and arguments were accepted, the party
demagogic appeals for ‘practical would be dissolvedinto the politically
politics’ and ‘activity’ flowed from the untutored mass of workers. Already at
arrogance of the intellectuals, which the meeting between the new leaders
serves for a fig-leaf to cover up their of the Petersburg League and Lenin
profound ignorance. Baron sum- and Martov, when they were released
marises thus Plekhanov’s views on on parole in February 1897, Takhtarev
these people: ‘‘Their preoccupation had proposed that delegates of the
with matters of practical administra- trade union (Central Workers’ Group)
tion characterises them as mere be automatically allowed to participate
bureaucrats, men lacking in revolu- in the League. Lenin defended the
tionary passion, and with too narrow recruiting of workers into the party,
a spirit to be able to respond to the but opposed blurring the distinction man,Frenci. and British capitalism, so
grandiose perspectives of the move- between the party, representing the the Russian Bernsteinists were very
ment.’’!* most advanced section of the workers, much the poor relations of interna-
As usual, Vera Zasulich attempted and the broad organisations of the tional opportunism. They had noideas
to conciliate between Plekhanov and class, particularly at a moment when of their own, other than the shifting
“the youth”. But by the end of 1897, the party was fightingfor its existence fads, moodsand prejudices of the in-
things took a serious turn, with the ar- underthedifficult and dangerous con- tellectual. What ideological baggage
rival in Switzerland of SN Pro- ditions of illegality. they possessed was lifted from the
kopovich and his wife YD Kushova. It is ironic that many bourgeois GermansandBritish.
Until then, the conflicts betwen the commentators try to present Reformism has a material base.
Union and the Emancipation of Economism as the reaction of the Capitalism in Britain, Germany and
Labour Group had been mainly confin- workers against Lenin’s allegedly ‘in- Francestill had a progressive role to
ed to organisational, rather than tellectual’ or ‘political’ trend.In reali- play in the developmentof the produc-
political questions. But the recent ap- ty, the ideologues of Rabochaya Mysl’ tive forces. The period of economic
pearance of the journal Rabochaya were students and intellectuals upswing which preceeded the First
Mysl (Workers’ Thought) brought through whom the pressure of the World War,the amelioration of the lot
about a radical change in thesituation. bourgeois-liberals was brought to bear of a section of the masses, and the con-
upon the workers’ movement. Their sequent softeningof relations between ‘
Plekhanov and the youth open admiration for Bernstein was no the classes was the social and
accident. They represented a specific economic premisefor the rise of Bern-
Thefirst issue of the journal, which Russian variant of the international steinite revisionism. But the seeds
came out in Petersburg in October phenomenon of revisionism, which in which prospered in the soil of economic
1897, expressed the ideas of the new turn was an expression. of the interests progressin the West provedvirtually
tendency in the most open and crudest of the middle-class ‘‘progressives”’ in barren in the harsh and rockyterrain
fashion: ‘‘As long as the movement the West who had drawnclose to the of Russia. Here there was no large
was no more than a meansto soothe workers’ movement when it was clear labour aristocracy, but a mass of
the conscience-stricken intellectual (!) that the latter had definitely establish- pauperised proletarians, slaving in
it was alien to the worker ed itself as a powerful social agency large-scale industry. Only in one area
himself. ..the economic base of the and therefore a potential source of did the ideas of Economism find the
movement was obscured by the cons- jobs, prestige and income. Indeed, necessary raw material to get an echo
tant attempt to rememberthepolitical from the very earliest days of the Ger- in the workingclass.
ideal. ... The average worker stood out- man Social Democracy, Engels had
side the movement. . . The struggle for continually warned against the per- The Bund -
economic interests was the moststub- nicious influence of the university
born struggle, the most powerful in ‘Katheder Sozialisten’, people like The Jewish workers’ movement in
terms of the numbersof people it was Dihring whograciously deigned to of- Western Russia, Poland:and Litnuania
understandable to, and in terms of the fer their services to the labour move- already had a long history behindit.
heroism with which the ordinary per- ment with’a view to proddingit along The strike wave which swept through
son would defend his rights to ex- the road of reformist class © these regions beginning in 1892pro-
istence. Such is the law of nature. collaboration. . duced a ferment amongall oppressed
Politics always docily follows However, the parallel holds good on- nationalities, especially the Jews, who
economics, and as a general result ly within certain limits. The social con- suffered the most extreme national op-
political shackles are snapped ‘en text in which Economism arose was pression. Cultural life began to stir in
route’, The struggle for economic very differentto that in which German a kind of national renaissance. Break-
status,(?) the struggle against capital revisionism was-born. and prospered. ing free from- the: deadweight of a
in the field of everydayvital interests Just as the Russian bourgeoisie culture fossilisedfor 2,000years,. the
and of strikes as a method of this represented. a feeble and. anaemic Jewish intelligentsia. became open to
struggle—such is the motto of the growth in comparison to mighty Ger- the. most.-radical. and: revolutionary
39
 MIR Spring 1986: Bolshevism Part Three ar

ideas. In place of the old exclusivism anything else, the contemptuousat- economic agitation and the political
andisolationism, they eagerly sought titude of the Economists towards the struggle is spelt out fairly clearly,
contact with other cultures, particular- very workers in whose namethey pur- when it states that;
ly Russian culture. As early as 1885, ported to speak. The underlying idea “No matter how broad the workers’
a section of the poor ‘yesivah’ is a complete lack of confidence in the movementis, its success will not be
students, training to become Rabbis, ability of ordinary working people to assured until the working class stands
helped to launch the Narodnik revolu- understandtheneed for political strug- solidly on the basis of political strug-
tionary organisation in Vilna. Now gle. Yet the necessity for social and gle’, and that ‘‘the attainment of
Jewish workers joinedthe struggle, political change confronts the workers political poweris the principal task of
eagerly learning Russian in order to at every stage in the struggle. Arising the fighting proletariat...Thus the
read books and discover the new ideas out of the economic struggle against task of the Social Democrats consists
for themselves. individual employers, the workers in- of constant agitation among the fac-
Jewish workers had organised evitably draw the conclusion at a cer- tory workers on the basis of existing
friendly societies or ‘kassy’ whichcol- tain momentin time of the need to ef- petty needs and demands.Thestrug-
lected funds for labour disputesfor as fect a thoroughgoing transformation gle provoked by this agitation will
long as anyone remembered—possibly of society. And long before that, as the train the workers to defend their own
ever since Jews were expelled from the entire history of the working class interests, heighten their courage, give
guilds in Germany and Poland. The movement from Chartist times on- them assurance of their own powers
structure of these societies recalled wards demonstrates, the proletariat and an awarenessof the necessity for
that of the medieval guilds understands theneed to fight for every union, and, in the final analysis
themselves, or the early British craft ultimately confront them with more
unions, with their solemn initiation serious questions demanding a solu-
rituals, annual guild holidays and- tion. Prepared in this way for a more
strict secrecy concerningall their af- serious struggle, the working class will
fairs. The artisans and workers move on to the solution of its most
organised in these ‘kassy’ were conser- pressing questions.”’'*
vative in outlook, hostile to socialist However, the Economists inter-
ideas and usually connected with the preted this in an entirely one-sided
synagogue. The narrow craft tradi- manner. Economic agitation and crude
tions, and the small-scaleand artisan ‘activism’ were elevated into a
character of much of the industry: in panacea. Revolutionary theory was ef-
this area, was the social base upon fectively relegated to an unimportant
which the Jewish Social Democratic secondary role. In this way, a correct
organisation, the Bund, grew up. The idea was turnedintoits opposite,giv-
jewellers, cobblers, tailors, engravers, ing rise to the anti-Marxist ‘theory of
typesetters and tanners of Vilna pro- stages’, which waslater to have such
ved more amenable than the a disastrous effect in the hands of the
Petersburg textile and metal workers Mensheviks and Stalinists.
to the ideas of ‘Economism’. -“Political demands”, wrote the
Even here, however, the real reason Economist Krichevsky, ‘‘which in
for the phenomenon lay with the Plekhanov. their nature are commonto all Russia,
ideological confusion and ‘tail-endism’ partial political and democratic de- must correspondinitially to the ex-
of the leadership. Vladimir Akimov, mand whichserves to strengthen its perience extracted from the economic
the extreme Economist,in his book on position, develop its class organisa- struggle by a given stratum of
the early history of the Russian Social tions and create the most favourable workers. It is only on the grounds of
Democracy,is obligell to admit that conditions for a successful struggle this experience thatit is possible and
theVilna Social Democratic workers against its oppressors. necessary to moveonto political agita-
complained that the party was “not tion.”!°
political enough”’: Economists’ contempt Theselines express very clearly the
‘It was the workers themselves,” he opportunist nature of Economism,
writes, “who demandedtheintroduc- for theory which flows from the desire to find a
tion of a ‘political’ element into the Thereis no unbreachable barrier bet- ‘short cut’ to the masses by watering
Social Democratic agitation. It was weenthe economic struggle for better down the programmeof Marxism and
they who were determined to expose wages and conditions and the political abandoningpolitical demands on the
the wrongsof the political system, to struggle to change society. The history grounds that the “‘masses are not
bring out the people’s lack of rights, of British trade unionism itself shows ready for them”. At bottom, this
to formulate the imterests of the how closely bound up the two are. phenomenon was analogous to the
workers as a citizen. But the revolu- From the very beginnings the unions politics of ‘small deeds’ advocated by
tionary organisation, which hoped to were forced to fight against reac- the Liberal Narodniks. It fitted in
guide (!!) ‘the labour movement tionary laws, to conquer democratic perfectly with the cowardly oppor-
towards Social Democratic ideas, was rights in the teeth of ruling class op- tunism of the ‘Legal Marxists’, who
afraid that it would not be understood position. The fact that the unions themselvesreally represented theleft-
by the working masses ({), that it created the Labour Party, which in wing of bourgeois Liberalism.* —
would lose its influence if it now rais- 1918, underthe direct influence of the Implicit in the ideas of the
ed its own demands for ‘political’ Russian revolution,.inscribed on its Economists was the fear of confron-
rights as the demands of the pro- banner the nationalisation of the
* Incidentally, it also anticipates nearly a
letariat. Was the working class means of production, further century in advanceall the allegedly ‘new’
already well enough educated political- underlines the point made by Marx theories advocated by Professor Hobsbawm
ly to appraise; to recognise its own in- that every economic~ struggle, in and Marxism Today, whichideally should
terests?-Theleaders. were notcertain essence,is'a political struggle. : be re-baptised: “‘Reformism the DayBefore
of this and hesitated to act.”'"’ = In Kremer’s famous pamphlet On Yesterday’. Nothing new under the sun, as
These few lines convey,better than Agitation, the relation between the saying goes...) 5 “
40
ting ‘the tsarist authorities, by movement, The Russian Marxists.had
avoiding political demands and at- a graphic word for this tendency:
tempting to presentthe activity of the ‘khvostism’ (‘tail-ism’). Whereas
Social Democratsas a ‘private affair’ revolutionary Marxism represents the
between workers and employers on the most conscious thinking part of the
labour front, leaving the question of workingclass, ‘Economism’andall the
the state to others. other schools of reformism personify
In reality, the meaning of all the a different and opposite part of its
arguments of the Economists was that anatomy.
the Social Democrats should passive- ‘Economism’ was never a
ly adapt themselves to the narrow homogenousideological trend. At its
limits of legality or semi-legality of- inception, as we have seen, it partly
fered to them by thetsarist state. By reflected a certain resentment of a
confining themselves to economic layer of the younger membersat what
demands they hoped to avoid the they saw as the irksome ideological
wrath of the authorities. In this sense, control of the ‘old timers’. In part, too,
Economism was the mirror image of it flowed from impatience and a
the position adopted by Legal Marx- tendency to regard ‘mass work’ as a
ism. It was tantamount to abandoning panaceaforall the problems facing the
the revolutionary struggle and han- organisation.
ding over the leadership of the move- Yet despite all the problems andset-
mentto theliberals. backs, the new movement was grow:
Such a scheme, however,flew in the ing rapidly. Social Democratic groups
face of the facts. If the Economists sprang up in Tver, Arkhangelsk,
were willing to adopt a ‘hands off’ Nizhny’ Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, membership, meant that much of the
policy inthe revolutionary democratic Kharkov, Kiev, Yekaterinoslav, work had a rather localist and
struggle against tsarism, the tsarist Odessa,Tiflis, Batum, Baku, Warsaw, amateurish character. The
state was by no means prepared to Minsk, Riga and many other impor- ‘Economists’ lack of concern with
standaloof from the struggle between tant centres. For the first time one theory andtheir narrow insistence on
workers and capitalists. Strikeafter could speak of a genuinely all-Russian the practical tasks of mass work and
strike was broken up bypolice and Marxist organisation. agitation was only the otherside of the
Cossacks, Wave after waveof arrests Thesituation in which these groups samecoin.
carried off the most active and con- were forced to function was, however, In order to place the movement
scious sections of the workers’ not conducive to ideological clarity in Russia on firm footing,it was
movement. andorganisational cohesion. Contacts necessary to put an end to this
between them weredifficult, irregular state of affairs. The pressing need
‘Tail-endism’ and constantly being disrupted. Ar- for a united party with a stable
rests frequently led to the disruption leadership and, aboveall, an all-
-According to the report of the of some groups and the emergenceof Russian Marxist newspaper, was
Bolshevik delegation to the 1904 new ones. Under the circumstances the felt by everyone. Only with the
Amsterdam Congress of the Second task of establishing a firm and
International, the average life of a authoritative leadership inside Russia
launching of Lenin’s Iskra did the
Social Democratic group in Russia at proved well-nigh impossible.
unification of the Russian Social
this time was no more than three to Inevitably the local Social ‘Democratic Labour Party become
four months. The constant wave ofar- Democratic groups tended to have a a viable proposition.
rests carried off the older, more somewhatlimited outlook. The Part four of Alan Woods’ series of articles
theoretically trained and experienced absenceof stable links with a national on the history ofBolshevism will deal with
members, who were replaced by raw, centre, the problems created by illegal the history of Iskra, the first all-Russian
half-prepared youth. This fact was‘an conditions and the immaturity andin- Marxist newspaper, up to the Second Con-
important element in the rapid rise of experience of the majority of the gress of the RSDLP.
the Economist current duringthe lat-
ter half of the 90s.
A party which has such a high tur-
nover, and is obliged to replenish its Footnotes. 9. Istoriya KPSS, Volume One, p228.
leadership with a constantinflux ofin- 10. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB
experienced and theoretically un- 1. Quoted in Istoriya KPSS, Volume One, Aksel’roda, p182.
tutored young people inevitably suf- p1s9. 11.Ibid, p208—9.
2. See ‘Slavonic and East European 12. SH Baron, ‘Plekhanov—The Father of
fers from a certain ideological dilution Review’, April 1934, Volume 12, No 34. Russian Marxism’ (Spanish editiion),
and a general loweringof its political 3. Lenin’s ‘Collected Works’, Volume One, p238.
level. Particularly when the majority p333. 13. Ibid.
of these young people are students and 4. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’, 14. Ibid, pp254—5.
intellectuals, the risk of political 29—30. 15, Ibid, p255.
degeneration and the influx of alien 5. KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh ‘16. Quoted in F Dan, ‘The Origins of
ideas becomes magnified a thousand- s’yezdov, konferentsii y plenumovtsk, Bolshevism’, p217.
fold. A revolutionary party which loses pls. 17. VAkimov, ‘On the Dilemmas ofRussian
6. Tetortye KPSS, Volume One, p22, Marxism (1895-1903), p215 (My
its cadres loses its backbone. Losing 7. F Dan ‘The Origins of Bolshevism’, emphasis—A W).
its theoretical ‘magnetic North’,it is p20s5. 18. Quoted in F Dan, ‘The Origins ‘of
inevitably blown off course: Instead of 8.. Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB Bolshevism’, p216.
intervening in the movement of the Aksel’roda, p127. : 19. Ibid, p218 (My mapas VY
class in order to provideit with a con-
scious political direction, such a par-
ty is capable only of tail-ending the
 What is to be done?
AT TEN o'clock in the morning of that the setting up of the party was
March Ist 1898, a group of nine peo- premature.
ple gathered togetherin theflat of the From the very beginning, the task
railwayworker Rumyantsev in the of building a unified workers’ party in
western town of Minsk. The purpose Russia was hamperedby the national
of the gathering was ostensibly the question. Tsarist Russia was—to use
name-day of Rumyantsev’s wife. In Lenin’s celebrated phrase—a veritable
the next room a stove was kept burn- prison-houseof nations. In the period
ing, not because of the cold, but to of rampant reaction following the
burn compromising papers in the assassination of Alexander I, national
event of a police raid. With the close oppression wasintensified. Under the
proximity of a mountedpolice bar- grim surveillance of Pobedonostsev,
racks, and the fact that the nineper- the twin watch-dogsof autocracy—the
sons concerned were the leaders of police and the Orthodox Church—
Social Democratic groups from cracked down on everything which
Moscow, Kiev, Petersburg and smackedof dissent: from independent
Yekaterinoslav, as well as the thinkers like Leo Tolstoy to Polish
Rabochaya Gazeta (‘‘Workers’ Jour- Catholics, Baltic Lutherans, Jews and
nal’) group and the Jewish Social Moslems.
Democratic organisation, the Bund, Marriages consecrated in Catholic
such precautions were clearly churches were not recognised by the
necessary. Underthese conditions, the Russian government. Under Nicholas
first and last congress of the Russian II, the church property of the Arme- authorities organised bloody pogroms
Social Democratic Labour Party took nian Christians was confiscated by the against the Jews; houses were sacked
place on Russian soil under Tsarism. state. The places of worship of the and men, women andchildren killed
For some years the need for a con- Kalmyks and Buryats were closed. and maimed, by lumpen mobsin.con-
gress to formalise the existence of the Forced Russification was accompanied nivance with the police.
party, elect a leadership and unify the by what amounted to compulsory con-
local groups had been evident. From version to the Orthodox faith. The national problem
his prison cell, Lenin had earlier Bernard Pares comments on the
managed to smuggle out a draft pro- state of affairs in Poland: ‘‘Warsaw and the Bund
grammefor the party, painstakingly University had been completely Rus- It was no accident, then, that the 1st
written in milk between thelines of a sianised, and Poles were taught their Congress was held in Minsk. The
book. own literature in Russian; in 1885 Rus- Polish and Western areas were
sian was introduced into primary hotbeds of anti-tsarist revolutionary
The first congress of the schools as the language of teaching; agitation where the two aspects of
RSDLP Polish railway servants were sent to
serve in other parts of the empire; in
social and national oppression combin-
ed to create an explosive atmosphere.
Some progress had already been 1885 Poles wre forbidden to buy land The strike movementof the 90s acted
made. The underground groups had in Lithuania or Volhynia, where they as a focal point for the accumulated
agreed to rename themselves had constituted the majority of the rage, bitterness and hatredof the op-
“Leagues of Struggle for the Eman- gentry.” ' SF ait 4 pressed nationalities, particularly the
cipation of the Working Class” and But the worst aspect of national op- Jews,as we have seen. (MIR No 31,
even to produce an illegal paper with pression was the treatment of the Spring 1986).
the title Rabochaya Dyelo (““Workers’ Jews. The majority of Jews lived in The movement of Jewish workers
Cause’”’). A clandestine committee was Poland and the Western provinces, and artisans led to the setting up of
set up in Kievfor the purposeofprin- which were declared from 1881 to con- the General Jewish Workers’ Union of
ting the journal, the first issue of stitute the only place where Jews were Lithuania, Poland and Russia in 1897,
which appeared in August 1897 allowed to live. Jews were dismissed a year before the first congress of the
(althoughfor reasons of clandestinity, en massefrom all administrative posts Russian party itself. The double
it was dated November). and excluded from mostprofessions in burden which the Jewish workers had
The Kiev organisation was also en- 1886. Only 10 per cent of Jews were to bear, being oppressed as workers
trusted with the arrangementsof the allowed to go to university (5 per cent and as Jews, created exceptionally
congress, since it had escaped the in Moscow andSt Petersburg). From favourable conditions for the spread of
worstof the arrests. Nevertheless, the 1887, the same rule was applied to revolutionary and socialist ideas. “‘A
idea of convening a congress inside secondary schools. In 1888 all Jews in spontaneous movement’’, wrote
Russia under these conditions was receipt of government scholarships Akimov, ‘swept like a strong wind
fraught with difficulties. Certain were registered as Orthodox. Children through the lower depths of Jewish
groups—suchas the “‘young”’ group in were baptised against-the wishes of society, through strata which had
Petersburg, the Odessaand Nikolaev their parents. Jews. who: became Or- seemed. immobile and incapable of
groups, and the Union of Social thodox were given a. divorce with no comprehending or guiding themselves
Democrats Abroad—werenotinvited questions asked. Special taxes were by any conscious idea.”? Precisely
on the groundsof beingsecurity risks. imposed on Synagogues and kosher because of this, the Jewish socialist
The Kharkov group, on.the other meat. As a means of dividing and workers andintellectuals played a role
hand,declined to participate arguing disorienting the workers, the in the Russian revolutionary move-
35
MIR Summer 1986: Bolshevism Part Foyr®]____ iE
ment out of all proportion to their that ‘‘The General Workers’ Union of However, the hopes aroused by the
numbers. Russia and Poland enters the party as congress werenotdestined to be fulfill-
Forthefirst two or three years after an autonomousorganisation, indepen- ed. One of the participants, Tuchap-
its formation, as Zinoviev remarks, the dentonly in those questions especial- sky, recalls in his memoirs: ‘‘Weleft
Bund was ‘‘the strongest and most ly relating to the Jewish proletariat.”’* the Congress with a feeling of cheer-
numerous organisation of our party.”’* This concession to the national pre- ful faith in our cause. Arriving in Kiev
At the time of the 1st congress, the judices of the Bund wasto giverise to I gave a report back to the League and
Bund enjoyed far greater resources a major polemic in the next period, the Workers’ Committee. The con-
and a larger membership than Social whenthe national question occupied a gress resolutions werefully approved.
Democratic groups in the rest of central place in the deliberations of the It looked as if the work would now go
Russia, with fourteen local organisa- Russian Marxists. While implacably forward still better and more suc-
tions (or ““committees’’ as they were opposing the oppression of national cessfully than in the past. But only a
then known) in Warsaw, Lodz, minorities in all its manifestations, and week after my return the Kiev
Belostok, Minsk, Gomel, Grodno, defendingthe rights of oppressed na- organisation was smashed.’’*
Vilna, Dvinsk, Kovno, Vitebsk, tionalities including the right to self- Before the month was out, five out
Mogilev, Berdichev, Zhitomir and determination, Lenin insisted on the of the nine participants had been ar-
Riga. Lesser committees also existed necessity to maintain the unity of the rested, including.one CC member. The
in many other areas, including Kiev, workers’ organisations and fought sole achievement of the CC was to
Odessaand Brest-Litovsk. against any tendency to divide them publish the agreed Manifesto, written
However, the Bund’s organisation on national lines. by Struve, who,.while already moving
was always more akin to a trade union to the right, madea surprisingly good
movement than a revolutionary party. Resolutions of the job of it—his last service to the cause
Even Akimov had to admit that the
political level of its leadership waslow:
congress he was soonto betray.
The First Congress had achieved
“JT regard this as an unquestionable In view of the bloody history of Rus- everythingit was able to achieve. The
shortcoming of the Bund: the Jewish sian tsarism, the maintenance of a party at least existed as a potential,
proletariat lacks theoreticians.’’* In principled position on the national a banner and a Manifesto. But condi-
reality, the bulk of its members were question undoubtedly posed colossal tions in Russia madeit impossible to
not proletarians but artisans andcraft- difficulties. It was a measure of the effect unification of the party on a
smen.The chief authority consisted of degree of mistrust and tension bet- principled basis. All the congress could
a central committee of three elected at weenthe nationalities that the Lithua- do was to point. the way. From 1898
the biennial congress. Atlocal level the nian Social Democrats, after some until 1917, no further congress of the
Bund organised trade union groups hesitation, decided not to attend the party wasto beheld on Russian soil.
(often misleadingly translated as congressof a “‘Russian’”’ party, much The experience had served to
“trade councils’) propaganda commit- to the chagrin of Dzerzhinsky who demonstrate the impossibility, under
tees and committees ofintellectuals, later wrote: ‘‘I was the severest enemy conditions of illegality, to build a
discussion groups and agitation com- of nationalism and considered it the viable political centre inside Russia.
mittees, all of which seem to have func- greatestsin that in 1898, whilst I was Thecentre of gravity of the organisa-
tioned more or less separately. The in prison, the Lithuanian Social tion inevitably passed to the exterior,
trade union groups gathered together Democracy did not enter the united where the forces of revolutionary
5-10 membersof the Bund in a given Russian Social Democratic Labour Marxism, underconditionsof relative
trade. These were appointed by the CC Party.’’® security, could regroup and prepare for
and appear to have met regularly to Similarly, the congress made some the next stage: the translation into
discuss trade union matters. Only concessions to the pressures of the reality of what had been attempted in
after August 1902 did the Bund,under local committees, jealous of their local Minsk in 1898.
the pressure of [skra, set up revolu- autonomy: ‘‘The local committees,” In practical terms, the congress had
tionary committees which grouped saystheresolution, ‘‘will carry out the . changed very little. Trotsky, who had
together the most advanced workers depositions of the CC in the manner heard about it in prison at Kherson,
separate and apart from the trade which they consider most suited to commentedthat‘‘a few monthsafter-
union groups. The whole structure of local conditions. In exceptional cases, wards, no-one talked about the con-
the Bund was organised on a complete- the local committees reserve the right gress anymore.’ After the initial
ly un-Marxist basis, with workers in to refuse to carry out the demands of wave of excitement, the local commit-
trade union groupsshutoff in water- the CC, informingit of the reasons for tees sank backintotheroutineoflocal
tight compartmentsfrom intellectuals the refusal. In all other matters, the work, producing endless leaflets and
who worked autonomously in their local committees will function in a proclamationsin connection with the
own committees. completely independent manner, being strike movement, which continued to
Despite the shortcomings of the guided only by the party pro- spread.
Bund, the Jewish socialist workers and gramme.’’’ The political and theoretical sdines:
artisans played an importantrole in A Central Committee of three was tion of the youth was neglected. With
the early days of the movement. The elected, it was agreed to issue a the most experienced leaders now
fact that the first congress was held manifesto, the Union of Russian Social almost all in gaol, the level of the
in Minsk was a recognitionof thatrole. Democrats Abroad wasrecognised as average memberfell to an extremely
Only the Bund hadthe resources to the party’s representative in the ex- low point. Theideas of ‘‘economism”’
organise such a congress under the terior and Rabochaya Gazeta was became widespreadin the local com-
very noses of the tsarist police. It is named asits official organ. mittees. The. practical consequencesof
a tribute to their organisational skills All this might seem quite a modest this were seén asearly as May Day
that the congress successfully com- balance. Yet the symbolic importance 1899, when:the “young” group in
pleted its course in six sessions which of the congress was far greater than Petersburg putouta leaflet calling for
took place over. three days.. its actual content. The news that.the a ten-hour workingday,in contrast to
Asno minutes were taken,practical- first congress had actually met caus- the internationally accepted slogan of
ly all that is known of the proceedings ed a waveof excited anticipation:The the eight-hour day, an action which
is contained in the resolutions. Under ice had been broken. The aihen at was denounced in the first. issue of
the pressure of the Bund,it was agreed last come into its own! _. Zarya as ‘‘a.betrayal of international
36
Social Democracy”’., , wasafraid of a split with the youth meetings. Lenin, while working on his
Everywhere the slogan wasraised of which would cut their links with monumental Development. of
‘freedom of criticism,’’ as a guise Russia and lay themselves open to the Capitalism in Russia, keenly followed
under which to smugglealien and revi- accusation that they were undermin- the polemics of Plekhanov against
sionist ideas into the party. With the ing the work of the comradesin thein- Bernstein. Newsof thecrisis in the
majority of the leaders in Siberian ex- terior. The apparentlack of a point of Union, and the resignation of
ile, only the exile Group for the Eman- support within Russia was a serious Plekhanov cameas a painful blow: The
cipation of Labour remained to con- problem for Plekhanov and his victory of the Economist trend caus-
duct a struggle against the Economist colleagues. ed consternation among the exiles.
trend. . But by early 1899, Plekhanov could Lenin began to write a series of
But the little circle around hold back no longer. The last straw polemics, such as Our Immediate
Plekhanov found itself increasingly was when Bernstein boasted that the Task, A Retrograde Trend in Russian
beleagured onall sides. Short of funds, majority of Russian Social Democrats Social Democracy and Aproposof the
and heavily dependent upon the were closer to his ideas than to ‘Profession de Foi’! ' in which the ideas
“‘youngsters’’ in the Union of Russian Plekhanov’s. The “legal Marxists’’ of Economism are subjected to mer-
SDsfor contact with Russia, the group Struve, Bulgakov and Berdayev also ciless criticism.
wasnowinseriousdifficulties. Theef- publicly lined up behindtherevisionist
fect of the strains upon the morale and
nerves of its members began to show,
tendency. Most alarmingly ofall, from
December 1898, the Economist
Protest of the exiles
with increasingly tense relations bet- “youth”? dominated the Petersburg An event which enraged the exiles
ween Plekhanov and Axelrod. By Social Democrats. Realising that the was the appearance of the notorious
April 1898, there were clear signs of formerly amorphous trend of Credo written by Kuskova early in
demoralisation, with Axelrod asking Economism now represented a 1899. The author of the document
himself whether the group had any specifically Russian variant of Berns- herself always protested that it was
reason to exist and Vera Zasulich, tein’s revisionism, Plekhanov set to not meant for publication. However
alleging illness, talking about dropp- work on a major counterblast, the that may be there is no doubt that the
ing out of activity. famous Vademecumfor the Editors of. Credo has the merit of expressing in
Rabocheye Dyelo, which appeared in a particularly clear way the fundamen-
Crisis in the exterior 1900. True to form, Plekhanov threw tal ideas of Economism. Lenin drafted
himself into the struggle, regardless of the famous Protest of the Russian
The isolation of the Group was whether it would cause a split. His Social Democrats'* by way of reply
underlined at the first congress of the new-found confidence received a and convened a meeting of 17 exiles
Union of SDs Abroad in November powerful impulseas a result of events which met in the Siberian village of
1898, when it became clear that the taking place thousandsof miles away, Yermakovskoe late in the summerof
veterans were in a minority. In view in Siberia. 1899. The meeting unanimously
of the now sharp differences of opinion From the depths of the Siberian adopted Lenin’s text which was sent
within the Union, they had no choice wilderness, Lenin and the other Social abroad where it was published by
but to resign from their editorial posi- Democratic exiles followed with alarm Plekhanov.
tions. It was decided to wind up Rabot- the unfolding of events. Paradoxical- The words of the Credoitself could
nik, and start publication of a new ly, it was relatively easy for them to have comestraight out of the pages of
journal, Rabocheye Dyelo, in line with maintain at least a certain level of Marxism Today. It is worth quoting
.the decision of the Minsk congress. political activity. The era of Stalin’s the relevant passagesin full:
The new editors, Krichevsky, Ivashin and Hitler’s concentration camps had “The change(in the party—AW) will
and Teplova cautiously leaned to the not yet dawned. The treatment of not only be towards a more energetic
“Economist” position, the most ex-
treme expression of which was the
journal Rabochaya Mysl (‘‘Workers’ The words of the notorious Credo could WS come straight
Thought’’), represented in the Union out of the pages of Marxism Today: ‘Intolerant Marxism,
by SN Prokopovich and his wife YD negative Marxism, primitive Marxism, whose conception of
Kuskova. the class division of society is too schematic, will give way
This was the blackest momentin the
life of the Emancipation of Labour to democratic Marxism. . . struggling to reform society.’
Group. Particularly serious was the
row between Axelrod and Plekhanov political exiles varied considerably, prosecution of the economic struggle
which now cameto a head. Axelrod from extreme harshnessto relatively and consolidation of the economic
had reason for complaint. For years, “iberal’’ conditions. But in the main, organisations, but also, and more im-
he had had to carry the burdenof the the tsarist authorities were content to portantly, towards a change in the par-
work with the Union, taking the brunt rely upon the vast distances which ty’s attitude to other opposition par-
of the attacks of the ‘‘youth’’, while separated the urbancentres from the ties. Intolerant Marxism, negative
Plekhanov was absorbed in literary isolated settlements on the banks of Marxism,primitive Marxism (whose
work, and of late had neglected even the Yeniseyriver as sufficient defence conception of the class division of
that. against the spread of revolutionary society is too schematic) will give way
For a long time Plekhanov ignored ideas. Political prisoners were not to democratic Marxism,andthesocial
Axelrod’s pleas to intervene against generally locked up. There was no need position of the party within the
the new trend. The reasonsforhis at- for it. They were kept under modern society must undergo a sharp
titude were probably varied:partly, he surveillance by local officials whose change. The party will recognise socie-
was tied up with the struggle against zealousnessin the pursuit of duty was ty: its narrow corporative and, in the
Bernstein, and begrudged the time and often conspicuousbyits absence. majority of cases, sectarian tasks will
effort in getting involved in what ‘Asa result, the exiled revolu- be transformed into social tasks, and
seemed like pettifogging squabbles. tionaries could follow events with its striving to seize power will be
Partly he underestimatedthe danger, relative ease, receiving books and transformed into a striving for change,
attributingit to a transient phase and newspapers, conducting cor- a striving to reform present daysocie-
youthful fads. Most probably of all he respondence, and even holdingillegal ty on democratic lines adapted tothe
37
 present state of affairs, with the ob-
ject of protecting the rights(all rights)
of the labouring classes in the mostef-
fective and fullest way’’.'*> (My
emphasis—AW). —_.
“The talk about. an independent
workers’ political party merely results
from the transplantation of alien aims
and alien achievements to our
soil... For the Russian Marxist there
is only one course: participationin, ie.
assistanceto, the economic struggle of
the proletariat, and participation in
liberal opposition activity’’.
Thelogic of the Credo could not be
clearer: the working class should not
strive to create its own revolutionary
party, but should confine itself to
“practical” trade union work andleave
the political task of reforming the pre-
sent system to the bourgeoisliberals. .
Lenin’s polemical writings against Vera Zasulich. Right, the front page of /skra
the Economists, beginning with the no 4, carrying Lenin's article, Where to
Protest are a classical re-statement of begin?, 1901.
the basic ideas of Marx and Engels on
the question of the proletariat andits
party. The proletariat only gradually tionary Marxist trend, which based Democratic groups in different parts
beginsto realise its historical poten- itself upon the workingclass and link- of European Russia, where Lenin and
tial, become a real force as opposed to ed the perspective of a revolutionary his co-thinkers were agreeably surpris-
- a mere undeveloped potential, to the overthrow of tsarism to the struggle ed by the favourable reception of their
degree to whichit organises asa class, for the hegemony of the working class ideas by a significant section of the
independentof other classes. — in the camp of revolutionary rank andfile. Even Struve and Tugan-
The history of the workers’ move- democracy, implacably opposingall at- Baranovsky, when approached,
ment begins with the unions, the basic tempts to subordinateit to the liberals assured the ‘“‘troika”’ of their support
organisation of the class which were and ‘‘progressive” bourgeois: the se- for the venture,insisting that they still
“not only a natural, but also an essen- cond, a reformist current which, whilst considered themselves Marxists. In
tial phenomenon under capitalism paying lip-service to Marxism,effec- view of the fact that the ““Legal Marx-
and. ..an extremely important means tively preached thepolicy of class col- ists” were willing to put up the
for organising the workingclassin its laboration and subservience to the necessary cash to finance the publica-
daily struggle against capital and for Liberals. This, in essence, was the tion, Lenin readily accepted their
the abolition of wage labour.’’'* But basis of the disagreement between collaboration.
once established,the trade unions can- Marxists and Economists. In different By the summerof 1900, everything
not confine theirsphereofactivity to guises, the same struggle re-occurred was ready for direct contact to be
economic demands, but inevitably many timesin the history of the Rus- established with Plekhanov’s group.
tend to moveinto the political plane. sian revolutionary movement, and With high hopes, Lenin left for
Here what is involved is not the with other names—althoughbasically Switzerland in July. Lenin’s high
sporadic struggles of individual the same argument—continues to the spirits did not last long. After the bit-
groups of workers against their present day. ter experienceof the split in the Union,
employers, but the struggle of the pro- Plekhanov’s nerves were on edge. He
letariat as a whole against the The new turn was sullen, resentful and extremely
bourgeoisie as a class, and its state. Of suspicious of the newcomers.
necessity, the proletariat and its par- The entry into the struggle of the ex- The discussions between Plekhanov,
ty enters into contact with other iled Russian leaders tipped the balance Axelrod and Zasulich on the one side
classes, the peasantry and the middle . decisively in favour of Plekhanov.Still andLenin and Potresov on the other
class, and has to establish working in Siberia, Lenin formed the ‘‘troika’”’ unfolded in an extremely tense at-
relations with other groups, but it does or ‘‘triple alliance’’ with Martov and mosphere. Lenin and Potresov were
so from the standpointof its indepen- Potresov which,on his insistance, took shocked byPlekhanov’s intolerant and
dent interest as a class. Indeed,its role steps to link up with the Emancipation abrasive manner. At times, the
is to place itself at the head of all other of Labour Group. His fundamental negotiations appeared to be near to a
oppressed and exploited layers to idea was to re-build the party around breakdown. In ‘‘How the ‘Spark’ was
carry out a fundamental transforma- a genuine Marxist newspaper. Such a nearly extinguished’’—,, an article
tion of society. ‘“‘Only an independent venture was clearly only possible if written shortly after Lenin’s return
working-class party’’, wrote Lenin, they joined Plekhanov in European with the recent eventsstill vivid in his
“‘ean serve as a strong bulwarkin the. exile. : mind—Lenin expresses.the painful im-
fight against the autocracy, and only ‘Having served out his term ofexile, pression of Plekhanov’s behaviour on
in alliance with such a party, only by in early 1900, Lenin travelledillegally him: “My ‘infatuation’ with Plekhanov
supportingit, can all the other fighters to St. Petersburg where he metVera disappeared asif by magic, and felt
for political liberty play an effective Zasulich, who had been sent to offended and embittered to an
7715
establish contacts with the interior. unbelievable degree. Never, neverin
_. Thus,at the very earliest beginnings The following months were taken up my life had I regarded any other man
of the movement in Russia, the by preparationsfor the publication of with such sincere respect and venera-
dividing line was clearly drawn bet- the new journal Iskra (‘“‘The Spark’’), tion, neverhad I stood before any man
ween twotrends; the first, a revolu- involving a series of visits to Social so ‘humbly’ and never before had I
38
been so brutally ‘kicked.’”’ ed by their short-sighted perspectives;
In Plekhanov’s defence, he had had nevertheless, he was.always on guard
a series of bad experiences with against any theoretical heresy in
younger comrades coming fromthein- socialist literature. . . This violation of
terior, and wasstill smarting from the the unity between theory andpractice,
“coup” of the ‘‘youth” in the Union fruit of the global destiny of
Abroad. On the other hand, in their Plekhanov,wasto be his downfall. He
anxiety to recuperate the maximum ‘proved to be unprepared for great
forces of the movement in Russia, political events, in spite of his enor-
Lenin and the others had made a mouspolitical preparation.’’'’
number of concessions to Struve, in- The meeting with Lenin and
cluding the statementin the original Potresov revealed just how much the
draft declaration that Iskra would be members of the Emancipation of
open to different political tendencies. Labour Group were lagging behind the
This mistake was seized upon by demandsof the present stage of the
Plekhanov, who vented his ac- movement. The informal methods, the
cumulated rage on the astonished organisational looseness, the mixing
newcomers. Morethan the political dif- up of personal questionswithpolitical
ferences, however, Plekhanov’s issues which are the hallmarks of the
unreasonable behaviour reflected the life of a small propaganda circle
psychological pressures of long years becomeintolerable obstacles once the
of exile which had begunto colourhis organisation of a mass party and
outlook. serious intervention in the mass move-
ment are on the order of the day.
Plekhanov's strengths Thanks mainly to Lenin’s great
and weaknesses patience—andalso to thefact that the
consequencesof a split were clear to need to add that we stand for the con-
This incident casts a significant everyone—a break was avoided. But sistent development of the ideas of
light on the state of affairs within the although reasonably good working Marx and Engels and emphatically re-
Emancipation of Labour Group. The relations were quickly restored, the ject the equivocating, vague and op-
long period of isolation from the deeper causes of the conflict remain- portunist ‘corrections’ for which Ed-
workers’ movement in Russia had ed unresolved and were destined to re- ward Bernstein, P Struve and many
taken their toll. Manyyearslater, in emerge with redoubled force in the others haveset the fashion.” ? °(my em-
1922, when the October Revolution future. phasis, AW)
was already five years old, and The compromise which was even-
Plekhanov had been dead for four, tually reached between the two sides The birth of /skra
Trotsky expressed both the strong and meant that Iskra would have an
weak sides of the old man in thefollow- editorial board of six, consisting of the The explicit denunciation of ‘‘legal
ing words: ‘‘Plekhanov spoke as an ‘‘troika’’—Lenin, Martov and Marxism’’, mentioning its most promi-
observer andcritic, as a publicist but Potresov and the Emancipation of nent representative by name, was a tur-
not as a leader. All his destiny denied Labour Group—Plekhanov, Axelrod ning point. Even so, Struve did not im-
him the opportunity to address and Zasulich, with Plekhanov having mediately effect an open break with
himself directly to the masses,to raise two votes. Control of the theoretical Marxism,and even contributed one or
them to action and to guide them. His journal, Zarya (““The Dawn’’) would be twoarticles to the first issues of the
weak points derived from the same effectively in Plekhanov’s hands. paper. However,the first encounter of
source from whence camehis principal The declaration of the Iskra Struve with Lenin in exile towards the
merits: he had beena pioneer,the first Editorial Board ‘3 was published in end of 1900 led to an open confronta-
crusader of Marxism on Russian September, It reads like a declaration tion. Struve’s arrogant demandsfor an
soil: . .he was not the leaderof the ac- of war on. all other tendencies in the increased sayin the editorial line of the
tive proletariat, but simply its Russian workers’ movement. Unlike paper gave the game away. Ineffect,
theoretical herald; he polemically the original draft drawn up by the the relationship between the Marxists
defended the methodsof Marxism, but “troika”, it denounces by namenoton- and the Left Liberal trend which went
he had ‘no opportunity to apply them ly Bernstein and Rabochaya Mysl but by the nameof “Legal Marxism’’, as
in practice. Althoughhelived several also Rabochaya Dyelo and Struve Lenin later explained; was thefirst ex-
decades in Switzerland, he was always (Plekhanov was particularly insistent ample of an episodic agreement bet-
a Russian exile. The opportunist on this). Lenin’s initial draft!9, was ween the Russian Marxists and
socialism of the Swiss municipalities written in a generally more con- anotherpolitical trend. Without mak-
and cantons with its extremely low ciliatory vein. The corrected version ing any principled concessions, and
theoretical level scarcely aroused his has a more implacable tone: | maintaining an implacablecriticism of
interest. The Russian party did not ex- “Before we can unite, and in order that the political deviations of the ‘‘Legal
ist and for Plekhanovits place was oc- we may unite, we mustfirstof all draw Marxists”, Lenin was prepared to
cupied by the Emancipation of Labour firm anddefinite lines of demarcation. enter into practical agreement with
Group, which was closed circle of Otherwise, our unity will be purely fic- them for the sake of advancing the
sympathisers (Plekhanov, Axelrod, ticious, it will conceal the prevailing workin Russia, outwitting the police
Zasulich and Deutsch, whocarried on confusion, and hinder its radical and censorand reaching a broader au-
an ardous task). The more hetried to elimination. It is understandable, dience than would havebeen possible
strengthen the theoretical and therefore, that we do not intend to with the narrow limitations of. illegal
philosophical roots ofhis position, the make our publication a mere work.
poorer seemedhis political roots. As- storehouse of various views. On the To be realistic, there was ananderly-
an observer of the European Labour contrary, we shall conduct it in the ing contradiction from the beginning.
movement, he overlookedthe mostcol- spirit of a strictly defined tendency. The two trends werefundamentally in-
ossal political manifestations of the This tendency can be expressed by the compatible, and, ultimately,.the con-
commarsdly socialist parties, eompromis- word Marxism, and there is hardly tradiction would have to be overcome
39.
MIR Summer 1986: Bolshevism Part E{ETE
IE EE ET

