1-1-The Bolshevik Revolution.pdf

8/12/2019 1-1-The Bolshevik Revolution.pdf

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C H A P T E R IT H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M

W HAT afterwards became the " Russian Communist Party(Bolsheviks) ", and , later still, the " All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) ", traced back its origin to atiny congress of nine men who, meeting at Minsk in March 1898,founded a " Russian ' Social-Democratic W orkers ' Party ". T henine delegates represented local organizations at Petersburg,Moscow, Kiev and Ekaterinoslav, and the Jewish GeneralWorkers' Union in Russia and Poland, commonly called the" Bund ". T he congress lasted three days M arch 1-3, 1898.It appointed a central committee and decided to issue a partyorgan. But before anyth ing else could be done , the poHcearrested all the principal participants, so that virtually nothingremained of this initial effort save a common name shared by anumber of local committees and organizations which had nocentral rallying point and no other connexions with one another.None of the nine delegates at Minsk played any leading role inthe subsequent history of the party. A " manifesto of the RussianSocial-Democratic Workers' Party " issued after the dispersal ofthe congress was the work of Peter Struve, a Marxist intellectual. Th is remained its most substantial legacy to posterity.

T he man ifesto, after referring to the " life-giving hurrica neof the 1848 revolution ", which had blown over Europe fifty yearsbefore, noted that the Russian working class was " entirely deprived of what its foreign comrades freely and peacefully enjoy ashare in the adm inistration of th e state, freedom of th e spoken andwritten word, freedom of organization and assembly ". The se werenecessary inst rum ents in the struggle " for its final liberation , againstprivate property, for socialism ". In th e west the bourgeoisie hadwon these freedoms. In Russia conditions were different:

' NotRusskaya,bu tRossiiskaya to denote not ethnic Russia, but the wholeterritory of the Russian Empire.3


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4 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T PT . iThe farther east one goes in Europe, the weaker, meanerand m ore cowardly in the political sense becomes the bourgeoisie,and the greater the cultural and political tasks which fallto the lot of the proletariat. On its strong shoulders the Russianworking class must and will carry the work of conqueringpolitical liberty. Th is is an essential step, but only the firststep, to the realization of the great historic mission of theproletariat, to the foundation of a social order in which therewill be no place for the exploitation of man by man.'

The document thus unequivocally accepted the two stages ofrevolution, the bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian-socialistrevolution, laid down in the Communist Manifesto just fifty yearsearlier. Its great me rit was that it pointed for the first time tothe fundamental dilemma of the Russian revolution the incapacity of the Russian bourgeoisie to make its own revolutionand the consequent extension of the role of the Russian proletariat to leadership in the bourgeois-democratic revolution. T hemain criticism afterwards made of it was that it failed to mentionthe dictatorship of the proletariat or to indicate the means bywhich the proletariat could be enabled to carry out its mission.The manifesto remained an academic exercise rather than aprogramme of action.The congress at Minsk was the first concerted attempt tocreate a Russian Marxist party on Russian soil. Fo r the pastthirty years the leading Russian revolutionaries had been the

narodniks a composite nam e for a succession of revolutionarygroups believing in the theory of peasant revolution and in thepractice of terrorism against mem bers of the autocracy. At theend of the 1870s a young revolutionary named Plekhanov brokewith the narodniks on the issue of individual terrorism, which herejected as futile, fled abroad, became a convert to Marxism, andin 1883 founded in Switzerland a Russian Marxist group underthe name " T he L iberation of Labo ur ". For the next fifteenyears Plekhanov and his associates, of whom Axelrod and VeraZasuUch were the most active, waged unceasing literary waragainst the narodniks, applying to Russia the Marxist thesis thatthe revolution could come about only through the development ofcapitalism and as the achievement of the industrial proletariat.The rapid expansion of industry and factory life in Russia during

VKP(B ) V Rezolyutsiyakh (1941), i, 3-5-


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 5these years and the beginning of industrial s trikes added subs tance to a programme which might a t the outse t have seemedunrealis tic. In the 1890s em bryo nic M arxist grou ps ma de theirappearance in Russia itself, and the year 1895 saw the foundationin Pete rsbu rg of a Leag ue of Struggle for the Libe ration of theW orking Class. Am ong the me mb ers of th is league was a youngand enthusiastic disciple of Plekhanov, Vladimir Il ich Ulyanov.

Vladimir Ulyanov had been born in 1870 in Simbirsk (whichmany years later was renamed Ulyanovsk), the son of a minorofficial. T h e young er generation of the family was early im bu edwith the revolut ionary tradi t ion. W hen Vladimir was seventeen,his elder brother, Alexander, was executed for complicity in a plotto assassinate Alexan der II L Vladim ir Ulya nov studie d at theunivers i ty of Kazan where he was converted to Marxism andeventu ally expelled for revo lution ary activities. In th e early1890s he came to Petersburg to practise law and to complete hisM arxist education. H is earhest writing s wer e a continu ation ofPlekhanov's polemics against the narodniks, and in the winterof 1894-1895 he was expounding Plekhanov's new work On theQuestion of the Developm ent of the Monist View of History ' to anadmiring circle of young Marxists .

In the summer of 1895 young Ulyanov visited the masterhimself in Switzerland, and , back in Petersb urg , joine d the L eagu eof Struggle for the Liber ation of the W orkin g Class. But theleague was not interested only in theor y. Uly anov , l ike i ts othermembers , engaged in the dis t r ibut ion of revolut ionary pamphle tsto factory wo rke rs; and this led at the end of 1895 to his arrest ,his imprisonment for some months and his eventual exile toSiberia, though owing to the laxity of police regulations thesentence did not interru pt his l i terary activit ies . D urin g his exilein Siberia his mind was turning over plans of party organizationwhich centred round the creation of a party newspaper to bepub lished abroad and smu ggled into Russia. H e discussed theseplans with N adezh da Krup skaya, who joined h im in S iberia andbecame his wife, with another social-democrat, Krzhizhanovsky,who shared his place of exile, and with two others , Potresov and

' The ponderous title was chosen to avert suspicion from the contents,the work being legally published in Russia with the sanction of the censorship.The English translation (1947) bears the more informative title In Defence ofMaterialism. T he autho r disguised himself under the pen-n ame of Beltov.


