by Lars T. Lih
Lenin’s cramped office in London, 1902–3, loaned to him by the Twentieth Century Press in order to edit issues of Iskra. The office is unchanged at 37 Clerkenwell Green, a building that today also houses the Marx Memorial Library.
Nothing symbolized the German SPD more than the multitude of newspapers that helped propagate its message. By the outbreak of war in 1914 the German party owned more than eighty newspapers. But publishing an illegal newspaper in Russia presented a formidable, almost insuperable obstacle for local organizations. Rabochaia mysl (Worker Thought) in Petersburg and Rabochaia gazeta (Worker News) in Saratov were admirable efforts, but they were of poor technical quality, appeared irregularly and were subject to police repression. Lenin was therefore not the only one calling for a nationwide party newspaper that would point to ‘the common reasons for the oppression of the workers, to the political system and the necessity of struggle against it’.34
Iskra also had a specific role to play in Lenin’s scheme to create a national party structure. The challenge that faced the new konspiratsiia underground was different in essence from the one that had faced the old-style conspiratorial underground. In the old underground a central group strove to create local offshoots, whereas in the Social Democratic underground isolated local groups were trying to find their way to achieve central coordination. In exile Lenin had worked out an ingenious scheme for using a national underground newspaper such as Iskra to meet this challenge. Iskra could not be the official party newspaper, not yet anyway, because there existed no official party institutions of any kind. To erect a national party authority you needed relatively homogeneous local committees – but to obtain homogeneous committees, you needed a common party authority. How to escape from this vicious circle? Here’s how: begin with the creation of an all-Russian political news paper, published abroad, since the difficulty and risks of publishing it in Russia were too great. At first this newspaper would admittedly be the product of a self-appointed and unauthorized group but it would have the undeniable virtue of actually existing, of actually coming out regularly, many times a year, with at least adequate technical quality.
This newspaper would then make an appeal to the local committees in Russia to become integral partners in its creation (through providing factual material and reports) and distribution. Thus, for the first time, the committees would be working together on a national project. The organization needed to transport the news papers would be the embryo of a national organization of professional revolutionaries that linked centre and localities. Furthermore, this newspaper would create programmatic unity by preaching a consistent line to which the various committees could adhere. The politically oriented agitation of the newspaper would also strengthen nationwide unity, since political issues tended more than economic grievances to be common, national ones. If all went well, the virtual authority claimed by the newspaper would create enough practical and programmatic unity among the scattered local committees that their representatives could come together and act effectively to create an actual authority. The newspaper, hitherto a private affair, could then become the sanctioned, legitimate voice of a genuinely functioning set of central institutions.
Such was Lenin’s ambitious plan. In the meantime Iskra was already helping to make Social Democracy a political factor on the national scale simply by propagating a unified, all-Russian message. Iskra portrayed the situation in Russia as seen through the prism of Lenin’s heroic scenario. The autocracy was on the verge of collapse. All sections of society were thoroughly disgusted with the clumsy monster. The workers, the peasants, the entrepreneurs, the nationalities, even many landowners – all had turned against the tsar. Discontent was turning into protest and protest into action, and the main impulse for the growing intensity of the revolutionary crisis was the mass actions of the workers. Their heroic protest, not just against capitalists but directly against tsarist despotism, was galvanizing the rest of society into a reali zation that the autocracy could be overthrown. And once this realization took hold, the autocracy’s days were numbered.
The same heroic picture of Russia in crisis permeates the pages of What Is to Be Done? (1902), later described by Lenin as a compendium of the Iskra outlook. The book is filled with nuts-and-bolts organizational strategies but what gives life to these prosaic arguments is the poetry of the exalted mission imposed by history on the Russian konspiratsiia underground. What Is to Be Done? portrays the Russian workers as so eager to fight that they continually outstrip the capacity of the Social Democrats to provide the requisite knowledge and organization. The workers continually push forth leaders from their own ranks – leaders who are able to inspire their fellows to undertake the noble task of freeing Russia from shameful despotism. As a result the workers as a class are on the move and they are galvanizing all of Russian society.