‘by the triumphofone over the other. the layer of semi-liberal intellectual pick.out thetell-tale cases, which hap-
Atone stageit almost lookedasif the fellow travellers like Struve, even penedto be all the same style! After
supporters of Economism andrevi- when, after 1902, their transition to that, they began to use ordinary suit-
sionism had won. The Russian the campof bourgeois liberalism was cases, with 100-150 copies of the paper
workers’ movement would thus have clear to all. Yet it had been Plekhanov hidden undera false bottom of strong
found itself tied hand and foot to the who demanded that Lenin insert a cardboard. But the demandfor Iskra
chariot of Liberalism. And the agen- public attack on Struvein the editorial continually outstripped supplies. New
cy through whichthis political subor- statement! This incident, too, shows methods had to be found. Between 200
dination would have been effected was the differences in the whole style and and 300 copies could be carried in
none other than “Legal Marxism’’. personality of the two men. Zasulich specially stitched waistcoats and
The launching of Iskra, with its un- once expressed it graphically in the skirts. Even so, these methods had to
compromising stance on Economism following terms: ‘‘George (Plekhanov) be supplemented by the establishment
and revisionism and its implacable is a greyhound: he shakeshis victim of underground printshops inside
defence of class independence and by the scruff of the neck and in the end Russia, which printed Iskra from the
criticism of the Liberals completely lets him go; you (Lenin) are a bulldog: lay out sheets smuggled in from
transformed thesituation. Now Struve you don’t let go.”’ ;,. abroad. Printshops of this sort were
andhisallies found themselves on the eventually set up in Moscow, Odessa
defensive. Yet Struvestill attempted A workers’ newspaper and Baku.
to use his name and influence to The endless details involved in such
dominate the new journal, to push and Plekhanov and Alexrod wanted the work absorbed a colossal amount of
prod it into a rotten compromise with paper to be published in Switzerland, time and energy. It also took a lot of
the old, discredited ideas. where they could keep an eye onit. money, which was raised from sym-
Struve’s complaint that Lenin was Lenin, Martov and Potresov were pathisers by Iskra agents in Berlin,
trying to ‘“‘use’’ him could hardly cut determined to publish elsewhere, and Paris, Switzerland and Belgium who
any ice when in the previous period moved to Munich.In pointof fact, the constantly sought funds and travellers
Struve himself had cynically used his members of the Emancipation of prepared to carry literature, contacts,
considerable influence with the weak Labour Groupdid notfully grasp the safe addresses and so on.
and immatureforces of Russian Social significance of Iskra as a means of Iskra was so successful becauseit
Democracyto water down anddistort organising the party. They centred fulfilled a number of needs. As a
its fundamental ideas and turn it into their attention on Zarya, which was workers’ newspaper it was a model.
a mere appendageofliberalism. published legally in Stuttgart between Here, simply expressed in a language
Contrary to the impression created April 1901 (March-new style) and which, without any trace of condescen-
by bourgeois historians, there was: August 1902, when a total of four sion, could be understood by anyin-
nothing baseor disloyal about Lenin’s numbers, published in three issues, telligent worker, was the theoretical
attitude to political opponents like came out. The only member of the answerto the ideas of the Economists
Struve. Suchpractical agreements as Emancipation of Labour Group who and their allies. After the years of
were reached werefreely entered into was keen to participate in Iskra was ideological confusion, the reaction of
by bothsides,and both sides had their Vera Zasulich, who travelled to the socialist workers inside Russia to
eyes open. As a matter of fact, Lenin Munich on a false Bulgarian passport. the new journal must havebeenlike
had come undersevere criticism by The bulk of the work of organising that of. Aristotle when he likened the
Plekhanov whoconsidered that he had
made too manyconcessions to Struve.
This was entirelyiin Lenin’s character. Iskra was so sucessful becauseit fulfilled a number
Ever implacablé on questions of of needs. As a workers newspaper it. was a
political principle, he was always ex-
tremely flexible on organisational model. ..a collective propagandist, agitator and
questionsandin his dealings with peo- ol cere Taal
ple. Lenin knew how to value people
with talent. Whatever their shortcom-
ings, he endeavoured with admirable the journal fell to Lenin. His wife, philospher Anaxagoras to ‘“‘a sober
patience to makeuseof their abilities Nadezhda Krupskaya played an in- man among drunkards.”
to build the movement. ‘Vladimir I]- valuable role handling the extensive Alongside the systematic exposure
yich”, wrote Krupskaya,‘‘was always correspondence with Russia which of the crimes of tsarism at home came
being enthusiastic over somebody or reached them indirectly, via the ad- detailed explanation of foreign policy,
other. On detecting in a person some dresses of German comrades, whofor- laying bare the intricacies and
valuable trait he would fairly pounce warded them to Krupskaya. manoeuvres of bourgeois diplomacy.
on him’. ,,. That was one of the The task of organising an illegal Thelife of the international workers’
strongest points of this great transportation network was full of dif- movement was closely followed. But
organiser of men and women. ficulties. According to Osip Pyatnit- aboveall Iskra was a paper whichac-
But there was also anotherside. sky, (“‘Freitag’’), who was later made curately reflected the life, the strug-
Once Lenin had made his mind up that ‘responsible for this work, the transpor- gles and the aspirations of the work-
someonewas an irreconcilable enemy tation of Iskra from Berlin to Riga, ing class. In every issue a large
of the ideas of Marxism, he did not Vilna and Petersburg took several amountof space was taken up by quite
hesistate to draw all the necessary con- months. Nor was the work free from short reports from the factories and
clusions and wage relentlesspolitical blunders of all sorts. In his workers’ districts, painstakingly. col-
struggle against them. In this, Lenin’s autobiography, ,; Pyatnitsky relates lected by Iskra agents inside Russia.
approach wasin stark contrast to the how they would utilise the services of and smuggled out by clandestine.
members of the Emancipation. of Russian students to carry literature in means. In this way, often with a delay-
Labour. Group. false-bottomedcases, These cases were _ of months, the workers. of. different.
~The members of the old group, manufactured by a small factory in parts of Russialearned about. the
especially Zasulich and Axelrod, could Berlin. A large order was placed for the struggles oftheir brothersandsisters
not bring themselves to burn the product. But the frontier guards soon in other parts of the country and:
bridges that still connected them to got wind of the trick. They learnt to abroad. Small wonder that the paper
40
was. an instant success in theinterior. Whilst correctly polemicising against man philosophy, English classical
The number of local party “‘commit- the Economists’ slavish worship of political economy and French
tees’’ adhering to the new journal “spontaneity”, Lenin allowed himself socialism. However,it is not true that
rapidly increased, opening up daily to fall into the error of exaggerating the proletariat,if left to itself, is only
new possibilities but also imposing a correct idea and'turning it into its op- capable of rising to the level of trade
severe burdensonthestill inadequate posite. In particular; he asserts that union consciousness(ie the struggle
apparatus at the disposal of theexile socialist consciousness ‘“‘would have to for economic betterment within the
centre. be brought to them (the workers) from confines of capitalism).
A revolutionary Marxist partyis, without. The history of all countries Over a decade before the Communist
first and foremost, ideas, methods, shows that the working class, ex- Manifesto saw the light of day, the
programmeandtradition, and only in clusively by its own effort, is able to British working class, through the
the second place an organisation for develop only trade union con- medium of Chartism—which Lenin
the purpose of carrying these ideas to sciousness,ie the conviction thatit is himself described as the first mass
the widest possible layers of the necessary to combinein unions,fight revolutionary workers’ party in the
population. But. without a strong the employers, and strive to compel world—had already gone far beyond
disciplined and efficient organisation, the government to pass necessary the boundsof a mere trade union con-
the best ideas in the world will never labour legislation, etc.” ,,. sciousness, passing from the idea of
succeed. This one-sided and erroneous presen- partial reforms and petitions to the
tationof the relationship of the work- idea of a general strike (‘‘the grand na-
What Is To Be Done tional holiday”’) and even armed insur-
rection (the “physical force’ men, the’
Lenin’s writings on organisation
produced at this time are masterpieces
Uo apaath? Newport uprising). Likewise, the work-
ing men and womenofParis actually
in their own right. The idea of the HaCorksmie poupocs: mamero zummenia
succeeded—without the presence of a
paper as a collective organiser is conscious Marxist party at their
brilliantly set forth in such works as H JEHHHA
head—in taking power,if only for a few
Where to Begin ,,, Letter to a months in 1871. Let us recall that
Comrade ,, and What Is To Be Done? Marx himself learned from the ex-
2¢- In the first named of these works, perience of the Paris Commune,from
the kernel of Lenin’s ideas is already which he extracted his idea of a
clear: workers’ democracy(‘‘dictatorship of
“The role of a newspaper, however, the proletariat’). In the same way, the
is not limited solely to the dissemina- idea of Soviets was not the invention
tion of ideas, to political education, of Lenin or Trotsky, but the spon-
andto the enlistmentofpolitical allies. taneous creation of the Russian pro-
A newspaperis not only a collective letariat during the 1905 revolution.
propagandist and collective agitator,
it is also a collective organiser... With Verieg ven J. H.W. Dieta Necdf. (G. m.b. H.)
sea
Importance of the
the aid of the newspaper, and through
it, a permanent organisation will
subjective factor
naturally take shapethatwill engage, Cover of Whatis to be done?, 1902. In the summerof 1936, the workers
not only in local activities, but in ing class and.socialist consciousness of Catalonia, once again without the
regular general work, andwill train its was not an original invention of Lenin, benefit of a Marxist leadership, smash-
members to follow political works but.was borrowed directly from Kaut- ed the fascist army and,effectively,
carefully, appraise their significance sky, whom he regarded at that time as had powerin their hands. If they did
andtheir effects on the various strata the main defender of orthodox Marx- not succeed in organising a workers’
of the population and developeffective ism against Bernstein. Indeed, Lenin state and consolidating their hold on
means for the revolutionary party to quotes approvingly the words of Kaut- power, spreading the revolution to the
influence those events.. The mere sky that:“The vehicle of science is not rest of Spain, that was nottheir fault
technical task of regularly supplying the proletariat, but the bourgeois in- but the responsiblity of the anarchist
the newspaper with copy and of pro- telligentsia (KK’sitalics): it was in the and syndicalist leaders of the CNT-
moting regular distribution will mindsof individual membersof this FAI and the POUM. The workers
necessitate a networkof local agents stratum that modern socialism leaders by refusing to finish off the
of the united party, whowill maintain originated, and it was they who com- remnants of the bourgeois state and
constant contact with one another, municated it to the more intellectual- organise a new workers’ state power
know the general state of affairs, get ly developed proletarians, who,in their on the basis of democratically elected
accustomed to performing regularly turn, introduce it into the proletarian soviets of factory and militia deputies,
their detailed functions in the All- class struggle where conditions allow signed the death knell of the Spanish
Russian work, and test their strength that to be done. Thus, socialist con- revolution. In any event, what happen-
in the organisation of various revolu- sciousness is something introduced in- ed in Catalonia and other parts of
tionary actions.” ;,. Ew sat to the proletarian class struggle from Spain in 1936 was far beyond ‘‘trade
There is possibly no other work in without (von Aussen’ Hine- union consciousness”. The same can
the history. of Marxist ideas which has ingetragenes) and not something that be said of France 1968, Hungary 1956,
been so ill-served as Lenin’s What Is- ’ arose within it spontaneously (ur- Poland 1980, South Africa at the pre-
To Be Done? Written between late wiichsig).” ,, (my emphasis, AW). sent time, and any case where the
1901 andearly 1902, this work was in- Here the one-sidedness of Kautsky’s working class attempts to begin to
tended as:a final settling of accounts ‘formulation stands outin all its crudi- take its destiny into its ownhands.
with the Economists, and therefore ty. It it true that Marxist theory, the Does this mean that Marxists deny
has an extremely polemical slant highest expression of socialist con- the importance of leadership and the
throughout. Undoubtedly, there is a © sciousness was not thrown up by the ‘subjective factor? On the contrary.
rich seam of ideas presentin this work, working class, but is the product of the The whole history of the world work-
which is, however, seriously flawed by best -that has been achieved by ing class movement shows that the
a most unfortunate theoretical lapse. bourgeois thought, in the form of Ger- proletariat needs a revolutionary par-
Al
 MIR Summer 1986: Bolshevism Part Fror Eo
ty and leadership in order to take imagine—to a simple questionof‘‘con- extreme. To straighten matters out
power. Such a party and leadership sciousness from outside’’ or “orders somebody had to pull in the other
cannot be created by “‘spontaneous from the top’’. The workingclass is not direction—and that is what I have
combustion’’. It cannot be thrown up a blank slate upon which you can write done.” ;,. (my emphasis, AW). In his
by events or improvised when the need anything youlike, or a water tap which biography of Stalin, Trotsky com-
arises, but has to be prepared can be turned on andoffat will. ments on these words: ‘‘The author of
painstakingly in advance. Ideas do not drop from theclouds, What To Do? himself subsequently
The question of the revolutionary but are formed on the basis of ex- acknowledgedthe biased nature, and
leadership and the consciousness of perience. In the course of its ex- therewith the erroneousness, of his
the class, however, are two separate perience, the proletariat inevitably theory, which he had parenthetically
things. Time andtime again the work- draws certain general conclusions interjected as a battery in the battle
ing class has provenin action that it aboutits role in society. Undercertain against ‘Economism’ andits deference
tends to move towards power. The conditions, in the turmoil of great to the elemental nature of the labour
Spanish proletariat, as Trotsky ex- events, the learning process can be movement.” 3'.
plained, was capable of making ten enormously speeded up. But even in In spite of this defect, What Is To
revolutions. The sameis true, at the “normal” periods of capitalist develop- Be Done? was a major landmarkin the
momentofwriting, of the magnificent ment, the old mole of history continues history of Russian Marxism. Init,
black proletariat of South Africa. to burrow deep in the consciousnessof Lenin conclusively demonstrated the
In the present epoch more than at the proletariat. | need for organisation, the need for pro-
any other time, the problem of con- fessional revolutionaries whose main
sciousness arises, not in the working ‘Life itself teaches’ concern would be the building of the
class; but aboveall in its leadership party, the need for a genuine massall-
which dragspitifvily at the shirt-tails At decisive moments, events can Russian workers’ party. This great
of history. Every time the masses burst over the head of the working historical task could not accomplish-
cometo revolutionary conclusions, they class before the latter has had time to ed “‘spontaneously’”’ but only by the
are faced with the most monstrous draw all the necessary conclusions. organised intervention of the forces of
obstacles in the form of the very Therole of the advanced guard is not Marxism.In order for the proletariat
organisations and leaderships which at all to ‘‘teach the workers to suck to take power, it must be organised.
’ were historically formed to effect the eggs,”’ but to makeconscious the un- Failure to achieve this task would
socialist transformation of society. consciouswill of the working class to mean, as Trotsky explained, that the
Though we live in the midst of an transform society. In this idea thereis potential force of the working class
organic crisis of capitalism no-one no hint of mysticism. Life itself would be uselessly dissipated, like
would guess such a thing from the teaches, as Lenin was fond of steam whichis dispersed in theair,in-
writings and speeches of the leaders repeating. From a lifetime’s experience stead of being concentrated by a
and “theoreticians” of the Socialist of exploitation and oppression, the piston-box.
and ‘‘Communist”’ parties, trade union working class, beginning with the ac- The essential idea which runs
leaders or sectarian deadbeats. Yet tive layers which lead the class, ac- through What Is To Be Done?—is the
they regard themselvesas ‘‘educated’’ quires a socialist consciousness. That need to train worker cadres, not just
people who graciously condescend to is precisely the basis of the historical class conscioustrade union militants,
lead the “ignorant” workers. process whichled to the birth of the but workers with a clear grasp of the
The idea of the workers as putty in trade unions and the mightyparties of ideas. of Marxism:
the handsofintellectuals who “‘bring the Second and Third Internationals. ‘“Without revolutionary theory there
consciousness from without’’ has The elements of a socialist con- can be no revolutionary movement.
nothing to do with the theories of sciousness and the idea of a radical This idea cannot be insisted upon too
Lenin. It is the psychological hall- transformation of the social order are strongly at a time when the
‘markof reformist and more particular- present in the rule books andconstitu- fashionable preaching of opportunism
ly Stalinist bureaucrats who havelost tions of countless unions, bearing goes handin handwith an infatuation
- all confidence in the working class and mute testimony to the underlying for the narrowest formsofpolitical ac-
who,deepin their hearts, nurse a pro- desire for change. Theclass struggle tivity.” °>?. (My emphasis— AW).
found and overweening contempt for itself inevitably creates not only a WhatLenin was driving at here was
ordinary people. To these haughty mis- class consciousness, but a socialist not at all a belittling of the capacity
leaders of the masses can be added as consciousness.It is the duty of Marx- of the workers to understand but quite
a footnote the ignorant sectarian in- ists to bring out whatis alreadythere, the opposite. His main concern was to
tellectuals, generals without an army, to give a conscious expression to what combatthe petit-bourgeois prejudice
who preen themselves as ‘“‘theoreti- is present in an unconscious or semi- that ‘“‘workers cannot understand
cians” andtreatlikelittle children the conscious form. theory” and that the party literature
few workers they very occasionally Those who mechanically repeat the must confine itself to economic
happen across.* error of What Is To Be Done? nearly slogans and immediate demands. On
In reality, the relationship between acentury later do so withoutrealising the contrary, Lenin insisted that “‘it is
the Marxists and the most advanced that Lenin himself later admitted that necessary that the workers do not con-
workers active in the unions, shop this incorrect formulation was merely fine themselves to the artificially
stewards committees and mass par- a polemical exaggeration. When,at the restricted: limits of ‘literature for
ties, and beyond them,thepolitically Second Congress of the RSDLP,an at- workers’ but that they learn to an in-
inactive mass, is an extremely com- tempt was madeto use this against ‘creasing degree to master general
plicated equation, which cannot be him, Lenin replied: ‘‘Weall now know literature. It would be even truer to
reduced—as the ~ bureaucrats that the ‘Economists’ have gone to one say ‘are not confined’, instead of ‘do
not confine themselves’ because the
* Not accidentally, these young ladies and assistance ofthe intelligentsia they—the ten workers themselves. wish to read and
gents were to be found distributing million workers who had just brought the
do read all that is written for the in-
unintelligible leaflets outside the factories country to astandstill, directly challenging
the capitalist state—couldaspire to nothing telligentsia, and only a few (bad) in-
occupied by ten million Frenchworkers in
May 1968, quoting from What Is To Be ‘greater in life than...a trade union tellectuals:believe that it is enough ‘for
Done? and explaining to the benighted consciousness! workers’ to be told a few things about
masses that without the generous factory. conditions and to have
42
 repeated to them over and over again the government. A section of the
what has long been known.” °°. government, represented by the
Starting from the immediate pro- Finance Minister, Witte, attempted to
blemsof the workingclass,fighting for lean on the Zemstvosfor support. Ear-
all kinds of partial demands, it is ly in 1901, Witte wrote a confidential
necessary to go beyondthe particular memorandum entitled The Autocracy
and establish the link with the general, and the Zemstvo which was publish-
from the struggle of groups of workers ed illegally abroad with a preface by
against individual employers to the none other than Struve.
struggle of the working class as a In his preface, Struve makes clear
whole against the bourgeoisie and its his complete break with Marxism,
state. In a brilliant line of argument, adopting instead the role of unpaid
Lenin established the dialectical inter- and unsolicited adviser to the govern-
relation between agitation, propagan- ment. Reading the words of this
da and theory and explained the way renegadeoneis forcefully reminded of
in which the small forces of Marxism, the tearful pleas of the modern liberals,
by winning over the most advanced churchmenand “‘reformists’’ in Chile
layers of the class can subsequently and South Africa who, unscrupulous-
win over the massof the proletariat, ly basing themselves on the heroic
and throughthe latter, all other op- sacrifices of the masses, try to appeal
pressed layers of society—the peasan- to the ‘enlightened self-interest’’ of
try, the oppressed nationalities, the the state to “reform itself before it is
women. too late’. In the same way Struve
The Economists were initially suc- wrote: ‘“‘No doubt there are men
cessful because they merely adapted. amongthe higher bureaucracy(!) who _.
to the prejudices of the most backward do not sympathise (!) with the reac-
layers of the workers. But as Lenin tionary policy...Perhaps it (the autocracy for concessions, unscrupul-
argued: the workers are not children government) will realise, before it is ously utilising the threat of revolution
to be fed on such “‘thin gruel’’. They too late, the fatal danger of protecting from below, that they would inevitably
do not want to be told what they the aristocratic regime at all costs. sell out for the sake of a rotten com-
already know. The workers have a Perhaps even before it has to face promise with the government, which
thirst for knowledge, whichit is the revolution, it will grow weary of its will then decoy them with false pro-
duty of the Marxists to satisfy. Tak- struggle against the natural and mises, “‘only to take them bythe scruff
ing as the starting point the immediate historically necessary development(!) of the neck and thrash them with the
problems of the working people,it is of freedom, and will waverin its ir- whip of reaction. And whenthat hap-
necessary to raise the level of con- reconcilable policy” and so on and so pens, gentlemen, wewill not forget to
sciousnessto a full understanding of forth. say, serves you right! 37.
_ its role in society, pointing the wayfor- In his article the Persecution of
ward out of the impasse. Zemustuvo and the Hannibals of Tensions on the
Liberalism ** Lenin delivered a
Attitude to the liberals counterblast to all this nonsense: Editorial Board
“There is no place for submissiveness The argument over Lenin’s article,
The launching of Iskra coincided in politics, and the time-honoured with the wisdom of hindsight, was not
with the beginning of a new revolu- police method of divide et impera an accident. Despite Plekhanov’s
tionary upsurge. The mass demonstra- ‘(divide andrule); yield the unimportant criticisms of Struve, there was a
tions of the workers of Kharkov on in order to preservethe essential, give tendency among the membersof the
May Day 1900 was thesignal for a with one hand and take back with the Emancipation of Labour Group which
stormy period of street demonstra- other, can be mistaken for submission did not see the need for a radical break
tions. “The Social Democracy”’ wrote only out of unbounded simplicity (both with that layer of bourgeois intellec-
the gendarme General Spiridovich, sacred andsly simplicity).”’ ;,. tuals of the “Legal Marxist’ trend
‘“‘understood the tremendous agita- The whole content of Lenin’s article which was nowclearly travelling to the
tional significance of going forth into is a devastating indictment of right, with one foot firmly in the camp
the streets. From then onit took upon liberalism. From the very dawn of the of bourgeois liberalism. Half jokingly,
itself the initiative for demonstrations, Russian workers’ movement the at- Lenin and Krupskaya nicknamed
attracting to them an ever greater titude to the bourgeois parties was Zasulich and Potresov the ‘‘Struve-
numberof workers. Not infrequently always the keystone of a revolutionary freundliche Partei,’ which can be
the street demonstrationsgrew outof approach. On this question, Lenin loosely translated as the ‘‘be-nice-to-
strikes.” **. always displayed the most implacable Struve Tendency.”
The revolutionary mood rapidly intransigence. Old habits die hard. If we leave aside
spread to the students. In the winter Significantly, this broadside against Plekhanov,who,forall his faults, was
of 1901-2, some 30,000 students took Struve and the liberals caused a a giant, the other membersof the old
part in a general strike against the disagreement within the Editorial group foundit increasingly difficult to
government. In turn, the mass unrest Board of Iskra. Plekhanov and Ax- adapt to the newsituation. In general,
gave heart to the liberals who began elrod were taken aback by the sharp- it takes leaders of a very special type
to make‘use of the limited powers of ness of the polemic, and pressurised to be able to makethe necessary tran-
self-government afforded to them by him to tone it down. Reluctantly Lenin sition from one historical epoch, with
the ‘Zemstvo’, a kind of county coun- inserted a conciliatory paragraph at its particular demands, to another
cil with responsibilities for roads, the end. Nevertheless, the general completely different period. Not ac-
hospitals, education and the like. By thrust of the article is quite clear: that cidentally, each. period of transition
the turn of the century many the bourgeois liberals had amply tends to be accompanied bycrisis and
Zemstvos were dominated by the demonstrated their cowardice and im- splits in which a certain layer, unable
liberals, who attempted to use them as potence, and lacking power themselves to adapt to the changed conditions,
a platform to press their demands on had to resort to pleading with the falls by the wayside. The creation of
43
 MIR Summer 1986: Book Review seeee
a mass workers’ party is incompatible
with the amateurish and ‘informal Party’, p 51 2" Ibid pp 354-5
*. V Akimop,op cit p 223 ?!. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’, p 83
methods which characterisetheinitial *. KPSS rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh,
period of propaganda activity. The *?, Trotsky, ‘Lenin’, Spanish edition, p 99
volume I, p 16 °*. QO Pyatnitsky: Zapiski Bol'shevika,
need for a more professional approach °. Quoted in Istoriya KPSS, volumeI, p 260 ppdl-2
was one of the central themes of ”. KPSS v rezolyutsiyakh i resheniyakh, 24
. Lenin’s ‘Collected Works’, volume 5, pp
Lenin’s writings at this time. volume I, p 17 17-24
‘Organising the work on a *, Quotedin Istoriya KPSS, volume1, p 265 75. Tbid. volume 6. pp 235-252
°. Trotsky, ‘My Life’ p 117 26 Ibid, volume 5. pp 349-529
business-like footing without in- °! V Akimou, op cit p 262 21 Ibid, pp 22-23
troducing any personal elementin- '!, See Lenin ‘Collected Works, volume 4’, ?*. Ibid, p 375
to it, and thus ensuring that pp 215-221, 255-296. >", Ibid, pp 383-4
caprice or personal relations '2. [bid pp 167-182. 3" Ibid, volume 6, p 491
associated with the past would not ‘>, The full text of the ‘Credo’ is reproduc- *'| Trotsky. ‘Stalin’ p 58
ed in Lenin’s ‘Collected works, volume 2. Lenin’s ‘Collected Works”, volume 4, p
influence decisions,” wrote Krup- 4’ pp 171-174. 369
skaya, ‘“‘had now become an ob- ‘4. Ibid p 176 *3. Ibid, p 384 (footnote)
vious need.” 3%, 'S. [bid p 181 *4. Trotsky, ‘Stalin’, p 28
Footnotes ‘6. [bid pp 333-349 5, Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 5, pp
''. Trotsky, ‘Political Profiles’, Spanish edi- 31-80
'. B Pares, ‘A History of Russia’, p 465 tion, pp123-24 °°. Ibid, p 70 °
>, V Akimou, ‘On the Dilemmas ofRussian . Lenin, ‘Collected Works, volume 4’ pp
oo
>'. Ibid, pp 75-76
Marxism (1885-1903)’ p 209 351-356 38. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’, p 67
3. G Zinoviev, ‘History of the Bolshevik . Ibid pp 820-880
2

BookReviews
THIS BOOK isin fact a selection of
material and commentary based upon ‘The Other
an exhibition of American artists of
American labour history. It covers 150 America—- Art and
years of painting, photographs, and
poems most of which was hitherto the labour
unknown to Western Europe. The ex-
hibition was sponsored by NGBK
(New Society for Fine Arts), and also
movement in the
funded in West Germany.It opened on
March 13 1983 in West Berlin, on the
United States’
eve of the hundredth anniversary of
Karl Marx’s death. More than 2000ex- By Philip Foner and
hibits went on display and, subse-
quently, on tour throughout Europe. R Schultz. Published
Thetitle of the exhibition was taken
from a book called The Other America,
by Journeyman
published in 1962, about poverty and
deprivation. There was revealed the
Press, 1985. £7.95.
world of unemployment, class strug- that period. Journals and magazines
gle and racial oppression whichis the
real history of America. As the in-
Reviewed by Steve Amor were produced from within art groups
which were circulated throughout the
troduction to the book saysthe exhibi- labour movement. One such journal
tion was a description of ‘‘all the piece of American labour painting, ac- was ‘The Masses’ which consistently
Americans excluded from the opulence cording to the books’ authors. Itis cer- carried socialist material from the end
of life on ‘Dynasty’ and ‘Dallas’.”’ tainly a powerful piece of: work. of the first world war and into the
It is a well documentedbookdivid- Painted in 1886, the picture is based 1920’s, with a series of notable con-
ed into sections each of which on a strike in Pittsburg in 1877 that tributors such as John Reed. ~
describes events and milestones which was called the Great Labour Uprising. But art sponsored by workers in the
so often inspired artists in their work. It was lost to the public for 60 years labour movement, who also were par-
Thereal surprise of the material is the and was only found again after exten- ticipants, really took root in the
width and variety of art that has come sive searches in the 1970’s. Covered in 1930’s. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ pro-
out of America, since the beginning of dirt and seriously damaged it was sold gramme had many offshoots. ‘Make-
the organised labour movementearly to its present owner “‘for less than Work’ projects were initiated, and
last century. what most used cars cost’”’. among those who demanded jobs were
The Other America uses hundreds of Butis was the historic period follow- artists. In December 1933 Public
examples to punctuate the commen- ing the Russian Revolution in 1905, Works of Art Projects were started,
tary text, and shows the reader how until the late 1930’s that gave birth to known as PWAP.Nearly 4,000 artists
little is recognised in Europe of more widespread ‘Labour art’ in were employed on weekly salaries, and
material which deals with the class America. The most well known names by the time the. projects finished in
struggle as subject matter. such as UptonSinclair, Jack London 1943 many thousandsof public works
For example, the painting ‘The and John Reed wereonly thetip of a of art had been completed. The majori-
Strike’, by Robert Koehler is today layer of artists and writers who ty of these works; murals; paintings;
generally considered to be the master- developed political consciousness in sculptures; print. designs and silk
44
 The Second Congress, 1903
THE TURNof the century saw a final breach with Marxism of the
period of rapid industrial growth in former ‘Legal Marxist” trend of Peter _
Russia, which served to strengthen Struve, who now becametheeditor of
further the working class, now Osvobozhdenie. For all_ its
numbering nearly three million. Bet- “democratic” phraseology, the liberal
ween 1894 and 1902 the numberof bourgeoisie was seeking to do a deal
workersin factories with a workforce with the autocratic regime. The trou-
of 100-150 went up by 52.8 per cent. ble was that the regime was morein-
In thosebig factories employing from clined to putits trust in the Cossack’s
500-1,000 workers, the numbers rose whip than to lean on the liberals,
by 72 per cent. The biggest increase, whose ability to control the masses
however, took place in the largest fac- was conspicuous byits absence.
tories, employing more than 1,000
workers, which increased by no jess
than 141 per cent. In the early years
“Zubatovism”
of this century, 1,155,000 workers Having failed to check the move-
were employed by 458 enterprises. ment by brute force, thegovernment
Layer after layer of workers was decided to resort to cunning. The head
drawn into the strike movement which of the Moscow Okhrana (secret police)
acquired an irresistable force in this SV Zubatovhit on the idea of setting
crucible of whirlwind industrial up legal unions, under the control of
development. the police, which were allowed to func- our party to these assemblies and in-
The class composition of the revolu- tion, and even elect committees sub- to these societies. . . They established
tionary movementreflected this pro- - ject to police vetting and carry out ac- contacts with the masses,were able to
found shift in social relations. In tivities, provided they wereofa strict- carry on their agitation, and succeed-
1884-90, a mere 15 per cent of those ar- ly economic, non-political character. ed in wresting workers from the in-
rested for political offences. were - This movement was far more suc- fluence of Zubatow’s agents. 9 4
workers. In 1901-03, 46 per cent, cessful than its authors had This was always the hallmark of
almost half, were workers. The expected—orintended.In a climate of Lenin’s method: absolute implacabili-
' statistics of the strike movementil- general labour unrest—and in the ty on questions of theory and princi-
lustrate the rapid processof politicisa- absence of genuine mass legal ple combined with extremeflexibility
tion of the workingclass: organisations—the workers entered on tactical and organisational issues.
the ‘‘police unions”’ in large numbers. The authorities attempted to con-
1901 1902 1903 In order to keep in the workers’ good struct a wall between the Marxists and
Political strikes:. 22.1 20.4 53.2 books, over-zealouspolice-officers even the masses. But the Social Democratic
Economic strikes: 77.9 79.6 46.8 organised strikes. These unions con- workers, by patient and careful work
The movementof the workingclass tained thousands of workers—far more and flexible tactics, succeeded in
gave a mighty impulseto the struggles than the relatively small numbers ac- breaking down the barriers,
of the peasantry. Early in 1902, pea- tive in the Social Democratic commit- penetrating the unions,andfertilising
sant revolts flared up in Poltava and tees. With their -customary them with the ideas of Marxism.
Kharkov ‘provinces. 10,000 troops ‘resourcefulness, the workers turned The successof thesetactics did not
were sent to suppress the risings, but the table on the police, and used the take long in makingitself felt. Under
soon the movement had spread to the opportunity to press home their the irresistable pressure of the
Central Black Earth region, the Volga demands and organise legally in the shopfloor, the Zubatov unions became
and Georgia. workplaces. partially transformed into organs of
The revolutionary movementof the The question arose of what attitude struggle. After the strike wave of
masses served to awaken the in- the Social Democrats should take 1908, the unfortunate Zubatov was
telligentsia from the slough of despond. towards these reactionary police unceremoniously sacked! Even then
The setting up of the Social Revolu- unions. Many years later, when the this movement continued to play a
tionary Party (SRs) in 1902 marked Russian workers had already taken role. The workers’ demonstration
the re-emergence of the revolutionary power, Lenin gave the answerin his which sparked off the 1905 revolution
petit-bourgeoisie under the banner of masterpiece on revolutionary strategy was led by Father Gapon—who
Narodnism andterrorisrh. and tactics, Left-Wing Communism— started out as Zubatov’s principal
Feeling the ground tremble beneath An Infantile Disorder: lieutenant in St Peterburg.
their feet, the political representatives “Under Tsarism wehad no‘legal op- At the time of launching Iskra, the
of the Russian bourgeoisie hesitatingly portunities’ whatsoever until 1905. party in Russia hardly existed as an
began to organise. The publication However, when Zubatov,agent of the organised force. In the midst of
abroad of an illegal liberal journal secret police, organised Black
Osvobozhdenie(“*Liberation’’) in 1902 Hundred* workers’ assemblies and *The “Black Hundreds” were a reac-
was thefirst timid step towards the working men’s societies for the pur- tionary, anti-semitic organisation used by
setting up of the future Liberal Party pose of trapping revolutionaries and tsarism as an auxiliary arm against the
(the “‘Cadets’’). This event marked the. combatting them, we sent members of revolutionary movement.

