MIA > Archive > Cliff > Lenin 2 > Chap.7
Although the revolution was led by class–conscious workers who were mostly Bolsheviks, it was not led by the Bolshevik Party. Furthermore the number of class–conscious workers active in the revolution could be counted in thousands, or tens of thousands, while the number who were aroused by the revolution was measured in millions. No wonder the leadership of the rank–and–file Bolsheviks in the February revolution, although able to achieve the victory of the insurrection, could not secure political power for the working class or the Bolshevik Party.
The Putilov works with their 40,000 workers contained only 150 Bolsheviks by February 1917; in the working–class and factory district of Vyborg there were no more than about 500 Bolsheviks. [1] Out of 1,500–1,600 delegates in the Petrograd Soviet in February, only about 40 were Bolsheviks. [2]
The proportion of Bolsheviks in the Petrograd Soviet was even smaller than their actual proportion among the people, because the Mensheviks and SRs rushed to take seats in the Soviet while many Bolsheviks were still participating in the street battles. I. Zalezhkii observed at the 4 March meeting of the Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks
that the seizure of seats in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies by the Liquidators [Mensheviks and SRs – TC] took place because at the time when the Bolsheviks were working illegally, the Liquidators were acting freely. In the first days of the February revolution the Bolsheviks were with the masses on the streets, and the Liquidators rushed straight to the Duma. [3]
The Bolsheviks were politically in complete disarray at the time. They hardly constituted a distinct grouping in the Soviet. Sukhanov described the situation at the time thus:
the fractions themselves had not yet taken shape in the Soviet.
References to party adherence were very rare. Opinions overlapped and... were very feebly differentiated.
Also, from the fraction point of view the deputies did not sit in any kind of order. In those days there was no tendency to split up into fractions and the deputies sat as chance directed. [4]
Sukhanov asserts that at a session of the Executive Committee of the Soviet on 1 March, when the question at issue was that of handing over power to the bourgeoisie, not one voice was raised in opposition, despite the fact that 11 of the 39 members of the Executive Committee were Bolsheviks, and that the three members of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee were present (A.C Shliapnikov, V.M. Molotov, and P.A. Zalutsky). [5] At the session of the Soviet as a whole on 2 March only 15 out of the 40 Bolshevik present voted against the transfer of power to the provisional government – i.e., to the bourgeoisie. [6]
On 3 March the Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Part passed a resolution that it would ‘not oppose the power of the provisional government insofar as its activities correspond to the interests of the proletariat and of the broad democratic masses of the people’. [7] The formula ‘insofar as’ (postolku, poskolku) appeared ii the resolution of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on relations with the provisional government, and became a way of referring to this particular policy of supporting the government.
Again, when some Bolsheviks in the Petrograd Soviet moved a resolution calling for the Soviet to form a government, they received only 19 votes, with many party members opposing this motion. [8]
No doubt the fact that the Mensheviks and SRs had an overwhelming majority in the Soviet influenced the attitudes of the Bolsheviks. As Shliapnikov put it: ‘Evidently the victory of the Menshevik Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries al the last plenum [of the Soviet on 2 March] on the question of power, came as a psychological shock to the Petersburg Committee moving it to the right.’ [9]
It must, however, be made clear that there was resistance to the opportunist line of both the Petersburg Committee and the right wing of the Bolshevik group in the Soviet. The resolution of the Petersburg Committee supporting the provisional government ‘postolku, poskolku’ was resisted in the committee itself, three members from the Vyborg Committee voting against it – K.I. Shutko, M.I. Kalinin, and N.G. Tolmachev. [10]
The Vyborg District Committee, which had the best organized district of Petrograd in its working-class area in the north-west of the city, took a militant left-wing line throughout. In fact, it played a central role in the February revolution. Not only was it closely involved in the action in one of the two main working-class areas of the city (the other being the Narva district in the south-west), but on 26 February it took command of the entire Petrograd Bolshevik organization after the arrest of most of the members of the Petersburg Committee.
Vyborg was the district where the key modern engineering works in Petrograd were located. A measure of Bolshevik influence there was that throughout the period between February and October the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Vyborg District Soviet. In Kronstadt, which had always been thought to be a bulwark of Bolshevism, there were only 11 deputies out of about 300 at the beginning of the period, and even by October only 136, or less than half the Soviet. In fact the Vyborg District Committee had a decisive influence on revolutionary Kronstadt and Helsingfors, the bastions of Bolshevism in the period leading up to October.
The Vyborg District Committee was also well organized, and had participated fully in the greatest event of the century, the victorious February revolution. It had every reason to feel self-reliant and confident.
On 27 February, during the revolution itself, it issued a leaflet calling for the election of a Soviet, and the revolutionary overthrow of the autocracy and transfer of power to the Soviet. [11] Resolutions urging the transfer of power to the Soviets were passed almost unanimously at factory meetings. A general meeting of the Vyborg Bolsheviks on 1 March adopted a resolution calling for the Soviets to seize power immediately and abolish the Duma’s Provisional Committee. [12]
On 5 March O.G. Ufshits, from Vyborg, moved the following draft resolution at a meeting of the Petersburg Committee of the Bolshevik Party:
1. The task of the moment is the founding of a provisional revolutionary government, growing out of the unification of local Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in the whole of Russia.