Lenin’s own inspiration in What Is to Be Done? is the mighty German Social Democratic party, whose example is invoked much more often and more concretely than is the example of the earlier Russian conspiratorial underground. Lenin assured his readers that the empirically worked-out application of the SPD model to Russian conditions – the threads strategy – was perfectly workable, if the praktiki would only hone their own professional skills. All that was necessary was to combine tight konspiratsiia at one level with a looser and more open type of organization at levels closer to the workers. Both ends of the threads thrown out by the underground would be protected. Secrecy would insulate the local party institutions from the police, while the supportive worker milieu would insulate activists directly in contact with workers.
One of the most famous quotes from What Is to Be Done? is the cry: ‘give us an organization of revolutionaries – and we will turn Russia around!’ This is often taken as a clarion call for a conspiratorial underground: ‘Forget about the unreliable workers and concentrate on conspirators recruited from the intelligentsia.’ But when Lenin’s statement is read in its immediate context it reveals itself as one more manifestation of Lenin’s unrepentant confidence in his heroic scenario. Lenin’s actual argument is: even back in 1895 the workers were so militant that the weak link in the chain was we ourselves, the Social Democrats. We failed in our job of providing the organization needed to make worker protest effective. How much more true today, when everybody can see the workers are on the move against tsarist absolutism! No wonder Lenin informed the sceptics: ‘You brag about your practicality and you don’t see (a fact known to any Russian praktik) what miracles for the revolutionary cause can be brought about not only by a [local Social Democratic] circle but by a lone individual.’35
What Is to Be Done? focuses on the underground’s role in the epic national struggle against the tsar that Lenin saw in his mind’s eye. But What Is to Be Done? is only one part of Lenin’s output during his years with Iskra (1900–1903). He also wrote scores of articles for Iskra and other publications, plus a seventy-page pamphlet entitled To the Village Poor (An explanation for the peasants of what the Social Democrats want). Because this overlooked pamphlet is one of the few pieces Lenin wrote exclusively for a non-party audience, it can be recommended as a very accessible presentation of Lenin’s heroic scenario. If To the Village Poor were as well-known as What Is to Be Done? the heart of Lenin’s vision would be much better understood than it is.
The writings of the Iskra period covered a wide range of topics, but all of them were informed by the fiery energy of Lenin’s commitment to his ‘other way’. Among the subjects treated are:
The overall crisis facing tsarism and its ineffective attempts to stave off its swiftly approaching doom.
Heroic worker protest and its effect on the rest of Russian society.
The peasantry as an integral part of the anti-tsarist coalition.
The nationalism of ethnic minorities, to be encouraged as a force subverting tsarism but discouraged as a centrifugal force within the party.
Individual terrorism as an outmoded and harmful revolutionary expedient.
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p; The deficiencies of the liberals and the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), the emerging rivals to Social Democracy for leadership of the anti-tsarist revolution.
As we saw earlier, Iskra was also meant to be a springboard toward achieving ideological and organizational unity among the scattered committees. This part of Lenin’s plan was also put into practice, but the reality was a lot messier than his original picture. True, more and more committees officially endorsed Iskra as their spokesman. But this bandwagon effect was achieved at the cost of hurtful internal struggles, sharp practices on all sides and local reorganizations that, although intended to help put workers onto local committees, were carried out in such a way that many workers felt seriously aggrieved.
In April 1903, Lenin and Krupskaya moved rather reluctantly from London to Geneva, in deference to the wish of the other Iskra editors to be together in one city. By this time enough momentum had been created to organize an acceptably representative Second Congress, and RSDWP members met abroad in August 1903. The Congress opened in Brussels but was then forced by pressure from the Belgian police to move to London. As Social Democrats often said to console themselves during the bitterness of the ensuing factional struggle, the Second Congress did have some lasting positive achievements. Not only were central party institutions finally created, but a consensus on basic programmatic and tactical perspectives was laid down. Social Democracy had become and remained a coherent all-Russian presence.