35
MIR Autumn 1986: Bolshevism Part Fjyco

ideological confusion, factional divi- amateurism which prevailed in many mistranslation of the Russian word
sions gaverise to a series of splits and committees were holding back the ‘“‘gubyerna’’ meaning “‘administrative
the setting up of small groups. In work at a time whenbig possibilities region’’, AW) his ownprovince,for the
Petersburg alone at the turn of the were opening up. sake of building the party. In the Iskra
century there was the ‘‘Group for the Iskra’s message, based on the need dictionary ‘localism’ was a synonym
Self-Emancipation of the Working to fight for Marxist theory, for a for backwardness, narrowness, almost
Class,” the ‘Group of Workersfor the unified party, for a professional ap- for regression. ‘Welded with a compact
Struggle with Capital,”’ ‘Workers’ ban- proach to the work, struck a respon- conspirative group of professional
ner’, “The Socialist’’, ‘‘Social sive chord among the workers, revolutionists’, wrote the Gendarme
Democrat”, ““Workers’ Library”, “The although by the end of 1901 there were General Spiridovich, ‘they travelled
Workers Organisation”’ and others,all only nine Iskra agents in the whole of from place to place, wherever there
claiming to speak in the nameof the Russia, and the tendency was still in were party committees, established
RSDLP. a minority. Many members of local contacts with their members,delivered
Manyof these groups wereinfluenc- committees were sceptical or even illegal literature to them, helped to
ed by the ideas of the Economists*. hostile at first. Thus at the second con- establish printshops and gathered the
One commonfeature was thedesire for gress one of the delegates remarked: information needed by the Iskra. They
a ‘‘pure proletarian’’ image. Thefirst- “IT recall the article Where to Begin? penetrated into local committees, car-
named group advancedthe idea that in No 8 or 4 of Iskra. Many of the com- ried on their propaganda against
the interests of the intellectuals were at rades active in Russia found it a ‘Economism’, eliminated their
variance with those of the workers. tactless article; others thought this ideological opponentsandin this way
The Petersburg League of Struggle plan was fantastic, and the majority subjected the committees to their in-
itself, having been taken over by the attributedit solely to ambition. Then fluence.’ The retired gendarme here
Rabochaya Mysl’ (Workers’ Thought) I remember the bitterness shown gives a_ sufficiently correct
faction of extreme economism,actual- towards Iskra by a majority of the characterisation of the Iskrovites.
ly split into two groups—one “for committees; I remember a whole series They were members of a wandering
workers’’ and the other ‘“‘for of splits...” ?. order, above thelocal organisations
intellectuals!” The Iskra tendency was gradually which they regarded as an arena for
Ofcourse all this posturing revealed built up by patient work around the the exercise of their influence.” °.
not a proletarian tendency, but paperitself. Starting as a monthly, The upsurge of the revolutionary
precisely the opposite: the snob- Iskra later appeared every two weeks. movement provideda fertile ground
bishnessof intellectuals who imagine Slowly but surely, a network was built for the spread of Iskra’s ideas. As the
that the way to win the workersis by up of worker-correspondentsin thefac- only paperwith a real national identi-
pandering to the prejudices of the tories and workers’ districts, for the ty, Iskra became a powerful force for
most backwardlayers of the working distribution of the paper, the unification which swiftly broke down
class. In the same way as the old systematic collection of funds,the link- the resistance of the parochial local
Narodniks tried, with calamitous up with different organisations and “committee-men”’.
results to ‘‘go to the people”, the the establishment of a periphery of In manyareas, the struggle for in-
would-be middle class revolutionist im- sympathisers. fluence within the committees led to
agines that it is possible to find a road A key role in this work was the splits. Invariably, however, the anti-
to the masses by donning a donkey- steadily growing number of Iskra Iskra committees tended to wither
jacket and using bad language.Thein- agents, men and women whodedicated away and disappear, while the number
tellectual whotries to curry favour by themselvesentirely to revolutionary of viable Jskra committees continued
“abasing”’ himself before the workers, work. Under difficult and dangerous to grow.
in reality demonstrates at one and the conditions in the underground they
same time a pathetic lack of undertook.the task of building the Economists in retreat
understanding of and a deep-seated tendency inside Russia, maintaining .
contempt for working people. stable contact with the centre abroad, The main base which remained to
organising theillegal transportation of the Economists of the Rabocheye
Theadvance of /skra literature, establishing underground Dyelo (Workers’ Cause) tendency was
print-shops, etc. Commenting on this the emigré ‘‘Union of Social
In reality what is required is the period in which he played an active Democrats Abroad.” An attempt to
creation of cadres, educated in the role within the Jskra camp, Trotsky achieve unity on a principled basis
theory and practice of Marxism andin- gives a vivid picture of the work and broke down, after a unification con-
tegrated in the working class move- lifestyle of these agents: ference in early 1901, and the Iskra
ment, starting with its most active and ‘“‘The immediate task of Iskra was to supportersfinally withdrew from the
consciouslayer. The class-composition select from amongthe local workers union in Septemberandthe following
of the party must be decisively pro- the personsof greatest stamina and to month set up the ‘‘League of Revolu-
letarian. But students and intellec- use them in the creation of a central tionary Social Democrats Abroad.”
tuals can play an importantrole,fer- apparatus capable of guiding the The Economists of the “Union of
tilising the movementwith their ideas revolutionary struggle of the entire Social Democrats Abroad”, seeing the
andassisting its development, on one country. The number of Iskra situation in Russia slipping out of
condition—that they havedecisively adherents was considerable, and it was their hands, decided to launcha pre-
broken with their class and placed constantly growing. But the number emptive strike by hastily convening a
themselves not only in words but in of genuine Iskrovites, of trusted Party Congress, which they hoped
+ stotbaidenantacid asintetbvabeitaiedae

everyday practice on the standpointof agents of the foreign centre, was of might give them an advantage.
the proletariat. necessity limited; it did not exceed
Theproblem with the “‘Economists” twenty to thirty persons. Most * For an explanation of Economism see
was that they saw, not the face of the characteristic of the Iskrovite was his Militant International Review Number 31,
proletariat, but only its backside. severance from his own city, his own Spring 1986 and Militant International
The tendencies of localism and government, (this appears to be a Review No 82, Summer 1986.

36
 0BBs
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The preparations for the Second Con- Mapof Social Democratic organisations, 1903.
gress now began in earnest.
The successes of [skra in Russia When, in January 1902, Plekhanov voice of the exiled propagandist, and
enormously enhanced the authority of presented his draft programme, Lenin not the rallying-cry of a new mass
the Editorial Board in London, which and Martov raised somecriticisms, revolutionary party. On Plekhanov’s
acted as the centre from which came which Plekhanov,as usual took as a side there was undoubtedly an element
not only theoretical guidance but also personal insult. When it was propos- of spite in his attacks on Lenin, which.
practical directives. But, unseen by ed that the draft be voted on, point by contained phrases, as Martov com-
the membership, there were serious point, his response was to walk out of plained, which he normally reserved
and growing tensions among the the meeting. Subsequently, Lenin pro- for political enemies. * Lenin’s draft
leading figures of Iskra. As the duced an alternative draft, which was was covered by Plekhanov with dou-
preparationsfor the congress advanc- discussed in a tense atmosphere,in- ble underlinings, exclamation marks,
ed andthe decisive date grew nearer, cluding threats and ultimatums. Krup- sarcastic comments aboutstyle and so
so these contradictions assumed an in- skaya’s description of this meeting on. Only the pressure of Axelrod and
creasingly unbearable character. provides a vivid picture of the inner Zasulich induced Plekhanov to back
The great bulk of the work rested on workingsof the Iskra Editorial Board down and apologise. In the end, a com-
the shoulders of Lenin and his wife at this time: promise was arrived at, but theinci-
Nadyezhda Konstantinovna dent served to bring to a head thein-
Krupskaya. tolerable position of the Editorial
Martov played an importantrole on Problems within /skra Board.
the literary front. Plekhanov was a Zasulich and Martov usually acted
theoretical giant. But in practice the “Plekhanov attacked parts of the as-conciliators between Lenin and
other older members of Plekhanov’s draft programme which Lenin had Plekhanov. Martov, an outstandingly
group playedlittle or no role. drawn up. Vera Zasulich did not agree talented individual, had come from the
Accustomed to decades of life in with Lenin on all points, but neither interior, like Lenin. But his tempera-
small emigrecircles, characterised by did she agree entirely with Plekhanov. mentandlife-style drew him closer to
extreme informality, where per- Axelrod also agreed with Lenin on Zasulich and the others. Zasulich, Mar-
sonalities loomed large and at times some points. The meeting was a pain- tov and Alexeyev shared a bohemian
overshadowed politics, the ‘‘old- ful one. Vera Zasulich wanted to argue existence in a kind of commune,
timers” were increasingly out of their with Plekhanov, but he looked so for- ironically styled ‘‘the Den” by the
depthin the new situation. The move- bidding, staring at her with his arms fastidious Plekhanov. Krupskaya and
mentin Russia, from which they had folded on his chest, that she was others haveleft a vivid picture of Vera
been physically separated for decades, thrown off her balance. The discussion Zasulich shut up in her room,agonis-
was foreign to them.Living in the in- had reached the voting stage. Before ing over an article whilst chain-
tellectual shadow of Plekhanov, with the voting took place, Axelrod, who smokingandliving on endless cups of
no possibility of independent develop- agreed with Lenin onthis point, said strong black coffee.
ment, stulified their political level. he had a headache and wanted to go “T regarded Martov as a rather char-
‘They were being left behind and they for a walk. ming type of bohemian with
were painfully awareofit. Vladimir Ilyich was terribly upset. somethingof the eternal student about
The six-strong Editorial Board To work like that was impossible. The his appearance,” wrote Lunarcharsky,
(Lenin, Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, discussion was so unbusiness-like.”’ ‘. “by predilection a haunterof cafes, in-
Martov and Potresov) was frequently The essence of the disagreement different to comfort, perpetually argu-
-the scene of bitter arguments. In the revolved not so much on fundamen- ing and a bit of an eccentric.” °.
run-up to the congress, there was a tals, but on a different approach to the Lenin alwaysretained a high regard
running battle between Lenin and work and a different conception of the for Martov’sintellectual qualities. In-
Plekhanov overthe draft programmes role of the programme. There was deed, Martov represents one of the
each had drawn up.In an atmosphere something abstract about Plekhanov’s most tragic figures in the history of
of hightened tension, the tone of the draft, which Lenin found too academic the Russian revolutionary movement,
discussion often became heated. and insufficiently concrete. It was the As Trotsky wrote: ‘‘A talented writer,
37
 MIR Autumn 1986: Bolshevism Part ER —eEEeEEeEeEEE>E—————

a resourceful politician, a penetrating youth; 2) his early (perhaps) return to to different workers’ meeting places to
mind and a graduate of the school of Russia; 3) a pen (without quotation avoid detection.
Marxism, Martov will nevertheless marks) with traces of feuilleton style, At the First Congress, the move-
enter the history of the workers’ too pretentious, etc. ment in the interior had been
revolution as an enormous minus. His ‘Ad 1) ‘Pero’ is suggested not for an represented by only five local commit-
thought lacked courage, his in- independentpost, but for the Board. In tees. The present gathering could now
cisiveness lacked will. Tenacity was no it he will gain experience. He un- claim to represent several thousand
substitute. It destroyed him...A doubtedly hasthe ‘intuition’ of a Par- members, with influence over hun-
revolutionary instinct doubtless lay in ty man, a man of our trend; as for dreds of thousands of workers. The
Martov. His first reaction to great knowledge and experience these can be majority of delegates were young,
events always revealed a_ revolu- acquired. That he is hardworking is mostly under 30 years old. Lenin, at
tionary aspiration. But after every likewise unquestionable. It is 33, was already a veteran. The rapid
sucheffort his thought not being sus- necessary to co-opt him so asfinally pace of revolutionary events in Russia
tained by the mainspring of will-power to draw him in and encourage him...” was a forcing house for the develop-
disintegrated and sank back. This (From Lenin’s Collected Works , mentof the young cadres of Marxism.
would be observed at the first glimp- volume 43,pp110-111). Only the former members of
ses of the waves of revolution. . . 7 . However, Plekhanov, guessing that Plekhanov’s Emancipation of Labour
The sensation on the part of the Trotsky would support Lenin, placing Group stood out as the representatives
older membersthat they were slipping him in a minority, angrily vetoed the of an older revolutionary generation,
behind gaverise to an ill-concealed proposal. belonging to a different epoch, almost
resentment against Lenin, Axelrod The experiences of the past three a different world.
was bitter about the fact that Iskra. years showed the need to put the par-
was based in London, not Switzerland, ty on a newfooting. It was necessary Debate on the Bund
and so on. The work of the Editorial to effect a decisive break with the past,
Board was hamperedbythefact that to put an end to the ‘small circle’ The conditions for acceptance as a
the six members frequently split into mentality, amateurism, organisational delegation was a minimum of twelve
two equal groups. For this reason, looseness and lay the basis for a months’ existance as an active
Lenin formally requested the inclusion strong, unified mass workers’ party. organisation. Several local committees
of Trotsky (known by his pseudonym, In view of the harm doneby localism (Voronezh, Samara, Poltrava,
‘‘Pero’’, the “‘pen’’) as a seventh and the need to adapt to difficult Kishinev etc) were not invited because
member of the Editorial Board. In a underground conditions, Lenin laid they did not fulfil this condition. There
letter to Plekhanov, he wrote: “‘I am heavy stress upon the need for were 43 delegates with 51 full votes.
submitting to all members of the centralism. Partly because in many areas there
Editorial Board a proposal to co-opt The forthcoming congress would was more than one local committee,
‘‘Pero’’ as a full memberof the Board. haveto elect a leadership in a situation every delegation was given two full
(I believe that for co-optation not a ma- where the most important political votes, whetheror not there were more
jority but a unanimous decision is leaders werein exile. Theinterior clear- than one delegate present. The Central
needed.) ly had to be represented on the leading Committee of the Bund was given
bodies, but Lenin opposed the idea of three votes (one for the Bund’s foreign
The Second Congress the Iskra Editorial Board—which was organisation), and the two Petersburg
entirely responsible for re-building the organisations, one vote each.In addi-
‘‘We are very much in need of a ‘party—relinquishing the leadership. tion, there were 14 people present with
seventh memberboth becauseit would The young Trotsky who had recently a consultative vote, including two
simplify voting (six being an even escaped from Siberia and come to Lon- representatives of the Polish and
number) and reinforce the Board. don to assist the work of Iskra was Lithunanian Social Democracy whoar-
‘“Pero’ has been writing in every surprised by Lenin’s formulation: rived during the tenth session.
issue for several months now. In “T arrived abroad with the belief The Iskra group, in theory, had a
general he is working for Iskra most that the Editorial Board should be clear majority with 33 votes. The open
energetically, delivering lectures (and made subordinate to the Central Com- opponentsof Iskra held eight votes—3
with tremendoussuccess)etc. For our mittee. That was the prevailing at- “Economists” and 5 Bundists. There-
department of topical articles and titude of the majority of Iskra maining votes wereheld by indecisive,
itemshe will be not only very useful followers. wavering elements, whom Lenin later
but quite indispensable. Heis unques- ‘“Tt can’t be done’ objected Lenin. characterised as the ‘‘centre’’ or ‘‘the
tionably a man of more than average ‘The correlation of forces is different. marsh”.
ability, convinced, energetic, and pro- How can they guide us from Russia? Over the years, the events of this
mising. And he could do a good deal No, it can’t be done. We are the stable congress have been heavily overlaid
in the sphere of translation and centre, we are stronger in ideas, and with a crust of myths, inventions and
popular literature. we must exercise the guidance from downright falsehoods. Here,it is alleg-
‘‘We mustdraw in youngforces: this here.” °. ed, Bolshevism emerged, fully clad and
will encourage them and prompt them No-one suspected that at the longed- armed, like Palas Athene from the
to regard themselves as professional for Second Congress the Iskra camp head of Zeus. Yet closer examination
writers. And that we have too few of would split precisely on the question reveals that the split between
such is clear—witness 1) the difficul- of the leading bodies. ‘Bolsheviks’ (“‘majority-ites”) and
_ty of finding editors of translations;2) The Second Congressfinally conven- ‘““Mensheviks”’ (‘‘minority-ites’’), or
the shortageof articles reviewing the ed on the 17 July 1903 in Brussels, more accurately between “hards’’ and
internal situatidn, and 3) the shortage whereits first thirteen sessions were “softs” in 1903 was by no meansfinal
of popular literature. It is in the sphere held. The attentionsof the police forc- but only an anticipation of future dif-
of popular literature that ‘Pero’ would ed the congress to move to London ferences. The real split did not occur
like to try his hand. where it re-convened as an Anglers’ until 1912—almost a decadelater.
“Possible arguments against:1) his club, periodically changing the venue The differences between Lenin and

38: 1
 Martov began to surface at the 22nd ought to be adapted‘to fashioning the
session, when the congress had been product; it ought not to include the
going on for two weeks. In all the product. Thus a centralised organisa-
previous sessions there was complete tion can guarantee the success of a
unanimity in the Iskra camp onall revolutionary struggle—even where
political questions. the task is to destroy the centralised
A great deal of time was taken up oppression of nationalities.”’ (My
with the question of the place of the emphasis—AW)
Bundin the party. (For a characterisa- The Bund had played an important
tion of the Bund see Militant Interna- role in the early days of the movement,
tional Review, No 32, Summer 1986). which earned it considerable prestige
This debate was of crucial importance and enabled it to exercise a decisivein-
in clarifying the Marxist attitude fluence on the First Congress, where
towards the national question. The it entered the RSDLPonthebasis of
historic significance of this can be autonomy. The weakness of the Rus-
gauged bythe fact that without a clear sian Social Democracy meantthat the
position on the national question, the Bund,in practice, led an independent
Russian Revolution could never have existence up to the Second Congress,
been successful. developing strong nationalist
In The History of the Russian tendencies.
Revolution, Trotsky gives a succinct
definition of the Bolshevik position on Separatism rejected
the national question:
“Lenin early learned the inevitabili- At the Second Congress, the Bun-
ty of this developmentof centrifugal dists in effect spoke as an independent
national movementsin Russia, and for party, which was only prepared to conducting agitation among the
manyyears stubbornly fought—most enter the RSDLP on a loose, federal Jewish workers and artisans with
particularly against Rosa basis, which would have meant the special material, etc. But what the
Luxemburg—for that most famous legalisation of separate organisations Bund demanded was the exclusive
paragraph of the old party programme of the Jewish workers. Lieber, the right to speak in the name of the
which formulated the right of self- Bundist spokesman,justified this on Jewish proletariat and, in effect, to
determination—that is, to complete the groundsof the special position of have a monopoly of Jewish affairs
separation as states. In this the the Jewish workers, suffering not on- within the Party. In short, it had a
Bolshevik Party did not by any means ly from class oppression butalso racial similar position to the present-day
undertake an evangelof separation.It oppression, which Russian workers defenders of ‘“‘black sections” im the
merely assumed an obligation to would not have the same degree ofin- Labour Party in Britain, or,in the
struggle implacably against every terest in combatting. Answering unions in the USA, a position which
form of national oppression, including Lieber, Martovsaid: ‘“‘Underlying this would sow the seeds of disunity among
the forcible retention of this or that na- draft is the presumption that the the workers and play into the hands
tionality within the boundaries of the Jewish proletariat needs an indepen- of chauvinist and racialist elements.
general state. Only in this way could dentpolitical organisation to represent When the Bund’s pretentions were
the Russian proletariat gradually win its national interests among the Social decisively rejected its delegates aban-
the confidence of the oppressed Democrats of Russia. Independently doned the Congress. They were soon
nationalities. of the question of organising the par- followed by the other representatives
“But that was only oneside of the ty on theprinciple of federation or that of the right wing, the Economists,
matter. The policy of Bolshevism in of autonomy, we cannot allow that any Martynov and Akimov,who werepre-
the national sphere had also another section of the party can represent the sent as representatives of the emigré
side, apparently contradictory to the group, trade or national interests of “Union of Russian Social Democrats
first, but in reality supplementingit. any sections of the proletariat. Na- Abroad”’. They walked out when the
Within the framework of the party, tional differences play a subordinate Congress recognised therival “League
and the workers’ organisations in role in relation to commonclassin- of Revolutionary Social Democrats”’
general, Bolshevism insisted upon a terests. What sort of organisation as sole representatives of the party
. Frigid centralism, implacably warring would we haveif, for instance, in one abroad.
against every taint of nationalism and the same workshop, workers of These walk-outs decisively changed
which might set the workers one different nationalities thought first the balanceof forces at the congress.
against the other or disunite them. and foremost of the representation of A development which was quite un-
While flatly refusing to the bourgeois their national interest?’’'®° (My foreseen was thecrystalisation,in the
state the right to impose compulsory emphasis—AW). course of the proceedings, of two
citizenship, or even a state language, Of course, on purely practical trends within the [skra camp. On a
upon a national minority, Bolshevism grounds,it would be possible to give numberof secondary issues(role of the
at the same time madeit a verily a certain degree of autonomy to na- Organising Committee, the Borba
sacred task to unite, as closely as tional groups within the party. This group, Yuzhny Rabochii), ''! it became
possible, by means of voluntary class would, however, be of a purely clear that someof Iskra’s supporters
discipline, the workers of different na- technical character, arising from the had voted with the right wing and the
tionalities. Thus it flatly rejected the need, for example, to publish material ‘‘Marsh’’. In general, the Iskra camp
national federation principle in in the different languages of the remained united. But in the twenty-
building the party. A revolutionary groups concerned. There would have. second session, the unity was broken
organisation is not the prototype of been no objections to the Bund enjoy- by an open clash between Lenin and
the future state, but merely the instru- ing the necessary autonomy to pro- - Martov on an organisational issue.
ment for its creation. An instrument duce Party literature in Yiddish and The first clause of the party rules

39
 MIR Autumn 1986: Bolshevism Part Pte EEE

dealt with the question: ‘‘Who is a “And, indeed,let us take for exam- say that this will cause unnecessary
member?’’ Lenin’s draft reads as ple a professor whoregards himself as difficulties. But what do these dif-
follows: ‘‘A memberof the RSDLPis a Social-Democrat and declares ficulties consist of? They talk of per-
one who accepts its programme and himself as such. If we adopt Lenin’s sons whodo not wantto join, or who
supports the Party both financially formula we shall be throwing over- can’t join, one of our organisations.
andby personal participation in one of board a section of those who, even if But why can’t they? As someone who
the party organisations’. Martov op- they cannot be directly admitted to an has himself taken part in Russian
posed this clause and moved as an organisation are nevertheless mem- revolutionary organisations,I say that
alternative that a member was bers... We must take care not to leave I do not admit the existence of objec-
somebody who accepted the pro- outside the party ranks people who tive conditions constituting an in-
gramme, and supported the Party consciously, though perhaps not very superable obstacle to anyonesjoining.
financially and “gives the party his actively, associate themselves with As to those gentlemen who do not
regular personal co-operation under the Party.” 14. want to join, we have noneed of them.
the direction of one of the party The workingclass and its organisa- “Tt has been said here that somepro-
organisations”. tions do-not exist in a vacuum,but are fessors who sympathise with our
On the face of it, there is only a surroundedbyothersocial classes and views mayfind it humiliating to join
slight difference between the two for- groups. Thepressureof alien classes, a local organisation. In this connec-
mulas.In fact, the real significance of of bourgeois ‘“‘public opinion’’, and tion, I remember Engels saying that
the difference only becameclear later. especially the pressure of the in- whereit becomes your lot to deal with
“The differences werestill intangible,” termediate layers, the middle class, the professors, you have to be prepared for
Trotsky recalled, ‘everybody was intellectuals who surround the the worst (laughter).
merely groping about and working workers’ organisations is ever-present.
with impalpable things’. '? But The demandsof these layers that the ‘No eternal laws’
behind Martov’s proposal was cer- workers should adapt their pro-
tain “‘softness”’, a conciliatory attitude gramme, methodsandorganisational “The example, is, in fact, an ex-
which amounted to the blurringofdif- structure to suit the prejudices andin- tremely bad one. If some Professor of
ferences between members and sym- terests of the petit bourgeoisie are a Egyptology considers, because he has
pathisers, between revolutionary ac- constant pressure. A long period of by heart the namesofall the Pharoes,
tivists and‘‘fellow travellers’. At the very close co-existence with the and knowsall the prayers that the
moment whenall the energies of Iskra radicalised middle class in the person Egyptians submitted to the bull Apis,
should have been concentrated on of the “‘Legal Marxists” hadleft its that it is beneath his dignity to join
combatting the old anarchistic stamp on the consciousness of the our organisation, we have no need of
formlessness and circle mentality, older members of the Emancipation of that professor. .
Martov’s position represented a big Labour Group. They moved among “To talk of control by the Party over
step back. Small wonderthatit led to social strata divorced from the work- persons whoare outside the organisa-
a sharp struggle in the Iskra camp on ing class, formed personal friendships tion means playing with words. In
and off the floor of the Congress. with the radicalised quasi-Marxist practice such control is impossible”’. '*
university professors, lawyers and doc- (My emphasis—AW)
The Party rules’ tors who helped them with financial After a heated discussion, Martov’s
donations and words of encourage- variant was approved by 28 votes to
In the months and years after the ment, but were not prepared to ‘‘dir- 23, but only because the wavering
congress a whole mythology has been ty their hands’ with practical revolu- elements in Jskra combined with the
constructed about this incident.It is tionary work. ‘‘I support your aims, “Economists” of the Union, the Bund
alleged that Lenin stood for dictatorial but to comeout openly as a socialist and the “‘Centre’’, represented by the
centralism and a small conspiratorial would be inconvenient and risky. trend around the journal Yuzhny
party, whereas Martov’s aim was a Think of my job, my position, my Rabochii (‘Southern Worker”’).
broad-based, democratic party which career prospects,” and so on. Un- Nevertheless, the split had not yet
would allow the workers to participate. consciously, or perhaps semi- acquired a definite character. Lenin, in
Both ideas are completely false. consciously, Axelrod, Zasulich and the course of the debate, showed that
To begin with, all the Iskra sup- Martov were acting as the spokesmen he wasstill anxious to reach agree-
porters were agreed upon the needfor for this social stratum, the transmis- ment: “First, as regards Axelrod’s
a strong, centralised party. That was sion belt for the pressures of alien kind proposal (I am not speaking
one of the main arguments against the classes upon the workers’ party. ironically) to ‘strike a bargain’, I would
Bund’s national-federalism, in which Plekhanov was placedin a difficult willingly respond to this appeal for I
Martov and Trotsky played the main position by this split, in which his do not atall consider our difference so
role. Immediately prior to the discus- friends andlife-long colleagues were vital as to be a matter oflife and death
sion on Clause One, Martov is quoted ranged against him.Forthefirst time for the party. We shall certainly not
in the Minutes as saying: “I would in herlife, Vera Zasulich openly stood perish because of a bad point in the
recall to Comrade Lieber that our up to her mentor. It must have been rules!” '* (My emphasis—AW)
organisational principle is not broad a shock, but to Plekhanov’s credit, he From a Marxist point of view,
autonomy but strict centralisa- stood up against the pressure at the organisational questions can never be
tion”. '>(My emphasis—AW)*. Congress. All his revolutionary in- decisive. There are no eternal, fixed
As to the demagogic argumentthat stinct told him that Lenin wasin the laws governing the modeof organisa-
Martov’s formula was intended to right. In the course of debate he
“open the party to the workers”’, that, pitilessly demolished the arguments of
* Incidentally, the Bund itself was a highly-
too, is a misrepresentation. At the Axelrod and Martov: centralised organisation. Its alleged opposi-
outset of the debate, Axelrod let the “According to Lenin’s draft, only so- tion to centralism only applied to the par-
cat out of the bag, with the following meone whojoins a particular organisa- ty as a whole, and reflected nothing more
example, which really revealed what tion can be regarded as a Party than an unscrupulous defenceofits own sec-
was behind the proposal: member. Those who oppose his draft tional interests.

40
tion of a revolutionary party. The rules The ingrained habits of a small ex-
and organisational structures must ile groupinstinctively rebelled against
change with changing circumstances so violent a disruption of the old ways.
andin line with the developmentof the The idea of formal elections, submis-
party. The same Lenin who argued sion of the minority to the will of the
fervently for restricting the party majority, disciplined work, while ac-
membership in 1903, under different ceptable in theory, proved hard to
historical circumstances, in 1912, swallow in practice. The members of
when the party was becoming Plekhanov’s old group, accustomed to
transformed into a mass force the life of a small, informal circle of
representing the decisive majority of friends, had long enjoyed immense
the active working class in Russia, in political authority as veterans and
effect argued that the party should be members of the prestigious Iskra
open to any worker who considered Editorial Board which wasnotstrict-
himself a Bolshevik—a formula which ly warrented by the role they now
apparently echoes Martov’s celebrated played. Axelrod and Zasulich felt an
phrase that ‘‘every striker should be involuntary fear of losing their per-
able to proclaim himself a Party sonal authority and having their in-
member’’. Does this mean that Lenin dividuality swallowed up in the new
was wrong and Martovright in 1903? environment, dominated by the new
Such a conclusion would be to com- generation of up-and-coming young
pletely misunderstand thedialectical cadres from inside Russia. The Con-
relationship between the mode of gress minutes show how insignificant
operation of the revolutionary party wastherole played by the old-timers,
and the concrete stage through which with the natural exception of
both the party and the working class Plekhanov. They must have felt com- ment with the change, but under the
movementis passing. A house must be pletely lost. pressure of Zasulich and Axelrod they
built upon solid foundations. In 1908, In the interest of Party unity, both changed their minds. The indignation
the party was only takingits first the Iskra organisation and the Eman- aroused by this issue among young
hesitating steps towards the conquest cipation of Labour Group were formal- and impressionable comrades is con-
of influence among the masses. It was ly dissolved at the Congress. The veyed by Trotsky’s memoirsof the oc-
necessary to lay heavy stress on basic veterans of the Emancipation of casion: ‘‘In 1903 the whole point at
political and organisational principles, Labour Groupneverseriously imagin- issue was nothing more than Lenin’s
above all the need for working-class ed that this would changetheir status desire to get Axelrod and Zasulich off
cadres with a clear understanding of in the movement. Things would sure- the editorial board. My attitude
the ideas and methods of Marxism. ly carry on muchas before. It was un- towards them wasfull of respect, and
This was all the more necessary in thinkable that they should occupy there was an elementof personal affec-
view of the chaotic period which had anything but the foremost positions, tion as well. Lenin also thought highly
gone before. To have “thrown the as they had always done. of them for what they had done in the
doors open” at this concrete stage past. But he believed that they were
would have been absolutely The real meaning of the becoming an impediment for the
disastrous, althoughat a different mo- future. This led him to conclude that
ment it would be necessary to do just 1903 split they must be removed from their posi-
that. When Lenin movedtheelection of tion in the leadership. I could not
Every period of transition from one an Editorial Board of three, it caused agree. My whole being seemedto pro-
stage of the developmentof the party an uproar, which took him completely test against this merciless cutting off
to another inevitably entails a certain by suprise—all the moreso since this of the older ones when we wereat last
amountof internal friction. We have proposal hadalready been accepted by on the threshold of an organised par-
already commented on thestresses the editors before the Congress. But ty. It was myindignation at his at-
andstrains involved in theearlier tran- this agreementwas only superficial. In titude that really led to my parting
sition from propagandato agitation. reality, the proposal had deeply shock- with him at the Second Congress. His
Now the same problemsrecurred, but ed and wounded the old editors who behaviour seemed unpardonable to me,
with far more serious results. would be dropped. In the corridorsof both horrible and outrageous. And yet,
The main objective of the Marxist the congress, they went around com- politically it was right and necessary,
tendency represented by Iskra was to plaining about Lenin’s alleged from the pointof view of organisation.
bring the party out of the embryonic “tactlessness” and “‘insensitivity”’. The break with the older ones whore-
period of circle life—‘‘kustar- There can be no doubtthat logic was mained in the preparatory stages, was
nichestvo’’—andlay the firm founda- entirely on Lenin’s side, as Plekhanov inevitable in any case. Lenin
tion for a strong and united Marxist completely agreed. The old E.B. ofsix understood this before any one else
workers’ party in Russia. Even before had not even managed to meet once. did. He made an attempt to keep
the Congress, however, Martov began The notion that a memberof the E.B. Plekhanov by separating him from
to express doubts and vacillations as of the party’s official journal could be Zasulich and Axelrod. But this, too,
to whether it was desirable to convene someone who did not personally par- was quite futile, as subsequent events
a party congress at all. Would it not ticipate in the work and whose only soon proved.” !7
be better to hold a congress of the contribution was to provide the occa- The proposals agreed on by the
Iskra tendency? The hesitations sional article for publication did not Iskra leadership prior to the Congress
reflected the conservatism and square with the conception of a was for a central committee of three
routinism and the fear of the ~ fighting proletarian organisation. (from the interior), an editorial board
“veterans” of striking out in a new Initially, the younger f..B. members, of three and a party council made up
direction. Martov and Potresov were in agree- of both bodies plus one other
4]
 (Plekhanov). However, a split opened
up immediately over the composition
of the CC. The “hard” Iskra-ites
favoured a CC composedentirely of
Fskra supporters. The “‘softs’”, led by
Martov, wanted to give representation
to the “‘centre”’ (Yuzhny Rabochii), and
produced their own list of candidates.
When the split fully surfaced, it
assumed a violent character. In the
session when the composition of the
Editorial Board was discussed theat-
mosphere was stormyin the extreme
as the Bolsheviks later reported to the
of the Socialist International (1904).
Trotsky moved the re-election of the
old Editorial Board of six. But the
withdrawal of the Bundists and the
supporters of Rabocheye Dyelo meant
that the [skra ‘‘hards”’ were now in a ssestes = - -
majority. Trotsky’s proposal was Krupskaya and, right, 30 Holford Square, Kings Cross, where Lenin and Krupskayaliv
voted down, and a new Editorial Board during their London exile.
consisting of Lenin, Plekhanov and
Martov was elected, whereupon Mar- gress speeches by Lenin (?) and other of a ruthless dictator, riding
v announced his refusal to par- Bolsheviks show that on the fun- roughshod over democracy.
icipate on the EB. Thesplit between damental question of the party pro-
the “hard” majority (‘‘Bol’shinstvo’’) gramme(!) and rules, Trotsky was at Both Stalinist and bourgeois
and “‘soft’’ minority (‘‘Menshinstvo’’) one with the other Mensheviks andbit- historians have a vested interest
was a fact. terly fought the Bolsheviks’ revolu- in identifying Leninism with
However significant the conse- tionary line(!).” °° Stalinism. In order to get at the
quences of the 1903 split were for the This base slander originates in the truth,it is necessary to push these
future, the differences which emerged campaign against ‘“Trotskyism’’ laun- unscrupulous middle-men to one
at the congress still bore an ched in 1923—24, when Lenin lay on side and go back to the writings of
undeveloped character. The assertion his death-bed, paralysed andhelpless. the protagonists themselves—in
that at the Second Congress Zinoviev, who had formed a secret bloc the first place the writings of
Bolshevism and Menshevism already with Kamenev andStalin, with a view Lenin and Trotsky—which, with
existed as political tendencies is entire- to forming the leadership after Lenin’s unerring accuracy and
ly without foundation. On all the death, went to the lengths of writing truthfulness explain the real
political questions there was virtual an alleged ‘‘History of Bolshevism’’ origins and nature of Bolshevism.
unanimity within the Iskra tendency. the main aim of which wasto discredit
Yet there have always been powerful Trotsky by means of a false and Part Six of Alan Woods’ seriesofarticles
vested interests in trying to read into tendentious accountof party history. on the History of Bolshevism will appear
these divisions far more than they con- In regard to 1903, Zinoviev refers to in the next edition of the MIR. Back issues
of the Militant International Review con-
tained in fact. ‘Comrade Trotsky who wasat that
taining parts 1 to 4 are available for £1 each,
time a Menshevik.”’ ?° postage included, from: World Socialist
_ History distorted For their part, bourgeois historians
such as Leonard Shapiro attempt to
Books, 3-13 Hepscott Road, London E9
5HB. Cheques payable to ‘World Socialist
caricature Lenin’s arguments in ~Books’.
Nobody had anticipated that this favour of centralism to paint a picture
split would take place. The par-
ticipants themselves were shocked and
stunned by the unexpected turn of
events. The fact that Lenin did not see Footnotes
it as a final parting of the ways was 1. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, Volume 31, 11. For a detailed explanation see ‘One Step
indicated by his ceaseless attempts to pos. Forward, Two Steps Back’ in Lenin's ‘Col-
2. ‘1908, Minutes of the Second Congress lected Works’, Volume 7, pp203—425.
achieve unity with the minority in the
months after the congress. Krupskaya
of the RSDLP’, p181. 12. Trotsky, ‘My Life’, p160.
3. Trotsky, ‘Stalin’, p39. 13. ‘1903, Minutes of the Second Congress
recalled that on one occasion when she 4. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’ of the RSDLP’, p308.
mentioned the possibility of a perma- 5. See S. Baron, ‘Plekhanov, Father ofRus- 14, Ibid, p311.
‘nent split, Lenin retorted: “That would sian Marxism’, (Spanish edition), 15, Ibid, p321.
be too crazy for words.” '® pp3s00—301. 16. Ibid, p326.
The political tendency represented’ 6. Lunacharchy, ‘Revolutionary Silhouet- 17. Trotsky, ‘My Life’, p162.
by Menshevism was only to take tes’, pp132—33. 18. Quote from Party Archivesin Istoriya,
shape in the period following the Con- 7. Trotsky, ‘Political Profiles’, pp97—98. KPSS, p486.
8&Trotsky, ‘My Life’, p157. 19. V. Grinko andothers, ‘The Bolshevik
gress. Yet the Stalinists for decades 9. Trotsky, ‘History of the Russian Revolu- Party’s Struggle Against Trotskyism
have persisted in citing the hot-headed tion’, pp890—91. (1903—February 1917)’, p30.
reaction of the 23-year old Trotsky at 10. ‘1903, Minutes of the Second Congress 20. Zinoviev, ‘History of the Bolshevik Par-
the Second Congress as “proof” of his of the RSDLP’, p81. ty’, p 85.
‘“‘Menshevism’’. Thus we read
statements like the following: “‘Con-
42
 Alan Woods continues his history of the Bolshevik party with an account of thesplit in the Rus-
sian Social Democratic Party which developed in 1903-1904.