2. To prepare for the full seizure of central power it is necessary to: (a) strengthen the power of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies; (b) proceed locally to the partial seizure of power by overthrowing the organs of the old power and replacing them by Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the tasks of which are the arming of the people, the organization of the army on democratic principles, the confiscation of the land and the carrying out of all the other demands of the minimum programme...
The power of the provisional government which was founded by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, will be recognized and supported only until the formation of a revolutionary government from the Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies and only in so far as its actions are consistent with the interests of the proletariat and the broad democratic masses. [13]
Shutko, the Petersburg Committee member from Vyborg, was the only one to vote for this resolution; Ufshits’ vote was consultative.
The formulation of the Vyborg District Committee position had much in common with Lenin’s Letters from Afar (7–2 March) and his April Theses (of 4 April). It spoke about the need to transfer power to the Soviets, as Lenin did. But unlike Lenin the Vyborg comrades limited the scope of the new government to minimum programme: they did not go beyond the old Bolshevik formula of democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, i.e., beyond the boundaries of the bourgeois revolution.
The conflict between the Vyborg District Committee and the Petersburg Committee reflected radical differences in attitudes in the workers’ strike movement of the time.
The battle for the 8-hour day went on throughout practical the whole of March. [1*] On 5 March the Petrograd Soviet adopted by 1,170 votes to 30 a resolution calling on all workers to return to work. The Vyborg District Committee of the Bolsheviks declared this resolution null and void as long as the workers had not achieved the 8-hour day, a pay rise, etc. The committee organized a demonstration against the Soviet decision, stating:
The Vyborg District Committee RSDLP(b), having discussed the question of returning to work, considers that the Petersburg Committee ought to organize an all-city demonstration, since it considers that in the moment that it is living through, the proletariat ought to undertake a yet stronger struggle for the basic slogans: a democratic republic, the 8–hour working day, confiscation of all the land, and also the moment demands from us a definite answer on the question of the war. We consider that this slogan on ending the war ought to be put forward on this demonstration. [14]
However, the Petersburg Committee refused to support the resolution. The Vyborg comrades were enraged. A delegate from Vyborg stated at the 7 March session of the Petersburg Committee: ‘The Vyborg District expresses dissatisfaction with the Petersburg Committee’s tardiness in bringing its decisions to the attention of the factories. This is why they decided to carry out the 8-hour working day independently in their own district.’
In addition, the following resolution from Vyborg was moved (and noted):
The Vyborg District Committee RSDLP(b), having discussed the decision of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on returning to work, considers this decision premature, in view of the fact that there was no decision about conditions of work.
There were a number of reasons why the Petersburg Committee stood so far to the right of the Vyborg District Committee. First, it was further from the grass roots, and less integrated with the proletarian masses. Secondly, as has been pointed out by one historian, the majority of the Petersburg Committee did not participate in the February revolution, and a number of its members had been away from the field of battle (being in prison) for a long time before. [15]
The left of the Petersburg Committee, who voted against conditional support for the provisional government (postolku, poskolku), was made up of the three delegates from Vyborg named above.
A third position, between those of the Petersburg Committee and the Vyborg District Committee, was taken by the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee. This Bureau had three members, Shliapnikov, Molotov and Zalutsky. The main body of the Central Committee elected in 1912 was in exile, either abroad or in Siberia. The Russian Bureau represented the exiled committee on the spot. All three members had escaped arrest during the war and all three were active during the February revolution.
On 27 February the Bureau issued a manifesto ‘to all citizens of Russia’. The manifesto called for the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government:
The task of the working class and the revolutionary army is to create a revolutionary provisional government which will lead the new regime, the new republican regime ... Workers of all factories and plants, as well as the insurgent troops, must elect without delay their representatives to the provisional revolutionary government, which must be established by the revolutionary insurgent people and their armies.
The task of this government should be the implementation of the minimum programme and the preparation of the constituent assembly:
The provisional revolutionary government must decree provisional laws which will safeguard the freedom and rights of the people, confiscate church and crown lands and turn them over to the people, institute the 8-hour day, and convoke the constituent assembly on the basis of direct, equal and secret universal suffrage. [16]
The aims of the Russian Bureau and the Vyborg District Committee were the same. The difference was in the emphasis placed by the latter on creating the provisional government from below through the formation of Soviets.
The Russian Bureau was concerned that the Vyborg District Committee’s line might lead to a premature uprising, and on 3 March it ordered the withdrawal of the leaflet that was circulating in Vyborg calling for the overthrow of the provisional government. [17]
In the first half of March the Bureau co–opted a number of new members. The new enlarged Bureau was, it seems, somewhat to the left of the original one. On 9 March, however, it adopted a resolution on the provisional government which was still considerably to the right of the Vyborg District Committee. Although it was more critical of the government than previously, and its statement included a number of revolutionary elements, it referred to the Soviet as "the embryo of the revolutionary power’, while at the same time contradicting itself by speaking about the need for a division of labour between the Soviets and the provisional government:
at the present moment these Soviets should exercise the most decisive control over all the actions of the provisional government and its agents both in the centre and in the provinces; and they should themselves assume a number of functions of state and of an economic character arising from the complete disorganization of economic life in the country and from the urgent necessity to apply the most resolute measures for safeguarding the famine–stricken population whom war has ruined. Therefore the task of the day is: The consolidation of all forces around the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies as the embryo of revolutionary power, alone capable both of repelling the attempts on the part of the Tsarist and bourgeois counter–revolution as well as of realizing the demands of revolutionary democracy and of explaining the true class nature of the present government.