But Lenin’s plan hit a completely unexpected snag at the very moment of its fulfilment. The Iskra editorial board fell apart in ugly mutual recriminations. The divisive issues were dense and tangled, combining personal animosities, organizational jockeying for position and genuine difference in revolutionary tactics. These deeper differences only gradually rose to the surface, and resulted in the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks that dominated Social Democratic politics for the next decade. At the Second Congress in August 1903 Lenin had been the dominant party leader. But by the end of the year he was completely isolated – forced to leave the Iskra editorial board and on very bad terms with all his former colleagues (see chapter Three). For a while it looked like Lenin’s first decade as a party leader might be his last.
According to the banner sentence of 1894 the opening act of Lenin’s world-historical drama would see the Russian ‘purposive worker’ imbued with the ‘idea of the historical role of the Russian worker’, namely, to act as leader of the narod. Furthermore, ‘durable organisations [would be] created among the workers that transform the present uncoordinated economic war of the workers into a purposive class struggle’. Something like this actually happened. The Russian version of Kautsky’s canonical merger of socialism and the worker movement was the konspiratsiia underground, that unique and underappreciated historical creation of a whole generation of praktiki. Lenin’s individual role in this creation was, first, his summation of the logic of the threads strategy; second, his eloquent defence of the optimistic assumptions needed to sustain faith in the viability of a truly Social Democratic underground; and third, his ingenious plan for creating national party structures. As always a cold-eyed look at reality will reveal the yawning gap between the actual konspiratsiia underground and its heroic self-inscription into the narrative of Lenin’s banner sentence. Certainly for Lenin himself his first decade ended in bitterness and seeming isolation. Yet his dream, far-fetched as it may have been, was a historical reality because people believed in it.
In a climactic passage from What Is to Be Done? Lenin evoked his heroic ‘other way’ as he outlined his ambitious project of using the newfangled methods of European Social Democracy in order to realize the dreams of Russian revolutionaries such as his brother Alexander. Lenin uses Alexander Zheliabov, a leader of the Narodnaya volya group that assassinated the tsar in 1881, to symbolize the Russian revolutionary tradition; he uses August Bebel, a worker who became the top leader of the German SPD, to sym bolize Social Democracy:
If we genuinely succeed in getting all or a significant majority of local committees, local groups and circles actively to take up the common work, we would in short order be able to have a weekly newspaper, regularly distributed in tens of thousands of copies throughout Russia. This newspaper would be a small part of a huge bellows that blows up each flame of class struggle and popular indignation into a common fire. Around this task – in and of itself a very small and even innocent one but one that is a regular and, in the full meaning of the word, a common task – an army of experienced fighters would systematically be recruited and trained. Among the ladders and scaffolding of this common organizational construction would soon rise up Social Democratic Zheliabovs from among our revolutionaries, Russian Bebels from our workers, who would be pushed forward and then take their place at the head of a mobilized army and would raise up the whole narod to settle accounts with the shame and curse of Russia.
That is what we must dream about!36
3. A People’s Revolution
‘During the whirlwind [of the 1905 revolution], the proletarian, the railwayman, the peasant, the mutinous soldier, have driven all Russia forward with the speed of a locomotive.’
Lenin, 1906
Bolshevism, as a distinct current in Russian Social Democracy, arose in the years 1904–14. During those years Bolshevism was a Russian answer to Russian problems. Later, when Bolshevism acquired a wider meaning, Lenin coined the term ‘Old Bolshevism’ as a label for the earlier period. ‘Old Bolshevism’ is a useful term that we will employ in later chapters. But for now Old Bolshevism is the only Bolshevism there is, so we shall dispense with the qualifying adjective.