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6 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T PT.rMartov , who were elsewhere in Siberia.' On their release fromSiberia early in 1900, Ulyanov, Potresov and Martov, havingcollected much needed funds, went on to Geneva to seek Ple-khanov's collaboration. Agreement was soon reached. A popularweekly named Iskra (" Th e Sp ar k" ) and a solid theoreticaljournal namedZarya (" T he Dawn ") were to be pubhshed underthe editorship of a board of six Plekhanov, Axelrod andZasulich, representing the " Liberation of Labour " group, together with Ulyanov, Potresov and Martov.

The first number of Iskra came from the press in Stuttgart^on December i, 1900, the first issue of Zarya on April i, igoi.Plekhanov's prestige and authority as the doyen of RussianMarxists made him, in his own eyes and in those of others, thepresiding genius of the enterprise. T he three mem bers of the" Liberation of Labour " group were the only prospective collaborators mentioned by name in the preliminary announcementofIskra,which was apparently based on a draft made by Ulyanovin Russia,^ and the same three names Plekhanov, Axelrod andZasulich also appeared alone on the title page of Zarya. Thethree junior editors were still quite unknown and had their spursto win. Ulyanov, the most prolific writer among them , hadpublished his earliest works under t he pen-names " Ilin " and" Tu lin " : since leaving Russia he had concealed his identityunde r the pseudonyms " Petrov " and " Frei ". An articleappearing in Zarya in December 1901 was the first occasion forthe use of a new signature, " Len in ". T he occasion was ofsymbolical importance. It was about this time that Lenin firstbegan to emerge head and shoulders above his fellow-editors byhis energy and by the clarity of his ideas. He alone knew exactlywhat he wanted: to establish an accepted body of revolutionarydoctrine and an organized revolutionary party . T he first of theseaims required, in addition to filling the columns of Iskra, thepromulgation of a party program m e; the second, the summ oningof a party congress to take up the work begun and abandoned

' N. K. Krupskaya, Memoriesof Lenin [i] (Engl, transl. 1930), p. 39.^ Subsequent issues were printed in M unich dow n to December 1903,when publication was transferred to Geneva.' Lenin, Sochinemya,iv , 37-41; VKP(B) v Rezolyutsiyakh (1941), i, 7-10.Ma rtov confirms th e existence of the original draft (Len in,Sochineniya, iv, 554):there is no evidence to prove how much of it survived in the finished version.


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CH. I TH E FO UN DA TIO NS OF BOL SHEV ISM 7in 1898. Iskra was designed to give, in the words of the preliminary ann ouncem ent of its b irth , " a definite physiognomyand organization" to the scattered Russian social-democraticmovement:

Before uniting, and in order to unite, we must first decisivelyand definitely draw a line of separation . Otherw ise our unionwould be merely a fiction covering up the present confusionand preventing its radical removal. It will therefore be und erstood that we do not inten d to make our organ a mere collectionof variegated opinions. W e shall on the contrary conduct it inthe spirit of a strictly defined policy.^By the middle of 1902Iskra was able to lay before its readers adraft party programme which represented a careful blend of theviews of the milder and more cautious Plekhanov and those ofthe bolder and more uncompromising Lenin. About the sametime Len in p ublished his first major original work on revolutionarydoctrine and revolutionary organization. What is to beDone ?Early in 1903 preparations were far enough advanced to summona party congress to meet in Brussels in July of that year.

" Bolshevism as a stream of political thought and as a politicalparty ", L enin was to write nearly twenty years later, " has existedsince 1903." Its character was determined by the controversiesof the period in which it was conceived and b rough t to bi rth controversies in which Lenin's clear-headed genius, confidentpersistence and polemical temperament gave him the outstandingrole. Before the congress met three ideological battles had beenfought and won. As against the narodniks,the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party regarded the proletariat and not thepeasant as the driving force of the coming revolution; as againstthe " legal Marxists ", it preached revolutionary and socialistactio n; as against the so-called " Econom ists ", it put forwardin the nam e of the proletariat political as well as economic de man ds.The campaign against the narodnikswas the main achievementof Plekhanov. T he first Russian revolutionaries of the i86o s,building on the intellectual foundations laid by the pioneers of

' VKP(B) V Rezolyutsiyakh (1941), i , 9 ; Le nin , Sochineniya, iv , 39-40 .^ Ibid. XXV, 174.

V O L . I B


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8 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T PT. ithe 184OS, were m aterialis ts in the sense of the eigh teenth -cen turyEnl ightenment and radica ls in the t radi t ion of the French revolution ; they lacked contact both with the Russian peasant and withthe sti ll num erically insignificant Russian factory work er. T h eRussian revolutionaries of the 1870s discovered the Ru ssian p easantand found in him the prospective protagonist of the Russianrevolution, which thus acquired for the firs t t ime a social as wellas an intellectual content. Som e of the m were followers ofBakunin and turne d toward s anarchism and terror ism. Oth erswere influenced by Marx (whose works began to penetrate Russiain the 1870s), but interpreted his teaching in a peculiarly Russianway, arguing tha t Russ ia , be ing a predominant ly peasant country ,would avoid the western stage of bourgeois capitalism and thatthe specifically Russian peasant commune would provide a directtransition from the feudalism of the past to the communism ofth e future . T h e distinction betw een the revolution ary radicals ofthe 1860S and the narodniks of the 1870s had some analogy withthe famous argument in other fields of Russian thought betweenwestern ers and Slavophils . T h e western ers held tha t i t was th edestiny of Russia, as a backward country, to learn from the westand to advance through the same phases and by the same processes wh ich had already ma rked the progress of the west. T h eSlavophils believed that Russia, backward no doubt but full ofyouthful vigour and in this respect superior to the already decaying west, had a peculiar destiny of her own to accomplish whichwould enable her to rise above the characteris tic evils of westerncivilization.

Lenin's early writings against the narodniks did l i t t le more thandrive hom e the argu me nts of Plekhano v. In th e very firs t of the mhe proclaimed with youthful emphasis his own revolutionary faithin the prole tar ia t :

It is on the industrial working class that the social-democratscentre their attention and their activity. W he n the advancedmembers of that class have assimilated the ideas of scientificsocialism and the idea of the role of the Russian worker inhistory, wh en the ir ideas are wide spread and th e wo rkers hav ecreated stable organizations that will transform the disconnectedeconom ic war of today into a con scious class-struggle thenwill the Russian worker, ris ing at the head of all democratice lements , overthrow absolut ism and lead the RUSSIAN PRO-


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OH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 9LETARIAT (b y t h e s ide of th e pr ole tar iat of ALL COUNTRIES)along the straight way of open polit ical s truggle towards aVictorious Communist Revolution.^

In the las t decade of the nineteenth century Wit te and fore igncapitalis ts were busy intensifying the development of Russianindus try and of the Russ ian prole tar ia t and thus crea t ing thecondi t ions which would prove P lekhanov and Lenin r ight . T hestar of the industrial worker was ris ing, the star of the peasantwa ning , in the revolutionary firmam ent. It was not ti l l 1905that the problem of fi t t ing the peasant into the revolutionaryscheme again became a burning party issue .