The most urgent and important task of the Soviets, the fulfilment of which will alone guarantee the victory over all the forces of counter–revolution and the further development and deepening of the revolution, is, in the opinion of the party, the universal arming of the people, and, in particular, the immediate creation of Workers’ Red Guards throughout the entire land. [18]
This Russian Bureau resolution put forward the Soviets as the bearers of the new power.
Thus, despite all the vacillations and vagueness, both the Vyborg District Committee and the Russian Bureau were moving towards a position close to Lenin’s before he returned to Russia, although very different from his position regarding the bourgeois democratic limits of the revolution.
On the question of the war the Petersburg Committee was the right of the Bureau. At best the views of the majority of the Petersburg Committee were muddled. The minutes of the committee of 7 March record:
Com. Fedorov, G.F., whilst being in principle for the ending the war, considers it impossible categorically to demand its ending, since if the front is weakened there is a risk of losing those freedoms which we have already succeeded in securing. The danger of a German regime being established is a considerably greater danger than the re-establishment of the pre-revolutionary government.
Com. Avilov, B.V., formulated the view of the Petersburg Committee in the following manner: (1) the war is imperialist; (2) ending of the war should be the result of the agreed actions of the international proletariat; (3) an immediate end to the war under present conditions, i.e. the continued power of the German imperialist government and the presence of danger from the counter-revolution in Russia, is inadmissible; on the contrary, we must declare that until these dangers are removed our front must defended against German attack. [19]
The disarray in the Bolshevik ranks was increased by the turn of Kamenev, Stalin and Muranov from Siberia. On 12 Ms they arrived in the capital and immediately took over the editing of Pravda, which had begun publication a week earlier. The comrades accepted this take-over as natural, for after all two of these men (Kamenev and Stalin) were the only members of the Central Committee in Russia at the time, and the third (Muranov) was former Duma deputy. The change in the editorial board of Pravda led the paper to swing sharply to the right. As Sukhanov put it: ‘In a flash it (Pravda) became unrecognisable.’ [20]
The new editors announced that the Bolsheviks would decisively support the provisional government ‘insofar as it struggles against reaction or counter-revolution’ – forgetting that the only important agent of counter-revolution at the time was this same provisional government. The new editors expressed themselves no less categorically on the war. Thus Kamenev took a position almost indistinguishable from that of the social chauvinists:
The war goes on. The great Russian revolution did not interrupt it. And no one entertains the hope that it will end tomorrow, or the day after. The soldiers, the peasants, and the workers of Russia who went to war at the call of the deposed Tsar, and who shed their blood under his banners, have liberated themselves, and the Tsarist banners have been replaced by the red banners of the revolution. But the war will go on, because the German army has not followed the example of the Russian army and is still obeying its Emperor, who avidly seeks his prey on the battlefields of death.
When an army stands against an army, the most absurd policy would be to propose that one of them lay down its arms and go home. This policy would not be a policy of peace but a policy of slavery, a policy which the free people would reject with indignation. No, the free people will stand firmly at their posts, will reply bullet for bullet and shell for shell. This is unavoidable.
The revolutionary soldiers and officers who have overthrown the yoke of Tsarism will not quit their trenches so as to clear the place for the German or Austrian soldiers or officers, who as yet have not had the courage to overthrow the yoke of their own government. We cannot permit any disorganization of the military forces of the revolution! War must be ended in an organized way, by a pact among the peoples which have liberated themselves, and not by subordination to the will of the neighbouring conqueror and imperialist. [21]
15 March, the day of the appearance of the first number of the ‘reformed Pravda’, [writes Shliapnikov] was a day of triumph for the ‘defencists’. The whole of the Tauride Palace, from the members of the Committee of the Duma to the Executive Committee, the very heart of revolutionary democracy, was brimful of one piece of news – the victory of the moderate and reasonable Bolsheviks over the extremists. In the Executive Committee itself, we were met with venomous smiles. It was the first and only time that Pravda won the praise of ‘defencists’ of the worst type. In the factories, this number of Pravda produced stupefaction among the adherents of our party and its sympathizers, and the spiteful satisfaction of our enemies. In the Petrograd Committee, at the Bureau of the Central Committee and on the staff of Pravda, many questions were received. What was happening? Why had our paper left the Bolshevik policy to follow that of the ‘defencists’? But the Petrograd Committee was taken unawares, as was the whole organization, by the coup d’état, and was profoundly displeased, accusing the Bureau of the Central Committee. Indignation in the workers’ suburbs was very strong, and when proletarians learnt that three former editors of Pravda, just come from Siberia, had taken possession of the paper, they demanded their expulsion from the party. [22]
Pravda was soon compelled to print a sharp protest from Vyborg District Committee:
If the paper does not want to lose the confidence of the workers it must and will bring the light of revolutionary consciousness, matter how painful it may be to the bourgeois owls [emphasis in original]. [23]
While the Vyborg District Committee was protesting against the line of Pravda, the Petersburg Committee fell more and more under its influence. Thus on 18 March Kamenev proposed that it should change its ‘insofar as’ policy towards the provisional Government to actual support; against some opposition the committee adopted Kamenev’s proposal. [24]
Despite the Vyborg district’s protests and those of many workers, until Lenin’s return to Russia Pravda’s general political line continued to accommodate the provisional government the defencists, and to be conciliatory towards the government the war.