Bolshevism and Menshevism

—The growing divide
‘*THE NEWS ofthe split hit us like Of course, a revolutionaryparty is not Lenin himself made repeated attempts to
a bolt from the blue. We knew that a discussion club, but a fighting organisa- re-establish unity, and even offered to
the Second Congress was to witness tion. Nevertheless, the idea of the makea series of concessions which, in ef-
the concluding movesin the struggle Bolshevik Party as a monolithic structure, fect, represented the abandonmentof the
with Workers’ Cause (the wherethe leaders order and the rank and positions won bythe majority at the Con-
Economists, AW), but that the file obey, is a malicious falsehood. On the gress. In her Memoirs of Lenin, Krup-
schism should take a course which contrary, the Bolshevik Party was the skaya recalls that:
most democratic party in history. Even “After the Congress Vladimir Ilyich
wasto put Martov and Lenin in op-
in the most difficult periods of did not object when Glebov suggested co-
posing camps and that Plekhanov
underground work, in the heart of the opting the old editorial board—better to
wasto ‘split off? midway between the revolution and in the most dangerous roughit the old way than to havea split.
two—noneofthis so muchvas entered days ofthe civil war, the internal regime, But the Mensheviks refused. In Geneva
our heads. and especially its highest expression, the Vladimir Ilyich tried to makeit up with
“‘The first clause of the Party Congress, was the arena of open and Martov, and wrote to Potresov, reassur-
statutes. ..was this really something honest discussion, with the clash of dif- ing him that they had nothing to quarrel
that justified a split? A reshuffle of ferent ideas. But there is a limit for all about. He also wrote to Kalmykova
jobs on the editorial board—what’s things. At the end of the day, a party (Auntie) about the split, and told her how
the matter with those people abroad, which seeks, not onlyto talk, but also to matters stood. He could not believe that
have they gone mad’’? act, must reach decisions and carry them there was no wayout.”’ ?
| The reaction of Lunacharsky, who into practice. The caricature of Lenin as a ‘‘ruthless
was to become one of Lenin’s principal The worker learns discipline in the dictator’? and cynical manoeuverer,
lieutenants in the next couple of years’ everyday experience of factory life. On ruthlessly trampling on his former col-
was faithful reflection of the reaction the other handthe notion of organisation leagues in order to concentrate powerin
of the majority of Party membersto the and disciplineis difficult for the intellec- his hands, does not correspond to the
split at the Second Congress. Theprevail- tual to grasp. Heorshe tends to see the facts. Krupskaya gives a vivid picture of
ing moodwasagainst the split, the real party precisely as a gigantic discussion Lenin in agonising over the split with
significance of which was not even clear group, in which to expound his views on Martov.
to the principal protagonists. each and every topic. However erudite,
however well read, the intellectual who Rupture
Ruthless has not placed himself personally on the
standpoint of the working class, comes to ‘At times he saw clearly that a rupture
In the months after the Congress, the a full stop precisely where the real task was unavoidable. Hestarted a letter to
supporters of the Minority raised a hue of Marxism begins, that is, in the realm Clair (Krzhizhanovsky, AW) once, say-
and cry about Lenin’s alleged ‘‘dictatorial of action. ‘‘Philosophers have only inter- ing that the latter simply could not im-
tendencies’? and ‘‘ruthless centralism’’. preted the world in different ways,’’ as agine the present situation, that one had
These outbursts, which had not the Marx explained,‘‘the point is, however, to realise that the old relations had
slightest’ basis in fact, served as a to changeit.”’ radically changed, that the old friendship
smokescreen to cover the anarchistic The anarchistic individualism of the with Martov was at an end?old friend-
behaviour of Martov’s group, who, Minority reflected, at bottom, the petit- ships were to be forgotten, and that the
despite the pledges given by them at the bourgeois standpointwith its organic in- fight was starting. Vladimir Ilyich did not
Congress, refused to submit to the deci- - capacity for discipline and its tendency to finish that letter or post it. It was very
sion of the majority and wageda disloyal mix up personal questions with political hard for him to break with Martov. Their
campaign against the leadership principle. work in St Petersburg and on the old
democratically elected at the Congress. Thelines of demarcation werestill con- Iskra had drawn them close
Breaking the most elementary normsof fused. Plekhanov, the future social- together...Afterwards Vladimir Ilyich
conduct which apply in any party, they patriot, initially stood with Lenin. Trot- had fiercely fought the Mensheviks, but
demanded that the Minority should sky, the future founder of the Red Army, whenever Martov’s line showed a tenden-
decide, and effectively tried to sabotage found himself temporarily in the camp of cy to rightitself, his cld attitude to him
the work of the Party, by refusing to col- the “‘Minority’’. Contrary to the Stalinist revived. Such was the case, for example,
laborate with its elected organs. slander that Trotsky was a ‘‘Menshevik’’ in Paris 1910 when Vladimir Ilyich and
Far from adopting a ‘‘ruthless’’ at- from 1903 onwards, he broke with Mar- Martov worked together on the Editorial
titude, Lenin, as we shall see, made every tov’s group in September 1904 and Board of Sotsial Demokrat (Social-
attempt to healthe split after the Con- thereafter formally remained outside both Democrat). Coming home from the of-
gress, and repeatedly express¢d his will- factions until 1917. Politically, Trotsky fice, Vladimir Ilyich often usedto tell me
’ ingness to compromise and make conces- always stoodfar closer to the Bolsheviks, in a pleased tone that Martov was taking
sions, even to the extent of retreating but, organisationally, he had the illusion a correct line and even coming out against
from the positions adopted by the Con- that it was possible to unite both wings Dan. Afterwards in Russia, Vladimir I]-
gress, Lenin, in fact, leaned over of the Party. History finally showed this yich was very pleased with Martov’s stand
backwards to accommodate the Minori- to be impossible. But Trotsky was not during the July Days (in 1917, AW) not
ty, in spite of their completely irrespon- alone in this error, as we snall show. because it was any good to the
sible conduct. In the monthsfollowing the Congress, Bolsheviks, but because Martov bore
34
 himself as behoves a revolutionary.
‘Vladimir Ilyich wasalready serious-
ly ill when he said to me oncesadly: ‘They
say Martov is dying too.’ ’’ ?
This was typical of a side of Lenin’s
character which is too often overlooked.
Completely devoid of sentimentality,
Lenin never allowed himselfto confuse
personal likes and dislikes with questions
of political principle. But Lenin knew
how to recognise talent in other people
and did not easily give them upasa lost
cause. Personal spitefulness was com-
pletely foreign to this man whoall his life
showed the greatest loyalty to other
comrades.
If it would have been upto Lenin, the
split could have been quickly resolved.
But the almost hysterical reaction of the
Minority made an agreementimpossible.
Defeated at the Congress, they launched
a series of violent attacks against Lenin
and the Majority. Martov published a
pamphlet accusing Lenin of causing a The young Trotsky, left, and Rosa Luxemburg.
“*State of Siege’ in the party. A heated
atmosphere was engendered, outof all party on a principled basis, Lenin himself a total overturn of the Congress decisions,
proportion to the importanceofthe issues explained the reason for the split in the _ it became clear that agreement was im-
apparently at stake. Osip Pyatnisky, who following passage: ‘‘Examining the possible. To accept such a demand would
wasin charge of the distribution of Iskra behaviour of the Martovites since the meanputting the clock back to thesitua-
in Berlin, recalls the surprise and conster- Congress, their refusal to collaborate on tion which prevailed before the Second
nation in the ranks at the report-back the Central Organ (althoughofficially in- Congress.
from the Congress: vited by the editorial board to do so), Factional struggle has a logic of its
‘We listened to the reports of both their refusal to work on the Central Com- own. By repudiating the Second Con-
sides about the Congress, and then im- mittee, and their propaganda of a gress, and defending organisational
mediately began the agitation in favour boycott—all I can sayis that this is an in- formlessness under the guise of an alleg-
of one or the other trend. I felt sorry that sensate attempt, unworthy of Party ed ‘‘struggle against centralism’’, the
offence had been caused to Zasulich, members,to disrupt the Party—and why? Minority’s position on organisational
Potresov and Axelrod, removing them Only because they are dissatisfied with the questions was gradually becoming in-
from the Editorial board of Iskra...On compostition of the central bodies; for distinguishable from the views of the
the other hand, I was wholly in favour speaking objectively it was only overthis “*Economists’’ with whom, only yester-
with the organisational structure of the that our ways parted, while their subjec- day, they had been at loggerheads. The
Party proposed by Lenin. My logic was tive verdicts (insults, affronts, slurs, accidental ‘‘bloc’’ of the ‘‘softs’’ with the
with the Majority, but myfeelings, so to oustings, shutting out, etc) are nothing Economist right wing at the Congress,
speak, were with the Minority.’’, but the fruits of offended vanity and a which Lenin had already pointed out, by
The confusion of the rank-and-file was morbid imagination.’’ ° (emphasis in the degrees turned into a fusion. The extreme
understandable. At this stage there were original). Economist Akimov, with malicious irony,
no obviouspolitical differences between noted the approximation of the Minori-
the Majority and the Minority. However Split ty to the old opportunist views of
deplorable the behaviour of the Mar- Economism:
tovites,; whose spiteful attacks and Refusing all Lenin’s attempts at recon- ““Even at the (Second) Congress, the
boycotting of the work of the party ciliation, the Martovites pressed on with Union’s delegates (ie Economists, AW)
reflected the hurt pride of individualist in- their campaign of agitation. They were supported the Mensheviks and voted for
tellectuals, unwilling to submittheir per- particularly strong abroad. They had Martov’s formulation. Today all the
sonal inclinations to the will of the ma- moneyand close contacts with the leaders members of the former Union (ie the
jority, the real differences between of the European Social Democracy. In Economist-controlled Union of Russian
Bolshevism and Menshevism were far September 1903, Martov’s group took the Social Democrats Abroad, AW) regard
from being clearly defined at this stage. first step in the direction of a split byset- the tactics of the ‘‘softs’’ as more correct,
It is true that the germs of these dif- ting up a ‘“‘Bureau of the Minority’’, with and as a concession to their own view-
ferences were already presentin 1903. But the aim of capturing the Party’s leading point. Whenit disbanded, the Petersburg
for the momentthey had noyet acquired bodiesbyall available means. They began Workers’ Organisation (Economist)
a definite political content. to publish their own factional literature declared itself at one with the Men-
Rather it was a differencein attitudes for distribution in Russia. sheviks.’’ ° (my emphasis, AW).
as reflected in Lenin’s characterisation of Despiteall this, Lenin still pinned his The differences came to a head at the
the two trends as the ‘‘hards’’ and the hopes on reconciliation. On 4 October 2nd Congress of the League of Russian
‘*softs’’. However, the clash of these two 1903 a meeting was held between Lenin, Revolutionary Social Democracy Abroad
trends undoubtedly foreshadowed the Plekhanovand Lengnik, for the Majori- held in Geneva in October 1903. Lenin
future split between Bolshevism and Men- ty and Martov, Alexrod, Zasulich and delivered the report-back of the Party
shivism, which only finally took place in Potresov, for the Minority. The Majori- Congress in measured terms, but was
1912. After nearly a decade of ceaseless ty were willing to make concessions, but answered bya slashing attack by Martov,
attempts on the part of Lenin to unite the when the Minority reacted by demanding which poisoned the atmosphere from the
35
 MIR Summer 1987: Bolshevism Part Six

outset. in 1909, he again turnedto the left and through their explanations. It goes
At the Second Congress of the Party entered a bloc with the Bolsheviks. But without saying that we cannot believe
it had been decided that the League would that was his last attempt before finally your assertion that suddenly Plekhanov
be the official overseas organisation of veering to the right, to end uptragically and Axelrod have become opportunists.
the Party, with the samestatus as a local in the camp ofpatriotic reaction in the That’s absurd!”’ * :
party committee in Russia. This clearly last few years ofhislife. When Lyadov approachedthe editor of
meantthat it would be under the control Trotsky once remarked that, in order the German Social Democratic newspaper
of the CC. But the Minority, which con- to be a revolutionary,it is not enough to Vorwarts with a request to publish cor-
trolled the League, would notacceptthis, have a theoretical understanding.It is also respondenceonthesituation in the Rus-
and approvednewrules giving the League necessary to have the necessary will- sian party he was told that Vorwdrts
independence from the CC with a view power. Withoutthis, a revolutionary is *‘could not spare much space for the
to turningit into a base for factional work like ‘‘a watch with a broken spring.’’ That movementabroad,especially the Russian,
against the Majority. Lengnik moved that phrase accurately describes Plekhanov’s whichis still so young and cangivesolit-
this be referred to the CC and whenthis weakside, which, despite his tremendous tle to the German movement.” ”
wasturned down,the representatives of contribution, finally undermined and In the haughty, condescending tone of
the Majority, incensed, walked out of the destroyed him. this German ‘‘apparatchik’’, tinged with
congress. The evening of 18 October (31) saw the national narrow-mindedness, the outline
At a hastily improvised meeting in a break with Plekhanov. At a meeting of of future developments can already be
nearby cafe, Plekhanov indignantly de- the Majority, only days after he had pro- discerned. These German party ‘‘prac-
nounced the behaviour of the Minority posed an all out struggle against the Mar- ticos’? had no interest in theory. While
and proposeda plan of action for a strug- tovites, Plekhanov did an 180° degree paying lip-service to Marxism, they were
gle against them. Nevertheless, in private, turn and argued for peace at any price: immersedin the daily routine of party and
Plekhanovwasfilled with misgivings. In- ‘I cannotfire against my own comrades. trade union tasks. What could the Ger-
itially firm in defence of Lenin’s position, Better a bullet in the brain than a split,’’ manparty with its powerful trade unions
which he knewto be correct, as soon as he exclaimed, ‘‘There are times when even and parliamentary fraction learn from the
it becameclear that an unbridgeable gap the autocracy has to give in.’? ’ He internal disputes of a small foreign par-
wasopening up between the Majority and presented his demandsin the form of an ty? Already to a significant section of the
his old friends and colleagues, ultimatum: either they were accepted, or Germanleaders, internationalism was a
Plekhanov’s nerve began to falter. Had he would resign from the Editorial Board. book sealed with seven seals.
he donethe right thing in siding with Plekhanov’s defection was a heavy The same‘‘Realpolitik’’ which twenty
Lenin? Wasit worth tearing the party blow to the Majority. With serious years earlier had led them to support
apart for the sake of a few rules? Lenin misgivings, but still hoping to facilitate Lavrov and the Narodniks against
and he had madeevery possible conces- unity, Lenin resigned from the Editorial Plekhanov, now led them to support
sion to the Minority, but the latter Board shortly afterwards. Plekhanovagainst Lenin. Theypreferred
demandedtotal surrender. What of that? However, far from uniting the Party, the well-knownleaders and ‘‘big-names’’.
Whatwasso terrible about co-optingall Plekhanov’s move had the opposite ef- Butbasically, they were uninterested in
the old editors back on for the sake of fect. The Martovites merely used their the issues involved.
peace? After, the old system, for allits success to press new demands: the co-
faults, was better than this. option of Minority supporters onto the Rosa Luxemburg
Central Committee and the Party Coun-
Concessions cil and the recognition of the decisions Particularly damaging to the Bolshevik
taken at the 2nd Congress of the League cause wasthe attitude oftheleft wing of
Lenin, too, was in favour of conces- of Social Democrats Abroad. Having the German party. Right up to 1914,
sions, even of co-opting the former capitulated once, Plekhanov now gave in Lenin regarded himself as a supporter of
editors, But experience showedthat every to all these demands, which, in effect, Karl Kautsky, the leader of the “‘orthodox
offer of concessions merely increased the would overturn all the decisions of the left’? of the SDP. Yet Kautsky refused to
intransigence of the Minority. Reluctant- Party Congress. allow Lenin spacein his journal die Neue
ly, Lenin picked up the gauntlet the other Theposition of the Majority looked ex- Zeit to put the case of the Bolsheviks. In
side had thrown down, because further tremely bleak. The ‘‘Minority’’ now con- a letter, Kautsky wrote: ‘‘While there re-
retreats would do harm to the cause of trolled the central organ, IJskra, the mains even the shadow of hopethat the
the Party. The break with Martov had League Abroad and the Party Council. Russian Social Democratswill themselves
been extremely painful, even traumatic, Only the Central Committee remained, overcometheir disagreements, | cannot
for Lenin, who confessed to Krupskaya theoretically, with the Majority. But the be in favour of the German comradesfin-
that this was the most difficult decision Majority was deprived of a voice. ding out about these differences. If they
of his life. But for Lenin the interests of Gradually, /skra ceased to publish the ar- find out about them from another source,
the party, the working class and socialism ticles and letters sent in by the supporters then, of course, we will have to take a
were more important than any personal of the Majority. Meanwhile, the Men- definite position.”’ '°
considerations. sheviks exploited to the full their contacts Underthe pressure of the Mensheviks,
Piekhanov was a different type and personal friendships with the leaders Kautsky came out against Lenin. But he
altogether. Worn out and disorientated by of the Socialist International. The did so cautiously. So long asthe split in
long years of exile, Plekhanov proved Bolsheviks had a poortimeof it in the Russia did not disturb the internal life of
unable to makethetransition to the new international socialist press. the German party, there was no need to
historical period, a period of revolution Lyadov,in his memoirs, recalls a con- make much ofit, hoping that things
which made new demands on the party versation he had with Kautsky in which would ‘‘sort themselves out.’’ After all,
andits leadership. What was truly amaz- the latter gave voice to his exasperation: if the German Party could accommodate
ing was not so muchthat he capitulated, ‘“‘What do you want? We don’t know everybody from Bernstein on the right to
but that he had sided with Lenin in the your Lenin. He’s a new man to us. Rosa Luxemberg and Parvusontheleft,
first place. It is a tribute to the man that Plekhanov and Axelrod weall know very the Russian comrades ought to manage
he at least attempted to makethe transi- well. We are accustomedto finding out to get. along without splitting over
tion, and notonly on this occasion, Later, aboutthe state of affairs in Russia only “‘trivial’’ questions.
36 !
 In this way, only the argumentsof the well acquainted in her own party, the Ger- two decades prior to the catastrophe of
Mensheviks were heard in the Western man SPD. World War One, when a conservative
European Socialist Parties. Misled by the Howrelevant to the presentsituation bureaucracy, ‘‘Marxist’’ in words, but
Mensheviks, false and tendentious ac- in the British Labour Party andits Euro- reformist in practice, by degrees con-
counts of the differences, Rosa Lux- pean equivalents are the words ofthis solidated its hold on the labour movement
emberg had written an article which Kaut- great revolutionary! ‘‘With the growth of in Germany, France and every other
sky published in Neue Zeit under the the labour movement’’, she wrote, country in Western Europe.
neutraltitle: ‘Organisational Questions ‘*parliamentarianism becomes a Whatwastrue of the unions was a hun-
of the Russian Social Democracy.”’ This springboardforpolitical careerists. That dred times moretrue of the parliamen-
article has been republished in English is why so many ambitious failures from tary fraction in the Reichstag. Dominated
underthe misleading and mischievousti- the bourgeoisie flock to the bannerof the by intellectuals and professional people,
tle never used during Rosa Luxemburg’s socialist parties. Another source of con- with a standardof living different to the
lifetime— “‘Leninism or Marxism?’’ temporary opportunism is the con- millions of workers they represented, the
In this article, Rosa Luxemburgrepeats siderable material meansandinfluence of Social Democratic leaders in parliament
the nonsense of the Mensheviks about the large Social Democratic movedto the right, escaped the control
Lenin’s alleged ‘‘ultra-centralism’’ and organisations. of the working class and eventually
“‘dictatorial methods.’’ It was precisely “‘The party acts as a bulwark protec- becametransformedinto a privileged and
Lenin’s reply to this article which Kaut- ting the class movementagainst digression conservative caste.
sky refused to print. In his reply, Lenin in the direction of more bourgeios As a reaction against this, Rosa Lux-
explodes, one after the other, the myths parliamentarism. To triumph these emburg laid heavy stress on the spon-
created by the Mensheviks abouthis ideas tendencies must destroy the bulwark. taneous movementof the working class,
‘on organisation—myths which have been They must dissolve the active, class con- elevating the idea of a revolutionary
assiduously cultivated ever since by both scious sector of the proletariat in the general strike almost to the level of a
bourgeois and Stalinist historians. amorphousmassofan ‘electorate.’’’ (my panacea. This over-reaction undoubted-
“‘Comrade Luxemburgsays, for exam- emphasis, AW) '? ly led her into a series of errors. One can
ple, that my book (‘‘One step forward, Of course, the struggle for the socialist say that in all of her disagreements with
two steps back,’’ AW) is a clear and transformation of society does not rule Lenin, including this one, Rosa Luxem-
detailed expression of the point of view out participation in elections or in parlia- burg was in the wrong. Yetit is equally
of ‘intransigent centralism’. Comrade ment. On the contrary, the working class undeniable thatall these mistakes can be
Luxemburg thus supposesthat I defend of all countrieshas been to the forefront traced back to a genuine revolutionaryin-
one system of organisation against of the fight for democratic rights and will stinct, a boundless faith in the creative
another. But actually that is not so. From use every legal and constitutional right in power of the working class and an im-
the first to the last page of my book,I order to improve its position and place placable hostility to the careerists and
defend the elementary principles of any itself in a commanding position to change bureaucrats whorepresent, in the words
conceivable system of party organisation. society. The building of powerful trade of Trotsky, ‘‘the most conservative force
Mybookis not concerned with the dif- union organisations, too, is a vital part in the whole of society.”’
ference between one system of organisa- of the preparation of the workingclass Rosa Luxemburg’s misgivings about
tion and another, but with how any for the carrying out of its historic task. Lenin’s alleged ‘‘pitiless centralism’’ were
system is to be maintained, criticised and shared, for the same reason, by other
rectified in a manner consistent with the
party idea.’”’ '!
Alien German lefts, such as AL Gelfand,
generally known byhis pen-name Parvus,
Rosa Luxemburg’s stand was no acci- But this process has two sides. The whose works were greatly admired by
dent. For many years she had been con- working class and its organisations do not Lenin, and also, at the time, by Trotsky.
ducting a stubborn struggle against the exist in a vacuum. Underthe pressure of After breaking from the Mensheviks,
bureaucratic and reformist tendency in alien classes, organisations which have Trotsky, for a while, worked closely with
the German Social Democratic Party. She been created by the workersfor the pur- Parvus.
watched with alarm the consolidation of pose of transforming society have become In later years, Trotsky admitted that he
a vast army of trade union and party deformed and degenerated. The pressure had been wrong and Lenin correct on the
functionaries into a solidly conservative of capitalist ‘‘public opinion’’ bears down organisational questions. His booklet Our
bloc. She knew this phenomenonbetter upontheleading layers. The ruling class Political Tasks, published in the heat of
than anyoneelse, even Lenin, who had has developed a thousand and one ways the factional struggle, contains many
not had muchfirst hand experience of the of corrupting and absorbing the most criticisms of Lenin which the author was
German party which he took <as his honest and militant shop stewardif he or later to describe as ‘‘immature ander-
model, particularly in the form ofits she lacks a firm base in Marxist theory roneous.’’ '? Yet there are elements even
“‘left’’ wing led at the time by Kautsky. and perspectives. The separating out of in this work which contained more than
She understood that this enormous a layer of full-time trade unionofficials, a grain oftruth in relation to a certain side
bureaucratic apparatus could become increasingly divorced from the shop floor of Bolshevism, namely the psychology
transformed, at a decisive momentin the and with all kinds of little perks and and modeof conductof the ‘‘committee-
class struggle, into a gigantic brake on the privileges, tended to create a distinct and men’’, that layer of party ‘‘practicos’’
masses. Andso it proved to be in August alien mentality, particularly when the and ‘‘organisation men and women’’ with
1914, when all of Rosa Luxemburg’s workers werenotinvolved in massstrug- whom Lenin himself was to enter into bit-
worst fears were confirmed. gle which tends to act as a check on the ter conflict only a few monthsafter the
Even a cursory glance at Rosa Luxem- leadership. But in a long period of appearance of Trotsky’s controversial
burg’s pamphlet suffices to show that decades of relative prosperity, full pamphlet.
whatshe was really polemicising against employment and ‘‘class peace’’, the Every political party, every stable
was not the ideas of Lenin (with which predominanttrendis for the rank-and-file organisation, necessarily has a conser-
she was only acquaintedin the caricature not to participate actively in their vative side. The need to provide the
form presented by the Mensheviks), but organisations, to trust their leaders and material meansto pass from the realm of
the kind of bureaucratic-reformist officials to ‘‘get on with the job.’’ This theory to that of practice demands the
degeneration with which she was only too wasthe situation in Germany for almost creation of an apparatus. Theliving prin-
37
MIR Summer 1987: Bolshevism Part Six
ciple of an apparatusis routine: the thou- conspiracy, true enough, offered rather come roundto the view that the only way
sand and one humdrum organisational meagre scope for such of the formalities to resolve the crisis was to call a new Party
tasks of collecting money, organising of democracy as electiveness, accoun- Congress.
distribution andsales ofliterature and so tability and control. Yet, undoubtedly the As was to be expected, the supporters
on require a meticulous attention to committeemen narrowedthese limitations of the Minority who nowcontrolled the
detail. Withoutthis, the construction of considerably more than necessity Party Council turned down Lenin’s pro-
the party would be unthinkable. From the demanded and were far more intransigent posal for a new Congress. However, when
outset, a number of people must be and severe with the revolutionary work- Lenin took his request to the CC,
dedicated to these tasks. As the party ingmen than with themselves, preferring theoretically controlled by the Majority,
grows, their numbers increase. Unless to domineer even on occasionsthatcall- he cameup against unexpectedresistance
special measures are undertaken to con- ed imperatively for lending an attentive from his own supporters. In Lenin’s
stantly raise the theoretical level of these ear to the voice of the masses.’’ !° Works wefind letter after letter striving
comrades and enlarge their horizons, a And Trotsky answers in advancethe to convince the CC membersofthe.cor-
certain organisational narrowness tends vile slander which seeks to find the rectness of this proposal. But the
to creep in, which can play a harmful role “original sin’’ of Stalinism in Lenin’s Bolsheviks on the CC shied away from
under certain circumstances. Un- method of democratic centralism: what they saw as a final break with the
consciously or semi-consciously, the im- ‘*In this connection,’’ he adds, ‘‘it is Mensheviks. Lenin bitterly remarked: ‘‘I
pression can be created of the primacy of rather tempting to draw the inference that think that on our CC wereally do have
organisation, whereas ideas, principles future Stalinism was already rooted in bureaucrats and formalists and not
and theory are regarded as of secondary Bolshevik centraiism or, more sweeping- revolutionaries. The Martovites spit in
importance. The opinions, initiative and ly, in the undergroundhierarchy of pro- their face and they wipe it off and read
criticism of the workers, the ‘‘rank-and- fessional revolutionists. But upon analysis me lessons in the ‘uselessness of strug-
file’’ are regarded as an unnecessaryin- that inference crumblesto dust, disclos- gle!”’ 17

cumbrance,at variance with the princi- ing an astounding paucity of historical

ple of ‘‘centralism’’, or control from content. Of course, there are dangers of War with Japan
“‘above’’. That there were elementsofthis one kind or another in the very process
in the Bolshevik party (as in any other of stringentiy picking and choosing per- Lenin’s decision to break with the Men-
party) is undeniable. But the attempts by sons of advanced views and welding them sheviks at this point was notan accident.
unscrupulous bourgeoishistoriansto link into a tightly centralised organisation. But Up tothis time, the central argument had
this with the abominations of Stalinism the roots of such dangers will never be centred on organisational questions. But
and to blame Lenin’s alleged ‘‘pitiless found in the so-called ‘principle’ of cen- now things began to take onan entirely
centralism’’ is a monstrous distortion of tralism: rather they should be soughtin newturn, reflecting a sudden and sharp
the truth. the lack of homogeneity and the turn in the political situation.
backwardness of the toilers—that is, in The student demonstrations, followed
‘Commandism’ the general social conditions which make
imperative that very centripetal leadership
by the political strikes and demonstra-
tions of the workers in 1902 were symp-
Looking back onthis period at the end of the class by its vanguard. The key to toms of a rapidly developing pre-
of his life, Trotsky summed up Lenin’s the dynamic problem of leadership is in revolutionary situation. A_ political
position in the following way: the actual interrelationships between the general strike in July and August of 1903
**Lenin understood better than anyone political machine andits party, between was followed by a brief lull, only to be
else the need for a centralised organisa- the vanguard andits class, between cen- succeeded by a new strike wave in the
tion: but he saw in it, aboveall, a lever tralism and democracy. Those interrela- summer of 1904. A rash of strikes oc-
for enhancing the activity of the advanc- - tionships cannot, of their very nature, be cured in Petersburg, Ivano-Voznessensk,
ed working men. The idea of making a established ‘a priori’ and remain im- Nizhny Novgorod, and the Caucusus,
fetish of the political machine was not on- mutable. They are dependanton concrete where a majorstrike shook theoil centre
ly alien but repugnantto his nature.’’ '* historical conditions; their mobile balance Baku in December.
Of course, it would be entirely wrong is regulated by the vital struggle of Under the pressure of the working
to compare the Bolshevik ‘‘committee- tendencies, which, as represented by their class, the liberal bourgeois began to press
men’’, most of whom were dedicated, extreme wings, oscillate between the their demands for a constitution. Feeling
self-sacrificing revolutionaries, to the cor- despotism of the political machine and the the ground shake under its feet, the
rupt bureaucrats of the Second Interna- impotence of phrasemongering.’’ (my regime was seized with panic. Plehve,
tional or to the monstroustotalitarian emphasis, AW) !° Minister of the Interior, wrote cynically
caste which rules Russia today. The Lenin hadtried to avoid fight, refus- to General Kuropatkin, the Minister of
Stalinist bureaucracy had to exterminate ing to answer the continuous attacks Defence: ‘‘In order to stave off revolu-
the Old Bolsheviks asthe first condition made against him. But the outcome of tion, what werequireis a victoriouslittle
for the consolidation of its rule as a Plekhanov’s action convinced him that no war.”
privileged caste. other solution was possible. This was Despite its backward, semi-feudal
Whatweare dealing with is a different made abundantlyclear byan article, sign- character, and its dependence upon
phenomenon:the emergenceofa certain ed by Plekhanov in No 52 of Iskra, en- Western capital, Tsarist Russia was one
tendency towards ‘‘commandism’’, for titled Where not to begin, a shameful at- of the main imperialist nations at the turn
lack of a better word, a certain formalistic tempt to providea ‘‘theoretical’’ cover- of the century. Together with the other
cast of mind which existed in certain up for the author’s capitulation. Under imperialist robbers, Britain, France and
layers of the party against which Lenin its new editors, Jskra was now transform- Germany, Tsarist Russia participated in
was obliged to wage a moreorless con- ed into a factional organ of the Minority. the carve-up of the world into colonies
tinuous struggle. The Majoritystill controlled the Cen- and spheres of influence. Poland and the
‘The habits peculiar to a political tral Committee. But having co-opted the Baltic states, Finland, and the Caucasus,
machine,’’ wrote Trotsky, ‘‘were already old editors onto the Editorial Board, the the Far Eastern territories and Central
forming in the underground. The young Minority now had a majority on the Party Asia, were, in effect tsarist colonies. But
revolutionary bureaucrat was already Council, the highest authority in the Par- the territorial ambitions of tsarism were
emerging as a type. The conditions of ty. By the end of the year, Lenin had insatiable. The avaricious gaze of St
38
 Petersburg wasfied upon Turkey, Per- and journalists organised semi-legal the war was perhapsthefirst public ex-
sia and aboveall China, where the decay- meetings in the form of ‘‘dinner parties’’ pression of this fact.
ing Manchu dynasty was incapable of where they would make speeches and Trotsky, in his autobiography,recalls
preventing the dividing up of theliving toasts in favour of moderate constitu- how a section of the old leaders leaned
body of China by the imperialist tional reform. towards the liberals: ‘‘The press was
brigands,especially after the defeat of the The decisive difference between becoming more daring,the terrorist acts
so-called “‘Boxer’’ uprising in 1900, when Bolshevism and Menshevism arose, not more frequent: the liberals began to wake
Russia occupied the whole of Manchuria. from the somewhat abstract discussions up and launched a campaignofpolitical
This predatory expansion in the Far on organisational questions at the Second banquets. The fundamental questions of
East brought Russia up against the rising Congress, important as they were, but on revolution came swiftly to the front.
young powerof Japan. The Japanese im- the life-and-death issues posed by the Abstractions were beginning in my eyes
perialists interpreted Russia’s action as an development of the revolution: in par- to acquire actual social flesh. The Men-
attempt to block them on the mainland ticular, the attitude to the liberals and the sheviks, Zasulich especially, were placing
of Asia. In the summerof 1903, the War attitude to the war. great hopes in the liberals.
Party wonthe day in Tokyo. In the dead ““Even before the (Second) Congress,
of the night in February 1904, the
Japanese fell upon the Russian fleet in
Liberals after one of the editorial meetings in the
cafe ‘Landolt’, Zasulich began to com-
Port Arthur, using the very sametactics The new /skra, under Menshevik con- plain, in the peculiar, timidly insistent
employed at Pearl Harbour in 1941. trol, took an ambiguousposition on the tone which she always assumed for such
Japanese commandof the seas was thus war, which smackedof pacifism, calling occasions, that we were attacking the
guaranteed and a bloodystruggle began for ‘‘peace at any price.’’ Lenin poured liberals too much. That wasa sore point
which wasto leadto the fall.of Port Ar- scorn onthis idea, explairiing that the vic- with her.
thur eleven months. later with the loss of tory of tsarism in the war would “**See how eager they are aboutit,’ she
28,200 Russian soldiers, half the garrison. Strengthen the regime for a_ period, would say, looking past Lenin, although
Three weeks later, the first Russian whereas the military defeat of Russian it was really Lenin whom shewasaiming
Revolution had begun. would inevitably mean the outbreak of at. ‘Struve demands that the Russian
Theforces unleashed by a warserve to revolution. He subjected the Russian _ liberals should not renounce socialism,
put all parties, programmes andleader- military campaign to a searing criticism, because, if they do, they will be threaten-
ships to the test. The calculations of the using it as a means of exposing the ed with the fate of the Germanliberals:
autocracy were based on cutting across degenerate and corrupt essence of the he says they should follow the example
the class struggle and forging a bloc bas- regime—nottearful pacifism, not impo- of the French Radical Socialists.’
ed on ‘‘national unity’’. The liberals at tent appeals for ‘‘peace’’ but revolu- ‘**We should strike them all the more,’
once revealed their reactionary essence. tionary defeatism was the position of said Lenin with a gay smile as if he were
Their dislike of the autocratic regime Lenin: teasing Vera Ivanovna.
which denied them slice of the ‘‘state ‘*The cause of Russian freedom and of ‘**That’s nice!’ she exclaimed in utter
pie’’ struggled with their greed at the pro- the struggle of the Russian (and the despair, ‘They come to meet us and we
spect of the big profits to be made out of world) proletariat for socialism depends strike them down!’
the war and the acquisition of new col- to a very large extent on the military “*| was with Lenin unreservedly in this
onies in the East. The ex-‘‘Marxist’’ defeats of the autocracy,”’ he wrote in discussion, which became morecrucial
Struve urged the students to support The Fall ofPort Arthur. ‘This cause has the deeper it went. In 1904, during the
“*patriotic’’ manifestos. been greatly advanced by the military liberal banquet campaign, which quickly
However,after initially weakening the debacle which has struck terror in the reached an impasse, I put forward the
revolutionary movement, the war soon hearts of all European guardians of the question, ‘What next?’ and answeredit
gave it a powerful impetus. The existing order. The revolutionary pro- in this way: the way out can be opened
humiliating military defeats made the war letariat must carry on a ceaseless agita- only by means of a generalstrike, follow-
deeply unpopular not only with the tion against war, always keeping in mind, ed by an uprising of the proletariat which
masses, but also with the bourgeois however, that warsare inevitable as long will march at the head of the masses
liberals, who deftly switched from as class rule exists. Trite phrases about against liberalism. This aggravated my
patriotism to defeatism. peace a la Jaures* are of no use to the op- disagreements with the Mensheviks.’’ |’
Thesightof the allegedly mighty Rus- pressed class which is not responsible for As Trotsky’s example graphically
sian armycollapsing like a houseof cards a bourgeois war between two bourgeois shows, the elements of a certain con-
at the first serious test exposed the inner nations, which is doingall it can to over- ciliatory attitude towards the bourgeois
rotteness of the tsarist regime forall to throw every bourgeoisie, which knows the liberals among theold editors of Iskra ex-
see. Cracks began to open upin the very enormity of the people’s sufferings even isted even before the 1903 split. But these
tops of the regime. The discontentof the in times of ‘peaceful’ capitalist exploita- tendencies rapidly becamefilled with a
student youth foundits expression in the tion.’’ '* (my emphasis AW). . concrete political and class content under
spread of terrorist moods. The reac- Lenin’s revolutionary internationalism, the implacable pressures of war and
tionary Plehve was blown up by a Social- whichsets out from a class analysis of war revolution, which mercilessly thrust aside
Revolutionary in July and hastily replac- as ‘‘the continuation ofpolitics by other all ambiguities, compelling every party
ed by the “‘liberal’’ Prince Svyatopolk- means”’ stands out in stark contrast to the and trend to define itself in practice.
Mirsky who began to makenoises about pacifist whining of the present-day leaders The Mensheviks came out publicly in
a “‘new era.”’ of the ‘‘Communist’’ parties interna- support of the Zemstvoliberals’ banquet-
Terrified of the threat of revolution tionally, whose position on all fundamen- ting campaign. It was on this question
from below, the regime began to make tal questionsis a million times worse than that Trotsky formally broke with the
concessions to the bourgeois liberals. In that of the Mensheviks. Mensheviks in September 1904.
the autumn of 1904, the liberal ‘Liberty Under the pressure of the bourgeois Answering thelie of the Stalinists that
League”’ (‘‘Soyuz Osvobozhdeniya’’) liberals, the leaders of the ‘‘Minority’’
issued a call for a campaign of banquets were, in fact, moving away from the posi- * Jean Jaurés (1859-1914) prominent leader of
to put pressure on the government for tion of revolutionary Marxism. Their the reformist wing of the French Socialist
reforms. Lawyers, doctors, professors cloudy, semi-pacifist characterisation ot Party.
39
 MIR Summer1987: Bolshevism Part Six