T h e " legal M arxists " w ere a small gro up of intellectualswh o, in the middle 1890s, began to expou nd M arxis t do ctrines in books an d articles cast in such a form as to pass theRuss ian censorship. T h e rapid spread of M arxism amo ng Russ ianintellectuals at this t ime was due to the expansion of Russianindus try and to the absence of any bourgeois t radi t ion or bourgeoispolit ical philosophy which could play in Russia the role of westernliberalism. M arx had praised the gro wth of capitalism in feudalcond itions as a progressive force. M arx ism was acceptable to th enascent Russian middle class as an ideological reinforcement inthe struggle against feudalism an d autocracy, jus t as Ma rxismwas later to have its appeal to the rising capitalist class in " backward " Asiatic countries as an ally in the struggle against foreignimperia l ism. Bu t , in accept ing M arxism , the Russ ian middle-c lassintellectual emptied it of any immediate revolutionary content, sothat the authorit ies , who sti l l feared the narodniks as the mainrevolut ionary party , were not unwil l ing to to lera te these swornenemies of the narodniks whose own programme seemed to carryno imm inent threa t . T h e outs tanding figure amo ng the " legalMarxists " was Peter Struve, the author of the manifesto of theM insk congress . HisCritical Notes on the Question of the EconomicDevelopment of Russia, published in 1894, were the original platform of the group, ending with the famous injunction to socialis tsnot to concern themselves with unrealis tic projects of " heaven-storming ", but to " learn in the school of capitaUsm ? Othe r

' Lenin, Sochineniya,i, 194.^ Struve occupied for some time an equivocal position, and was a contributorto the first numb ers ofIskra; after 1902 he severed all connexion with th e party ,and in later years became a bitter enemy of the revolution.


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10 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T PT. i" legal Marxists " were Bulgakov and Berdyaev, subsequent converts to Orthodox Christianity, and Tugan-Baranovsky, author ofa standard work on Russian factories. Diam etrically opposed tothe narodniks,they accepted withou t qualification the Ma rxistview of the development of bourgeois capitalism as a necessaryfirst stage in the eventual achievem ent of socia lism; and theybelieved that in this respect Russia must learn from the westand tread the western path . So far Len in was in full agreementwith them. But their insistence on the necessity of the bourgeoiscapitalist stage soon led them to regard this as an end in itselfand to substitute reform for revolution as the process throughwhich sociahsm would eventually be achieved, thus anticipatingthe views of Bernstein and the German " revisionists " of Marxism. As Lenin sum me d up the matter long after, " they werebourgeois democrats for whom the breach withnarodnism meant atransition from petty-bourgeois (or peasant) socialism not to proletarian socialism, as in our case, but to bourgeois liberalism ".'

More substantial was the controversy with the so-called" Economists" a group of Russian social-democrats who exercised a powerful influence on the whole movement about the turnof the century. T he distinctive tenet of the " Econom ists " wasthe sharp separation of economics from politic s; the former werethe affair of the workers, the latter of the intellectual leaders ofthe party. According to this thesis the workers were interestednot in political, but only in economic, en ds ; the class strugglefor them reduced itself to a form of trade unionism a struggleof men against masters for better conditions of work and socialimprovements within the framework of the existing order.Politics were the concern of the intellectuals ; bu t, since the onlyconceivable political programme in contemporary Russia was aprogramme of bourgeois reform, the party intellectuals were infact limited to the same ends as the bourgeois liberals and becameindistinguishable from them . In the words of the so-calledcredowhich came to be accepted as the manifesto of the group :

Discussions about an independent workers' political partyare nothing more than the product of a transfer of foreign tasksand foreign achievements to our soil. . . . A whole set ofhistorical conditions prevents us from being western Marxists' Lenin, Sochineniya, xii, 57.


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M i iand demands from us a different Marxism which is appropriateand necessary in Russian condit ions. T he lack in every Russiancitizen of political feeling and sense evidently cannot be redeemed by discussions about pol i t ics or by appeals to a nonexistent force. This political sense can be gained only bytraining, i .e. by part icipat ion in that l i fe (however un-Marxistit may be) which Russian reality offers. . . . For the RussianM arxist the re is only one way ou t: to sup port the econ omicstruggle of the proletariat and to participate in liberal oppositionactivity.I

These heresies were denounced in the summer of 1899 by Leninand a group of his fel low-exiles in Siberia, who de scribed them in acounter-manifesto as a regression from the party manifesto of theprevious year, where " the work of conquering poli t ical l iberty "had b een squarely placed on " the stro ng s houlders " of th eRussian worker.^ In the fol lowing year Plekha nov produc ed avad e-m ecu m of doc um ents introd uce d b y a preface of his ownwhich was designed to serve as the f inal exposure of " Econom-i s m " ; 3 and Martov, who had a talent for pol i t ical sat i re, wrotea Hymn of the Latest Russian Socialism :

Flat ter us not with your poli t ics, ye demagogues of thetoi ling masses, pra te not to us of your co mm unism s ; we bel ievein the might of caissesd assistance. ^The controversy was carried on into the Iskra period, occupyingman y columns of the new jo ur na l : and Lenin 's What is to beDone ?, after an initial sally aga inst th e " legal M arx ists ", pr oceeded to a mass assault on " Economism " in all i ts ramifications :

T h e idea of the social-dem ocrat m ust be not a t rade unio nsecretary, but atribune of the people. . . . A t r ade un ion po li cy ofthe w orking class is simply abourgeois policyfor the wo rking class.sPolitical as well as economic agitation was needed to arouse theclass-consciousness of the masses. Ind ee d the two could not be

' Ibid, i i , 479-480 . Accord ing to the au th or o f the docum ent , K uskova ,i t was not intended for publication, nor was the t i t le credo given to it byh e r {ibid, i i , 638-63 9) . T h e pu blic i ty i t received was due to the fact tha tLenin and his companions in Siber ia took i t as the text for their a t tack on" E c o n o m is m " .