It has to be made clear that Pravda’s line – that the revolution was a bourgeois democratic revolution, that the provisional government needed to be supported postolku, poskolku, and concessions made to ‘defencism’ – was followed by local Bolshevik leaders all over Russia. It is unlikely that this was simply a result of influence of Pravda.
The Kharkov Bolshevik paper Sotsial-Demokrat wrote 19 March:
Until German democracy takes power into its hands our army must stand up like a wall of steel, armed from head to foot against Prussian militarism, for the victory of Prussian militarism is the death of our freedom. [25]
The Moscow Bolshevik daily Sotsial-Demokrat of 20 March stated: ‘Until peace has been achieved – we do not throw away our arms.’ [26]
The formula of support for the provisional government was reported again and again, in for instance, Krasnoiarskürabochii, the Bolshevik paper of Krasnoiarsk, on 15 March [27] and the Moscow Sotsial-Demokrat on 9 March [28] and in April. [29] The Kharkov Bolshevik paper went so far as to demand from the provisional government that it should carry out the minimum programme of the party! [30]
In Baku the enthusiasm of the Bolshevik leaders was such that they joined the local provisional government. [31]
The Bolshevik leaders Kamenev and Stalin formulated their right-wing position even more clearly at the All-Russian Conference of the Bolshevik Party held on 28 March. [32]
In his report On the Attitude to the Provisional Government, Stalin stated:
The power has been divided between two organs, of which neither one possesses full power. There is and there ought to be friction and struggle between them. The roles have been divided. The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies has in fact taken the initiative in effecting revolutionary transformations. The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies is the revolutionary leader of the insurrectionary people; an organ of control over the provisional government. On the other hand, the provisional government has in fact taken the role of fortifier of the conquests of the revolutionary people. The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies mobilizes the forces and exercises control, while the provisional government ... takes the role of the fortifier of those conquests by the people ... Such a situation has disadvantageous, but also advantageous sides.
Here Stalin overlooks class distinctions, and speaks simply about the division of labour between the provisional government and the Soviets. The workers and soldiers advance the revolution and the bourgeois government fortifies the conquests of the revolution!
In so far as the provisional government fortifies the steps of the revolution, to that extent we must support it; but in so far as it is counter-revolutionary, support to the provisional government is not permissible.
Stalin then declared his support for the resolution of the Krasnoiarsk Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which stated:
the submission of the provisional government to the basic demands of the revolution can be secured only by the unrelaxing pressure of the proletariat, the peasantry and the revolutionary army, who must with unremitting energy maintain their organization around the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies born out of the revolution, in order to transform the latter into the terrible force of the revolutionary people; ... to support the provisional government in its activities only in so far as it follows a course of satisfying the demands of the working class and the revolutionary peasantry in the revolution that is taking place.
In the discussion on the war, which did not produce any resolution from the conference, the right Bolsheviks’ attack was even more open and objectionable. Thus Vasiliev, the delegate from Saratov, moved a resolution stating:
Revolutionary democratic Russia does not seek an inch of foreign soil, or a penny of foreign property. But not an inch of our own soil or a penny of our own property can be taken away from us ... so long as peace is not concluded we must stand fully armed; and in guarding the interests of new democratic Russia we must increase tenfold our efforts, for we are now defending our budding liberties. The revolutionary army must be powerful and unconquerable. It must be provided by the workers and by the provisional government with everything necessary to strengthen its forces. Discipline in the ranks, being the necessary condition of an army’s strength, must be sustained not out of fear but out of free will, and based upon mutual confidence between the democratic officer staff and the revolutionary soldiers.
There were a number of protests against the Stalin-Kamenev line at the conference. Thus Skrypnik declared:
the government is not fortifying, but checking the cause of the revolution.
There can be no more talk of supporting the government. There is a conspiracy of the provisional government against the people and the revolution, and it is necessary to prepare for a struggle against it.
Nogin said: ‘It is clear that we ought not now to talk about support but about resistance.’ But on the whole Stalin and Kamenev undoubtedly had the majority of the conference with them.
The conference then discussed the question of uniting the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks into one party, as suggested by Tsereteli. Stalin was wholly in favour of the proposal. ‘We ought to go. It is necessary to define our proposals as to the terms of unification. Unification is possible along the lines of Zimmerwald-Kienthal.’
Molotov spoke in opposition, but Stalin stuck to his guns:
There is no use running ahead and anticipating disagreements. There is no party life without disagreements. We shall live down trivial disagreements within the party. But there is one question –it is impossible to unite what cannot be united. We will have a single party with those who agree on Zimmerwald and Kienthal, i.e., those who are against revolutionary defencism. [33]
Unity on the basis of the vague pacifist resolutions of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, resolutions which Lenin had voted against! Unity with Tsereteli, the man who moved the Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary coalition to the right, and who three months later arrested and disarmed the Bolsheviks!