he had been a ‘‘Menshevik’’ since 1903, gressive forces’’. gressive’” wing of the capitalists. This
Trotsky explains: - The entire psychology of the Men- policy was later taken over by Stalin
‘“*This connection with the minority in sheviks was impregnated with a lack of underthetitle of the ‘‘Popular Front.’’
the second congress was brief. Before confidence in the revolutionary potential Under different names and guisesitstill
many monthshad passed, two tendencies of the working class. The workers were remains, in essence, the policy of the
had become conspicuous within the enjoined not to demand too much, orex- ‘*Communist’’ parties today.
minority. 1 advocated taking steps to press too extreme views which might Lenin poured scorn on the very idea:
bring about a union with the majority as “*frighten’”’ the liberals. Jskra published ‘*Canit in general be acknowledged cor-
soon as possible, because | thoughtof the statements quite in the spirit of Professor rect in principle to set the workers’ party
split as an outstanding episode but Hobsbawnin Marxism Today whentalk- the task of presenting to the liberal
nothing more. Forothers,the split at the ing in hushed tones about the Liberal- democrats or the Zemstvo-ists political
Second Congress wasthe beginnings of SDP Alliance. demands ‘which they must supportif they
the evolution towards opportunism. I “*If we take a look at the arenaofstrug- are to have any right to speak in the name
spent the whole year of 1904 arguing with gle in Russia then what do we see? Only of the people’? No, such an approachis
the leading groups of Mensheviks on two forces; the Tsarist autocracy and the wrongin principle and can only obscure
questions of policy and organisation. The liberal bourgeoisie, which is now organis- the class consciousnessof the proletariat
arguments .were concentrated on two ed and possesses a huge specific weight. andlead to the mostfutile casuistry.’’ ’°
issues: the attitude towardsliberalism and The working mass, however, is atomised
that towards the Bolsheviks. I was for un- and can do nothing; as an independent Political basis of
compromising resistance to the attempts force we do not exist; and thus our task
of the liberals to lean on the masses, and consists in supporting the second force, “conciliationism”’
at the same time, becauseofit, I demand- the liberal bourgeoisie, and encouraging This, then was the real basis of the
ed with increasing determination the it and in no case intimidating it by presen- Bolshevik-Mensheviksplit, which did not
union of the two Social Democratic fac- ting our own independent proletarian emerge until over a year after the Second
tions.’” °° (my emphasis AW). demands.”’ >? (my emphasis AW). Congress. This fact is attested to by no
The ‘‘crime’’ of Trotsky in these years And Zinoviev adds, quite correctly, less a person than Theodor Dan, one of
wasthat.of ‘‘conciliationism’’, or, to use that ‘‘the question of the attitude of the the main leaders of the Mensheviks, who
an unkind expression ‘‘unity- working class to the bourgeoisie again States that:
mongering’’. This conciliationism, arose with particular acuteness—the same ‘*.. today, with historical hindsight,it
however, was an attemptto re-unite the basic question with which wecollided at is scarcely necessary any longer to
party, a view shared by manywithin the every stage of the history of the party and demonstrate that the organisational
Bolshevik camp andtheparty in general. to whichin the end all our disagreements disagreementsthat, at the Second Con-
It had nothing to do with a conciliatory with the Mensheviks could be reduced.” gress divided the Jskra people into
attitude to the enemies of the working Nosooner had the Mensheviks public- Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were merely
class—theliberals andtheso-called ‘‘pro- ly comeoutin favour ofthe liberals, then the cover for incipient intellectual and
gressive’ bourgeoisie. That position, im- Lenin issued a blistering attack on the political divergences that were far more
placably criticised by Trotsky, was the banquetting campaign. In his article The profound, and aboveall morepersistent
position of the Mensheviks then and the Zemystvo Campaign and Iskra’s plan, than the disagreements between the
leaders of the ‘‘Communist’’ parties to- Lenin mercilessly flayed the advocates of Economists and Iskra that had receded
day. It is an idea which Lenin spent his class collaborationism and defended an with the past and been completely li-
entire active life fighting against. independent revolutionary class policy: quidated by the congress. It was not an
‘*Afraid ofleaflets, afraid of anything organisational but a political divergence
Independence that goes beyond a qualified-franchise that very quickly split the Russian Social
constitution,’’ thundered Lenin, ‘‘the Democracy into two fractions which
Trotsky’s characterisation of the liberal gentry will always stand in fear of sometimes drew close and then clashed
liberals was clear from an article which the slogan ‘a democratic republic’ and of with each other, but basically remained
appeared in Jskra in mid-March 1904, the call for an armeduprising of the peo- independentparties that kept on fighting
where he described them as ‘‘half- ple. But the class-conscious proletariat with each other even at a time when they
hearted, vague, lacking in decision and in- will indignantly reject the very idea that were nominally within the framework of
clined to treachery.’’ ?' It was precisely we could renounce this slogan and this aunitary party... But at that time, at the
this article which provoked Plekhanov to call, or could in general be guided in our beginning of the century, the political
present the editors of /skra with an activity by the panic and fears of the character of the split was far from im-
ultimatum demandingTrotsky’s removal bourgeoisie.’’ ?* mediately apparent, not only to the spec-
from the editorial board. Thereafter, Of course, under the extremely difficult tators on the side lines but to the par-
Trotsky’s name disappeared from IJskra conditions of tsarist dictatorship, one ticipants in the fractional struggle
and his active collaboration with the Men- could not rule out temporary, episodic themselves.’’ ?° (my emphasis AW).
sheviks to all intents and purposes came agreements even with the bourgeois Thereal differences had nothing to do
to an end. liberals. with ‘‘centralism’’ versus ‘‘democracy’’,
The Mensheviks wereclearly passing But the first condition for such or even, as Trotsky pointed outin his last
over from merely organisational dif- agreements was always for Lenin the work, of ‘‘hards’’ versus ‘‘softs’’: ‘“True
ferences to political ones. Right wing complete political independence of the firmness and resoluteness predetermine a
Mensheviks like Theodor Dan began to workingclass andits party: no mixing up person to the acceptance of Bolshevism,’’
get the upper hand within the ‘‘Minori- of banners, no political blocs, no com- he wrote, ‘‘Yet these characterisations in
ty’’. The Mensheviks called_upon the promise on programmeor principles. themselves are not decisive, there were
workers to support the liberal’s banquet The Mensheviks, by contrast, were any numberofpersonsof firm character
campaign, reducing the role of the pro- prepared to water down their demands so among the Mensheviks and Social
letariat to that of mere ‘‘cheer-leaders”’ as not to ‘‘intimidate’’ the liberals, to Revolutionaries. On the other hand, weak
of the liberals. In this way, the Men- sacrifice the party’s independence for the people were not so rare among the
sheviks hoped to establish a “broad front sakeof “unity”, in a word to subordinate Bolsheviks. Psychology and character are
for democracy’’, including ‘‘all pro- the working class to the so-called ‘‘pro- notall thereis to the nature of Bolshevism
40 ft
which, above all, is a philosophy of
history and a political conception.’’ , ;(my
emphasis, AW).
Thereal difference between Bolshevism
and Menshevism wasthe difference bet-
ween class independence and class col-
laborationism, Marxism and Revisionism,
reformism and revolution. But it took
several years, and the experience ofwar,
revolution and counterrevolution, for the
real nature ofthese differences to become
absolutely clear.
Despite the fact that the political dif-
ferences between Bolshevism and Men-
shevism were now coming to the fore,
manyleading Bolsheviks did not unders-
tand Lenin’s position and tendedto play
the differences down.
The predominant trend among the
Bolshevik tendency inside Russia was
“‘conciliationism.”’ The great majority of
'
the party activists did not grasp the
Russian prisoners of war. The forces unleashed by the Russo-Japanese warput all par-
reasonsfor the split, and rejected it. Even ties, programmes andleaderships to the test.
Lenin’s closest collaborators were,in ef-
fect, working against him. In February bodies. Lenin’s complete isolation seem- abroad. They even insisted on the right
1904, after a long period of vacillation, ed to underline his weakness. And, to the to censor Lenin’s writings (‘‘the printing
the CC inside Russia rejected Lenin’s call ‘‘practicos,’? Plekhanov’s arguments car- of his writings. .. will be carried out on
for a congress by five votes against one. ried more weight. What wasall this fuss each occasion with the agreementsof the
This amounted to a public rebuff for really about? members of the CC’’) ?” and prohibited
Lenin. Yet those who voted against— Lenin attempted in his book One Step agitation in favour of a Third Congress.
Krzhizhanovsky, Krasin, Galperin, Forward, Two Steps back to point out the Furthermore, Noskov was charged with
Gusarov and Noskov (Zemlyachka voted issues of principle involved. But many of ‘*re-organising’’ the party’s technical
for) had workedclosely with Lenin since the ‘‘Committee-men’’ were unimpress- work abroad, which meanteliminating
the founding of Jskra, or even earlier. ed. In January 1904, Lenin had finally such supporters of Lenin as Bonch-
They had played a prominent role in organised a Bureau of Majority Commit- Bruyevich, who had been involved in
organising the revolutionary Marxist tees to agitate for a Congress. Two ‘CC publishing Bolshevik material abroad,
tendency in Russia. How could they members, Lengnik and Essen, were sent and Lyadov, who was in charge of
behave in this way? to Russia for this purpose, but were ar- finance. In addition, three more
These were, in many ways, true rested. Meanwhile, the majority of Bolshevik-conciliators, and then three
‘‘Bolshevik’’ types—tireless, dedicated Bolshevik ‘‘conciliators’’ on the CC ac- Mensheviks, were co-opted onto the CC.
party workers, good organisers, disciplin- tually ousted Lenin’s only supporter, WhenLenin finally found out what
ed and self-sacrificing. But they were Zemlyachka. The Bolshevik leadership was going on, he wrote an angryletter to
what mightbecalled ‘‘practicos,’’ whose was falling apart. Demoralised, Gusarov the CC challenging the legality ofits ac-
work consisted in a hundred and one dropped out of activity, and tions. A further letter was sent to the
detailed organisational tasks. Without Krzhizhanovsky resigned from the CC. members of the Bolshevik committees,
such people, no revolutionary party can The remaining CC members, Krasin, exposing theactivities of the CC. He even
succeed. A party without an apparatusis Noskov and Galperin—all Bolshevik sent a letter to /skra asking it not to
like a knife without a blade. But there was conciliators—now proceeded to pull off publish the illegal declaration. But the
also a negative aspect to the mentality of an unprincipled coup. editors eagerly pounced on the opportuni-
the Bolshevik ‘‘Committee-men,’’ as they ty to publish it in No 72 underthetitle:
were known: a certain organisational Declaration Declaration of the Central Committee.
limitedness, a narrowness of outlook and There was nothing left to Lenin but to
restricted theoretical horizons. Such types In the summer of 1904, when Lenin break off all relations with the con-
as these inevitably tended to look with a was convalescing in the Swiss Alps, the cilators. But the situation was now grim
certain disdain upon the finer points of triumvirate held a secret meeting of the indeed. Everything which had been
theory and regarded such controversies as CC and passed what became known as achieved by the Second Congress was now
those that took place at the Second Con- the ‘‘July declaration’’, calling for recon- in ruins. Oneafter the other, the leading
gress as mere emigre squabbles, of no ciliation between the Bolsheviks and Men- bodies had been captured by the Minori-
practical importance. If the majority of — sheviks and, in effect, surrendering on the ty. The Martovites appeared to have
them hadinitially sided with Lenin and Minority’s terms. Theyaccepted the ‘‘un- triumphedall along the line. Lenin seem-
Plekhanov,this was not out of any deep questionable legality’’ of the new ed to be utterly isolated.
ideological commitment, but because the Editorial Board of /skra andthe ‘‘equal- In reality, however, the Mensheviks’
organisational stand of the Majority ly unquestionable superiority of the cen- victory had been achieved by manoeuver-
struck them as being more in accord with tral organ in everything which concerns ing at the top. At grass roots level, Lenin
the ‘‘Party spirit”? which was the moving the defence and clarification of the basic still enjoyed considerable support. Many
force of their lives. principles of the international Social party committees were repelled by the
But after Plekhanov’s defection, things Democracy’s programmeandtactics.”’ 7° manoeuveringsof the conciliators on the
began to appear more complicated. The These actions represented an explicit CC. An increasing numberof committees
former Majority now looked very much repudiation of Lenin, whom theyreliev- were coming out in favour of a new Con-
like a minority, at least on the leading ed of the right to represent the CC gress as the only way of resolving the
41
 MIR Summer 1987: Bolshevism Part Six

crisis. The Party committees in ved to be the actual majority. Russia, on tions. Not only did they control the
Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinoslav, the other hand, where the voice of the prestigious /skra, but also had plenty of
Riga, the Northern Union, Voronezh, organisedproletariat is louder, where the money from wealthy sympathisers. They
Nizhegorod, and, perhaps more surpris- Partyintelligentsia too, being in closer did nothesistate to use this unscrupulous-
ingly Baku, Batum and the Caucasian and more direct contact with them, is ly as a weaponin the factionalstruggle.
Union, declared their support. Even trained in a more proletarian spirit, and Krupskaya recalls with a note of bit-
abroad, Social-Democrat groupsin Paris, where the exigencies of the immediate terness how the Mensheviksputpressure
Genoa and Berlin, cameout, against the struggle make the need for organised uni- on sympathisersto stop giving assistance
Mensheviks. ty more strongly felt, came out in to the Majority: ‘‘Ilyich and I had some
According to a letter written by vigorous opposition to the circle spirit and strong things to say about those ‘sym-
Lyubinov to Noskov in the autumn of the disruptive anarchistic tendencies.” >? pathisers’ who belonged to no organisa-
1904: ‘On the question of the declaration (my emphasis, AW). ; tion and imagined that their accommoda-
(of the CC, AW) there has been such a By the autumn, the prospects for the tion and paltry donations could influence
row you can hardly make head ortail of Bolsheviks were looking brighter. A new the course of events in our proletarian
it. Only one thing is clear; all the leading team was gradually being put party!’’ °* The question of funds from
committees—except Kharkov, Crimea, together with newarrivals from Russia— abroad was undoubtedly a factor in the
Gornozavodsk and Don—are committees people like Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, capitulation of the ‘‘Bolshevik-
of the Majority... The CC has received Olminsky. After his month in the Alps, conciliators’’ on the CC to the emigre
a full vote of confidence from a very in- Lenin’s health was much improved. “It centre.
significant number of committees.’’ 3° was as if he had bathed in a mountain
(my emphasis, AW). stream and washedoffall the cobwebs of Forward
Encouraged by the response inside sordid intrigue,’’? wrote Krupskaya. °
Russia, Lenin convened a conference of Encouraging reports were being received Despite their lack of resources, the
~ 22 Bolsheviks in Switzerland in August from Russia, where To the Party had Bolsheviks decided to launch a new paper
1904, which adopted his appeal To the been clandestinely distributed to the Party called Vperyod (‘‘Forward’’). At a
Party, which becamea rallying call for committees. meeting in Geneva on 3 December an
the convening of a Third Party Congress. According to Krupskaya, by mid- editorial board was elected, composed of
With uncompromising honesty, Lenin September, twelve out of 20 committees Lenin, VV Vorovsky, MS Olminsky and
describedthe seriouscrisis through which with full voting rights had come out in AV Lunacharsky, with Krupskaya as
the Party was passing, adding that: favour of a Congress, and the number secretary. As usual, the lack of funds was
“‘Nevertheless, we regard the Party’s wasstill growing. From this point on, the made up for by personal sacrifice.
sickness as a matter of growing pains. We Bolsheviks were a serious organised force Everyone scratched around for spare
consider that the underlying cause of the within Russia. By the end of the year a cash. Vorovsky handed over some
crisis is the transition from the circle form Bolshevik Organising Centre was author’s fees he had just received. Olim-
to party forms of the life of Social- established in the interior, with the back- sky parted with a gold watch. Somehow
Democracy; the essence of its internal ing of 13 Party committees. or other, 1,000 francs were scraped
struggle is a conflict between the circle Unlike their opponents, the Bolsheviks together—barely enough for one and a
spirit and the party spirit. And conse- were extremely short of funds. The ques- half issues. But nobody was deterred by
quently only by shaking off this sickness tion of a newspaper wasinitially out of this. The first issue of the truly first
can our Party become a real party.’’ >! the question. As a temporary substitute, Bolshevik newspaper duly rolled off the
(my emphasis, AW). Lenin and Bonch-Bruyevich launched a press on 22 December 1904. Just over a
‘*Publishing House for Social Democratic fortnightlater, the Russian emigres were
intelligentsia Party Literature’? which from early startled to hear the raucousshouts of the
newspaper boysofthe streets on Geneva:
September began to publish individual
Only now does Lenin explain theclass titles by Lenin and his collaborators. This ‘Revolution in Russia! Revolution in
forces which lay behindthesplit: ‘‘Last- was, at least, a start. But the Mensheviks Russia!”’
ly, the opposition cadres have in general held all the cards when it came-to publica-
been drawn chiefly from those elements
in our Party which consist primarily of
intellectuals. The intelligentsia is always Footnotes
moreindividualistic than the proletariat, ,) Lunacharsky— ‘Revolutionary Silhouettes 2 17) Quoted in Istoriya KPSS Vol 1 p 508
owing to its very conditions of life and 1a) Lenin—Collected Works, Vol 8 p 53
36
work, which do not directly educate it " Krupskaya—‘‘Memories of Lenin’’ p 98 .. 19) Trotsky, ‘“My Life’’ p 166
through organised coilective labour. The 3) ibid pp 98-99
" 49) ibid p 165
21) Quoted in Deutscher ‘‘The Prophet Arm-
intellectual elements therefore find it a) Pyatnitsky—Zapiski Bolshevika p 54
ed’’ p 86
harder to adapt themselves to the 3) Lenin—Collected Works, Vol 7, p 34
e) Akimov—A Short History of the RSDLP, 22) See Zinoviey ‘‘History of the Bolshevik
discipline of Party life and those of them Party’’, pp 107-8
p 332
whoare not equal to it naturally raise the 23) ibid p 108
7) SH Baron—‘‘Plekhanov’’ (Spanish ed) p
standard of revolt against the necessary 327
2a) Lenin—Collected Works, Vol 7, p 503
organisational limitations, and elevate a) see Istoriya KPSS Vol 1, p 518 a6) ibid p 508
their instinctive anarchism to a principle o) ibid, p 523 26) Dan, “‘The Origins ofBolshevism’’, p 250
of struggle, misnaming it a desire for 10) ibid, p 524 27) Trotsky, ‘‘Stalin’’ p 50
11) Lenin—Collected Works, Vol 7, p~474 22) Istoriya KPSS p 509
‘autonomy’, a demandfor‘tolerance’etc.
12) Rosa Luxemburg, ‘‘Leninism or Marx- 29) ibid
‘“‘The section of the Party abroad, 30) ibid
wherethe circles are comparatively long- ism?” p 98
13) Trotsky, ‘‘Stalin’’ p 62 a1) Lenin—Collected Works Vol 7, p 455
lived, where theoreticians. of various 32) ibid pp 455-6
14) ibid
shades are gathered, and where thein- 15) ibid p 61 33) Krupskaya—‘‘Lenin”’ p 106
telligentsia decidedly predominates, was 1¢) ibid pp 61-62 3a) ibid p 98
boundto be most. inclined to the views of
the ‘Minority’, which then as a result pro-
on Andiedalled

42
 Part seven in a series of articles by Alan Woods, Editor of the MIR, on the history of Bolshevism.

The Ninthof January, 1905

“Sire! We workers, our children activists inside Russia were confused would enable this subterranean process
and wives, the helpless old people and disorientated. Having lost control to find a voice and a conscious, orga-
who are our parents, we have come of the Party centre abroad, the Bolshe- nised expression.
to you, Sire, to seek justice and viks were deprived of an organ, until After the assassination of Plehve, the
the first issue of Vperyod came out in regime, hopelessly compromised by
protection. Wearein great poverty,
December 1904. An acute shortage of military defeats and feeling the ground
we are oppressed and weighed funds meant that even Vperyod led a tremble beneath its feet, tried to fore-
down with labours beyond our precarious existence. The Mensheviks stall revolution from below by making
strength; we are insulted, we are had more resources, but were relatively concessions from the top. The ‘Spring’
not recognised as humanbeings, we weaker on the ground intheinterior, of Autumn1904 gave the workers more -
are treated like slaves who must with the exception of certain areas such room to breathe. From September 1904
bear their lot in silence. And we as the South and the Caucasus. a series of mass meetings were held in
have suffered it, but we are being The weakness of the Party coincided the Petersburg factories, under the
driven ever deeper into beggary, with a new upswing in the workers’ auspicies of Gapon’s ‘Assembly’ which
lawlessness and ignorance. Despot- movement, which wastherefore obliged became increasingly popular with the
to express itself through other channels. workers. Fresh layers of workers, with
ism and arbitrary rule are strangling In an effort to check the growth of no experience of struggle, were becom-
us, and we aresuffocating. Sire, our Marxist influence among the workers, ing organised. Gapon’s organisation
strength is at an end! The limit of as we have seen’*, the authorities encou- now had 8,000 members and branches
our patience has been reached: the raged the setting up of legal trade in at least eleven districts of the city.
terrible moment has come for us unions, under the vigilant eye of the This wasa far larger number of workers
when it is better to die than to police. Typical of these ‘Zubatov’ than had ever participated in the Social
continue suffering intolerable tor- unions was the St Petersburg ‘Assembly . Democratic organisations.
ment.” ~~ of Russian Factory and Workshop Gradually, the advanced Social
Workers’, set up by Father Grigory Democratic workers overcame their
With these words, the working class Gapon with police permission, on con- instinctive aversion and began cau-
of Russia made its first decisive en- dition of its maintaining strictly non- tiously to explore work in this union.
trance uponthe stage of history, appea- political character. Onthefaceofit, the prospects were not
ling to the clemency of the tsar, the at all promising. The workers who
“little father’, with a petition in its Father Gapon joined Gapon’s union were notlike the
hands and a priest at its head. Eleven old, conscious Social Democratic
months later, the same working class Gapon’s ‘union’ was in reality a workers, but completely raw, politically
rose against the autocracy, arms in friendly society which organised insu- untutored masses, who brought with
hand, under the leadership of a Marxist rance schemes, libraries and social acti- them all the prejudices imbibed for a
party. In the intervening months, the vities, such as musical evenings which thousand years from a backward pea-
first Russian Revolution unfolded on an the workers attended with their fami- sant milieu, soaked in religion, supersti-
epic scale, involving every layer of the lies. It was intended as a safety-valve tion and a slavish worship of the tsar,
proletariat and all other oppressed where workers, to some extent, could the ‘batyushka’ the ‘little father’. Inso-
layers of society, passing through every give voice to their grievances, but where far as injustice existed, the Russian
imaginable phase of struggle andutiliz- all mention of politics was rigorously peasant reasoned, this was the fault of
ing every conceivable fighting method, prohibited. Since the Assembly’s the ‘tsar’s servants’, not the monarch
from economic strikes and petitions to leaders did everything in their power to who wasthe ‘people’s protector’. It was
the authorities through the political exclude revolutionaries, it is not surpris- no accident that the union was headed
general strike and mass demonstrations, ing that the revolutionary workers and by a priest. Father Gapon, an able
to an armed insurrection. The 1905 intellectuals looked upon the new orga- organiser and a natural leader, spoke a
revolution already revealed, albeit in an nisation with extreme suspicion and language which the workers could un-
embryonic fashion, all the basic pro- hostility. derstand. With its curious mixture of
cesses which were to be repeated on a Howeverthe efforts of the police and militancy and religion, class struggle
higher scale twelve years later. It was a their union stooges to clamp the and monarchism, it correspondedto the
dress rehearsal, without which the final workers’ movement into a straitjacket first, confused gropings towards con-
victory of the proletariat in October of legal constraints was doomed to sciousnessof millions of the most down-
1917 would have been impossible. In failure. The rising tide of discontent trodden layers of society.
the course of 1905, all ideas, program- whichaffected all layers of society in the The figure of Gapon himself is sh-
mes, parties and leaders were put to the course of the Russo-Japanese War, rouded in an enigma. The prevailing
test. The experienceofthe first revolu- beganto affect even the most backward opinion in Marxist circles at the time
tion was decisive for the future evolu- strata of the working class. Up to this was that he was a simple police agent,
tion of all the tendencies in Russian moment, the opposition to tsarism had who in all probability had deliberately
Social Democracy. mainly come from the liberal intelli- planned the massacre of the 9 January
Yet the truth is that the beginning of gentsia and the students. Thebig batal- 1905 with the authorities. The notorious
the revolution foundthe party in a lions of the working class seemed to Stalinist Short Course states baldly that
lamentable state. The split between the have stood aside from the struggle. But, “In 1904, prior to the Putilov strike, the
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had, in despite the appearance of calm, the police had used the services of an agent
effect, thrown it right back. The in- factories and workers’ districts were
ternal faction fight had virtually para- seething with discontent. All that was * See Militant International Review No
lysed its activities for many months. The required was some focal point which 33, Autumn 1986
provocateur, a priest by the name of
Gapon.... Gapon undertook to assist
the tsarist Okhrana (secret police, AW)
by providing a pretext for firing on the
workers and drowning the working class
movement in blood.” 1.
Gapon was undoubtedly mixed up
with the police prior to the 9th January
andlater, after the defeat of the revolu-_
tion, was accused bythe Social Revolu-
tionaries of doing the samething, for
which he was assassinated. Neverthe-
less, the idea that Gapon consciously
led the workers to be slaughtered is
clearly false. All along he gives the
impression of being carried along by
events beyond his control or un-
derstanding. On the eve of the
massacre, this ‘leader of men’ gave
voice to his perplexity: ““What would
come of it? Good heavens, I don’t
know. Something big, but what exactly,
I can’t say. Who can makeheadortail
of all this?’’ 2, After the massacre,
Gapon recoiled in horror, denouncing
the tsar and appealing for an armed Father Gapon, second from right, with the St. Petersburg Chief of Police.
uprising. For a time he swungleft, even
gravitating close to the Bolsheviks be- a situation of ferment among the not even allow them to speak. “Up to
fore relapsing and finally ending up as masses, even this apparently innocuous the ninth of January,” the Petersburg
the victim of a terrorist’s bullet. idea had a logic of its own. delegate reported, “‘the attitude of the
The idea of an appeal to the tsar and workers towards the (Bolshevik) com-
The Putilov strike a petition of demands immediately mittee was extremely hostile. Our
caught the imagination of the masses, agitators were beaten up, leaflets were
The accumulated rage and bitterness correspondingto their first gropings in destroyed, andthefirst 500 roubles sent
of the factory workers finally exploded the direction of revolutionary con- to the Putilov workers by the students
in a strike at the Putilov arms works—a sciousness. Mass meetings wereheld all were accepted grudgingly.” 4. <A
strategic centre of the St Petersburg over the capital, which indicated a swift Menshevik writer bears this out: “In the
proletariat-in December. The spark process of radicalisation among the Narva district, where the movement
which ignited the powder-keg was the workers. Gapon dashed from one meet- had originated, as late as the eighth of
dismissal of four activists of Gapon’s ing to another, delivering increasingly January, the workers enthusiastically
union. Starting in September 1904,the- radical speeches underthe impactof the welcomed the political content of Ga-
re had been mass workers meetings in mood of the masses, who revered him. pon’s petition. When a lone Social
the factories under the auspices of the An eye-witness account gives a vivid Democrat attempted to deliver a poli-
union, which gave the workers a chance impressionofthe electric atmosphereat tical speech, a howl went up from the
to express their grievances and begin to these meetings, with their quasi- assembled workers: ‘Down with him!’
acquire an idea of their own strength. evangelical character, Gapon calling ‘Throw him out!’ ” s.
The employers became alarmed and upon the Almighty to lead the workers
decided to crack down. On the 28
December, a mass meeting of workers
in struggle, urging the workers to stand
together and,if necessary, die together:
Marxists isolated
from eleven factories was convened by “All those present were in a state of Yet despite the hypnotic effect exer-
Gapon’s organisation. The increasingly rapture-—many were weeping, stamping cised by Gapon:on the workers at the
radicalised mood of the workers was their feet, banging chairs, beating with time, he was merely an accidental figure
slowly pushing even the Gaponite their fists against the walls and raising thrown up by the movement of the
leaders to more militant positions, at their hands on high, they swore to masses, like a fleck of foam on the crest
least in words. An indication of the remain firm to the end.”3. of a mighty wave, which flashes brightly
sea-change was the fact that represen- Gapon’s authority appeared to be for a momentbefore vanishing forever.
tatives of the Social Democrats and unassailable. By contrast, the revolu- His very success consisted in the fact
Social Revolutionaries were invited to tionary Social Democrats were at first that he was the personification of the
attend. regarded with suspicion by the workers. first incohate, spontaneous, instinctive
At this meeting it was decided to send The report of the St Petersburg Bolshe- movementof the workingclass, the first
a delegation with a petition to the viks to the Third Congress in April stirrings of consciousness of the masses.
management, the factory inspectors and shows that they had been very slow to Inevitably, such a movement tends to
the authorities in St Petersburg, setting intervene in what they saw as a reac- seek out the line of least resistance, the
forth the workers’ grievances. The idea tionary police union, only beginning to well-worn paths, familiar sounding
of a petition was probably conceived by pay it serious attention when thestrike phrases and famous leaders. As always,
Gaponas a way of diverting the move- . was well underway. In someparts of the the watchword of the movementof the
ment into safe channels. Possibly city, notably the Vyborg district, they massesis ‘unity’. At one mass meeting,
Gaponreally believed he could act as a got a sympathetic hearing. But else- Gapon chided a Social Democratic
mediator betweenthe‘little father’ and where in the city, they were given a speaker with the words: “Do not in-
his ‘children’. But once put forward, in rough ride. Often the chairman would troduce discord: let us march towards
40 MIR Winter 1988: Bolshevism Part Soe

our sacred goal undera single peaceful mass agitation carried out systema- dents, socialist groups, women, children
banner, common to one and all.” 6 tically by the Social Democrats for at and old people-in all about 140,000
The numerical weakness and. isola- least ten years prior to the 9 January. people. ‘‘As agreed, the march to the
tion of the Social Democracy at the That the basic slogans of the Marxists palace was a peaceful one, without
beginning of the revolution was rev- hadleft their mark on the consciousness songs, banners or speeches. People
ealed in the words of Livshits, giving of the working class was demonstrated wore their Sundayclothes. In some
voice to the frustration of the part by the fact that a numberof key Social parts of the city they carried icons and
activists in Petersburg at their inability Democratic demands found their way church banners. Everywhere the peti-
to exercise a decisive influence before into Gapon’s famous petition—from the tioners encountered . troops. They
the 9 January: ‘We Party workers”, he eight-hour day to the demand for a begged to be allowed to pass. They
wrote, “knew very well that the forth- Constituent Assembly. Gapon’s move- wept, they tried to go around the
coming peaceful procession would not ment, designed to build a solid wall barrier, they tried to break throughit.
lead to anything worthwhile and would between the mass of the workers and The soldiersfired all day long, the dead
involve the masses in terrible the Marxists, in the end served as a were counted in by the hundreds, the
bloodshed. But where was theforcethat bridge. wounded in the thousands. An exact
could have forestalled this terrible mis- count was impossible since the: police
deed, for which tsarism andclericalism Bloody Sunday carted away and secretly buried the
was responsible? Such a force did not bodies of the dead at night.” 11. At least
exist.” 7. (My emphasis, AW) In reality, Gapon was stirring up 4,600 people were killed and wounded,
Martov, in his history of the Russian forces neither he nor anyoneelse could that day.
Social Democracy, written only a few control. While the revolutionaires The massacre of the Ninth of January
years later, confirms that “‘...the Social branded him an agent provocateur, the reveals ‘Nicolas the Bloody’, as he justly
Democracy of both factions could not authorities cursed him as a dangerous became known, notonly as a cruel and
but notice that the stormy events in agent of the revolution. Irrespective of contemptible man, but also as an ex-
Petersburg in January 1905 took place his subjective intentions, the latter ceedingly stupid monarch. ‘‘The shots
not only outside the immediate leader- description was far nearer the truth. fired on the 22 January* 1905,” recalls
ship of the Social Democracy, but even The petition aroused tremendous en- Eva Broido, ‘woke ‘echoes all over
without:a significant participation by it thusiasm when it was read out in mass Russia. Everywhere the masses were
as an organised whole.” 8 workers’ assemblies where it was every- stirred out of their complacency: the old
This is confirmed from the Bolshevik where approvedwith acclamation. With belief in the goodness of the ‘little
side by the minutes of the Third Con- breathtaking naivety, Gapon wrote to father’ the tsar was dead. Even the most
gress which state that: “The January the Minister of the Interior on the eve aan ‘workers understood: that
events found the Petersburg committee of Bloody Sunday, requesting legal per- much.”
in an extremely deplorable state. Its mission for a peaceful demonstration in At an cmotional meeting held on the
links with the working masses had been front of the Winter Palace: ‘““The tsar night of Bloody Sunday, Gapon
utterly disorganised by the Mensheviks. has nothing to fear,” he wrote, “I, as announced to the assembled workers
Only with great difficulty did they man- the representative of the Assembly of “We no longer have a tsar.”” Crowds of
age to maintain themselvesin the City, Russian Workers, my colleagues, and workers roamed thestreets, angry and
a Island and the Vyborg district.” the worker comrades—and even the so- desperate but without leadership. And
called revolutionary groupsof different suddenly, the same revolutionaries who
"Yet in 24 hours the whole situation trends—guarentee the inviolability of his had been rejected, shouted down and
was transformed. Marx once wrote that person. Let him comeforth like a true even beaten up, becamethe focal point
the revolution at times needs the whip tsar, with courage in his heart, to meet of intense interest. The Petersburg
of counter- revolution to drive it for- his People and take unto his hands our delegate at the Third Congress related
ward. It took the massacre of Bloody petition.”’ Signed: “The Priest Gapon how on the evening of the Ninth the
Sunday to knock out of the headsof the and Eleven Workers’ Deputies, Peters- Bolshevik agitators took to the streets
masses the century-old illusions in tsar- burg, 8th January.” 10 looking for groups of workers to
ism. In a revolutionary situation, the In an attempt to underline their address, but found that things had
workers’ consciousness grows by leaps peaceful intentions, the organisers already gone beyond that stage. The
and bounds. Indeed, sudden and sharp banned the display ‘of red flags. The workers had learnt in a matter of hours
shifts in the mood of the massesconsti- Social Democrats, despite their grave more than decades of agitation and
tutes the essential element of a revolu- misgivings about the demonstration, propoganda could ever teach them.
tionary or pre-revolutionary period. By decided, correctly, to participate along- ‘““We were passed bycarriages carrying
the end of the year, the revolutionary side the rest of their class. This the away the dead, behind which ran
Social Democracy had definitely establ- organisers agreed to only on condition crowds of people ‘Down with the tsar!’
ished itself as the hegemonic force that they marched at the rear of the Youonly had to throw armsat a crowd
within the working class, striving to demonstration, a measure which, in the like this and they would have gone
place itself at the head of the revolu- event, saved the lives of many of anywhere you wanted. On Vasily Island
tionary nation. them. a scrap iron shop was broken into and
In point of fact, the rapid growth of While the leaders of the union were the crowd armed themselves with old
the forces of Russian Marxism in 1905 straining every nerve to convince the swords. This created a_ pathetic
was not at all accidental. The terrain government of their peaceful inten- impression. Everywhere you could hear
had been prepared over a long period tions, the latter, in a state of near panic, the cry: ‘Arms! Arms!’ By evening the
through decades of Social Democratic was preparing to teach the masses a attitude towards the organisation
agitation, propaganda andorganisation. bloody lesson. underwent a radical transformation.
A considerable number of advanced At two o’clock in the afternoon of ' Our agitators were listened to with
workers had been in contact, to a Sunday January 9, the workers began to
greater or lesser extent, with the Social assemble before the Winter Palace. The * The Old Style pre-revolutionary calendar,
Democratic propagandacircles. A far square was soon packed with a huge retained in Russia until 1918, was thirteen
larger numberhad been touchedbythe multitude not only of workers but stu- days behind the New Style. -
 SSA
fl