^ Ibid, i i , 483-486.3 G. V . P lekhanov , Sochineniya, xii, 3-42 .' ' Quoted in E. Yaroslavsky, Istoriya VKP(B), i (1926), 252 .5 L e n in , Sochineniya, iv, 423-4 26.


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12 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T PT. iseparated, s ince every class s truggle was essentially polit ical.Un like th e " legal Marx ists ", w ho we re in essence a bou rgeo isgroup advocat ing bourgeois pol ic ies through a Marxis t id iom,the " Eco nom ists " h ad a policy of econom ic agitation and socialreform for the workers and were to tha t extent a genuine workers 'par ty. Bu t they reached the same practical conclusion as the legalM arxists tha t it was necessary to postp one to an indefinite futurethe revolutionary socialis t s truggle of the proletariat and to concentra te meanwhile on a reformis t democrat ic programme inalliance with the bourgeoisie. Le nin did not fail in later years topoint out tha t they had in th is respect ant ic ipated the fundam enta ltenet of Menshevism. '

The underlying issue a t s take in the controversy with thelegal Marxis ts and the Economis ts was one which cont inued todog the whole his tory of the Russ ian revolut ion. T h e t idy schemeof the Communist Manifesto provided for revolution by successives tages. F irs t , the bourgeois revolut ion would overthrow theremains of the feudal order and of polit ical absolutism, and establish bourgeois democracy and bourgeois capitalism, with i tsa t t endan t phenom enon , an indus t ri a l p ro le ta r ia t ; then the p roletariat , organizing itself under the conditions provided bybourgeois democracy, would proceed to the final revolution tooverthro w bourg eois capitalism and establish socialism. O n theother hand, Marx himself had seemed to have some doubts aboutthe application of this scheme, which was the product of a bril l iantgenera l iza t ion from Engl ish and French his tory, to the Germanyof the 1840s, s t i l l awaiting her bourgeois revolution butalready possessing a nascent industry and rapidly growingproletariat . In 1844 M ar x had questio ned the possibili ty ofkeeping the coming German revolut ion within the l imits of abourgeois revolution " which leaves the pillars of the house standing " , and d eclared tha t G erm any could be emancipated onlythro ug h the revolut ionary prole tar ia t . - In the Comm unist Manifesto i tself h e pred icted th at, ow ing to the " advan ced con-

' Lenin,Sochinerdya, xii, 69.^ This was the gist of the famous concluding passage of the essay On theCritique ofHegel sTheory of Law, ending with the prediction that " the signalfor Germany's resurrection from the dead will be given by the crow of theGaUic cock " {Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels: Historisch-KritischeGesamtausgabe,V^ Tei l , i , i , 617-620).


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 13ditions " and " developed proletariat " of contemporary Germany,the Germ an bourgeois revolution would be " the imm ediateprelude to a proletarian revolution ". An d after th e fiasco of1848 had revealed the helplessness of the German bourgeoisie,M arx drew the link between bourgeois and proletarian revolutionsin Germany closer still. In his address to the Com munist Leaguein March 1850, he argued that the failure of 1848 had imposed adual task on the Germ an workers: first, to support the bourgeoisiein its democratic struggle against feudalism and to give to thatstruggle the acutest possible form ; and, secondly, to m aintainan independent party ready to take up the socialist struggle againstbourgeois capitalism as soon as the bourgeois-democratic revolution was completed. M oreover, while the two tasks were theoretically separate, the interest of the workers was to make the processcontinuous :While the democratic petty bourgeoisie wants to end therevolution as rapidly as possible . . . our interests and ourtask consist in making the revolution permanent until all themore or less possessing classes are removed from authority,until the proletariat wins state power, until the union of proletarians not only in one country, but in all the leading countriesof the w orld, is sufficiently developed to pu t an end to competition between the proletarians of these countries, and untilat the very least the chief productive forces are concentrated inthe hands of the proletarians.And Marx ended a long appeal with the phrase: " Their fightingslogan must be ' permanent revolution ' ".'Russian Marxists in the 1890s thus had two courses open tothem . Everyone agreed that Russia had not yet reached herbourgeois revolution; and it could therefore be argued, as thelegal Marxists and Economists argued, that at this stage theproletariat could, so far as the socialist revolution was concerned,only play a waiting game, and in the meanwhile act as a subsidiaryally of the bourgeoisie in its programme for the overthrow offeudalism and autocracy. T he alternative was to apply to Russia

' M arx i Enge ls , Sochineniya, v i i , 483 , 489 . T h e or ig in of th is f amous ph raseis unc er ta in ; M ar x used i t for the f irst t im e in an ar t ic le of 1844, in which heobse rved tha t Napoleo n had " subs t i tu ted pe rm ane nt war for pe r m ane ntr e v o l u t i o n " (Karl Marx-Friednch Engels: Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe ,


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14 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T PT.isome such scheme as Marx had propoun ded for G erm any ; andLenin seems to have been the first, in an article called Tasks ofRussian Social-Democrats, written in Siberia in 1898, to makethe application. Here Lenin argued tha t the task of Russiansocial-democracy was to lead the class struggle of the proletariat" in both its manifestations " in the democratic struggle againstabsolutism, in which the proletariat would have an ally in thebourgeoisie, and in the socialist struggle against capitalism, inwhich the proletariat would fight alone. W hile " all social-democrats recognize that the political revolution in Russia must precedethe socialist revolution ", it is none the less tru e that th e democratictask is " indissolubly linked with the socialist task ", so that " allsocialistsin Russia must becomesocial-democrats . . . and all trueand consistent democratsin Russia must become social-democrats " .' Len in preserved a complete theoretical separationbetween the two revolutions. Mind ful of the absence in Russiaof the relatively advanced industrial development of Germany in1848, he refrained from following Marx in his prediction of an" imm ediate " succession of bourgeois and proletarian revolutions; he preferred to say nothing at all about the interval betweenthem . But the " indissoluble link " between the two tasks ofRussian social-democracy brought him near to Marx's conceptionfor G ermany of a continuous process of revolution. Le nin'sarticle was enthusiastically received by the " Libera tion of Labo ur "group in Geneva, and published there with a preface by Axelrodpraising it as a " direct commentary " on the party manifesto.^Acceptance of the dual task of the proletariat, democratic and