Writing years after these events, Trotsky stated quite accurately: ‘A reading of the reports ... frequently produces a feeling of amazement: is it possible that a party represented by these delegates will after seven months seize the power with an iron hand?’ [34]
Long before the February 1917 revolution Lenin had warned against the danger of defencism raising its ugly head once the Tsar was removed – of his regime being replaced not by proletarian rule, but by a bourgeois democratic government. In an article called Social Chauvinist Policy Behind the Cover of Internationalist Phrases (published in Sotsial-Demokrat No.49, 21 December 1915), he argued against Martov’s statement: ‘It is self–evident that if the present crisis should lead to the victory of a democratic revolution, to a republic, then the character of the war would radically change.’
Lenin hammered the point hard:
All this is a shameless lie. Martov could not but have known that a democratic revolution and a republic mean a bourgeois-democratic revolution and a bourgeois-democratic republic. The character of this war between the bourgeois and imperialist great powers would not change a jot were the military-autocratic and feudal imperialism to be swept away in one of these countries. That is because, in such conditions, a purely bourgeois imperialism would not vanish, but would only gain strength. [35]
A few weeks earlier Lenin had argued that it was not ‘admissible for Social Democrats to join a provisional revolutionary government ... with revolutionary chauvinists.’
By revolutionary chauvinists we mean those who want a victory over Tsarism so as to achieve victory over Germany, plunder other countries, consolidate Great Russian rule over the other peoples of Russia, etc. Revolutionary chauvinism is based on the class position of the petty bourgeoisie. The latter always vacillates between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. At present it is vacillating between chauvinism (which prevents it from being consistently revolutionary, even in the meaning of a democratic revolution), and proletarian internationalism. At the moment the Trudoviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries, Nasha Zarya, Chkheidze’s Duma group, the Organizing Committee, Mr Plekhanov and the like are the political spokesmen for this petty bourgeoisie in Russia.
If the revolutionary chauvinists won in Russia, we would be opposed to a defence of their ‘fatherland’ in the present war. Our slogan is: against the chauvinists, even if they are revolutionary and republican – against them, and for an alliance of the international proletariat for the socialist revolution. [36]
And with insight and impressive foresight, Lenin wrote:
A new political division has arisen in Russia on the basis of new, higher, more developed and more complex international relations. This new division is between the chauvinist revolutionaries, who desire revolution so as to, defeat Germany, and the proletarian internationalist revolutionaries, who desire a revolution in Russia for the sake of the proletarian revolution in the West, and simultaneously with that revolution. This new division is, in essence, one between the urban and the rural petty bourgeoisie in Russia, and the socialist proletariat. [37]
He foresaw the danger of an alliance of petty bourgeois democratic defencists with the liberal bourgeoisie.
Equally clear is the liberal bourgeoisie’s stand – exploit the defeat and the mounting revolution in order to wrest concessions from a frightened monarchy and compel it to share power with the bourgeoisie. Just as clear, too, is the stand of the revolutionary proletariat, which is striving to consummate the revolution by exploiting the vacillation and embarrassment of the government and the bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie, however, i.e., the vast mass of the barely awakening population of Russia, is groping blindly in the wake of the bourgeoisie, a captive to nationalist prejudices, on the one hand, prodded into the revolution by the unparalleled horror and misery of war, the high cost of living, impoverishment, ruin and starvation, but on the other hand, glancing backward at every step towards the idea of defence of the fatherland, towards the idea of Russia’s state integrity, or towards the idea of small-peasant prosperity, to be achieved through a victory over Tsarism and over Germany, but without a victory over capitalism. [38]
Consequently, in the present war, the Russian proletariat could ‘defend the fatherland’ and consider ‘the character of the war radically changed’, only and exclusively if the revolution were to put the party of the proletariat in power, and were to permit only that party to guide the entire force of a revolutionary upheaval and the entire machinery of state towards an instant and direct conclusion of an alliance with the socialist proletariat of Germany and Europe. [39]
On the basis of this internationalist stand Lenin now, after the February revolution, developed a whole new revolutionary strategy and tactics, the first product of which were his Letters from Afar.
While the Bolshevik leadership in Russia was in a state of disunity, with the top leaders veering towards defencism, towards supporting the provisional government and towards unity with the Mensheviks, Lenin was fuming at being ‘accursed afar’. Before coming back to Russia he was already very worried, as a result of the scanty information filtering through to him, about the Bolshevik leadership’s position. A letter of 30 March to J.S. Hanecki, a member of the Bureau Abroad of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks, is filled with alarm:
Our party would disgrace itself for ever, commit political suicide, if it tolerated such a deception ... I personally will not hesitate for a second to declare, and to declare in print, that I shall prefer even an immediate split with anyone in our party, whoever it may be, to making concessions to the social-patriotism of Kerensky and Co. or the social pacifism and Kautskianism of Chkheidze and Co. [40]
After this seemingly impersonal threat, Lenin makes it clear that he has certain individuals in mind as the main culprits: ‘Kamenev must realize that he bears a world-historic responsibility.’ [41]
However Lenin did not limit himself to cursing the opportunism of Kamenev and his associates. He quickly got to work to draw up a political strategy for the party and the proletariat. Between 7 and 26 March he wrote five ‘Letters from Afar’ (the fifth was unfinished). Only the first was published by Pravda. In this he wrote:
Side by side with this government – which as regards the present war is but the agent of the billion-dollar ‘firm’ ‘England and France’ – there has arisen the chief, unofficial, as yet undeveloped and comparatively weak workers’ government, which expresses the interests of the proletariat and of the entire poor section of the urban and rural population. This is the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies in Petrograd ... The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is an organization of the workers, the embryo of a workers’ government, the representative of the interests of the entire mass of the poor section of the population, i.e., of nine-tenths of the population, which is striving for peace, bread and freedom ... He who says that the workers must support the new government in the interests of the struggle against Tsarist reaction ... is a traitor to the workers, a traitor to the cause of the proletariat, to the cause of peace and freedom ... For the only guarantee of freedom and of the complete destruction of Tsarism lies in arming the proletariat, in strengthening, extending and developing the role, significance and power of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. [42]
Lenin’s statements were produced as if from a machine-gun!