enthusiasm. The organisers could go tending the revolutionary wave ou- only eleven for the whole year, as
wherever they pleased. On each ofthe twards to the most backward pro- against 55 in 1903 and 117 in 1905.
successive days the same mood could be vinces. 1%,
observed.” 13. This movement.of the working class A recent detailed study reveals the
From exile in Switzerland, Lenin provoked panic in governmentcircles. crisis in the organisation in St Peters-
immediately hailed the January events After Bloody Sunday, the ruling clique burg on the eve of the revolution: ‘“The
as the beginning of the revolution in intended to move quickly towards reac- Social Democratic organisation in St
Russia: ‘““The working class,” he wrote, tion, as indicated by the dismissal of the Petersburg prior to January 1905, by
‘thas received a momentous lesson in Liberal Svyatopolk Mirsky in favour of almost any criteria, was weak. In De-
civil war: the revolutionary education of the conservative bureaucrat Bulygin, cember 1903, the joint Social Democra-
the proletariat made more progress in and the granting of almost unlimited tic organisation had about eighteen
one day than it could have made in dictatorial powers to General Trepov. circles in the factories, and membership
months and years of drab, humdrum, Now all its calculations were thrown of circles was from seven to ten, which
wretched existence. The slogan of the into disarray. Under the pressure of the would give a total worker membership
heroic St Petersburg proletariat, ‘Death growing strike movement, on the 18 of not more than 180. If the students
or Freedom!’ is reverberating throu- February, the tsar issued his first Mani- and intelligentsia had about the same,
ghout Russia.”” 14. (My emphasis, festo in which he hinted at a constitu- as seems likely, total membership
AW) tion and popular representation. By its would have been 360. During the winter
The spontaneous mass movement in united action, the working class had of 1904 the Committee’s membership
solidarity with the Petersburg workers achieved more in one week than all the and activities declined, and the links
which swept across the whole country years of speechifying and petitions and with abroad were weak or non-
wasthe final answerto all the Doubting banquets by the liberal bourgeois. existent... The same correspondentsays
Thomases who questioned the willing- The movementof the workers had an that the Mensheviks too were losing
ness of the workers to fight. Only two electrifying effect onall classes in socie- support: in one region where they had
days before Bloody Sunday, the ex- ty. The public retreat of the regime fifteen to twenty circles, by December
Marxist Liberal, Struve, wrote in his encouraged not only the workers, but 1904 they had only four or five’’. 18
journal Osvobozhdenie, “There is not also the middle class, the bourgeois
yet such a thing as a revolutionary liberals and the students. “The worker’s Lenin
people in Russia,” to which Trotsky action strengthened the position of the
replied scathingly, speaking of the radical elements within the intelligent- - After Bloody Sunday, this situation
Liberals: ‘They did not believe in the sia just as the zemtsy’s conference had experienced a complete turn- about.
revolutionary role of the proletariat; earlier put a trump card in the hands of But a cursory glance at Lenin’s cor-
instead, they believed in the force of the the opportunist elements.” 16. respondence at this time reveals the
zemsty’s petition*, in Witte, in Svyato- The shock-waves that flowed from deficient state of the organisation, parti-
polk Mirsky, in jars of dynamite. There the Ninth of January pushed the whole cularly with regard to contact between
was no political prejudice in which they movementto the left. The tide began to the Bolshevik activists inside Russia and
did not believe. Our belief in the flow strongly in favour of revolutionary the leading centre abroad: ‘“‘A nice
proletariat was the only thing they action, and the revolutionary Social business: we talk of organisation, of
regarded as prejudice.” 15. Democracy. Social Democratic centralism, while actually there is such
workers, Bolshevik and Menshevik now disunity, such amateurism among even
Revolution begins came to the fore in every factory. It is the closest comradesin the centre, that
impossible to overestimate the impor- one feels like chucking it all in in
On the 10 January, barricades ap- tance of the role of these conscious disgust. Just look at the Bundists: they
peared in St Petersburg. By the 17 workeragitators in the unfolding strike do not prate about centralism, but every
January, 160,000 workers were on wave, despite its apparently ‘sponta- one of them writes to the centre weekly
strike in 650° factories in the capital. neous’ character. The activities of the and contacts are thus actually main-
From 14-20 January a general strike revolutionaries was greatly assisted by tained... Really, I sometimes think that
gripped Warsaw which resembled an General Trepov who obligingly exiled nine-tenths of the Bolsheviks are ac-
armed camp. A demonstrationcalled by large numbersof‘trouble makers’ from tually formalists. Either we shall rally
the Social Democrats and nationalists St Petersburg to the provinces where all who are outto fightinto a really iron
led to bloody clashes with the troops they acted as a necessary ‘leaven’ to the strong organisation and with this small
who fired up to 60,000 roundsin three revolutionary movement. but strong party quash that sprawling
days leaving, officially, 64 dead and 69 The possibilities which now unfolded monster, the new Iskra (ie Mensheviks,
wounded of which 29 died later. But before the Russian Marxists were now AW) motley elements, or we shall
despite the repression, the strike move- immense. But the Party, still reeling prove by our conduct that we deserve to
mentsweptlike wildfire through Poland from the effects of the split, was in very go underfor being contemptible formal-
and the Baltic states. A similiar situa- poor shape to take advantage of the ists...
tion existed in the Caucasus where a opportunities. Given the nature of un- “The Mensheviks have more money,
political general strike broke out. The derground work, it is very difficult to more literature, more transportation
movementcut across all national lines: estimate the exact strength of the facilities, more agents and more ‘na-
Polish, Armenian, Georgian, Lithua- Bolsheviks at this time. The St Peters- mes’, and a larger staff of contributors.
nian and Jewish workers expressedtheir burg Party organisation did not formaily It would be unpardonable childishness
solidarity with their Russian class split until December 1904, when the not. to see that.2’°19. (My emphasis,
brothers in the most practical way—by Mensheviks broke away. Up to that
fighting against the hated Russian auto- time, Lenin’s supporters had been in
cracy. Most seriously of all, from the the ascendant. But the internal struggle fhe Campaign of banquets
government’s point of view, a railway had had a damaging effect on the and petitions launclied the previous Autumn
strike began in Saratov, in Central Party’s work, turning it inwards. This is by the Liberals organised around the ‘zemst-
Russia, on January 12, which quickly reflected in the number of Bolshevik vos’. See Militant International Review,
spread to the other railway lines, ex- leaflets issued in Petersburg in 1904: Number 35, Summer 1987.
42 MIR Winter 1988: Bolshevism Part Sve] ————————————————————

While some element of exaggeration work. Donotfeartheir lack oftraining, unfold in an orderly and pre- deter-
may be put down to Lenin’s natural do not tremble at their inexperience and mined fashion, like an orchestra res-
feelings of frustration and impatience, lack of development.... (because) ponding to the flourishes of a conduc-
the accusation of ‘formalism’ directed events themselves will teach them in our tor’s baton. It is a living play of forces,
against a layer of the Bolshevik profes- spirit. Events are already teaching an equation even more complex than
sionals inside Russia was not at all everyone precisely in the Vperyod war between nations. The events of
accidental. Starting out from a position spirit. Bloody Sunday and afterwards, to pur-
of clear superiority among the Party “Only you must be sure to organise, sue the military analogy, represented a
activists in Russia, the Bolshevik com- organise, and organise hundreds of general mobilisation of the working
mitteemen, when unexpectedly conf- circles, completely pushing into the class. But that class, only just recov-
ronted with the explosive movement of background the customary, well-meant ering from its naive illusions and striv-
the masses failed to react with the committee (hierarchic) stupidities. This ing to find the road to a complete
necessary flexibility, and consequently is a time of war. Either you create new, overhaul of society, continually stumb-
made mistakes and frequently lost the young, fresh, energetic battle organisa- ling over the innumerable obstacles
initiative. tions everywhere for revolutionary placed in its path, as yet lacked a
In a situation where hundreds of Social Democratic work of all varieties general staff able to point the way
thousands of workers and youth were amongall strata, or you will go under, forward to victory. Even the most cou-
entering the arena of politics, seeking wearing the aureole of ‘committee’ rageous army never won a war without
the revolutionary road, the mostpress- bureaucrats.” 20. good generals. But the best of generals
ing need was to open upthe party, and Theselines strikingly reveal the who- without an army do not count for
let in at least the best elements among le essence of Lenin’s method, particu- much.
the masses. But the committeemen, larly on organisational questions. While Lenin understood clearly that all the
steeped in the habit of clandestine, stressing the need for a strong, centra- Manifestos and promises of reform
small circle work, proved reluctant to lised revolutionary organisation, Le- were only a smoke-screen to deceive the
move over and make way for the new, nin’s attitude to organisational ques- masses, behind which the reaction was
fresh layers. They found a hundred and tions was always extremely flexible. playing for time and preparing its rev-
one excuses for not ‘opening up’-the After the Second Congress, the enge. Time was therefore: of the
workers were ‘not ready’ to join, the Mensheviks attempted to caricature essence. In an uninterrupted stream of
need to safeguard security, and so on Lenin as a hidebound bureaucrat, striv- articles, he poured scorn on the Liberals
and so forth. After all, they reasoned, ing to create a party composed of an with their illusions in peaceful constitu-
‘wasn’t the basic difference between elite of intellectual professional revolu- tional reform, and flayed the Menshe-
Lenin and Martov at the Second Con- tionaires which would exclude ‘ordinary viks for their illusions in the Liberals.
gress the need to safeguardthepurity of workers’ who would have to submit to One of the facets of Lenin’s political
the revolutionary vanguard by. not the commandsofan ‘all-powerful cen- genius was his ability to separate the
swamping it with too many raw and tre.’ This caricature, which has been essential from the inessential and grasp
untutored elements? We mustnot ‘dilu- maliciously repeated and exaggerated the essence of a problem. He quickly
te’ the membership! by bourgeois historians, is the opposite realised that it was now a question of
Yet that very Lenin who argued in of the truth, as the above passage—very ‘either... or’. The time for playing
favour of restricting Party membership typical of the period with which we are games was past. Either the working
in 1903, now argued even more vehe- dealing~irrefutably demonstrates. class, under a conscious revolutionary
mently in favour of opening the doors leadership, would succeed in gathering
and windowsandletting in the largest Revolution or togetherall the oppressed masses under
possible numberof workers and youth: its leadership, above all the poor pea-
““Weneed youngforces,” he thundered, reaction? sants and the oppressed. nationalities,
“I am for shooting on-the spot anyone Unfortunately, a layer of Bolshevik and smash the powerof tsarism by an
who presumes to say that there are no organisers inside Russia, the so-called armed uprising, or, inevitably, the for-
people to be had. The people in Russia ‘committee-men’, on occasion acted ces of black reaction would destroy the
are legion: all we have to dois to recruit like the very caricature invented by the revolution, exacting a bloody revenge
young people more widely and boldly, Mensheviks. They interpreted Lenin’s on the working class. There was no
moreboldly and widely, and again more organisational ideas as fixed and immut- ‘middle way’.
boldly without fearing them. This is a able formulas, to be applied mecha- Everything, therefore, hinged on the
time of war. The youth-the students nically, irrespective of the needs of the Marxists’ ability to win over a decisive
andstill more the young workers- will moment. Even the most correct idea, majority of the working class and as
decide the issue of the whole struggle. when carried beyond a certain limit, quickly as possible make the necessary
Getrid of all the old habits of immobil- becomestransformed into its opposite. political, organisational and material
ity, of respect for rank and so on. Form By making a fetish of organisational preparation for a national armed upris-
hundreds of circles of Vperyodists (ie forms, and overlooking the dialectical ing. This idea was at the kernalof all
Bolsheviks, AW) from amongthe youth method of applying these ideas in a Lenin’s pronouncements throughout
and encourage them to work at full rapidly changing situation, despite their 1905 and partly explains the urgent and
blast. Enlarge the Committee threefold undoubted capacity for self-sacrifice at times uncharacteristically sharp tone
by accepting young people ontoit, set and hard work, the ‘committee-men’ of his correspondence with the inte-
up half a dozen subcommittees, ‘co-opt’ frequently played a negative role in the rior.
any and every honest and energetic development of the Party, until cor- Underthe pressure of the mass move-
person. Allow every subcommittee to tected by the intervention of Lenin. ment, the Mensheviks, particularly the
write and publish leaflets and without Theessenceof the problem facing the ones ‘on the ground’ in Russia, began to
any red tape (there is noharm if they do Party was: how to establish firm links move left. Not only the Bolshevik
make a mistake: we on Vperyod will between the relatively small forces of the Vperyod, but also the Menshevik Iskra
‘gently’ correct them.) We must, with revolutionary vanguard and the mass of published articles and diagrams on
desperate speed, unite all people with the workers and youth who were moving streetfighting. However, the opportun-
revolutionary initiative and set them to into struggle? The revolution does not ist tendencies which were already appa-
rent before the Ninth of January were
revealed in the exaggeratedrole attri-
buted by the Mensheviks to the liberal
bourgeoisie and in Martov’s insistence
upon political, rather than technical
preparation of the masses for armed
uprising, of which Lenin tersely com-
mented: “The separation of the ‘techni-
cal’ side of the revolution from the
political side of the revolution is the
greatest twaddle.” 21.
Early in February, Gapon himself,
having been pushed temporarily to the
left by his experiences, issued an Open
Letter to the Socialist Parties of all
Russia, which included an appealfor an
armed uprising: “I call upon all the
socialist parties of Russia to enter im-
mediately into an agreement among
themselves andto proceed to the armed
uprising against tsarism. All the forces
of every party should be mobilised. All
should have a single plan of action...
The immediate aim is the overthrow of Three days after Bloody Sunday a ral! strike began In Central Russia, extending the
the autocracy, a provisional revolution- revolutionary wave to the most backward provinces.
ary government which will at once
amnesty all fighters for political and guously by the Menshevik leaders them- forces of reaction. Shaken by the show
religious liberties, at once arm the selves. From late 1904 onwards, Trots- of solidarity between the workers of
people, and at once convoke a Consti- ky and the German Left Social different nationalities, the authorities
tuent Assembly on the basis of uni- Democrat Parvus (Alexander Gelfand), set about trying to break this unity by
versal, equal and direct suffrage by worked out a body of ideas which were organising bloody pogroms. Asearly as
secret ballot.” 22. later to provide the basis for Trotsky’s February, the agents of the regime
theory of permanent revolution. We incited the Tartars in Baku to launch a
United Front will deal with the nature of this theory murderousassault on the Armeniansin
and the position of Lenin and the that city. Throughout the year 1905, all
This was given a warm welcome by Mensheviks later. But first, let us put over Russia, lumpen gangs werebribed
Lenin, who, in his article, A Militant the record straight. with money and vodka bythe nolice to
Agreement for the Uprising, 23. “Trotsky, too, had a basic divergence beat up and murder Jews, Socialists and
stressed the need for a united front of of views with Iskra (the Menshevik students. In organising workers’
all revolutionary forces to prepare the organ, AW)onthepolitical conclusions defence the different party organisa-
uprising, on the basis of the old slogan to be drawn from the situation created tions co- operated in action. For prac-
‘march separately and strike together’. by the 9 January. Trotsky wrote that tical purposes, agreements were arrived
However, here, and in all his other after 9 January the working class move- at involving Bolsheviks, Mensheviks,
articles, Lenin is emphatic on the ab- ment‘slipped into an uprising’. Hence Bundists, the socialists from other
solute necessity of maintaining the com- the Constituent Assembly in and for nationalities, and even petit-bourgeois
plete political independence of the work- itself could no longer be the funda- organisations like the nationalist Polish
ing class and its party: ‘“We see in the mental and generalising slogan of the Socialist Party, and the Social Revolu-
independent, uncompromisingly Marx- party. After the 9 January it was necess- tionaries (SR’s).
ist party of the revolutionary proletariat ary to prepare for an armed uprising
the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the replacement ofthe tsarist gov- The Shidiovsky
andthe sole road to victory that is most
free from vacillation. We shall never,
ernment by a Revolutionary Provisional
Governmentthat alone could convoke a Commission
therefore, not even at the most revolu- Constituent Assembly.” 26. These are In theory, there would have been
tionary moments, forego the complete the words of the Menshevik leader nothing wrong, underthese conditions,
independenceof the Social Democratic Theodor Dan, written at a time when he with arriving at practical, episodic
Party or the complete intransigence of and Trotsky were bitter political ene- agreements even with the bourgeois
our ideology.” 2. mies. The basic ideas contained here, Liberals, whilst maintaining complete
Trotsky’s position at this time was based on Trotsky’s pamphlet, Till the organisational and political indepen-
very close to that of Lenin. Despite this Ninth of January, are in complete dence. But in reality, such agreements
well-known fact, the Stalinist historians agreement with the general position with the Liberals were virtually non-
persist in describing Trotsky in 1905 as a defended by Lenin. In his history of the existent. The latter were striving, not
“Menshevik’, as we read in the follow- Russian Social Democracy, Martov for an armed insurrection, but for a deal
ing, fairly typical, extract: ‘“Trotsky’s polemicises nof only against Lenin’s with tsarism, leaning for a time on the
denial of a revolutionary democracy(?) position, but also against the theories of mass movementin orderto frighten the
was in effect defence of the Menshevik Trotsky and Parvus. 27. regime into granting a constitution.
idea of the bourgeoisie’s hegemony(!) The question of arming the workers, Lenin’s articles in this period were full
in the forthcoming revolution.” 25. which Lenin persistently raised, flowed of the sharpest attacks on the Liberals.
Yet the differences which separated from the needs of the moment. While warning against their treachery and
Trotsky from the Mensheviksas early as making conciliatory noises, the govern- combatting the Mensheviks’ attempts to
February 1904 are attested to unambi- ment was systematically preparing the blur the dividing line between the work-
 44 MIR Winter 1988: Bolshevism Part SVC1

ing class and the bourgeois Liberals and hand, to refuse to participate would be from the experience whichset an impor-
fomentillusions in the latter. to renounce a splendid opportunity to tant precedent for the election of
In search ofallies for the revolution- carry the ideas of revolutionary social- workers deputies which playeda role in
ary proletariat, Lenin’s attention was ism to the mass of. workers. For the the establishment of the Sovietlater on.
focused elsewhere. While the Menshe- Menshevik leaders, with their oppor- 29.
viks looked towards the Zemstvo tunistic leanings, there was no particu- Atthis time, none of the main leaders
Liberals, Lenin became increasingly lar problem. They immediately advo- of either the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks
convinced that the only possible ally for cated using the Commissionasa ‘tribu- had yet returned to Russia, with the
the workers in their struggle to over- ne’ from which to address the workers exception of Trotsky who arrived in
throw the autocracy consisted in the of all Russia. Amongthe Bolsheviks in Kiev in February where heestablished
peasantry, particularly the poor pea- Petersburg, however, the prevailing close contact with the key Bolshevik
sants. His vision of the revolution was mood wasinitially in favour of a boy- figure in Russia at that time, Leonid
that of the broadest possible movement cott. Similar moods existed also among Krassin. Krassin wasin charge ofa large
of the workers and peasants, to over- the Menshevik workers who were far to and well-equipped secret printing press
throw tsarism, establish a provisional the left of the leaders in exile. At the ‘somewhere in the Caucases’. But his
revolutionary government (‘democratic Third Congress, Rumyantsev (‘Filipov’ role went far beyond that. A highly
dictatorship of the proletariat and pea- in the minutes) stated that “There were capable young engineer, Krassin wasin
santry’) which, without going beyond no differences over the need to boycott many ways the prototype of a Bolshevik
the limits of capitalism, would carry the (Shidlovsky) Commission.” 28. organiser.
through the most radical and _far- However, the general mood of the “The party, like the revolution, was
reaching democratic programme, first workers was overwhelmingly in favour still young at that time,” Trotsky recalls
and foremostthe confiscation of the big of participation, and the Bolsheviks in his autobiography, ‘‘and one was
estates and the handing overof land to soon modified their position in favour struck by the inexperience and lack of
the peasants. of participating, at least in the election finish revealed both by the members
Up till 1905, the party’s agrarian of delegates, taking full advantage of and their actions in general. Krassin
programme consisted of a series of the legal opportunities for agitation likewise was not wholly free from this
limited demands which would alleviate among a wider layer of workers than fault. But there was something firm,
the burdens on the peasantry, particu- would normally be possible. resolute and ‘administrative’ about him.
larly the recovery of the ‘otrezki’, or He was an engineer of someexperience,
‘cut-off lands’, that is, the land which Congress convened he held a paying job andfilledit well; he
had been withheld from the peasants was valued by his employers, and had a
under the terms of the Emancipation of The correctness of this decision was circle of acquaintances that was much
the Serfs Act of 1861. But now, the shownby subsequentevents. On Febru- larger and more varied than that of any
revolution in the urban centres was ary 14, 400 candidates stood in the of the young revolutionariesof the day.
rapidly spreading to the villages. The elections, of whom 20 per cent were In workers’ rooms, in engineers’ apart-
old party programme was hopelessly Social Democrats, 40 per cent ‘radica- ments, in the mansions of the liberal
antiquated, in a situation where the lised workers’ and the remainder ‘eco- Moscow industrialists, in literary
general sentiment among the peasants nomist’ workers and others. But despite circles-everywhere, Krassin had con-
was in favour ofseizing the landlords’ being in a minority, the Bolshevik nections. He managed them ail with
estates. delegates managedtoset the tone of the great skill and, consequently, practical
Conscious of the danger facing it meeting. The arrest of a number of possibilities that were quite closed to
from all sides, the regime acted with a- delegates created a mood of angry the others were opened to him. In 1905,
mixture of ruthlessness and cunning. militancy in which the Bolsheviks suc- in addition to participating in the gen-
While attempting to crush the move- ceeded in delivering what amounted to eral work of the party, Krassin had
ment by newarrests, deportations, mar- an ultimatum to Senator Shidlovsky, charge of the most dangerousfields of
tial law and pogroms, the government demanding freedom of speech and as- the work, such as armed units, the
simultaneously attempted to woo the sembly, the right of delegates to con- purchase of arms, the preparing of
Liberal bourgeoisie with the Manifesto duct their activities without let or hin- stocks of explosives, and the like. In
of February 18 and set in motion a drance, the right to meet and discuss spite of his broad outlook, he was
manoeuvre designed to split and diso- freely with their ‘electorate’ and the primarily a man of immediate acheive-
rient the’ working class. Utilising the freeing of their arrested comrades. But ment, in politics as well as in life. That
time- honouredtrick of the ruling class when, on the following day, the votes washis strength but it wasalso his heel
in all countries whenit feels its back to were due to be taken, the government of Achilles.’’ 30.
the wall, the tsarist governmentset up a decided that things were getting out of Lenin greatly appreciated people like
commission headed by Senator Shid- hand and refused to accept the workers’ Krassin who got on with the work
‘lovsky ‘‘to enquire into the causesof the demands, whereuponthe boycott cam- quietly, efficiently and without fuss.
discontent among the workers”’. paign now went ahead in earnest. Hav- Krassin’s work went on in secret, but
The aim of this strategem wasclearly ing been through the experience of the played aninvaluablerole in building the
an attempt to defuse the situation, Commission, shoulder to shoulder with party in this stormy period. Politically,
diverting the workers away from revolu- the rest of the class, it was now relat- Krassin was a conciliator. But concilia-
tionary action and prevent them from ively easy to expose the fradulent na- tionist moods were common among
moving in the direction of Marxism. In ture of the entire manoeuvre, while party activists in Russia, andstill more
an unprecedented move, the govern- simultaneously agitating for the 8-hour among the workers, as was clearly
ment announced that the workers working day, a state insurance policy, reflected in the report of the Petersburg
would be represented on the commis- democratic elections and an end to the delegation to the party congress: “In
sion by means of elected delegates. war. Three days later the authorities the recent period the demandfor an end
This manoeuvre presented the Marx- hastened to put an end to the one and to the split is becoming widespread.
ists with a tactical problem._On the one only attempt to solve the ‘labour prob- Worker Bolsheviks and Mensheviks are
hand, the reactionary aims of the gov- lem’ by legal means. The workers, holding joint meetings, either with or
ernment were quite clear. On the other meanwhile, had learned a great deal without the intellectuals, and every-
‘where the demand for unification is
pushedto the fore.” 31. One way or the
other, the split in the party had to be
resolved. Se
The obvious solution was the conven-
ing of a party congress. The Bolsheviks
had been agitating for the convening of
the Third Congress for months, but the
Mensheviks, fearing they wouldbe in a
minority, continually stonewalled.
Early in February, a police raid on the
Moscow appartmentof the writer Leo-
nid Andreyev led to the arrest of all
members of the Central Committee
(mainly Mensheviks_and conciliators).
Those still at liberty contacted the
Bolshevik ‘Bureau of Majority Commit-
tees’ with the intention of reaching
agreement to convene a Congress.
Though formally this was the respon-
sibility of the Party Council, a majority
of the party organisations inside Russia
were clearly in favour. If two-thirds of January Sth, 1905.
the committees requested a congress,
the Council was obliged by the rules to
call one. By the beginning of April the
Bolsheviks were able to prove conclus-
ively that a total of 21 organisations
inside Russia, including the CC, were in
favour of a Congress. (These figures
were accepted as correct by Martov. 32.)
This represented 52 votes outofa total
of 75 that would represent the whole
party at a congress-many more than
what would be required by the rules.
An Open Letter to Plekhanov, as chair-
man of the Party Council, written by
Lenin in the name of the CC was
published early in April. Yet the Coun-
cil, openly flouting the rules and in
contempt of democratic procedure,
refused to call the congress.
Given the irresponsible and illegal
behaviour of the Council, the Bolshe-
viks had no alternative but to convene a
Congress themselves,in the nameof the
Central Committee and the majority of Footnotes
party organisations in Russia. The
Mensheviks, although invited to attend, 1. Stalin (and others?), ‘History of the 18. ibid p72.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union 19. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 8,
stayed, away and organised their own (Bolsheviks)’, p94. pp143-45. a
conference in Geneva. -. 2. Quoted in Martovet al, ‘Obshehestven- 20. ibid p146.
On April 12 1905, delegates noe Dvizhenie v Rossii’, volume 2, p43. 21. See Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume
assembled in London for over two 3. ibid p45. 8, p163.
weeks of intense discussions on the 4. ibid p44. 22. Quoted in Dan, ‘Origins of Bolshe-
5. Quoted in JLH Keep, ‘The Rise of the vism’, p305 “> . a
fundamental problems of the revolu- Social Democracy in Russia’, p157. 23. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 8,
tion. The first genuinely. Bolshevik 6. ibid p158. pp158-166.
Congress had been convened.. 7. Martov, op cit, volume 3, p540. 24. ibid p159.
8. ibid, volume 2, p45. 25. VA Grinko (and others), ‘The Bolshe-
Part Eight of Alan Woods’ series of 9. Tretiy s’yezd RSDRP (Protokoly),. ve Party’s Struggle Against Trotskyism’,
p544, DIO. . :
articles on the history of Bolshevism,
10. Martov, op cit, volurne 2, p45 26. Dan, op cit, p305. -. i
dealing with the Third Congress and the Il. Trotsky, ‘1905’, p92. “ 27. Martov, op cit, volume 3, pp553-
further developmentof the 1905 revolu- 12. Eva Broido, ‘Memoirs of a Revolutio- 54
tion, will appearin the next edition of the nary’, p116. 28. Tretiy s’yezd, p179. _
MIR.Backissues of the MIR containing 13. Tretiy s’yezd, p545. 29. See Oskar Anweiler, ‘Los. Soviets’;
parts I to 6 are available for 90p each, . 14. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 9;. p43-44. 7 oa le j
postage included, from World Socialist p97. . ; . 30. Trotsky, ‘My Life’, pp169-170
Books, 3-13 Hepscott Road,London E9 15. Trotsky, op cit, p95. 31. Tretiy s’yezd, p549. ao
JHB. Cheques payableto World Social- 16. ibid p96. : -32. Martov, op. -cit,;: volume.

ist Books. : :
- 17, See David Lane, ‘The Roots ofRussian.-
Communism’, p71.
Part eight of Alan Woods’ series of articles on the history of Bolshevism.

1905—The Third Congress

Onthe twentyfifth of April 1905, the which the working class must subor-
first genuinely Bolshevik party congress dinate itself to the Liberal bourgeoisie.
opened its doors in London. On the The question of organising the workers
agenda werethe following questions: 1) for an armeduprising did not enter into
the armed uprising; 2) the attitude to their scheme of things, because they
the government’s policy, including the saw the workers’ role as merely backing
slogan of the provisional revolutionary . up the Liberals, and forcing the autoc-
government; 3) the attitude to the racy to retreat under the pressure of
peasant movement; 4) relations strikes and demonstrations directed
between workers and intellectuals towards placing the Liberals in power.
within the party; 5) party rules; 6) the The Bolsheviks, while not denying
attitude to other parties (including the the bourgeois-democratic character of
Mensheviks); 7) the attitude to the the revolution, saw things quite dif-
non-Russian Social Democratic or- ferently. They saw the working class as
ganisations; 8) the attitude to the the main motor-force of the revolution,
Liberals; 9) practical agreements with which would triumph, in spite of the
the Social Revolutionaries, and or- cowardice and treachery of the ‘pro-
ganisational questions. Present at the - gressive’ bourgeoisie, only to the degree
Congress were 24 delegates with full that the proletariat fought for and won
voting rights representing 21 commit- its rightful place at the head of the
tees, as well as a numberof other party nation, uniting behindits bannerall the
groups, including the Vperyodeditorial oppressed classes of society, in par-
board and the Bolshevik Organisation ticular the peasantry. The role of the
Abroad, which had a consultative vote. Kamenev.
Social Democrats was no longer merely
Lenin was present, nominally as a that of ‘propagandist-enlighteners’ but
delegate from Odessa. ‘romantic revolutionaries’ who imagin- revolutionary organisers, not merely
ed that all that was needed was a ‘committee-men’ but leaders of masses,
Insurrection decisive push by small terrorist groups
to ‘detonate’ the massesinto action. For
whose duty it was to prepare for an
all-out general strike, culminating in an
The Congress took place in the white this subjective idealism, the problem of all-Russia uprising against tsarism.
heat of revolutionary upswing. The armed insurrection was something in-
party was faced with a wholeseries of
pressing political and tactical questions:
dependent of time and space. For the
Marxists, for whom the revolution must
_ Strikes
the attitude to the government’s ‘con- be the work of the workers themselves, Given the numerical weaknessof the
cessions’ (the Shidlovsky Commission), it arises inevitably at a certain point in forces of Marxism, this may seem to
the slogan of a parliament (‘zemsky the development of the class struggle. have been an excessively ambitous aim.
sobor’), the constituent assembly, arm- Where the necessary objective condi- Butit is necessary to bearfirmly in mind
ed uprising and the provisional revolu- tions were absent, to put forward cons- the concrete conditions of the time. The
tionary government, legal and semi- tantly the idea of insurrection and arm- Russian working class was politically
legal work, the national and agrarian ed struggle is mere Blanquism.* They virgin, consisting overwhelmingly of
questions, and so on. But the question correctly concentrated on the slow work newlayers freshly awakenedto political
which..dominated all others was the of developing Marxist cadres, emphasis- life, with no fixed traditions of reformist
armed insurrection. Lenin was par- ing theory and organisation, carefully or Stalinist mass organisations, and no
ticularly emphatic about this: ‘“The en- husbanding resources and building links deeply-rooted political prejudices. The
tire history of the past year,” he argued, with the masses. But now, the entire lava of the revolution had not yet had
“proved that we underestimated the situation had been transformed by the time to harden into a solid crust of
significance and inevitability of the up- social earthquakes of war and revolu- bureaucratic conservatism. This enabl-
rising. Attention must be paid to the tion. After January 9, Martov’s argu- ed the forces of Marxism in Russia very
practical aspect of the matter.” 1. ment that you cannot ‘organise’ the quickly to overcome their weakness and
Lunacharsky (‘Voinov’) opened the revolution and his accusation of ‘Blan- rise to the head of millions of leftward
debate. The revolution in Russia had quism’ directed at the Bolsheviks moving workers who had nowhereelse
already begun in the sense that the smacked of sophistry. In reality, the to go.
masses had decisively entered the arena Mensheviks’ attitude flowed from their After the shock of Bloody Sunday the
of struggle. What was now needed, he entire conception of the revolution as a consciousness of the masses was trans-
argued, was to give an organised form bourgeois-democratic revolution in formed. There was a wave of local
to this semi-spontaneous movement.
Otherwise, all the heroism and energies * This term, which was commonly used by doomed him to play a negative role. “Blan-
of the workers could be dissipated in the Russian Marxists to denote revolutionary qui,” wrote Engels, “‘is essentially a political
disorganised and aimless local upris- adventurism, takes its name from the famous revolutionary, a socialist only by sentiment,
ings. French revolutionary and utopian com- because of his sympathy for the sufferings of
In the previous period, when the munist, Luis Auguste Blanqui (1805-81) who the people, but he has neither socialist theory
objective conditions for revolution were based himself on an ultra-left, conspiratorial nor definite practical proposals for social
conception of the revolution, as the work, not reforms. In his political activities he was
absent, the Russian Marxists, Plek- of the masses but as a ‘coup de main of a essentially a ‘man of action’.’’ 2. The modern
hanov in the first instance, had laid small revolutionary minority’. Despite his ultralefis have faithfully preserved all of
heavy stress on attacking the voluntarist undoubted sincerity and personal courage, Blanqui’s faults without possessing any of his
theories of the Narodniks, those Blanqui’s lack of theoretical understanding virtues. - .
37
MIR Summer 1988; Bolshevism Part cighRPRe eee

strikes and demonstrations, often of a on the one hand, to consolidate for the
stormy character. One of the delegates people every improvement in the
recalled the electric mood in the fac- economic conditions and every exten-
tories: “After the January revolutionary sion of liberties with a view to intensify-
week in Petersburg there was such a ing the struggle, and, on the other,
spate of anarchistic strikes that in many steadily to expose before the proletariat
factories it was enough for only one of the reactionary aimsof the government,
the workers to shout: ‘Down tools, which is trying to disunite and corrupt
lads!’ for a strike to break out, and the working class and drawits attention
anyone who spokeout againstit, receiv- away from its urgent class needs at the
ed from the others the tag of ‘pro- moment of the revolution.” 6.
vocateur’.” 3. Lenin’s flexible and dialectical
‘The danger was that the energies of understanding of revolutionary tactics
the workers would be dissipated in this andstrategy clashed with the unyielding
way. What was required wasto try to dogmatism of the committeemen,
unify the movement so as to be able to whose universe revolved around the
concentrate ‘full strength at the point of axis of their narrow local circle, which
attack’. The same delegate stressed the they jealously guarded, on the one hand
need to combat ultraleft.adventurism against the leadership ‘in exile’, on the
and individual terrorism: ‘‘on the one other hand against the demandsof the
hand, needless acts of petty terrorism, workers for a greater say in the running
on the other, acts of senseless provoca- of inner-party: affairs. The class com-
tion, or clashes with the police and position of the Congressitself left a lot
soldiers, when individual armed per- to be desired, as one of the delegates,
sons, by bringing their weapons into Nadezhda Krupskaya. Leshchinsky (‘Zharkov’) commented:
play. give the enemy reason and oppor- teemen’ were ill at ease in the mass “Looking around me, at the composi-
tunity to fire upon and slaughter unarm- movement and used every excuse to tion of the present Congress, I am
ed crowds.” 4 avoid getting too closely involved with astonished that in it there are so few
The delegates discussed in a business- it. A formalistic conception of organisa- workers, and yet, that workers suitable
like manner all the technical details: the tion, discipline and centralism, together to be sent to the Congress, without any
drawing up of ‘strategic maps’ of towns, with certain ultraleft tendencies, served doubt, could have been found.” 7. This
the training of competent officers, the to cover up for an innate conservatism is borne out by Krupskaya, whosays in
raising of funds, but aboveall the need and cliquishness, inherited from the her memoirs: “‘There were no workers
for every branch to possess detailed past. Lenin used the Congress as an at the Third Congress—at least none of
knowledge of local conditions and the arena to wage an implacable srugele any mark... There was no shortage of
moodof the workers. Side byside with against these tendencies. committeemen though. Unless this
the technical and organisational On the question of participating in make-up of the congress is borne in
preparation, there was to be a stepping legal organisations such as trade unions, mind a great deal of what the congress
up of the ideological, agitational and co-ops, insurance and benefit schemes, records oe will not be properly
propaganda work, as an integral part of where the prevailing mood of the ‘com- understood.”
preparing for the overthrow oftsarism. mitteemen’ was for a boycott, Lenin In fact, the minders at the cong-
Agitation was to be carried on, not only warnedthat: “‘The Congress cannotlay ress became frequently heated, as Lenin
among the workers, but also among the down a hard andfast rule on this point. tackled the prejudices of the ‘practicos’
intellectuals. students, youth, women, All methods should be used for agita- head-on, while the latter did not con-
the non-Russian nationalities, and, as tion. The experience of the Shidlovsky ceal their resentment at the ‘in-
much as possible, among the peasants, Commission gives no ground whatever terference’ of the ‘exiles’. ‘The ‘com-
beginning with the village poor. Special for a downright negative attitude,” and mitteeman’,” wrote Krupskaya, “‘was
attention was devoted to work in the went. on to shock the advocates of usually a rather self-assured person. He
army, with the aim of winning over the boycott by asserting that it would be saw what a tremendousinfluence the
soldiers to the side of the workers. The correct, under certain circumstances, to work of the committee had on the
troops were to be leafletted, and a participate even in a rigged tsarist par- masses, and as a rule he recognised no
commission of experienced specialists liament: “It is impossible to reply inner-Party democracy. ‘Inner-Party
was set up, under the control of the categorically whetherit is advisable to democracy only leads ‘to trouble with
Central Committee, to work out a participate in the Zemsky Sobor. the police. We are connected with the
programmeoftransitional demands for Everything will depend on the political movementasit is’, the ‘committeemen’
soldiers. situation, on the electoral system, and would say. Inwardly they rather despis-
Nevertheless, even at a time when the on other specific. factors which cannot ed the Party workers abroad who, in
question of armed insurrection had be estimated in advance. Somesay that their opinion, had nothing better to do
been pushed to the fore by events, the the Zemsky Sobor is a fraud. That is than squabble among themselves-‘they
fundamental task of the party wasstill true. But there are times when we must ought to be made to work under Rus-
that of winning over the masses. take part in elections to expose a sian conditions.’ The ‘committeemen’
Without that, all the talk about over- fraud.” 5. And Lenin moved an adden- objected to the overruling influence of
throwing tsarism would have been so dum to the resolution on this question the Centre abroad. At the same time
much empty chatter. The Congress, which stated: “As regards the actual they did not want innovations. They
however, confirmed many of Lenin’s and sham_ concessions which the were neither desirous. nor capable of
fears that the Bolshevik activists inside weakened autocracy is now making to adjusting themselves to the quickly
Russia had been slow to react to chang- the democrats in general and to the changing conditions.” 9.
ing conditions. Accustomed to function- working class in particular, the Social Bogdanov moveda resolution, fone
ing over a long period in small, closed Democratic party of the working class up by Lenin, ‘On the Relations between
circles in the underground, the ‘commit- should take advantage of them in order, Workers and Intellectuals within the
38
dLMIR Summer.1988: Bolshevism, Part eight