' L e n in , Sochineniya, i i , 171-178 . T h e thesis of the " indisso luble l ink "had a r e spec tab le ances t ry in Russ ian thou ght . Herz en , wh o, thou gh r igh t lyaccounted the progeni to r o f the narodniks, shows occasional traces of Marx'sinf luence, wro te in 1868 : " A repub lic whic h did not lead to socia lism wou ldseem to us absu rd, a trans it ion tak ing i tself for an end ; socia lism which tr iedto dispense with poli t ica l l iber ty, with equali ty of r ights , would quickly degene ra te in to au thor i ta r ian com mu nism " (Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii i Pisem,ed . M . K . Le mk e , xx (1923) , 132 : an obvious e r ror in punc tua t ion has beencor rec ted) . F ro m a d i f fe rent ang le , a Min is te r of the In te r io r und e r Alexan de rI I I , D . Tols toy , sa id in the 1880s : " Any a t te mp t to in t rod uce in to R uss iawes te rn Euro pean pa r l iam enta ry forms of gove rn men t i s doo med to f a i lu re .I f the Tsa r i s t r eg ime . . . i s ove r thro wn, i t s p lace wi l l be taken by com mu n i s m, t h e p u r e u n d i s g u i s e d c o mmu n i s m o f M r . K a r l M a r x w h o r e c e n t l yd ied in London and whose theor ie s I have s tud ied wi th a t ten t ion and in te re s t "(Bernha rd von Bi i low, Denkwurdigkeiten (1931) , iv, 573) .^ The pre face i s r epr in ted in Lenin , Sochineniya, i i , 603-6 05.


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 15socialist, had its implications in term s of party organization. Oneof the issues in the controversy with the Economists was theso-called question of " spontaneity " ' in the workers' movement.T he Communist Manifesto, in attacking the Utopian socialists, hadopposed " the gradual, spontaneous class organization of theproletariat " to " a n organization of society specially contrivedby these inventors ". On the other hand, emphasis on " gradual "and " spontaneous " development might be pushed to a pointwhere it amounted to a denial of the need for political action." Spontaneity " thus became a catchword of the Economists, whoheld that the development of economic action among the masses(trade unionism , strikes, etc.) would make them " spontaneously " ripe for revo lution. Orth odo x social-democrats, asrepresented by Plekhanov and the " Liberation of L a bo u r"group as well as by Lenin, argued not only that the workersshould be encouraged to put forward political as well as economicdem ands, but th at they should be im bued with a conscious revolutionary purpose and conduct a consciously planned revolutionarycampaign. " Co nscio usn ess" was adopted as the opposingcatchword to " spontaneity ".^ According to Lenin , the weakness of the Russian workers' movement at the end of the centurywas that the " spontaneous " element had outstripped " consciousness ". Russia's rapid indus trial developm ent had provokeda wave of strikes against intolerable conditions in the factory.But the protest of the workers was not guided by any revolutionaryconsciousness or revolutionary theory.

The theoretical discussion on " spontaneity " and " consciousness " masked the vital practical issue of the nature and functionof a revolutionary party which ultimately rent the Russian Social-Dem ocratic W orkers' Party in twain. W hat was one day tobecome Bolshevik doctrine developed gradually, and provokedno serious clashes of opinion within the party before the fatefulcongress of 1903. It was not mou lded exclusively by Le nin .Plekhanov still enjoyed a unique authority as the theorist of the' The Russian words stikhiinyi and stikhiinost' are conventionally b ut inadequately translated by " spontaneous " and " spontaneity ". The yalsoconveythe idea of untutored inspiration, of something innate and elemental.* T he controversy is also reflected in an early article of 1901 by Stalin,who wrote that " social-democracy took in hand this unconscious, spontaneous,unorganized movement " of the workers {Sochineniya, i, 14).


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i6 THE MAN AND TH E I N S T R U M E N T PT. iparty, which Leninwasslowtocontest. Butfromthe foundationof Iskra onwards Lenin became more and more the pace-makerof advanced ideas withinthepar ty ; and it is in his writings thatthe evolution of party doctrinecan be most clearly traced. Theview consistently propounded in Iskra of the character of theparty rested on two propositions to which Lenin returned overand over again. Thefirst was that without revolutionary theorytherecan be no revolutionary movement .' Thesecondwasthat" social-democratic consciousness or class political consciousness was not a spontaneous growth,and could cometo theworker only from without . Both these propositions definedthe relation of the party to the proletariat as a whole and hadcorollaries whose far-reaching implications werenot immediatelyapparent.

The first proposition, which insistedon the supreme importanceof theory, called for a party created by intellectualsand, atany rateat theoutset, composed m ainlyofthem. This,in Lenin'sview,was anhistorically attested necessity:The history of all countries bears witness that by its ownresources alone the working class is in a position to generateonly a trade-union consciousness, i.e. a conviction of thenecessityofcoming togetherinunions,ofcarryingon astrugglewiththemasters,ofsecuring from thegovernmentthepromulgation of thisor that lawindispensablefor the workersand soforth. Theteachingofsocialism has g rownout ofphilosophical,

historicalandeconomic theories w orkedout byeducated representativesof the possessing classes,of the intelligentsia. Thefoundersofcontemporary socialism, M arxandEngels, belongedthemselvesby their social originto the bourgeois intelligentsia.SimilarlyinRussiathetheoretical teachingof social-democracyhas arisen altogether independ entlyofthe spo ntaneous growthofthe workers' movement,hasarisenas thenaturaland inevitableresultof the developmentof thought amongthe revolutionary-socialist intelligentsia. 3' Len in , Sochineniya, ii, 184, iv, 380.^ Ibid, iv, 384, 422.3 Ibid, iv, 384-385 . Le n in ' s empha s i s seems here to have led him

in to a p h ra s e ( a l t o g e th e r i n d e p e n d e n t l y " ) w h i c h is d o u b t fu l ly M a rx i s t ;e l sewhere he laid s t re ss on the necessary social roots of every pol i t icald o c t r i n e . The s a m e c h a rg e m i g h t be b rough t aga ins t a wel l -know n passagein one of M a r x ' s own ea r ly wr i t ings in w h i c h he spoke of the p ro le ta r ia t as" the mate r ia l weapon of p h i l o s o p h y for m a k i n g the revo lu t ion {Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels: Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe, V T e i l , i, i, 619-620).