The ‘task of the day’ at this moment must be: Workers, you have performed miracles of proletarian heroism, the heroism of the people, in the civil war against Tsarism. You must perform miracles of organization, organization of the proletariat and of the whole people, to prepare the way for your victory in the second stage of the revolution. [43]
Who were the allies of the proletariat in the revolution?
It has two allies; first, the broad mass of the semi-proletarian and partly also of the small-peasant population, who number scores of millions and constitute the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia ... Second, the ally of the Russian proletariat is the proletariat of all the belligerent countries in general. [44]
With these two allies, the proletariat, utilizing the peculiarities of the present transition situation, can and will proceed, first to the achievement of a democratic republic and complete victory of the peasantry over the landlords, instead of the Guchkov-MiIiukov semi-monarchy, and then to socialism, which alone can give the war-weary people peace, bread and freedom. [45]
In the second Letter from Afar Lenin put forward clearly the need for a second revolution and the need to establish a workers’ government: ‘Only a proletarian republic, backed by the rural workers and the poorest section of the peasants and town dwellers, can secure peace, provide bread, order and freedom.’ [46]
The Third Letter goes further in elaborating the task and the structure of the future workers’ state:
We need a state. But not the kind of state the bourgeoisie has created everywhere, from constitutional monarchies to the most democratic republics ...
We need a state, but not the kind the bourgeoisie needs, with organs of government in the shape of a police force, an army and a bureaucracy (officialdom) separate from and opposed to the people. All bourgeois revolutionaries merely perfected this state machine, merely transferred it from the hands of one party to those of another.
The proletariat, on the other hand, if it wants to uphold the gains of the present revolution and proceed further, to win peace, bread and freedom, must ‘smash’, to use Marx’s expression, this ‘ready-made’ state machine and substitute a new one for it by merging the police force, the army and the bureaucracy with the entire armed people. Following the path indicated by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian revolution of 1905, the proletariat must organize and arm all the poor, exploited sections of the population in order that they themselves should take the organs of state power directly into their own hands, in order that they themselves should constitute these organs of state power. [47]
Again Lenin comes to the key problem of the revolution: organization.
Comrade workers! You performed miracles of proletarian heroism yesterday in overthrowing the Tsarist monarchy. In the more or less near future (perhaps even now, as these lines are being written) you will again have to perform the same miracles of heroism to overthrow the rule of the landlords and capitalists, who are waging the imperialist war. You will not achieve durable victory in this next ‘real’ revolution if you do not perform miracles of proletarian organization! [48]
The Fourth Letter deals with the question ‘How to achieve peace?’
The Tsarist government began and waged the present war as an imperialist, predatory war to rob and strangle weak nations. The government of the Guchkovs and Miliukovs, which is a landlord and capitalist government, is forced to continue, and wants to continue, this very same kind of war. To urge that government to conclude a democratic peace is like preaching virtue to brothel keepers. [49]
If political power in Russia were in the hands of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, these Soviets, and the All-Russia Soviet elected by them, could, and no doubt would, agree to carry out the peace programme which our party (The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) outlined as early as 13 October 1915.
This programme would probably be the following:
1. The All–Russia Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies (or the St Petersburg Soviet temporarily acting for it) would forthwith declare that it is not bound by any treaties concluded either by the Tsarist monarchy or by the bourgeois governments.
2. It would forthwith publish all these treaties in order to hold up to public shame the predatory aims of the Tsarist monarchy and of all the bourgeois governments without exception.
3. It would forthwith publicly call upon all the belligerent powers to conclude an immediate armistice.
4. It would immediately bring to the knowledge of all the people our, the workers’ and peasants’ peace terms:
liberation of all colonies;
liberation of all dependent, oppressed and unequal nations.
5. It would declare that it expects nothing good from the bourgeois governments and calls upon the workers of all countries to overthrow them and to transfer all political power to Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
6. It would declare that the capitalist gentry themselves can repay the billions of debts contracted by the bourgeois governments to wage this criminal, predatory war, and that the workers and peasants refuse to recognize these debts. [50]
The Fifth Letter sums up the previous letters regarding the tasks facing the Russian proletariat, and adds the following points:
the proletariat can and must, in alliance with the poorest section of the peasantry, take further steps towards control of production and distribution of the basic products, towards the introduction of ‘universal labour service’, etc ... In their entirety and in their development these steps will mark the transition to socialism, which cannot be achieved in Russia directly, at one stroke, without transitional measures, but is quite achievable and urgently necessary as a result of such transitional measures ... In this connection, the task of immediately organizing special Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in the rural districts, i.e., Soviets of agricultural wage-workers separate from the Soviets of the other peasants’ deputies, comes to the forefront with extreme urgency. [51]
What magnificent clarity – and this was written thousands of miles from the arena of struggle, and on the basis of very scanty information!