Social Democratic Organisation,’

which, while recognising the difficulties:
under conditions ofillegality, argued in
favour of applying the principle . of
elections more broadly, to open up the
party to the workers, to make room for
the new, fresh. layers on the party’ s
leading committees.
This resolution called forth aa storm of
protest on the. part of. the commit-:
teemen. Kamenev (‘Gradov’) wasfirst
on his feet: “I must decisively speak
against approving this resolution. This .
question of the relation. between the
intellectuals and workers in party or-
ganisations does not. exist..(Lenin: It:
does exist!) No, it does not: it exists as
an issue for demagogy-and that’s all.’”
10. Others argued that there was no time
or forces. to train workers, basing.
themselves on the famous quote-from
Whatis to be Done? which incorrectly
asserts that socialist consciousness must- Anton Lavinsky's: 1926 poster fo the film, The “Battleship ‘Potemkin.
be. brought to the workers from
without. Thus, Romanov (‘Leskov’) would be very pleased ‘if; in the make- landlords estates and the setting up of
complained: ‘‘It seems to me that here up of our committees, out of every two peasant committees. From this point
we are overestimating the psychology of intellectuals there were eight workers.” onwards, the revolutionary solution of
the workers(sic!), as if the workers by 12. the agrarian problem lay at the heart of
themselves could become conscious It is an interesting point, frequently the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary strategy.
Social Democrats.’’11. (My emphasis, overlooked, that many of the old The Party Rules approved at the
AW) Yet now the very author of What.. worker ‘Economists’ of the Rabocheye Second Congress were basically re-
is to be Done? answeredhis critics by Dyelo tendency subsequently joined the affirmed, although Lenin madeit abun-
appealing to the class instinct of the Bolsheviks whereas the Economist in- dantly clear that they were not to be
workers, and. deliberately shocked his tellectuals, such as Martynov and interpreted in a narrow sense, but that
audience by referring approvingly of the Akimov, almost to a man, joined the the party organisation should be quickly
participation of the workersin the party Mensheviks. opened up to include the best of the
organisation during the period of But, despite all the passionate ar- workers and the youth. With the bitter
‘Economism’™*: guments put forward by Lenin and his experience of the split still fresh in
supporters, the majority remained ob- everyone’s memory, he also insisted on
Intellectuals durate. Burning with indignation, Lenin
again intervened: “I could hardly keep
including in the Rules clear and specific
guarantees for the rights of minorities
.“It has been said here that the my seat when it was said that there are within the party. Minorities were to
bearers of Social Democratic ideas are no workersfit to sit on the committees. have the right to express their point of
predominantly the intellectuals. That is. The question is being dragged out: view freely at all levels of the party,
not true. In the epoch of Economism, obviously there is something the matter subject only to the condition that the
the bearers of revolutionary ideas were with the Party. Workers must be given raising of differences should not be
workers, not intellectuals... It is further places on the committees. Oddly donein such a way as to disorganise and
asserted that at the head ofthe splitters enough, there are only three publicists underminethe practical intervention of
are usually situated intellectuals. That at. the Congress, the others being the party in the struggle against tsarism
observation is very important but does committee-men: it. appears however and capitalism.
notsettle the matter. I long ago advised. that the publicists are forplacing the
in my written works that workers should
be brought onto the committees in the -
workers, whereas the committee-men
for some reason are quite wrought up
Weekly paper
greatest possible number..The period over it.” 13. - The Congress launched a new weekly
following the Second Congress was In- the end, Lenin remained ina paper, Proletary, to replace the
characterised. by the insufficient imp- minority, and the resolution was re- Vperyod, and elected a new central
lementation of this obligation-that is jected, on the grounds that there was committee to replace the old concilia-
the impression I have got from my ‘no need’ for a special'resolution on this tionist one. The Congress thus resolved
conversations » with the - ‘practical subject. Subsequent events. were to the old unsatisfactory division between
workers’.... It is necessary to overcome show just how: right Lenin was. the party’s central organ, central com-
the inertia of the committeemen (app- Nevertheless, the«Third Congress mittee and party council, reducing these
lause and hissing)... the: workers havea marked anhistoric landmark. Thebasic to a single centre, the CC, which was
class instinct, and with justa little bit of ideas of Lenin on the leading role of the later divided into two parts, the exterior
political experience they very quickly proletariat: in the revolution, the need and the interior. Lenin, for the time
become.- staunch social-democrats. I for’ absolute class. independence and being, remained outside Russia, whilst:
mistrust. of the Liberals, was adopted the ‘Russian Bureau’ of the CC, based
* In the English ‘Collected Works’. this without dissent.. The party’s policy on in St Petersburg, was made up of
speech of Lenin’s has, for reasons best known the agrarian question (Lenin. led off in Bogdanov, Krassin and Postolovsky,
to the Stalinist editors, been'left out. I quote this debate) was radically: changed to with Rumyantsev later being co- opted
here from the Congress minutes. AW include the. confiscation of all the big on. Lenin was, in effect, in charge of the
39
MIR Summer 1988: Bolshevism Part eight EE——————————————

‘Foreign Bureau’ of the CC which main- mid-1905 had grown to tens of Only 14% of the income of the Sebas-
tained close links with the Russian thousands of roubles a year.” 16. topol committee came from subs. The
Bureau, but also had direct links with Even so, neither the Bolsheviks nor situation in Riga was better, butstill
the local party committees. with whom the Mensheviks could keep up with the only amounted to 22%. However, in
it carried on a_ regular corres- demand for socialist literature. the Bolshevik stronghold, Ivanovo- —
pondence. Everywhere there was a thirst for the Voznesensk, the corresponding figure
The Congress had given a much written word. The workers wanted to was 53%. 17. Both factions. received
needed boost to the morale of the know. Theold /skra had a print-run of large donations from wealthy sym-
Bolsheviks, who began to grow at a around 10-15,000 (fortnightly, although pathisers. But the Mensheviks, with
considerable pace. New branches and for a brief period it appeared weekly). their far looser organisation, were al-
district committees were set up. Factory Nowthe audience for a revolutionary ways far more dependent upon this
cells were established, as well as Bol- socialist newspaper wasat least ten or source than the Bolsheviks, who strove
shevik trade union factions, designed to twenty times that figure. The underg- for, and finally achieved, an organisa-
take advantage of the new opportunities round printshops could not keep up tion built upon the kopecks of the
for legal trade union: work in which, with the needs of the moment. But the workers-the only real foundation for a
however, the Mensheviks had gained a possibility of launching a legal paperdid workers’ party. By contrast, we have
head-start. Bolshevik agitation and pro- not arise until later in the year when already seen how, in early 1905, almost
paganda was carried out by small Trotsky and Parvus took over the old half of the income of the Mensheviks
specialised groups of 10 to 12 people. liberal Ruskaya Gazeta and transformed came from a single contributor. On the
Each agitator-organiser was responsible it into a legal organ of the Marxists. 15 February, according to the same
for a single district. The opportunities With its low price of one kopeck, andits source, the Petersburg Mensheviks’ in-
for carrying socialist ideas to the popular style, circulation shot up from cometotalled 247r ‘tof which 200r were
workers were now immense. Millions of 30,000 to 100,000, reaching a staggering from a sympathiser.” 18. The situation
leaflets were published by both Bol- 500,000 by December. By comparison, with the Jewish Bund was completely
sheviks and Mensheviks in the course of the Bolshevik legal paper Novaya Zhiz- different. Despite their opportunistic
the year. “The old forms of propagan- n', ‘New Life’, had a circulation of policy, the Bund hada well-established,
da,” writes Krupskaya. “were dead and 50,000- which wasstill fives times more centralised working class organisation,
propaganda had turned into agitation. than the total print run of the old Iskra. about which Lenin spoke enviously
With the colossal growth of the working But that was not until the Autumn. In more than once. Fifty per cent of their
class movement. verbal propaganda and the meantime, the local party groups needs were met from the workers dona-
even agitation as a whole could not had to make do with whateverleaflets tions. as
meet the needs of the movement. What and other material they could duplicate ’ The scope for the work inside Russia -.
was needed was popular literature. a on their humble hand-operated was now considerably easier. Although-.
popular newspaper. literature for the mimeograph machines. arrests were still made, sentences tend-
peasants and for the non-Russian na- In his history of the Social Democ- ed to be more lenient. Sometimes the .-
tionalities.”” 14. racy. Martov gives a whole series of local police were overruled by libera
These, and other pressing needs, figures for the financial state of both provincial governors. The police, s
immediately raised the question of Menshevik and Bolshevik groups in themselves were losing their nerve.
finance. The question of arms, too, 1905, which show how far the demands Under these circumstances, the local
required large sums of money. David of the situation outstripped the income committees were able to meet almost
Lane, on the basis of a study of the raised from the membersin subs. Thus, daily.
Bolshevik and Menshevik press, conc- the Baku committee, in February, rais- A typical local committee would con-
ludes that, in February, the St Peters- ed a total of 1,382 roubles, of which sist of not more than a dozen people.
burg Bolshevik Committee raised a only 38 (3%) came ‘from workers’. Every member of a committee had a
total_of 2,400 roubles (£240), of which direct responsibility for some aspect of
265r was spent on the press and 375r on the work, either press, finance or agita-
organisation. There was a separate arms tion, or responsibility for a particular
fund of 1,29S5r. of which 850r had district or factory. These were linked to
already .been spent. If we include a ‘A typical local the workers through party circles.
further 981r represented by a separate There were also social democratic stu-
strike fund, this means that the total committee would consist dent organisations, and: beyond these a
income of the St Petersburg Bolsheviks of not more than a wider ‘periphery’ of sympathisers.. As
in February 1905 was about £468 (ten soon as even one worker joined in a
roubles equalled one pound). However, dozen people. Every factory, he or she was expectedto begin
in just the first two weeks of July, the member of a committee working under the direction of the local
expenditure of the Bolsheviks had risen committee. We have already seen some
to 800r on arms, 540r on organisation had a direct of the negative features of the ‘commit-
and 156r on literature. responsibility for some teemen’. But it would be wrongto lose
“The Mensheviks’ income from 15 sight of their positive side. These were
February to 15 March,” according to aspect of the work, professional revolutionaries, dedicated
Lane, “‘was larger than the Bolsheviks, either press, finance or to the party, hard-working and: self-
being 4,039r (2,000r of which came sacrificing. Working underdifficult con-
from one contributor): of this sum, agitation, or ditions, they were almost always on the
1,250r were spent on arms, ‘organisa- responsibility for a move. They lived a hand-to-mouth ex-
istence, on very low wages, around
tion’ in various regions cameto 1,126r
and 630r were spent on the printing
particular district or 25-35 roubles a month, funds permit-
presses.” 15. - factory. These were ting, which was not always the case!
“The budget of the revolutionary linked to the workers Some had a private income. others were
organisations, consisting in the period sometimes forced to do part-time jobs.
1901-02 of a few hundred roubles, by through party circles.’ Some, like Krassin, as we have seen,

40
 MIR Summer 1988: Bolshevism, Part eight

The Ivanovo-Voznesensk ‘Meeting of Representative Delegates’, a soviet In all but name.

worked as a ‘cover’, which sometimes ‘temporarily ebbed, as the workers of sacks turned into a mass political
gave rise to amusing circumstances: ‘In the capital cautiously took stock of the demonstration on May 15 with slogans
St Petersburg there was an insurance position. The May Day demonstration such as ‘Downwith Tsarism!’ and ‘Long
company, not inaptly named Nadezhda in St Petersburg was not a success, with live the Revolution!’ A wave ofstrikes
(‘Hope’) whose directors made it their only a few hundred turning out. and demonstrations swept through Po-
policy to employ as clerks men known However, the more backwardprovinces land and Lithuania, culminating in the
to be active revolutionaries: they found were now being roused to struggle. On 23 June general strike and uprising in
that, although they seldom remained the first of May, 200,000 workers struck Lodz, and solidarity demonstrations in
with the firm for long owingto the high in nearly 200 towns throughout Russia. Warsaw and Odessa. ‘
incidence of arrests, they were excep- The textile workers were well to the
tionally honest.” 19. fore. On 12 May, a generalstrike broke
out in the Bolshevik stronghold of
Soviets
Donations Ivanovo-Voznesensk, a textile town The strike wave which gripped almost
with 70,000 workers, lasting 72 days. By all the industrial areas throughout the
Like the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks this time the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Bol- Spring and Summer assumed an inc-
also had some wealthy sympathisers sheviks numbered more than 400. reasingly political character. Whereasin
who were systematically tapped for Negotiations were conductedbyelected March, less than 30%of strikes were
cash. Well-heeled civil servants, Zemv- factory delegates who metin a ‘Meeting political, between April and August the
stvo liberals, doctors and other profes- of Representative Delegates’, a soviet figure had risen to . 50-70%.
sional people provided money through in all but name. Out of 128 delegates, of Everywhere, the workers’ elected
donations, put up full-timers and even whom 23 were women, about 30 were representatives in the factory commit-
hid fugitives. In Odessa, the director of Bolsheviks. tees and strike committees led the way.
a big printing works ‘“‘always helped out The Ivanovo-Voznesensk soviet kept And all that a ‘soviet’ is—at its incep-
in a financial crisis.’” The industrialist order in the town, issued proclama- tion-is an enlarged strike committee, an
Savva Morozov donated 2,000 roubles a tions, set up a militia and controlled the organ of struggle in the fight of the
month to Krassin from late 1903 on- press, thus in practice imposing workers against the employers. The
wards. As the amount of moneyraised freedom of the press, speech and soviets in Russia, those marvellously
from subs, paper and literature sales assembly. Daily mass meetings enabled effective, flexible and representative
was nowhere near enough to meetthe the mass of workers to learn and ex- organisations of the workers, were not
demands of the new. situation, such change experiences. The peasantsin the the invention of Lenin or Trotsky.
donations became very important. Max- surrounding districts looked hopefully Nowheredo they feature in the writings
im Gorky, whose fameas a writer was towards the soviet to which they of Marx and Engels. They were the
already established, played a keyrole in directed petitions. The militant unity of product of the inventive genius and
raising this kind of money, enlisting the the proletariat and peasantry was thus initiative of ordinary working men and
aid of many other writers and promi- being forged, not in words but in deeds, women. The Soviets were destined to
nent intellectuals, whose enthusiasm by the movement of the workers play a central role in the whole develop-
had been aroused by the revolution. themselves. From the 23 May thelocal ment of the revolution, particularly
Students and other middle class people party got out a regular bulletin on the during and after the great October
were approached for ‘donations. Even course of the dispute.. By the end of strike.
the odd landowner, like A Tsurupa, June,. the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Bol- Not only the urban workers but the
gave regular contributions. shevik organisation had grown to 600 peasantry was also gradually being
Throughout the Spring of 1905, the members, with 15-20 factory organisa- drawn into the orbit of the revolution.
pendulum swungcontinually_to theleft. tions. © : i _ Throughout the Summer there were
After the massacre of. the Ninth of In the textile town of Lodz in Poland, peasant disturbancesand strikes of ag-
January, the movementin St Petersburg the funeral of a worker killed by Cos- _ ricultural labourers in the Baltic area,
41
 MIR Summer 1988: Bolshvisn Part i> —>——>————————————

the Ukraine, Don, Kuban and the ficer. A massive demonstration took
Caucusus. In some areas, the peasants place, and mass meetings were held in
virtually took over whole areas and ran which social democratic agitators par-
their own affairs. The Menshevikstried ticipated. This showed both the strong
to use this as backing for their theory of and the weak side of the spontaneous,
“revolutionary self-government’. But elemental movementof the masses. All
the truth was that, unless the working the elements were presentfor a decisive
class took power, such local outbreaks linking-up of the army with the revolu-
could only have an_ episodic tionary people. But in the absence of a
character. conscious leadership, the “floating
Taking cognisance of the new situa- republic” could only have the character
tion in the villages, the party had of an episodic development, which
already re-drafted its agrarian program- nevertheless was an anticipation of the
me to include the confiscation of all going overof the soldiers andsailors to
landowners’, government, church, the side of the Soviets in 1917.
monastic and crown lands. The changed These. events left the Odessa
atmosphere in the villages opened up authorities thunderstruck. For a time
for the first time big possibilities for they did not know what to do. In
social democratic work among the practice, power wasin the hands of the
peasants. Although the party wasstill workers. But they acted with no clear
weak here, somecircles were establish- perspective, no overall policy or plan.
ed in areas like, Nizhegorod, Samara, This allowed the authorities time to
Saratov, Kazan and Tver. Lenin in- concentrate their forces against Odessa.
sisted on the establishment of purely z0 ue A naval force was sent against the
Workers’ strike in Moscow.
social democratic groupsin the villages, Potemkin, which succeeded in escaping
composed of farm labourers and rural in the ranks, making them ever more to Rumania, butthe revolution in Odes-
proletarians. Only then would they seek receptive to social democratic agitation. sa was brutally. suppressed.
agreements for joint work with other Newsof the annihilation of the Russian The mutiny on the Potemkin
revolutionary-democratic groups. But fleet at Tsushima, (27-28 May, 1905) therefore failed to lead to an insurrec-
the prior condition was not to blur over had an especially electrifying effect on tion, which was implicit in the situation.
the distinction between workers and the sailors. As so often happensin naval Butit did not pass off without leavingits
peasant small proprietors. mutinies, the leading role was played by imprint. Terrified at the scale of the
An interesting pen portrait of the the petty officers, normally drawn from mass movement and the signs of inner
work of Bolshevik agitators in the vil- the most able and intelligent of the decomposition in the armed forces, the
lages is to be found in Sholokhov’s sailors, whose close proximity to the government announcedthe holding of
famousnovel And Quiet Flows the Don, officers gives rise to a deep-seated elections to the State Duma (parlia-
which describes how the Bolshevik contempt for the latter. The tensions ment). Ten days later peace was conc-
Stockman organised a group of Cos- and conflicts aroused by the arrogance luded with Japan under humiliating
sacks around a poetry and literacy and incompetence of the naval officers terms. It is not generally realised that,
circle: “After long sifting andtesting, a become increasingly unbearable when despite her earlier reverses, from a
little group of the Cossacks began to they are related to matters of life and strictly military point of view, Russia
meet regularly in Stockman’s work- death, in time of war. Precisely such a had everything to gain from continuing
shop. Stockman was the heart and soul clash between the petty officers and the war. Japan’s reserves of men and
of the group and he workedstraight officers led to the outbreak of the money were nearly exhausted. But the
towardsa goalthat only he fully unders- famous mutiny on the battleship Prince rapid termination of the war was essen-
tood.-He ate into the simple understan- Potemkin Tavrichesky on June 14 1905, tial for the preservation of the autoc-
ding and conceptions like a worm into immortalised in Eisenstein’s classic film racy.
wood, instilling repugnance and hatred The Battleship Potemkin. The ending of the war and the an-
towards the existing system. Atfirst he The immediate issue was the bad nouncement of elections was greeted
found himself confronted with the cold food. But the underlying cause was the with elation by the bourgeois liberals.
steel of distrust, but he was not to be general discontent with the conduct of “The Japanese,” proclaimed one of
repulsed. Even that could be worn the war, andthepiling up of unbearable them, “‘will not enter the Kremlin, but
away.” 20. contradictions over decades and genera- the Russians will!’ 22. However, closer
This ferment in the villages had im- tions. The Black Sea fleet had set out acquaintance with the details of
portant repercussions in the armed for the southern port of Odessa precise- Bulygin’s proposals soon poured cold
forces, which were overwhelmingly of . ly when that city was in the grip of a water over this precipitate and naive
peasant composition. However, as so general strike. No amount of military optimism.
often happenedin the history of revolu- discipline and police surveillance could Bulygin, the creature of the autoc-
tions, the revolt flared up first in the prevent the bacilli of revolution from racy, had worked out what Lenin desc-
fleet, with its more proletarian class reaching the ships anchored only a few ribed as “the most reactionary constitu-
make-up. miles away. tion in Europe.” It gave the vote to the
The party’s work amongsoldiers and The mutineeringcrew arrestedall the landowners, bourgeois, property-
sailors was even more difficult than officers, except the commanderand six owning peasants and the urban middle
work amongthe peasants. Onthe eve of others who were killed. The sailors class, while the workers, the village
the 1905 revolution, there were only elected a committee from their midst poor, womenand servicemen-thatis to
three organised party groups in the which took the bold initiative of sailing say, the overwhelming majority of the
armed forces. However,in the course of into Odessa to appeal for support from population—weére ‘excluded. To add in-
the revolution, this numberincreased to the workers. A great crowd assembled sult to injury; the Duma would only
a total of 27 groups. 21. Military defeats around the corpse of the able seaman have consultative powers! The whole
created an explosive mood of discontent Grigory Valulinchuk, killed by an of- elaborate construction wasa lie and a
42
deceit behind which everything would -
continue as before.
From this moment on, the Duma
occupied a central position in the tac-
tical discussions of all social democratic
tendencies. The Bolsheviks immediate-
ly came out in favour of a policy of
“active boycott”. The position of the
Mensheviks was ambiguous. In the
Caucusus, focal point for the most
backward and opportunist wing of Men-
shevism, they openly called for par-
ticipation. However, in general, the
mood of the Menshevik rank and file
was against this. The Bolsheviks pro-
posed a united front to the Mensheviks
and the Social Democratic organisa-
tions of the nationalities for a boycott
campaign. Atlocal level, the Bolsheviks
and Menshevik workers acted in
unison. The petit bourgeois Social
Revolutionaries also supported the
boycott. Even the: Liberals of the
‘Union of Unions’ were compelled to
come out in opposition, at least in Sailors from the Potemkin.
words. ultra-left moods which would only serve even a section of the Liberals were
to separate the advanced elements from opposed. The democratic aspirations of
Boycott the majority of the class. the masses collided against the solid
The organic opportunism of the Men- wall of the bureaucratic-police regime.
The government’s granting of shevik leaders meant that they were Only by the revolutionary overthrow of
autonomyto the universities, in itself an heavily inclined towards parliamen- tsarism and a clean break with the past
apparently secondary measure, tarianism, although the pressure of the could the ground be cleared for the
represented a majorturning- point. The radicalised rank and file prevented introduction of a genuine democracy.
doors of the establishments of higher them from revealing their hand too The exact nature of the transformation
education were suddenly thrown open early. Among the Bolsheviks, however, and the role of the different classes in
and through them poured the masses, there was a considerable numberofthe . the revolution were the subject of
thirsting for ideas, and eager to par- “committeemen”’ in particular who ad- heated debate within the ranks of the
ticipate in the arena of public debate. vocated the “boycott” tactic as an ab- workers’ movement, which will be dealt
Up to this point, the students had been solute panacea, outside of time and with later. But to all but the blindest
involved in a passive student. ‘strike’, space. This ultra left tendency, the reformist, it was evident that on the
refusing to turn up to classes. This was product of a lack of understanding of order of the day stood, not parliamen-
on the point of being broken when the theory and the dialectical method of tarianism but a revolutionary general
whole movementtook an entirely diffe- Marxism, led to serious mistakes later strike and armedinsurrection to over-
rent direction. Throughout the on, as Lenin honestly admitted. throw the autocracy. This perspective
Autumn, the campuses and lecture In the given situation, the boycott of was amply corroboratedbythe hightide
theatres were the focal points of heated the “Bulygin Duma” project was ab- of the revolution which was ushered in
discussions. Beginning with the solutely correct. The revolutionary by the October strike in St Petersburg
students, these debates became known wave wasstill gathering in strength. The and culminated in the December upris:
to the workers who soon understood terms of the new constitution fell so far ing in Moscow. . :
that here, at last, was a place they could short of the expectations aroused that
meet and discuss unmolested by the
police. ‘‘Alongside the: students’ uni-
formsin thelecture theatres,’”’ wrote an Footnotes
eyewitness, “ordinary: clothes and, 1, Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 8, 13. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 8;
above all, workers overalls. were to be p370. p4ii. apt

seen with ever increasing frequency.”23 2. Marx and Engels, ‘Selected Works’, 14. Krupskaya, op cit, pI27. 1
Theexplosion on the campuses show- volume 2, p38]. 15. David Lane, ‘The Roots of Russian
ed that the pendulum wasstill swinging 3. Tretiy s’yezd RSDRP (Protokoly), Communism’, p78.
rapidly to the left, with new layers being plo. 16. Martov, ‘Obshehestvennoe Dvizhenie v
drawn into the struggle. This was the 4. ibid. : Rossii’, volume 2, p63. .
fundamental consideration which deter- 5. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 8, 17. ibid, volume 3, p569.
mined the Bolsheviks attitude to the p375. . 18. D.Lane, op cit,,, p78.
question of a boycott: at.-this stage, 6. ibid p376. 19. JLH Keep, ‘The Rise of the Social 2
although at the Third Congress Lenin 7. Tretiy s’yezd, p124. Democracy in Russia’, p181. .
was very careful to insist. that the party 8. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’, 20. Sholokhov, ‘And Quiet Flows:pees
should keep its options: open on this pl125. a Don’, : p259.
question. Morethan anyone.else, Lenin 9. ibid pp124-125. 21. Istoriya KPSS, a 2; “90. :
understood the need for-extreme flex- 10. Tretiy..s’yezd, p255. 22. Bernard Panes, ‘A History: ofRussi’ i
ibility on all tactical and, organisational I], ibid p20. pts. ' i
questions and notto get carried away by 12. ibid p262. 23. Martov, op cit,vate 1, 773. ere
 Part nine in a series of articles by Alan Woods, Editor of the MIR, on the history of
Bolshevism.

1905: The October Strike to

the December Insurrection

TheSt Petersburg Soviet leadership before thelr trialin-early.1906. Trotsiy, the President of the Soviet Is in the second row,second left.

In the Autumn of 1905, the revolu- Lodz, Minsk, Petersburg, Vilna, Odes- as a living social force. The general
tion acquired an unprecedented sweep. sa, Kazan, Tiflis and all the major strike is the highest. expression ofthis.
Atthe head of the movementstood the centres. The working class, by making . Lenin was fond of quoting the words of
proletariat, wielding its classical its power felt, drew behind it big sec- a German song: “All the wheels stand
weaponofstruggle — the generalstrike. tions of the middle class. The intel- still if your mighty arms so will!” By
“In its extent and acuteness,”’ as Lenin ligentsia joined in the strike. “In many ‘participating in the strike movement,
later recalled, “the strike struggle had ‘places juries refused to sit, lawyers to especially where this achieves an active
no parallel anywhere in the world. The plead, doctorsto attend patients. Jus- form with mass. participation, the
economic’ strike developed into a tices of the*peace closed down their workers acquire a feeling of their own
political strike, and the latter into insur- courts.” 2. °°" strength through unity. The strike is a
rection.” 1. ae The strike was accompanied. by mass levelling phenomenon,serving to bind
Beginningwith a small dispute at the meetings where the workers thrashed together the most advanced,politically
Sytin printworks in Moscow, the print- out tactics and discussed strategy and conscious workers with the broadest
ers’ strike spread to 50 printshops politics: ‘Increasingly, soldiers began to layers of the class, who are aroused in
within a few days and then rapidly participate in these meetings, express- action from the inertia of ‘normal’
became general throughout the city. ing ‘solidarity with the people. The _times.
Just when the movement in Moscow workers were beginning to organise Thus, in 1905, the September-
appearedto be dying down, on October militias for self-defence, to combat pog- October strike. movement was sparked
2 the St Petersburg printers came outin roms and keep order. In someplaces, off not by the most. experienced and
solidarity. At the sametime, the railway the workers fighting squads went onto advanced sections of the class, but by
workers struck, and elected delegates. the offensive. There were clashes with the more backwardlayers, such as the
By mid-October, three quarters of a cossacks in Yehaterinoslav and bar- printers and bakers. In the course of
million railwaymen wereonstrike. The ricades in Odessa. struggle — prepared for by the ex-
strikes now became general, involving The role of the strike in general is to perience of all the previous decades. —
“Moscow, Kharkov, Revel, Smolensk, make the working class awareofitself the masses rise above themselves, cas-
35
MIR Autumn 1988: Bolshevism Part Nite ws

ting off the psychology of servile and feature in the writings of the great down its arms. Certain governors have
passive obedience and begin to unders- Marxist thinkers prior to 1905. They been forced, under threats by, the
tand that what hitherto appeared im- were not foreseen in the pages of The representatives of the local. political
possible is now within their grasp. The Communist Manifesto, but were the parties, to resign their posts.” 4.
slave begins to think and act like a free invention of the Russian workingclass. Similarly, the governor-general.of. War-
man, with a mind and a personality of The most authoritative and influential saw, Martynov, wrote that “‘the.fantas-
his own, capableof displaying initiative of these was the Petersburg. Soviet tic mood of Polish society and. the
and creativity, taking decisions, think- which held its first meeting on the 13 hostility towards Russians have’ ac-
ing, planning and acting as a conscious October, with not more than 40 quired hitherto unprecedented:dimen-
: force. delegates present. The chairman of this sions.” 5. The Ukraine was alsoin a
Against this, the reformist trade “meeting was the Menshevik, Zborovs- state of turbulance with mass protest
union leaders reflect the past — that ky. Very soon, the Soviet embraced meetings in Kiev and Odessa in Oc-
immense dead-weight of routine, habit practically the whole of the Petersburg tober.
and tradition. which, in the words of proletariat. Here was an extremely Splits were beginning to open up in
Marx,. “weighs like an Alp” on: the broad, democratic andflexible organ of the ranks of the autocracy. While. Witte
consciousness of the masses. This is why struggle.-One delegate was elected for pleaded with the tsar to grant reform
every strike is successful only .to the. every 500 workers..Small workshops from above to head off revolution-from
degree that it is organised from. below” combined to send a delegate.The trade below, General Trepov,the virtual dic-
by the workers themselves.. Yet to talk unions werealso permittedrepresenta- . tator of Petersburg, issued the famous
about’ a ‘spontaneous’ movement is. tion, as were the workers’parties. The command to his troops: “Spare no
misleading. A strike: can: be ‘spon- °- petit-bourgeois democrats:were rep- * cartridges!” aay
taneous’ only in the sense that it is not resented. by the Social Revolutionary - : Thus,.in embryo,all the factors were
led from the tops, that. the workers Party. The anarchists were too insig- present for the passing of powerinto the
themselves take control of it. But every nificant to be represented in the Soviet hands: of the working class.. The
strike is always led by the most cons- executive. The same was true through- weakness of the regime, faced with an
cious, the most daring and courageous out the country, with the sole exception ‘explosion of popular anger,is-revealed
elements thrown up by the working of Byelostok, where they had the ma- in the panicky tone of Witte’s letters to
class. These are the ‘natural leaders’ of jority. the tsar, and the continual complaints
the proletariat, who will invariably From distant exile, Lenin greeted the about. the lack of troops. Finally, even
begin to draw revolutionary conclusions formation of the Soviets which, in a the thick-headed Nicolas was compelled
from their experience. brilliant anticipation, he characterised to come to terms with reality and
as embryonic organsof workers’ power. grudgingly concede the need to. hold
- Soviets “I. may be wrong,” he wrote, “but I
believe (on the strength of the incomp-
elections to a State Duma (parlia-
ment).
lete and only ‘paper’ information at my
InRussia, underthe prevailing condi- disposal) that politically the Soviet of
tions,. there. was no opportunity for the Workers’ Deputies should be regarded Tsar retreats
creation of a mass reformist labour ' as the embryo of a provisional revolu-
movementwith a privileged labouraris- tionary government. I think the Soviet Thetsar’s Manifesto ofthe 17 October
tocracy and an ossified bureaucracy at -Should proclaim itself the provisional was-hailed by Lenin as “‘the first victory
its head. The attemptto establish tame, revolutionary government of the whole of the. revolution’. It was greeted by
government controlled) ‘Zubatov’ of Russia as early as possible, or should - scenes of wild. rejoicing on the streets.
unions. came to. nothing. After the ninth - Set up a provisional revolutionary ~-Crowds of excited people: gathered in
of January, many of these unions bec- government (which would amount to thecity centres. to discuss the situation.
ameswiftly transformed by the masses the same thing, only in another form).” On. the 18th, 19th and 20th of October,
into genuine organs of struggle. 3. This, in essence, was what actually with no pre-ordained plan, the workers
The rapid development of the forces occurred in October 1917. marched to the gaols with red flags to
of Marxism in Russia, and the ease with The October strike gave a mighty demand the release of political
which they placed themselves at the impetusto the revolutionary movement prisoners. In. Moscow, thegoals were
head of the mass workers’ movementin -in the villages. In the last three months forcibly opened up and. the prisoners
1905, can only be understood’ in the of 1905, 1,590 cases of peasant distur- carried shoulder-high through the
context of a politically virgin proletariat bances were reported. There was a col- streets.
with no long history of reformisttrade ossal ferment amongall the oppressed -Despite the mood of euphoria, Lenin
_ unions and parties. Very swiftly, the -hationalities. Finland, the Baltic region -hammered home the idea. that The
Russian Marxists were able to win over: ~ and large areas of the Caucasuses Manifesto was only a tactical retreat and
‘the bestclassfighters in the factories ...became. virtual no-go areas, especially - warmed against constitutional illusions
who. in turn enabled them to play a~ after the anouncementofreforms in the and playing at. parliamentarianism:
dominant role in the mass move- tsar’s October Manifesto. The. ‘liberal’ “There is talk of liberty, of popular
ment. . prime. minister, Witte, wrote in worried representation: some hold forth on a
In: the absence of well-established terms tothe. tsar about the situation in constituent assembly. But: whatis being
mass trade unions, the striking workers Finland: “During the secondhalf of last constantly, hourly and minutely lost
movedto elect delegates who began to October events took place in Finland sight of is that, without serious
come together in improvised strike which have no precedent in almost a guarentees,all these fine things are but
committees, which were generalised to hundred years since the province has hollow phrases. A. serious guarentee
include all sections. of the class. The been under Russian rule. A.political can be provided only by a victorious
creation of these ‘Soviets’ in 1905 is a general strike was organised. A well- rising of the :people,. only by the comp-
marvellous example of the creative armed and organised ‘national guard’ lete domination of the. armed pro-
genius of ordinary working. people, (militia, AW) made its appearance, letariat and the peasantry over all
once they enter the arena of struggle. which in manyareas took overthe role . representatives of tsarist power who,
Nowhere does the idea of Soviets of the lawful police, ordering it to lay under pressure. by. the people, have