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 17H e invoked the authori ty of the " profoundly jus t and weightywords " of Kautsky, s ti l l the revered theoretical leader of Germansocia l -democracy:

The contemporary socia l is t movement can come into beingonly on the basis of a profo und scientific kno wled ge. . . . T h ebearer of this science is not the proletariat , but the bourgeoisintelligentsia ; con tem por ary socialism was bo rn in the headsof individual members of this class .^It is difficult to dissociate this attitude from a faint aroma ofcondescension, which was characteris tic of Plekhanov and not atth is t ime wholly absent f rom the wri t ings of Len in. T h e ma nifesto annou ncing th e foundat ion ofIskra, in pursu ing the campaignagains t the Economis ts , expressed contempt for " pure ly workers 'l i te ra ture " ; ^ and looking back muc h la ter on this per iod, Len innoted that, in Russia as elsewhere, the growth of a mass workers 'movement had been a s ignal for the appearance of " opportunis t "deviations in the M arxist camp.^ Le nin an d his early associateswere intellectuals of the purest water ; and their writings attaineda high s tandard of learning and acumen . Zinoviev described thefew workers in the early party organizations as " isolated phenomen a ".'> T h e 1905 revolu tion for the firs t t im e bro ug ht into theranks of the party a s ignificant number of workers.

The second propos i t ion, which envisaged the party as arevolutionary eli te imposing a revolutionary consciousness " fromwithout " on the mass of the workers , drew a sharp dis t inc t ionbetween the prole tar ia t and the party . T h e c lass was an economic

' Le n i n , Sochineniya, iv , 390-391 .^ VKP(B) V Rezolyutsiyakh (194 1), i , 10.' Le n i n , Sochineniya, xv i i , 344 . M arx had no ted tha t " the workers , whe nthey . . . g ive up w ork an d beco me profess ional litterateurs, a lways mak e' t h e o re t i c a l ' t r o u b l e " (M a rx i En g e l s ,Sochineniya, xxv i , 484 -485) . R . Mich e l s ,d i scuss ing the ques t ion on the bas i s o f German and I t a l i an exper ience , con c ludes tha t " whe never th e marsha l ' s ba ton has res ted in the worker ' s h o rnyhand, the army of workers has had a leadership less sure and less sat isfactoryfo r i t s pu rposes than when the l eadersh ip has been in the hands o f men f romoth er classes of society " , a nd ad ds expl ici t ly : " Ult im atel y i t is not so m uc hthe rev i s ion i s t in te l l ec tua l s as the l eaders o f the t rade un ion movemen t , tha t i sto say , p ro le ta r ians by o r ig in , who have been beh ind the re fo rmis t t endency inG e r m a n s o c i a l d e m o c r a c y " {Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens (and ed . 1925),pp . 391 . 408 ) .

G. Zin ovie v, Geschichte der Komm unistischen Partei Russlands (1923),p. 8s.


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i8 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T FT. Iunit, the party a political or ideological un it ; ' and it was in thenature of things that the party could be only a part of the class^ its vanguard and th e champion of its interests. It w as Ple-khanov who in the columns ofIskracoined the term " hegemony "to express the relation of the party to the proletariat. He pr otested against th e " confusion of the concept ' class ' with theconcept ' party ' ", and added that " the whole working class isone thing, and quite another thing is the social-democratic partywhich represents only the leading and at the beginning numerically small detachme nt of the working c la ss " .' No seriousMarxist ever believed that a small elite of revolutionaries couldby itself make a revo lution ; that would have been to fall into theheresy of " Blanquism ".* No one insisted more powerfullythan Lenin himself that without the masses no serious politicalaction was possible. But the party was never conceived by Len inas a mass organization. M uch of its strength was due to the factthat it was more concerned to exclude than to in clu de : qualityrather than quan tity was its aim. T he function of the party wasto lead the workers. " Th e spontaneous struggle of the proletariatwill not becom e a genu ine ' class struggle ' un til this struggle isled by a strong organization of revolutionaries." The doctrineof spontaneity, which denied this role of leadership, was nicknamed " tail-endism " because it condemned the party to lag atthe tail of the workers' movement.

The doctrine of the party as a repository of revolutionary' As Lagardel le , the French social is t , put i t , the class is held together by alien de necessite, the par ty by a lien de volonte (H. Lagarde l le , Le SocialismeOuvrier (1911), p p . 166-167 ).^ T h i s was even dec la red to be the der iva t ion o f the wo rd : " T he word' p a r t y ' c o m e s f ro m t h e La t i n pars o r pa r t : and we Ma rx i s t s s ay today tha tthe party is part of a defin i te class " (G. Zinoviev, Geschichte der Komm unistischenPartei Russlands (1923) , p . 10).3 G. V. P lekhanov , Sochineniya, xii, 80-81 .* " B lanqu ism " in n ine te en th -cen tu ry revo lu t ionary par lance mean t add ic t ion to the iso lated revolut ionary conspiracy orputsch and neg lec t o f metho d ica lo rgan iza t ion . " A mi l i t a ry consp i racy i s B lanqu ism " , wro te Len in in 1917 ," if i t is not organized by the party of a dei in i te class , if i ts organizers have not

taken in to account the pol i t ical factor in general and the in ternat ional factorsin par t i cu la r " and if the ob jec t ive cond i t ions a re no t p rop i t ious (Len in ,Sochineniya, xxi , 347). A briefer, thou gh perha ps less rel iable, defin i t ion issugges ted by Len in ' s obiter dictum in 1917 : " W e are not Blan quis ts : w e arenot in favour of seizure of power by a minori ty " (ibid, xx, 96).5 Ibid, iv , 465.


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 19theory and revolut ionary consciousness, leading and guiding aspontaneous workers ' movement , was hammered out by Leninand his colleagues in Iskra against a bac kgrou nd of curr entcont roversy . I t had , however , good Ma rxis t warrant . Some suchdoctrine had inspired the f i rst Communist League of the 1840s,a body whose membership never exceeded a few hundreds , andleft its mark in at least one passage of the Communist Manifesto :

The Communis t s are , pract ical ly , the most progress ive andreso lute section of th e wo rking class of all cou ntries . . . ; the yhave, theoret ical ly, the advantage over the great mass of theproletariat of understanding the l ine of advance, condit ions, andgeneral resul ts of the proletarian movement.Another passage of the Communist Manifesto, on the o ther hand ,descr ibed the pro letar ian m ovem ent as " the indepen dent self-conscious m ovem ent of the imm ense majori ty " ; and in lateryears, influenced partly by the failures of 1848 and partly by theirEngl i sh surroundings , Marx and Engels came to bel ieve in aperiod of indoctrinat ion of the masses as the necessary prelude ofa proletarian revolut ion. T h e only organizat ion spons ored byMarx and Engels after their arr ival in England, the Internat ionalW orkin gm en's A ssociat ion ( the so-cal led " First In terna t ional ") ,was a mass associat ion, not a revolut ionary party, and was asremote as could well be imagined from the Communist Leagueof their youth.