In Lenin’s banner sentence of 1894 the crucial central episode of the heroic scenario is described in the following words: ‘the Russian WORKER, elevated to the head of all democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism’. These few words contain the essence of Bolshevism during its first decade, and we shall spend this chapter unpacking their meaning. We must first ask: what is the role of this episode in the overall heroic scenario? The answer: to open up the road to socialist revolution by removing the obstacle of tsarist absolutism. The more thoroughly the revolution did its job, the swifter would be the journey to the final goal. Therefore, the party’s goal should be revolution ‘to the end’ (do kontsa), that is, ‘to the absolute destruction of monarchical despotism’ and its replacement by a democratic republic.1
‘Russian People in the Grip of Autocracy’, from M. J. Olgin’s The Soul of the Russian Revolution (1917).
According to the logic of Lenin’s heroic scenario, the only way to successfully carry out the democratic revolution ‘to the end’ is for the urban proletariat to be the head, the leader, the vozhd of all the ‘democratic elements’, that is, all the social groups with a stake in attaining full political freedom. The Russian revolution could only succeed as a narodnaia revoliutsiia, a people’s revolution. In order for the proletariat to play its destined leadership role it had to spread its message far and wide. And the only way to do that was through the institutions of the konspiratsiia underground. The Russian revolution could only succeed if these channels were kept open.
During the years 1905–7 Russia underwent a profound revolution and the tsar was forced to grant a significant measure of political freedom. When Lenin viewed these events through the lens of his heroic scenario he arrived at the following conclusions: The 1905 revolution was a vast, mighty people’s revolution. Unfortunately, the revolution was not able to go all the way ‘to the end’ by replacing tsarism with a democratic republic. It nevertheless achieved great things and represented a tremendous vindication of Social Democratic expectations. The decade-long consciousness-raising activity of the underground party paid off because the proletariat did indeed act as leader of the narod.
Lenin’s advice for the future was based on this reading of the events of 1905. The Russian Social Democrats needed to prepare for a decisive repetition of the 1905 revolution – one which would carry out the revolution to the
end by creating a provisional government based on the workers and peasants. Only a government based on these classes (‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants’) would be able to install a democratic republic and beat back the counterrevolution with the necessary ruthlessness. The best way to prepare for this second people’s revolution was to remain loyal to the strategy that made the first one possible: the leadership role of the urban workers (‘hegemony of the proletariat’) and an energetic commitment to spread the socialist good news despite government repression.
The official slogans of Bolshevism used learned foreign-sounding phrases such as ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ and ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants’. But the inner meaning of these phrases is profoundly Russian and arises from an interpretation of the revolutions of 1905–7 in terms of Lenin’s heroic scenario. Even Bolsheviks who otherwise were opponents of Lenin subscribed to this core platform.
Lenin’s political life during the whole decade was therefore a fight for the meaning of the revolution of 1905–7. A review of the events of these tumultuous years is essential background for Lenin’s personal biography.
The Revolution of 1905–7
The immediate background to the revolution was the shock administered to Russian society by international competition at its most unforgiving. War with Japan began with a Japanese attack on Russian forces on 8 February 1904. Historians have recently suggested that this overlooked conflict should really be called World War Zero, the first of the global conflicts that defined the twentieth century.2 As Russia’s military lurched from disaster to disaster, Russian society – never terribly enthusiastic about the war to begin with – moved toward revolutionary disaffection.
Against the background of growing military defeat the powerful tsarist government began to look shaky and unsure. On 28 July 1904 the widely hated Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve was assassinated by Socialist Revolutionary terrorists. The government responded, not in its usual manner of clamping down, but by offering concessions to public opinion. Liberal forces in elite society took advantage of the new atmosphere by unleashing a ‘banquet campaign’ in autumn 1904 which featured respectable pillars of society offering toasts that turned into subversive speeches.