No wonder the editors of Pravda did not enthuse about the Letters from Afar. They published only the first of the five, with about one-fifth of it cut out. Among crucial phrases censored was Lenin’s accusation that those who advocated that the workers should support the new government in the interests of the struggle against Tsarist reaction were traitors to the workers, to the cause of the proletariat and to the cause of freedom. He might have applied this to Kamenev, Stalin and Muranov.
It took Lenin five weeks from the victory of the February revolution to manage to reach Russia. ‘From the moment news of the February revolution came, Ilyich burned with eagerness to go to Russia,’ Krupskaya remembers.
England and France would not for the world have allowed the Bolsheviks to pass through to Russia. This was clear to Ilyich – ‘We fear,’ he wrote to Kollontai – ‘we will not succeed in leaving this cursed Switzerland very soon.’ And taking this into consideration, he, in his letters of 16–17 March, made arrangements with Kollontai how best to re–establish contacts with Petrograd.
As there was no legal way it was necessary to travel illegally. But how? From the moment the news of the revolution came, Ilyich did not sleep, and at night all sorts of incredible plans were made. We could travel by airplane. But such things could be thought of only in the semi-delirium of the night. One had only to formulate it vocally to realize the utter impracticability of such a plan. A passport of a foreigner from a neutral country would have had to be obtained, a Swedish passport would be best as a Swede arouses less suspicion. A Swedish passport could have been obtained through the aid of the Swedish comrades, but there was the further obstacle of our not knowing the Swedish language. Perhaps only a little Swedish would do. But it would be so easy to give one’s self away. ‘You will fall asleep and see Mensheviks in your dreams and you will start swearing, and shout, scoundrels, scoundrels and give the whole conspiracy away,’ I said to him teasingly. [52]
Then Martov came up with an excellent idea for getting to Russia. He proposed a plan to obtain permits for emigrants to pass through Germany in exchange for German and Austrian prisoners of war interned in Russia. But no one wanted to go in that way, except Lenin, who grasped at the plan.
The political risk involved in being aided by Germany was very great indeed. There was a serious danger of being accused of collaboration with the enemy. It needed enormous daring and willpower to take advantage of a ‘sealed train’, but Lenin did not lack these.
On 17 March he declared that the ‘only hope to get out of here is in an exchange of Swiss émigrés for German internees’. On 18 March he announced his own readiness to act, and invited any of his followers who wished to return, to contact him [53], declaring: ‘We must go at any cost, even through hell.’ [54]
In Russia the Foreign Minister, Miliukov, announced that any Russian citizen travelling through Germany would be subject to legal action. [55] But nothing could deter Lenin from taking the only way open to him to get to revolutionary Russia. On 27 March a group of 32 Bolsheviks risked the route through Germany in a ‘sealed train’.
More than a month later Martov took his courage into his hands and followed suit. On 5 May he and a number of other Mensheviks, together with Natanson, the SR leader, Lunacharsky, Balabanova and Manuilsky, followed in Lenin’s footsteps. Altogether there were 257 passengers on this journey, including 58 Mensheviks, 48 Bundists, 34 Socialist Revolutionaries, 25 Anarcho-Communists, 18 Bolsheviks and 22 without party affiliation. On 7 June a third sealed train left Switzerland for Russia with 206 passengers, including 29 Mensheviks, 25 Bundists, 27 Socialist Revolutionaries, 26 Anarcho-Communists, 22 Bolsheviks, 19 unaffiliated, and 39 non-émigrés. [56]
Lenin dared. He dared to use the conflict between the German high command and the Anglo-French-Russian alliance in order to further the interests of the revolution. Ludendorff hoped that the revolution in Russia would lead to the disintegration of the Russian army, and thus help the military plans of hard-pressed Germany. Lenin took advantage of Ludendorff’s plans to further his own.
The historical agent who intervened to cross Lenin’s plans with those of the German high command was the ex-revolutionary Parvus. This Russian-born member of the German Social Democratic Party, who had been active in the 1905 revolution but then turned to making money on a large scale through military commercial enterprises, was now the unofficial adviser to the German Foreign Office on Russian internal affairs. So, under his influence, a few days after the February revolution, Brockdorff-Rantzau, German Ambassador in Copenhagen and a confidant of Parvus, wrote to the Foreign Office: ‘Germany must create in Russia as much chaos as possible.’ Overt intervention in the course of the revolution must be avoided, but
We should ... in my opinion, stake everything on deepening the antagonisms between the moderate and the extreme parties in secret: for we have the greatest interest in the latter winning the upper hand, because then the transformation becomes inevitable and will assume forms which must shake the existence of the Russian empire.
The favouring of the extreme element, Brockdorff-Rantzau emphasizes, is in the German interest, ‘because through it more thorough work will be undertaken and a quicker conclusion brought about.’ In about three months, ‘it can be counted on in all probability, that the disintegration will be far enough advanced to guarantee the collapse of the Russian power through a military intervention on our part’. [57]
These views coincided with those of General Ludendorff.