Such difference as there was between the Marx of the Communis t League and the Marx of the Fi rs t In ternat ional was theeffect not of an evolution of doctrine, but of a change of milieufrom the Prussian police state of the 1840s to the bourgeoisdemo cracy of mid -Victorian En gland . I t was thu s logical thatLenin should in this respect have been a disciple of the earl ierrathe r tha n of the later M arx . Le nin was from the outset apract ical Russian revolut ionary, whose revolut ionary theory wasframed in the l ight of Russian needs and Russian potent ial i t ies.The project of making the intel l igentsia the spearhead of a proletarian revolut ion was even more apposi te to Russian than toGe rm an condi t ions , not only because the weak and backward Ru ssian proletariat stood even more than i ts German, and a fortiorithan i ts western European, counterpart in need of such leadership,but because the Russian intel l igentsia did not , l ike i ts western


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30 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T PT.Icou nterpa rt , possess social roots in the comm ercial bourgeoisieand was not therefore committed to any deep-seated bourgeoisallegiance. T h e econom ically rootless Russ ian intelligentsia ha dalready shown how i ts capaci ty for abstract revolut ionary thinkingcould be harnessed to the political reality of social revolution.T he " going to the people " mo vem ent of the 1870s, beingexclusively directed to the most backward sect ion of the population , th e peasa ntry, was a fiasco. Bu t it had its place in historyas a f irst quixotic and despera te at tem pt to bridge th e gulf betw eenthe masses and the revolut ionary intel l igentsia; and this couldnow be repeated with the proletarian masses. I t was, howeve r,when Lenin reached the detai ls of party organizat ion that Russiancondit ions most clearly influenced his thou ght . T h e nature ofthe R ussian state prec lude d the form ation of any kin d of socialist,or even democrat ic, party on a western model and drove everydemocrat ic or social ist movement into secret and conspiratorialchan nels. Isolated revolut ionary groups of workers and stu den tsformed by well-meaning amateurs fel l easy vict ims to the Tsaristpolice. Su ch exploits we re like " a cam paign wage d by gangs ofpeasants armed with clubs against a modern army ". '

Against small groups of socialists seeking shelter up anddown the broad Russian underworld [wrote Lenin at this t ime]stands the gigantic machine of the powerful contemporary statestrainin g all i ts forces to cru sh socialism and dem ocrac y. W eare convinced that we shall in the end break this police state.. . . Bu t in ord er to carry on a system atic strug gle againstthe government we must bring our revolut ionary organizat ionto the highest point of perfection.^

The making of revolution in Russia was a task for professionalrevolut ionaries ; and i t was no accident that mil i tary metaphors sofrequently appeared in discussions not only by Lenin, but byPlekhanov and o ther Iskra wri ters, of party organizat ion.

The theme of party organizat ion was f inal ly developed byLe nin in the summ er of 1902 in the pam phlet What is to be Done ?,which drew the conclusions from the campaign against theEco nom ists. In his t rea tme nt of this concrete topic Le nin ranfurther ahead of hisIskra colleagues than on any previous occasion.He compared the posi t ion of the Economists to that of the re-

' Lenin, Sochineniya,iv, 439. ^Leninskii Sbornik, iii (1925), 26.


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CH.I TH E F O U N D A T I O N S OF B O L S H E V I S M 21visionists in Germany, of the possibilists in France and ofthe Fabians in England; it w as the symptom of a profounddivisionin the social-democratic movement betweenademocraticparty of social reformers and a socialist party of true revolutionaries.^ The one party conceived itself as an organization ofworkers , the other as an organization of revolutionaries .The difference wasfundamental:

An organizationofworkers must b e,firstofall,oc cupational;secondly, it mustbe as broad aspossible; thirdly, it mustbeas little secretaspossible. . . . Conversely,an organizationofrevolutionaries must contain primarilyandchiefly people whoseoccupation is revolutionary activity. . . . T his organizationmust necessarilybe not very broad,and assecretaspossible.^Lenin faced the charge that such an organizationwas in contradiction with the democratic principle . The charge couldcome only from foreign quarters ignorant of Russian realities.T he democratic principleas commonly interpreted required fullpublicity and electionto allposts . Neitherofthese requirements could befulfilled by a revolutionary party working within" the framework of our autocracy . Len in concluded:

T heone serious organizational principlefor workersin ourmovement mustbestrictest secrecy, strictest choiceofmem bers,training of professional revolution aries. Once these qualitiesare present something more than democracy is guaranteed:complete comradely confidence among revolutionaries. . . . Itwould be a great mistake to think that the impossibility of areally democratic control makes the members of a revolutionary organization irresponsible. . . . Th ey feel the ir re-sponsibility very keenly, knowingbyexperience thatinordertorid itself of an unworthy member an organization of genuinerevolutionaries recoils from noth ing. This principlewas to be applied equallyat alllevels:

We must break completely with the tradition of a purelyworkers'or trade union type of social-democratic organizationdownto factory groupsinclusive. The factory groupor factorycommittee . . . mu st consist of a very small number ofrevolutionaries,receiving direct from the [central] committeeordersandpowerstoconductthewhole social-democratic partywork in the factory. All members of the factory committee' Lenin, Sochineniya,iv, 366-367. Ibid,iv, 447.' Ibid,iv,466-469.


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23 T H E M A N A N D T H E I N S T R U M E N T FT imust regard themselves as agents of the [central] committee,bound to submit to all its directions, bound to observe all" laws and customs " of this " army in the field " into whichthey have entered and which they cannot leave without permission of the commander.'Thus the whole emphasis came to rest on the need for a small,closely knit party under a strong central leadership to act in thename of the proletariat as the spearhead of revolution. T hemethods of the revolutionary struggle varied and must be determined empirically from time to time. W hat remained fixed andconsistent was the central plan built up on a sound basis of theory,and executed, with the support of the m asses, by a highlyorganized, disciplined and centrally directed party of professionalrevolutionaries.Lenin, now in his early thirties, had reached the summit ofhis powers. T he thre e years following his release from Siberiawere years of feverish and incessant intellectual activity. Thesewere the years in which the foundations of Bolshevism " as astream of political thought and as a political party " were laid.T he instrum ent carried the stamp of the m an : it reflected itscreator's simplicity, his unbending strength and, above all, hissingleness of purpo se. A well-known passage in Kru pskaya'smemoirs bears witness to that masterful concentration on a singleend which was the hall-mark of Len in's character. As a schoolboyhe liked skating, but found that it tired him, so that he wanted tosleep afterwards. " Th is hindered my studies. So I gave upska ting." After his retur n from Siberia he ceased to play chessbecause " chess gets hold of you too much, and hinders work ".At one time he had been fascinated by the study of Latin, but" it began to hinder o ther work, so I gave it up ".^ After therevolution he told Gorky :

I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves,makes you want to say stupid, nice things and stroke the headsof people who could create such beauty while living in this vilehell. And now you m ustn't stroke anyone's head you m ightget your hand bitten off.'' L e n in , Sochineniya, v, 185-186.^ Krupskaya , Memories of Lenin [ i] (Engl, t rans . 1930) , p. 35 .^ M . G o r k y , Days with Lenin (Engl, t ransl . n .d.[? 1932]) , p . 52.