36
 ee

retreated a pace but are far from having

yielded to the people, and far from
having been overthrown by the people.
Until-that aim is achieved there can be
no real liberty, no genuine popular
representation, or a really constituent
assembly with the power to set up anew
order-in. Russia.
“Whatis a constitution? A sheet of
paper with the peoples’ rights recorded
on it: What is the guarentee of these
rights being really recognised? Itlies in
the strength of those classes of the
people that have become awareof these
rights and have been able to win them.”
.6. And with crushing realism, Lenin
analyses ‘the balance of forces at the
given.moment: “The autocracy is no
longer . Strong enough to come out
against: the revolution openly: The
revolution is not yet strong enough to
dealthe. enemy a decisive blow. This
fluctuation of almost evenly balanced
‘Death Stalks the- barricades’ by Boris Kustodlev, depicts the entry of the Senoyonosky
regiment to crush the December rising.
forces: inevitably engenders confusion
amongthe authorities, makesfortransi- itiatives in.‘setting.‘up Soviets, where Zhizn’. notably onewhich appeared in
tion from repression to concession, to they immediately won a head-start over Number Six, over the signature of P
laws providing for freedom of the press the more cautious Bolsheviks. Mendeleyev, where we read thefollow- |
and freedom of assembly.” 7. The task The Petersburg Mensheviks were far ing: “The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies
of the revolutionaries in this situation to the left of the Menshevik leadership mustnot exist as a political organisation
was, while clearly understanding that in exile. In any case, under the impact and the social democrats must withdraw
the really decisive battles lay in the of the revolution,, even some of the from it, since its existence acts negative-
future, to grasp the opportunity with Menshevik leaders began to move to ly upon the developmentof the social
both hands, and make full use of the the left, at least in words. Thus Fyodr democratic movement. The Soviet of
newly-won freedonis to build the party Dan wrote. to..Kautsky in November delegates can remain as a trade union
rapidly, extend its. influence within all- 1905: ‘Welive here as.thoughin a state organisation, or it cannot remain at
spheres of social life, and prepare for of intoxication. The revolutionary air all.” 11. The same author goes on to
the inevitable showdown. affects people like wine.” 10. propose that the Bolsheviks should pre-
According to one estimate, there In the course of the revolution, the sent the Soviet. with an ultimatum:
were about8,400 ‘organised Bolsheviks’ Bolsheviks and’.Mensheviks in the either accept the programme of the
in 1905.. Probably the Mensheviks had capital had drawn closer together. By RSDLPor else disband! The Bolshevik
about the same. 8. But in the context of the Autumnthey had already establish- leaders justified their hostility to the
-general. pre-revolutionary ferment, the ed a joint committee. But the Bolshevik Soviet on the grounds that it
party’s: sphere of: influence was far central committee members in Peters- represented “the subordination of cons-
wider. The scope for action was vastly burg were uneasy at. the thought of a ciousness to spontaneity.” 12. They
increased. after the issuing of the Oc- ‘non-party”. mass: organisation existing went so far as to movea resolution on
tober Manifesto.. Martov recalls: that: side by side. with the party. Instead of these lines in the Soviet. When it was
“All in all, throughout this period, on seeing the Soviet as an importantfield turned down, the Bolshevik delegates,
the eve of the October days, the Social of action, they eeeit.with hostility, led by CC members Bogdanov and
Democracy in the ranks of the illegal as a rival... 2. Knuyants, walked out. The other del-
organisations could assemble several On 27 October, the. Bolshevik CC egates merely shrugged their shoulders
thousandsof workers, students, soldiers published a. resolution which was made and proceeded to the next point on the
and peasants; but the sphere of its binding uponall Bolsheviks throughout agenda!
immediate... organisational’ ’ influence Russia, recommending that the Soviets From afar, Lenin followed the ac-
took in hundreds of thousands of people should. accept the party programme. tivities of his followers with dismay. His
in town and countryside.” 9. - This ‘sectarian’and schematic. position article, Our tasks and the Soviet of
An absolutely key. question for the ~ completely*ignored the. neéd ‘to -estab- © ‘Workers’ Deputies, : 13. quoted.above,
linking up of the small number of lish. a_firm..link between the advanced was written in Stockholm in‘early
- organisedMarxists to the broad mass of workers“ who‘stood on the ideas of November, when Lenin.was on route to
workers: in struggle was the attitude Marxism‘andthe -mass ofthe politically Russia, but riot published until 1940. In
towards the Petersburg Soviet.. As we untutored. workers. It. was tantamount it Lenin attempted, gently butfirmly, to
have. -seen, Lenin, despite. being to.demanding thatthe workingclass as a correct the mistakes of the Petersburg
separated from the field of action by whole: ‘should enter into: -the -Marxist Bolsheviks. In the fifth issue of Novaya
thousands. of miles, was able- im- party, a completely unrealistic concep- Zhizn’, an article signed by a BM
mediately to grasp the significance of tion which, if pressed, could only lead _Knuyants (‘Radin’) posed the alter-
this striking new phenomenon. For to the isolation .of the - minority: of native: ‘Soviet or Party’. Lenin replied:
their part, the Mensheviks, with their advanced workers from the rest of the “I think that it is wrong to put the
innate opportunism, found nodifficulty class. ‘question in this way and that the
in adapting to. the prevalent mood The crass formalism of this line of decision must certainly be: both the
among the workers. Their more flexible argument was conveyed in a numberof Soviet of Workers’ Deputies and the
attitude permitted them to take in- articles in the Bolshevikpaper, Novaya Party. Theonly question — and ahighly
37

ee ek
 Chronology of the main events: 1905
JANUARY. 4-7: Strike at the glant Putilov movement in Odessa Is put down but 10 OCTOBER31:St Petersburg Soviet calls a
engineering works against the sacking of days later peace Is ‘concluded with general strike around the struggle for the 8
four members of Father Gapon’s union. The. Japan. hour day.
strike spreads throughout St Petersburg,
involving 140,000 workers. NOVEMBER 4: Lenin retums to Russia
SEPTEMBER:Printers strike In Moscow from exile.
for a shorter working day and higher plece
' JANUARY 9: March to the Winter Palace rates. Over 50 print works are out by NOVEMBER 12: St Petersburg Sovietcalls
led by Gapon. Over 1,000 are shot dead and» September 24. On October 2 printers In St off the strike to ensure an organised retum
thousands wounded. While the movement Petersburg come out In solidarity. to work.
ebbs In St Petersburg after ‘Bloody Sunday’,
a wave of strikes spreadsinvolving over one OCTOBER. 7: Railway workers Join the NOVEMBER 26: Khrustalyov-Nosar, chalr-
million workers across 122 towns. The. movement. By mid-October, 750,000 were man of the St Petersburg Soviet, Is ar-
ferment develops Into the countryside from on strike. Very rapidly the strikes become rested.
the summer with strikes and widespread general andspread to all major centres, DECEMBER 2: Mutiny of the Rostovregi-
land, grain and cattle selzures. drawing behind them big sections of the
ment In. Moscow.
middie class: Schools and universities
APRIL 12: The Third Congress of the close. *
DECEMBER 3: The St Petersburg SovietIs
. RSDLP convenes in London, boycotted by
the Mensheviks. OCTOBER13: First meetingof the Peters- arrested, Including Trotsky, now Its chalr-
burg Council, or Soviet, of Workers’ man.
MAY:Generalstrike In the textile town of Deputies. .
ivanovo-Voznesensk, lasting 72 days. Town DECEMBER 4-10: Moscow Soviet votes
under the control of a ‘Meeting of ‘for a general strike and an armed Insurrec-
OCTOBER 17: Tsar Nicolas Issues his tlon. Within two days 150,000 workers are
Representative Delegates’, a soviet In all ‘October Manifesto’, grudgingly conceding
but name. on strike, militiamen begin to disarm police
elections to a state duma.
and soldiers, and barricades appear on the
streets.
JUNE TO AUGUST:Following the defeat of OCTOBER 26:The Alexandrovsky WorksIn
a Russian fleet by the Japanese at * Petersburg begin a strike for the 8 hour DECEMBER 16: Moscow Soviet Executive
Tsushima, sailors of the Black Sea fleet y-
votes to end strike. 1,059 people had died
mutiny on the battleship Potemkin. The
In 9 days of fighting.
Potemkin salls Into Odessa appealing for OCTOBER 27: Bolsheviks launch legal
Support from the workers. Eventually the paper, Novaya Zhizn’.

Dashnaks (Armenian nationalists) and kind of federal structure. ‘either...or’. Behind the facade of a
supporters of Paol-Zion (a group set up The October Manifesto radically alt- ‘proferred constitution, the autocracy
in 1905 which attempted to combine eredthe social and political balance of was prepared for a bloody settling of
Zionism with Marxism, a section of forces in Russia. -As Lenin had fore- accounts. Such reforms as had been
which joined the Bolshevik Party after seen, the bourgeoisie; which had all achieved had been conquered not by
the . October revolution). Armed ‘along beenstriving to get a deal with the liberal wheeler-dealers, but exc-
detachments weresentto try to defend tsarism at the expense of the workers lusively by the revolutionary struggle of
the Jews, and initially succeeded in and peasants, now treacherously the proletariat. Far from drawing in its
driving off jthe lumpen mobs, before deserted the revolutionary camp. The horns after the October Manifesto,
coming up against the army and police big capitalists and landowners united in Lenin urged the working class to sum-
whose superior forces compelled them a reactionary bloc — the so-called mon up all its forces for a decisive
to retreat, with some.loss oflife. Union of 17 October, the ‘Octoberists’, show-down.
After October, the trend towards which threw all its weight behind tsarist The struggle to build the Party and to
re-unification, becameirresistible. All reaction. At the sametimethe‘liberal’ extend its influence over the broadest
over the country, branches of both section of the bourgeoisie founded the possiblelayers of the class now assumed
factions passed resolutions demanding the character of a race against the clock.
unity. Pyatnitsky describes how when In a series of internal conferences held
* the Odessaj Social Democrats received: Decisive in the Autumn, Lenin insisted on the
the proposal for re-unification from the opening up of the Party, and the int-
CC it was ‘met with a warm response show-down roduction of the elective principle from
from among the party members, the top. to bottom, in order to change the
Mensheviks as well as. the Bolsheviks. Constitutional Democrat Party, the composition of the committees, with an-
That was easy to understand: that our ‘Kadets’, which came out.in favourof a influx of fresh new workers and youth..
few available forces were weak and ‘constitutional monarchy’, in effect ac- ' Pressure had to. be applied on the
scattered had becomeevident to every ting as aleft flank forthe autocracy, ‘committeemen’ through the free airing
Party member during the pogrom... It covering up thebloodyreality of tsarist of fresh views andcriticisms from below
was obvious tothe committee that the tule with pseudo-democratic constitu- and, where: necessary, by the replace-
proposal of union would be passed by a tional phrase-mongering. Lenin was ment. of some of the older and conser-
great majority at the Party meetings of particularly scathing in his attacks. on vative elements by new people who
both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, for this so-called ‘progressive’ wing of the were capableofreflecting the real mood
wherever the advocates of immediate bourgeoisie, sparing no opportunity to of the class. - ,
' unity spoke they were supported almost denounce them for their cowardice and ’ The. party’s structures were radically
unanimously.” 21. In Moscow and treachery. fy altered to take account of the new
Petersburg the local committees had The going over of the liberals effec- conditions. Manyfactory branches were
been working closely together even tively cleared the ground for decisive set up to underline the new turn. The
before October and ‘had established a action. It was now a question of newly-founded factory branches held
39
 TS URN orale oT

MIR Autumn 1988: Bolshevism Part Nine

open meetings. The Lessner factory earlier had been underground. Butthis preparedto fight in defence of the gains
branch recorded an attendance of 70 figure, important though it is, was of the revolution and against the Black
workers at one such meeting. Further, a Hundreds.
dwarfed by the achievement of Trotsky
number of areas established workers’ who, together with Parvus, took over
The first chairman of the Petersburg
clubs, either on a district or factory the former liberal paper Ruskaya Soviet, GS Khrustalyov-Nosarwas, like
basis. The Mensheviks originated this Gazeta and transformed it Father Gapon, an accidental. figure,
into a’
work. Their club at the Baltic Worksin popular and militant workers’ paper who played no independent role. In
Petersburg had a membership of 120. with a low price (one kopek). Its cir- reality, the leading role in the Soviet
Following their example, the mainly culation shot up from 30,000 to 100,000, was played by the 26-year old Trotsky,
Bolshevik Vyborg district set up a club who subsequently became chairman
reaching a staggering 500;000 by
with 300 members. Normal membership after Khrustalyov’s arrest in November.
December. Likewise Nachalo, which
for clubsof this type seems to have been wastheoretically the organ of the Men-
Trotsky wrote most of the proclama-
around 200-300, at least in Moscow and sheviks replacing the defunct Iskra, but tions and manifestos of the Soviet and
Petersburg. A further development was in practice was controlled by Trotsky, gained enormous popularity with the
the holding of city-wide aggregates, had a much bigger circulation than workers.
where the entire membership could get Lunacharsky, then one of Lenin’s
Novaya Zhizn’. 22. ;
together and discuss the work. The Alongside the legal mass work, the closest collaborators, recalls that Trots-
district committees in big industrial Bolsheviks also stepped up the material ky “held himself apart not only from us
areas weresplit into smaller units cover- preparations for armed insurrection. By but from the Mensheviks too. His work
ing sub-districts. In someareas, thecity the end of October the fermentin the waslargely carried out in the Soviet of
committee even drew up their own rules villages had reached new levels, with Workers’ Deputies and together with
in line with the special conditions 37% of European Russia affected, esp- Parvus he organised some. sort of
prevailing in their areas. This was the ecially the central ‘black earth’ zone, separate group which published a very
case, for example, in Petersburg and Latvia, Estonia, Georgia and the Uk- militant and very well-edited small and
Ivanovo-Voznesensk. raine. The wave of peasant discontent cheap newspaper (Nachalo, AW). _
From all this we can see how ext- in turn spread to the armed forces. “I remember someone saying in
remely flexible Lenin’s conception of There was a series of mutinies in the Lenin’s presence: ‘Khrustalev’s star is
organisation always was. At certain army and navy, which underlined the waning and now the strong man in the
moments in its history, the Bolshevik importance of work amongthe soldiers Soviet is Trotsky.’ Lenin’s face darken-
Party laid heavy stress on centralism, and sailors. ed for a moment, then he said: ‘Well,
for example, during the long periods ' Trotsky has earnedit byhisbrilliant and
when it was forced to work in underg- ~unflagging work.’ ” 23.
round conditions. But in periods when Trotsky - The full significance of Lenin’s reac-
they were permitted to work in ‘normal’ tion can only be guaged if we realise
legal conditions, the Bolsheviks, as we An outstanding organiser and tech- that precisely on this decisive question
see here, favoured the most open and nical worker, Krassin was put in charge -— the attitude to the Soviet — the
democratic forms of organisation. of this secret and highly sensitive work. Petersburg Bolsheviks made a fun-
As we have seen, the adventof legal He was also responsible for the or- damental error, which lost them the
conditions created vast scope for the ganisation of fighting groups. The local opportunity of winning the majority of
party press. Ten days after the tsar’s committees themselves established active workers in the capital. The mis-
Manifesto was published, the first issue specialised units to obtain arms and set takes of the Petersburg Bolsheviks al-
of Novaya Zhizn’ came out. On Gorky’s up thesegroups. This work was stepped. lowed the Mensheviks to gain a majori-
advice, the Bolsheviks entered into up in the Autumn with the creation of ty in the Soviet. They had, indeed,
contact with liberal publishers who underground bomb factories and arms taken theinitiative in setting the Soviet"
helped launch the venture. Gorky also dumps. Once again, Gorkyplayed a key up, but had no idea where this step
played an indispensible role in obtain- role in raising money for this work, would take them.
ing financial backing for the journal which was partly funded by what was - Since the break with the Mensheviks
from well-to-do writers and intellec- knownas ‘expropriations’, or raids on oneyearearlier, Trotsky had attempted
tuals. Under these conditions, many banks conducted by armed groups to maintain an independent position
writers and poets, who would hitherto under Bolshevik control. between the Bolshevik and Menshevik
never have dreamedofparticipating in Suchactivities, however, had nothing ’ factions. This earned him a numberof
revolutionary politics, became actively in common with the latterday tactic of justified rebukes from Lenin whose
involved with the Bolsheviks through ‘urban guerillaism’. This was no secret attacks on ‘Trotskyism’ were closely
the party press. Well-known writerslike conspiracy carried out by small groups related to the need to hold in check the
K Balmont and Leonid Andreyev, and of terrorists behind the backs of the strong ‘conciliationist’ tendency among
of course Gorky himself, contributed workers,but a conscious revolutionary _ his own followers. But despite the sharp
articles and money. strategy linked to the masses. The differences over the question of unity —
The paper was published legally in fighting squads were closely linked to differences which, in any case, became
the name of Gorky’s wife Maria the Soviets. Legal workers’ clubs set up increasingly irrelevant in the course of
-Fedorovna Andreyeva. The editor was rifle ranges where workers learned to the year — there can be no doubt that
a poet, Minsky. This, however, was a handle arms under the noses of the on all political questions, there was a
front for the real editorial board with police. The bloody wave of pogroms very great affinity between Lenin and
Krassin and Gorky in charge until Lenin posed the need for workers’ self- Trotsky. :
himself assumedcontrolafter his return defencein a very concrete fashion. For That Trotsky’s general political
in November. Novaya Zhizn’ became their part, the Bolsheviks pressed for stance in 1905 stood very close to the
the de facto official mouthpiece of the formation of a united front involv- ‘Bolsheviks is well attested to on both
Bolshevism up to its closure in early ing the unity in action of all workers sides. Whenthefirst issue of Trotsky’s
December.Its circulation was between organisations and also petit-bourgeois Nachalo appeared, it was warmly wel-
50,000 and 80,000, a major achievement democratic and nationalist groups — an comedby the Bolshevik Novaya Zhizn’
for a party which only a month or so agreementofall those forces who were which wrote: “The first number of

40
l
Nachalo has come out. We welcome a workers of the capital were well-nigh a bad mood amongthe soldiers and
comradein the struggle. Thefirst issue exhausted. After the issuing of the considerably reduced the prospect of
is notable for the brilliant description of October Manifesto, the liberal emp- them going over to the side of the
the Octoberstrike written by Comrade loyers, who had previously appeared workers.
Trotsky.” 24. While, technicaily, sympathetic to the revolutionary move- Meanwhile, the moodin the factories
Nachalo was supposed to the organ of ment, and even paid the wages of of Moscow reached fever pitch. The
the Mensheviks, who had now wound striking workers, finally came out in workers were impatient for action. On
up Jskra and put their resources into their true colours. The Novemberstrike December 4, the Moscow Soviet passed
Nachalo, the later was firmly underthe in Petersburg had involved even bigger a motion congratulating the soldiers on
control of Trotsky and Parvus, whose numbers of workers than in October. their uprising and expressing the hope
line of the permanent revolution was in But this was really the last desperate that they would comeover to the side of
direct contradiction to the Menshevik effort of a working class gravely the people. But by the time the ink was
policy of alliances with the bourgeois weakened by months ofstruggle. Sens- dry, the soldiers revolt had been crush-
liberals. Thus, the Menshevik leader ing that the movement wasbeginning to ed.
Dan wrote a grumbling letter to Kauts- run out of steam, the employers Lenin had repeatedly expressed his
ky: “In St Petersburg they founded a threatened a lockout, while the police anxiety about a premature uprising. He
newspaper, Nachalo, which succeeded and troops moved to break up workers’ recognised that the party’s forces were
Iskra, and throughout November and meetings by force. Fearing that the still weak, the fighting squads too unp-
December 1905 it carried the most movement would disintegrate into a repared, to take on the full might of the
radical pronouncements, hardly distin- series of guerilla disputes which could state. Aboveall, the massive reserves of
guishable from those in the Bolshevik be crushed one by one, the St Peters- the peasantry had only begun to enter
paper, Novaya Zhizn’.’’ 25. (My em- burg Soviet decided to beat a tactical the field of battle. More than once he
phasis, AW). Martov’s biographer, Is- retreat and, on November 12, after a expressed the hopethat the final show-
rael Getzler, makes the samepoint: tense debate, called off the strike, in down between the workers and the reg-
“Thus Martov found himself in a order to withdraw in a united and org- ime should be putoff till the Spring. But
minority on Nachalo which had become anised fashion, so as: to preserve the Lenin understood very well that the
a propogator of Trotskyism rather than forces of the working class, and prevent revolution cannot be directed like an
of Menshevism.’’ 26. (My emphasis, a demoralising defeat. orchestra under a conductor’s baton.
AW). The defection of the bourgeois lib- Krupskaya vividly conveys Lenin’s at-
erals tipped the balance in favourof the titude: ‘In answer to a question about
reactionary camp. General Trepov was the timing of the uprising he said: ‘I
‘Moscow now in the ascendancy. Fearing ‘anar- would put the uprising off till the
chy’, the Liberals-clung to hiscoat-tails. Spring, but we shan’t be asked
About the theory of permanentrev- By November26, the regimefelt strong anyway’.” 28.
olution and the differences between enough to arrest Khrustalyov on the
Lenin and Trotsky in 1905. we shall premises of the Soviet Executive. The
Soviet resporded with the famous
Insurrection
speak elsewhere. Suffice it to note that
on all the fundamental questions of the ‘Financial Manifesto’, written by Par-
vus, calling for the non-payment of A year later, in November 1906, a
revolution in 1905 there wasvirtually. memberof the Bolshevik CC, speaking
complete agreement between the two taxes and withdrawal of bank deposits
to hasten the financial crisis of the at a conferenceoffighting organisations
men. Despite the sharpness of the of the RSDLP, complained that some
polemical struggle in the previous regime.
_ Evenat this point,. fresh new layers comrades “‘have too mechanical a con-
period, Lenin hada high opinion’ of ception of the circumstances which gave
Trotsky’s achievements which cont- were entering the struggle every day:
janitors, doormen, cooks, domestic ser- rise to the December uprising in Mos-
rasted favourably with the mistaken cow and are painting toosimplified a
policies adopted by the Bolshevik com- vants, floor-polishers, waiters, laund-
resses, public bath attendants, pol- picture of the role of the CC in the
mitteemen inside Russia prior to calling of this uprising. The CC — soit
Lenin’s return. Thus Krupskaya, in the icemen, cossacks — even the odd detec-
tive! Society had been stirred up to the. appears — just pressed a button and the
second Russian edition of her memoirs, insurrection burst forth. If the CC
in. a passage which, along with much depths. Butthe increasingradicalisation
hadn’t donethis, the uprising would not
else, has been deleted from all subse- of the formerly politically inert mass
have taken place!’ 29. In reality, the
quent editions, quotes from letter disguised the fact that the ‘heavy bat-
Moscow uprising did not take place -
written by Lenin in September, which talions’ of labour were now almost
according to a. definite plan. The
has also not seen thelight of day: “In exhausted. The- December strike in
workers werepressing for action. There
the Septemberletter written to ‘Augus- Petersburg was far less unanimous than
was a mood of expectation in the
tus’ Ilyich wrote: ‘To wait until you get in November, involving at most two- factories, and everyone sensed the app-
complete agreement with the CC or thirds of the workers of the capital. This roach of the decisive moment. Zem-
among the agents is sheer. Utopia. We fact indicated that the high-point of the lyachka, one of Lenin’s closest as-
don’t want a coterie but a Party, dear movement in Petersburg had been sociates in the early: days, recalls that
friend!’ In the sameletter, replying to reached, and the revolutionary tide was
when local Bolsheviks got up to speak
an indignant complaint that our people beginning to ebb. in the Soviet they saw that the issue was
had been printing Trotsky’s leaflets, The initiative now passed to the
no longer in doubt: “it was written on
Ilyich-wsote: ‘...They are printing Trot- workers of Moscow. A mutiny in the
the workers faces.” 30. There- was a
sky’s' leaflets... dear me.:. there’s Rostov regiment on December 2 gave unanimousvote in favourof a political
nothing wrong with that provided the rise to hope that the garrison might
general strike and an armed insurrec-
leaflets are tolerable and have been come. over. But the local Bolsheviks tion.
corrected!’ ” 27. hesitated and, seeing that the move-
Althoughtheinitiative came from the
Throughout the Autumn, the storm- mentdid notspread, the troops quickly . Bolshevik workers, the Mensheviks and
centre of the movement wasin Peters- lost heart. In a couple of days the
burg. But by the end of November, the mutiny was crushed. This defeat caused SRs also participated in the uprising,
41
 which cruelly revealed the unprep- to the governmenttorces. Lhe Moscow
aredness of the revolutionaries. There rising was at an end. The death toll are perhaps. understandable. But in
were only 2,000 armed men, backed up according to the Moscow Medical later years, an entirely false interpreta-
by a further 4,000 militiamen, ‘druzh- Union was 1,059, of whom 137 were tion of these events was unscrupulously
niki’, without weapons. Ofthese, 250- womenand 86children. The big majori- put in circulation by the Stalinists,
300 were Bolsheviks, 200-250 Men- ty were ordinary citizens. Casualties beginning with Stalin’s notorious Short
sheviks and about 150 SRs. The rest amongfighting men on both sides were Course whichclaimsthat ‘“‘the St Peters-
were made up of the militias of the amazingly few. Only thirty five soldiers burg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, be-
were killed, including five officers. ‘ing the Soviet of the most important
students, telegraph employees and
other non-party groups. There were not Then beganthe bloody chapter of mass industrial and revolutionary centre of
arrests, shootings and deportations. Russia, the capital of the tsarist empire,
enough armsto go round, butthe rebels
ought to have played a decisive role in
counted on the support of the popula- ’ When news of the Moscow rising the revolution of 1905. However, it did
tion and hopedthat a sufficient number reached Petersburg, Lenin called a
of the troops would go over. to tip the not perform its task (!), owing to its
meeting of CC members andactivists bad, Menshevik leadership. As we
balance in their favour. plus the representatives of the united
Theinsurrection started as a result of know, Lenin had not yet arrived. in St
Bolshevik -and Menshevik military or- Petersburg, he was still abroad. The °
a spontaneous movement from below.
ganisation. The Menshevik side includ- Mensheviks took advantage of Lenin’s
Theinitial spark appears to have been a ed VA Antonov-Ovseyenko, who in
government provocation — troops were
absence to make their way into the St
1917 was to lead the assault on the Petersburg Soviet (?) and to seize hold
‘Sent to disperse a couple of workers’ Winter Palace, and twenty years later
meetings. There were demonstrations (?) of its leadership. It was not surpris-
was murdered‘ by Stalin. ing under these circumstances that the
and clashes betwen soldiers and It was clear that only the spread of
militiamen. The first barricades were Mensheviks Khrustalev, Trotsky (!),
the movementto other areas could save Parvus and others managedto turn the
thrown up, and hostilities began in
the uprising. But given the exhausted St Petersburg Soviet against the policy
earnest.
state of the Petersburg workers, there of an uprising.” 31. This is a particularly
Despite their misgivings, the Moscow was no chanceofgetting them to follow
party did not stand aside, but threw crass way of expressing a theme which
suit. Support was therefore limited to has since been repeated in a variety of
themselves into the battle, with the
the sending of arms, while AI Rykov keys. But this ignorant slander was
intention of giving it an organised and
was sent with another CC member, MF answered in advance by Lenin, who on
disciplined character. The militiamen Vladimirsky, to attempt to co-ordinate
immediately set about energetically innumerable occasions expressed his
operations in Moscow. On December complete solidarity with the general
disarming not only policemen but sol- 13 the Bolshevik-- Menshevik centre
diers. On December 10 the masses tactical line adopted by the St Peters-
issued a joint declaration entitled ‘Sup- burg Soviet.
came out onto the streets to throw up
port the Moscow Uprising!’, appealing
barricades, which appeared with ligh- In her memoirs of Lenin, Krupskaya
to the workers of Russia not to allow
tening speed. These served to slow recalls the prevailing mood among the
the government to put downtheinsur-
down the troops and hinder the move- St Petersburg workingclass at the time:
rection.
ment of cavalry. Despite their overw- “The Central Committee,”’ she wrote,
helming superiority in numbers and “called upon the proletariat of St
fire-power, the troops frequently found Defeat ‘Petersburg to support the uprising of

SSONNRtte MBSRaraeebet rcs

themselves in difficulties. Surrounded the Moscow workers, but no co-
by a hostile population, they found ordinating action was achieved. A com-
themselves assaulted-on all sides by an There were, in fact, a whole series of paratively raw district like the Moskovs-
unseen enemy,in the form of small and. armed uprisings — in Kharkov, Donbas, ky responded to the appeal, but an
mobile groups of militia. More than Yekaterinoslav, Rostov-on-Don, the advanced district like the Nevsky did
once, the authorities must have held Northern Caucasuses, and Nizhni Nov- not. I rememberhow furious Stanislaw
their breath at the sight of a city of one gorod. The national question lead to Wolski was—-he had been agitating in
million inhabitants, the great majority violent upheavals in Georgia and the that very district. He lost heart at once
composed of ‘the enemy’, locked in’ Baltic provinces in particular. Even and all but doubted whether the pro-
combat with an army of partially before the Moscow rising there was a letariat was as revolutionary as he had
demoralised and unreliable troops. general strike and insurrection in Lat- thought it to be. He failed to take into.
The Moscow workers fought heroic- via. In Georgia, too, the December account that the St Petersburg workers
ally, but the lack of arms, poor co- _ general strike gave rise to an armed were worn out by previous strikes, and
‘ordination and absenceofmilitary skill uprising in the workers’ district of Tiflis mostimportantof all they. realised how
‘begantotell at last. Once the barricades (Tblisi), led by the legendary ‘Kamo’ badly organised and poorly armed they
had beenbuilt, the unarmed populace (Ter-Petrosyan). were for a decisive struggle with tsarism.
could only play the role of onlookers. These movements notwithstanding, Andit would be a struggle to the death,
Their passive support boosted the the Moscow rising did not succeed in they had the example of Moscowtotell
morale of the fighting units and enabled arousing tHe proletariat of St Peters- them.’’ 32.
them to hold out for longer than anyone burg. The absence of an uprising in the Even in a revolutionary situation,
had the right to expect. Finally, on capital meant that the government different layers of the working class
December 16, only one district, Pres- could concentrate its forces on crushing move at different speeds and at diffe-
nya, still remained in rebel hands. That the workers of Moscow, and then put rent times. To use a military analogy,
day the Soviet executive committee down the local movements one by the Achilles’ heel of the 1905 revolution
voted to end the strike. As an act of one. consisted of the fact that the bulk of the
‘defiance, the Presnya Social Democ- Bitterly disappointed at the failure of reserves were moving into action at a
ratic district committee voted to end the the Petersburg working class to come to time when the advanced guard was
strike only on the evening of December the aid of the rising, somesections of worn out by the struggle, and incapable
18. The gesture was of no avail. By the Social Democrats initially blamed _ of continuing the struggle. This explains
nightfall of December 17, Presnya fell the workersof the capital for the defeat. the apparently contradictory fact that

42
 BT
a

the more backward workingclass dist- burg immediately, to go into battle the movement underwent a complete
ricts were prepared to come out while undercircumstances that would be most transformation. The consciousness of
the more advanced sections did not unfavourable for them. But the workers the workers advanced by leaps and
will not allow themselves to be provok- bounds on the basis of great events,
respond.
The same observation holds good for ed, and will know how to continue on which shook the foundationsof all the
the peasantry, without which the their path of independent preparation old beliefs, habits and traditions, com-
revolution in the towns was doomed to for. the next all- Russian action.” pelling the working class to come to
failure. Only in the course of 1906 did 34, terms with the realities of its own
the movement in the villages assume With the wisdom of hindsight, it is existence. By a process of successive
massive proportions. By that time, possible to see that the period from the approximations, the working people
however, the. backbone of the working Octoberstrike to the December upris- tested one political option after
class movement had already been ing marked the high tide of the 1905 another, from worker-priests and ‘hum-
broken, athough this was far from clear revolution. With the defeat of the Mos- ‘ble petitions, passing through economic
at the time. Throughout the year 1906, cow proletariat, the movement in the strikes for better wages and conditions,
there was a whole series of strikes and towns, despite the still powerful strike constitutional reforms .and imperial
movementsof the proletariat, which led movementin 1906, had effectively been manifestos, bloody pogroms, street
Leninto believe that revolution wasstill broken. The mighty upsurge of the demonstrations and workers self
on the agenda. Far from criticising the peasantry came too late. The Party, defence squads, to the highest expres-
Petersburg workers for not rushing to which was weak and divided at the sion of the class struggle-the political
arms in December, Lenin gave the outset of the revolution, had grown general strike and armed insurrec-
following evaluation of the situation: impressively in the space of a few tion. . .
“Civil war is raging. The political strike, months, but the task of uniting and At each stage, the breaking free of
as such, is beginning to exhaustitself, leading a movementof millions proved. the masses from their old illusions was
and is becoming a thing of the past, an to be beyondthe capabilities of a few marked by the rise and fall of political
obsolete form of the movement. In St thousand cadres, despite heroic trends and accidental figures of. all
Petersburg, for instance, the famished endeavours and sacrifice. The incredi- kinds. The Gapons and the
and exhausted workers were notable to ble thing was not that the Russian ‘Khrustalyov-Nosars for a brief instant
carry out the Decemberstrike. On the Marxists had failed to lead the pro- loomed large upon the stage of history
other hand, the movementas a whole, letariat to victory in 1905, but the wayin before vanishing forever leaving no
though held down for the moment by which a tiny handful of revolutionaries, trace behind them. But the genuine
with scarcely two decades of work revolutionary tendency represented by
behind them, had grown from insig- Bolshevism, despite all mistakes and
Turning point nificant propagandacircles to a power- inevitable ups and downs; advanced
‘ful party, with tens of thousands of resolutely to its natural place at the
the reaction, has undoubtedly risen to a activists leading hundreds of thousands headof the revolutionary proletariat.
much higher plane. ‘of workers, inthe space of just a few The theoretical, political and. organisa-
“The heroic proletariat of Moscow months. tional weapons which enabled the Bol-
has shown that an active struggle is 1905 wasa decisive turning-point. For shevik Party to lead the workers to
possible, and has drawnintothis strugg- the first time, revolutionary Social victory in October 1917 were forged in
le a large body of people from strata of Democracy became a decisive force the white heatof the revolution of 1905,
the urban population hitherto con- within the workingclass of the whole of and temperedin the long dark night of
sidered politically indifferent, if not Russia. Within a space of nine months, reaction which followed.
reactionary. And yet the Moscow
events were merely one of the most ’
striking expressions of a ‘trend’ that has Footnotes
broken through all over Russia. The
new form of action was confronted with 1. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 31, 18. ibid, p36 (footnote).
gigantic problems which, of course, p27. 19. ibid, pp37-38. ,
could not be solved all at once...” 2. Trotsky, ‘1905’, p111. 20. Trotsky, ‘The Stalin SchoolofFalsifica-
aa.” 3. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 10, tion’, p1l10.
. pal. 21. Pyatnitsky, ‘Zapiski Bol’shevika’,
Lenin’s perspective, then, was that 4. Semyenikov i Pankratova, ‘Revolyutsiya p87.
‘the revolution had far from exhausted * 1905 goda’, (a collection of government 22. See Trotsky, ‘My Life’, pp177-78.
itself. The peasant movement was grow- documents) p22. 23. Lunacharsky, ‘Revolutionary Silhouet-
. ing and mightyet give a fresh impetus to 5. ibid, p224. tes’, p60. ;
the towns, particularly in the Spring. - 6. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 10, 24. Quoted in Trotsky, ‘My Life’,
The regimeitself. was in crisis, faced p460. pl82
with the possibility of financial collapse. 7. ibid, pp394-95. 25. See Ascher, op cit, pp241-42.
8. See D.Lane, ‘The Roots of Russian 26. I.Getzler, ‘Martov’,. p110. ..
The inner cohesiveness of the armed
Communism’, p12. 27. Krupskaya, ‘Memories of Lenin’, 1930,
forces wasstill in the balance. From this 9. Martov, ‘Obshehestvennoe Dvizhenie v 144.
point of view, it was essential that the Rossii’, volume 3, p575. a 28. ibid, p132, 1960 edition. —
workers should husbandtheir strength 10. Quoted in Ascher, ‘Paul Axelrod and 29. Quoted.in ‘Istoriya KPSS’, volume 2,
as far as possible for the decisive all- the Development of Menshevism’, p241. p136.
Russian struggle that lay ahead. And 11. Quoted by O.Anweiler, ‘Los Soviet’, 30. ibid, p137.
Lenin specifically warned the Peters- p&4. 31. Stalin (and others?), ‘History of the
burg workers against the danger of 12. ibid, p85. CPSU (B)’, p128.
provocation: “It would be very much to 13. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 10,
pp19-28. 32. Krupskaya, op cit, pl42, 1960 edi-
the advantage of the government to 14. ibid, p19. tion. :
suppressthe still isolated actions of the 15. ibid, p27. 33. Lenin, ‘Collected Works’, volume 10,
proletariat. The government wouldlike 16. ibid, p31. 793-94.
to challenge the workers of St Peters- 17. ibid, p32. 34. ibid, p94.

43