Militarily [General Ludendorff judges a few weeks after the revolution in Russia] the Russian revolution can only be characterized as an advantage for us. Through its effects the war situation has developed so fortunately for us that we no longer need to reckon with a Russian offensive and can already now pull forces out... If the situation in the East is eased still more, then we can disengage still more forces there ... With this addition we will even up the relation of forces in the West in our favour. So we can await the coming situation with greater confidence. [58]
The German authorities were remarkably short-sighted. As one historian describes the situation:
One instinctively puts the question in this context, whether the German agencies responsible were not aware that working with Bolshevism in a way was playing with fire. Did the belief really hold sway that imperial Germany could come to terms with the Russian social revolution without itself one day being seized by it?
The German files contain no statements about such deliberations on the part of the responsible government agencies. Also they hardly gave rise to the supposition that they are more thoroughly occupied with the theory and practice of Bolshevism there or have even grasped the true nature of Lenin and his ideas.
The main aspects of German politics result far more from the wrong calculation, from the limitations of the moment: first the war must be won or at least the peace in the East established; what comes afterwards is not now at issue. The Bolsheviks are possibly in a position quickly to bring about a separate German Russian peace and so to effectively frustrate the plans for détente in the East. [59]
Lloyd George summed up this superficial way of thinking in the following words:
It is difficult to take long views in war. Victory is the only horizon. It is a lesson to the statesmanship which takes short-sighted views of situations and seizes the chance of a temporary advantage without courting the certainty of future calamity. [60]
Two opposing historical plans crossed each other’s paths, Lenin’s and Ludendorff’s. There is no doubt who was the more farsighted of the two: or who gained the advantage. On 25 October the Bolsheviks seized power. A year later, under the influence of the Russian revolution, the German masses overthrew Ludendorff.
In using the sealed train, with all the political risks involved – the danger of being called a German agent, an accusation that played a significant role in the events of the Russian revolution – Lenin showed both his farsightedness and his political courage.
1*. See further Chap.12, The Rise of the Factory Committees
1. Kutuzov, op. cit., Vol.1, p.5.
2. Shliapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god, op. cit., Vol.2, p.175
3. P.F. Kudelli (ed.), Pervyi legalnyi Teterburgskii komitet bolshevikov v 1917 g., Moscow-Leningrad, 1927, p.16.
4. Sukhanov, op. cit., p.195.
5. ibid., pp.107-8.
6. Shliapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god., op. cit., Vol.1, pp.167-85.
7. Kudelli, op. cit., p.19.
8. Shliapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god., op. cit., Vol.1, p.240.
9. ibid., p.255.
10. ibid., p.209; Kudelli, op. cit., p.11.
11. KPSS v borbe za pobedu sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v period dvoevlastii 27 fevralia - 4 iulia 1917 g. Sbornik dokumentov, Moscow 1957, p.171.
12. ibid., p.172.
13. Kudelli, op. cit., pp.19-20.
14. ibid., p.27.
15. D.A. Longley, The Divisions in the Bolshevik Party in March 1917, Soviet Studies, July 1972.
16. Sidorov, op. cit., Vol.1, pp.3-4.
17. Kudelli, op. cit., p.11.
18. Sidorov, op. cit., Vol.1, p.106; L.Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification, New York 1937, pp.240-241.
19. Kudelli, op. cit., p.24-26.
20. Sukhanov, op. cit., p.227.
21. Pravda, 15 March. B&K, Vol.2, p.868.
22. Shliapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god., op. cit., Vol.2, p.185.
23. Sidorov, op. cit., Vol.1, p.111.
24. Kudelli, op. cit., pp.49-52.
25. Sidorov, op. cit., Vol.1, p.520.
26. ibid., p.528.
27. ibid., p.63.
28. ibid., p.463.
29. ibid., p.163.
30. ibid., p.532.
31. R.G. Suny, The Baku Commune, 1917-1918, Princeton 1972, pp.72-75.
32. For a long time the only full report of this conference was in the minutes published by Trotsky as an appendix to his book, The Stalin School of Falsification. After the death of Stalin these were published in Russia, in Voprosy istorii KPSS, 1962, No.5, pp.106-25; No.6, pp.130-152. These correspond exactly, except that:
(1) they contain material not in Trotsky's work, and
(2) they omit the last day, when Lenin presented the April Theses to the conference.
33. ibid.
34. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, op. cit., p.316.
35. Lenin, Works, Vol.21, p.435.
36. ibid., p.403.
37. ibid., p.379.
38. ibid., p.380.
39. ibid., p.436.
40. ibid., Vol.35, pp.309-310.
41. ibid., p.313.
42. ibid., Vol.23, pp.304-305.
43. ibid., p.306-307.
44. ibid., p.307.
45. ibid., p.308.
46. ibid., p.310.
47. ibid., p.325-326.
48. ibid., p.323.
49. ibid., p.334.
50. ibid., pp.337-338.
51. ibid., pp.340-341.
52. Krupskaya, op. cit., pp.287-288.
53. Leninski Sbornik, Vol.2, pp.376-377.
54. W. Hahlweg, Lenins Rückkehr nach Russland 1917, Leiden, 1957, p.13.
55. ibid., p.76-77.
56. Senn, op. cit., p.231.
57. Quoted in Hahlweg, op. cit., pp.11-12.
58. ibid., p.11.
59. ibid., p.25.
60. D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, London, 1936, Vol.5, p.2530.
Last updated on 25.10.2007