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 23If Lenin could lead and dominate men, i t was because he himselfthroughout his l i fe was led and dominated to an exceptionalextent by a single thou ght and a single aim. Th is overwh elmingsense of service to an idea accounted for the simplicity andmo desty of dem eano ur which all rem arked in him . H e set anexample of austeri ty and impersonali ty which long remained astanda rd of cond uct for the party . N o doub t StaUn was correctin noting this trait as " one of the strongest sides of Lenin as tlienew leader of the new masses J But there was no element ofcalculat ion in Lenin about an at t i tude which was deeply rootedin his character.

This whole-hearted simplici ty and directness left their markon Lenin 's thinkin g. His imme nse learning, his analytical ski ll ,his outstanding intel lectual power in the marshal l ing of fact andargument were displayed without much concern for the subtleral ternat ions of l ight and s ha de ; everything was clear-cut , bri l l iant ,decisive. As Buk harin said in the last year of Le nin 's life :

Le nin is a strategist of gen ius. H e know s tha t it is necess aryto str ike the principal enemy and not eclect ical ly weave shadeupon shade.^In controversy he was apt to resort to a one-sided emphasis whichhe justi f ied by the need to co unteract similar one-sidedne ss in hisadver sary :

The Economists bent the st ick one way [he said at thesecond party congress, defending What is to be Done ?]. I norder to straighten the stick it was necessary to bend it the otherway ; and this is what I did.^Yet his ideas could be Utopian to the point of naivety, as in hisreflexions on the disappearance of the state or on the replacementof bureau cracy by the personal service of ci t izens. T h e co mb inat ion of a fundamental simplici ty of thought and character withfanat icism in opinion and ruthlessness in act ion is st rongly reminiscen t of Rob espierre. Le nin 's self-assurance in the infal li bility of his creed was rendered all the more formidable by his

' S ta l in, Sockineniya, vi , 55.^ Dvenadtsatyi S esd Rossiiskoi Komm unisticheskoi Partii {BoVshevikov)

(1933). P- 563.3 L e n in , Sockineniya, v i , 23 . State and Revolution, wr itte n fifteen years later,reveals the same technique (see p. 240 below).VOL. I C


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CH. I T H E F O U N D A T I O N S O F B O L S H E V I S M 25It is not enough [he wrote at this t ime] to be a revolut ionaryan d an advo cate of socialism in gen eral. It is necess ary to knowat every moment how to f ind the part icular l ink in the chainwhich must be grasped with al l one's st rength in order to keep

the whole chain in place and prepare to move on resolutely tothe next l ink. 'After three years of revolut ionary experience he could exclaim it was no dou bt an obiter dictum ut tered in the heat of cont roversy that" pract ice i s a hundred t imes more impor tant thanany the ory ".^ In the roll of L en in 's genius one of the largestentries would have to be devoted to his greatness as a politicalstrategis t and as a political tactician . H is far-sighte dne ss inbuilding up impregnable posi t ions in advance was matched byan uncanny ins t inct which to ld h im where and when and how tostrike or to hold back.If, howev er, Le nin w as a great revolut ionary perh aps thegreates t of all t im e his genius wa s far m ore c onstru ctive tha ndestruct ive. T h e con tribut ion of Le nin and the Bolsheviks tothe overthrow of Ts aris m was negligible. I t is only in an externalsense that they can be held responsible for the overthrow of theProvisional Go ver nm ent. Fr om July 1917 i ts downfal l had become inev itable ; i t was wait ing only for i ts successor to appea r.Bolshevism succeeded to a vacant thro ne . T h e crucial m om entsof the interval between the February and October revolut ionswere Lenin 's announcement at the f i rst AU-Russian Congress ofSoviets in June that the Bolsheviks were wil l ing to take powerand Lenin 's decision in September that the t ime was r ipe to takei t . Le nin 's major achieveme nt came after the bloodless victoryof the revolut ion in October 1917 and was that of a great construct ive statesm an. But what he buil t , with all i ts me ri ts andall its defects, was raised on foundations laid long before, andcannot be ful ly understood without some knowledge of thosefoundations. T h e fi rst of the m were laid durin g the so-cal led" Iskra period " before Lenin's followers received their distinctivename at the second party congress.

' Ibid,xxii, 466. ' Ibid, xxvi, 71.


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CHAPTER

BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS

MAINLY as the result of the preparatory work done by theIskra group, the second congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party met in July and August 1903under the chairmanship of Plekhanov, first in Brussels (whenceit fled for fear of poHce persecution) and then in L ond on. It wasthe real foundation congress of the p ar ty : bu t it also saw thefamous split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks which widenedand deepened u ntil it led to complete formal separation after 1912.The congress was attended by representatives of 25 recognizedsocial-democratic organizations, each having 2 votes except theJewish workers' organization, the Bund, which had 3 in virtue ofthe special status as an autonomous section of the party accordedto it by the first congress. As some organizations sent only onedelegate the congress was actually composed of43voting delegatesdisposing in all of 51 votes. In addition there w ere 14 delegatesfrom various organizations with consultative, but without voting,rights. Of the full delegates more tha n3 were professed adhere ntsofIskra, and the congress was completely dominated by theIskragroup. So long as the Iskra-ites remained united, the only concerted opposition came from the delegates of the Bund, who wereinterested almost exclusively in the rights of national minoritiesand in upholding their own autonomous status in the party, andfrom two delegates with " Economist " leanings, Akimov andMartynov, who represented the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad . T he resolution to recognize Iskra as the centralorgan of the party was passed at an early stage of the congresswith only two dissenting votes.'The most important pieces of business before the congresswere the adoption of a party programme and of a party statute.

I V toroi S ezdRSDRP (1932), p. 155.6

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