Lenin

by Lars T. Lih

  Only in an unpublished draft written on 8 April 1917 (Lenin left for Russia on 9 April) do we find for the first time the idea of ‘steps toward socialism’ in Russia itself. The metaphor of ‘steps toward socialism’ was designedly tentative. Neither at this time nor later did Lenin argue that Russia could achieve full socialism without European revolution. Nevertheless, ‘steps toward socialism’ represents something new in his outlook. For the first time Lenin suggests that Russia can at least start moving toward socialism without waiting for European revolution. And since we are familiar with Lenin’s lifelong heroic scenario, we are not surprised to find that Lenin tightly links the idea of ‘steps toward socialism’ in Russia with proletarian leadership, not of the peasantry as a whole, but of the ‘poorest peasantry’ who were themselves exploited by capitalism.24 As we shall see, the link between ‘steps toward socialism’ and class conflict within the peasantry was crucial to Lenin’s whole view of the Russian revolution.

  For the time being, ‘steps toward socialism’ was just a minor note in Lenin’s rhetoric. The situation that greeted Lenin when he arrived in revolutionary Petrograd was still extremely fluid. Immediately after the abdication of the tsar on 2 March, two power centres had emerged in the nation’s capital: the Petrograd Soviet, created from below by workers and soldiers inspired by memories of 1905, and the Provisional Government, created by members of the tsarist Duma in an effort to provide elite continuity. The Proviional Government may have looked solid and imposing, but even at the beginning of the revolution it was something of a phantom, with less real power and less legitimacy than the Petro grad Soviet. In fact the Provisional Government existed only at the sufferance of the Soviet, whose leadership did not want to take on the mantle of official government authority themselves. The Soviet therefore gave support to the Provisional Government postolku-poskolku – ‘insofar as’ – the Provisional Government carried out the policies of the Soviet.

  Meanwhile the situation in the country was rapidly disintegrating under the pressure of a series of interlocking crises, of which the continuing war by Russia against Germany and Austria constituted the most inexorable. The Provisional Government supported the war effort due to traditional great-power concerns. The Soviet made all sorts of diplomatic efforts to achieve a democratic peace, but in the meantime it felt that Russia had to conduct ‘revolutionary defence’ – a defence not of tsarism, but of free Russia. But the country was simply incapable of conducting an unpopular and burden some war, and a renewed military offensive in June ended in disaster.

  The immediate trigger of the February revolution that overthrew the tsar was food-supply difficulties and the unbearably high cost of living, and the revolution only accelerated the spiralling economic breakdown. Tied to the crisis of the economy was the peasant demand for land. The Provisional Government insisted that such a fundamental question as land relations had to be settled by a Constitutional Assembly, but its insistence was caused less by democratic scruples than by fear of taking some very tough decisions with implications for the fundamental interests of the entire elite. No wonder that the eight-month history of the Provisional Government is one of desperate improvisation, as one hastily assembled coalition collapsed and gave way to the next. The only constant feature of these cabinets was the presence of Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer and Duma member with ties to the peasant parties. Kerensky more or less inserted himself into the very first cabinet as the representative of Soviet democracy, and gradually became almost the entire government himself. Faced with an impossible task, Kerensky made a valiant effort by means of charisma and bluster to keep Russia from imploding under the weight of its many contradictions. Coalition after coalition took over the reins of government and was promptly discredited by the ongoing war, by the accelerating economic and social collapse, by the postponement of agrarian reform.

  The disenchantment of the masses with coalition government made the Bolshevik scenario seem like a plausible response to Russia’s interlocking crises. Ultimately the success of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1917 was based on the success of the message they sent to the workers, soldiers and peasants. This message can be conveyed in three words and a punctuation mark: ‘Take the power!’ ‘Power’ here translates vlast, a word that could also be translated as ‘sovereign authority’, the ultimate source of legitimacy and decision-making. Everybody in Russia realized that the key question that confronted the country after the abdication of the tsar was the identity of the vlast. Everybody realized that only a tverdaia vlast, a strong and tough-minded sovereign authority, could effectively respond to the multiple crises buffeting Russian society.

  The Bolsheviks insisted that ‘the nature of the class that holds the vlast decides everything’ – and they meant everything.25 They told the Russian narod that as long as the vlast was controlled by their class enemies – the landowner, the capitalist, the ‘bourgeois’ in whatever form – the imperialist war would continue, the economic collapse would continue, the postponement of radical land reform would continue. Troubles would cease only when the workers as a class took the power and fulfilled their historical mission of leading the narod to revolutionary victory.

  Lenin argued that a proletarian vlast was necessary for a strong and effective state. According to a common misunderstanding of Lenin’s message in 1917, however, Lenin advanced the semi-anarchist slogan of ‘smash the state!’ This distortion of Lenin’s message is taken from State and Revolution, Lenin’s most famous book from 1917. This production is based on reading done in early 1917 before the outbreak of revolution in Russia and published in 1918 and it strikingly lacks the tang of Russia during the year of revolution. It is pitched at an abstract level of socialist revolution in general and consists mainly of angry polemics about the meaning of various passages from Marx and Engels. The phrase ‘smash the state’ is shorthand for the following slogan: ‘Smash the bourgeois state and replace it with a strong and effective proletarian state.’ The bourgeois state apparatus is smashed when (a) it cannot be used to repress the revolution and (b) it is thoroughly democratized. The proletarian state is not smashed – rather, it gradually dies out as society is transformed.

  Lenin wanted to smash the bourgeois state apparatus, but he had a very different view of the bourgeois economic apparatus. This apparatus, perfected and given vast powers by the wartime state, must be carefully preserved and used as a ready-made tool by the revolutionary class. A perfect symbol for the imperialist economic apparatus was Germany’s Waffen-und Munitionsbeschaffungsamt (Weapons and Ammunition Supply Department), or WUMBA for short. Lenin’s vision of socialist revolution can be paraphrased as ‘WUMBA for the people’. As he wrote in December 1916:

  The war has proved with special clarity and also in practical terms the truth that, before the war, was repeated by all the vozhdi of socialism that have now gone over to the bourgeoisie: contemporary capitalist society, especially in the advanced countries, has fully matured for the transition to socialism.

  If, for instance, Germany can direct the economic life of 66 million people from a single centre, and strain the energies of the narod to wage a predatory war in the interests of 100 or 200 financial magnates or aristocrats, the monarchy, etc., then the same can be done, in the interests of nine-tenths of the population, by the non-propertied masses, if their struggle is directed by the purposive workers, liberated from social-imperialist and social-pacifist influence… Expropriate the banks and, relying on the masses, carry out in their interests the very same thing WUMBA is carrying out in Germany!26

  Lenin’s response to the crises of 1917 is best expressed, not by State and Revolution, but by two pamphlets from autumn 1917, one on the economic crisis (The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Deal with It) and the other on the political crisis (Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?).27 Here Lenin sets out at length the programme I have summarized as ‘Take the power!’ and ‘WUMBA for the people’. These slogans were intertwined. A key theme in Lenin’s rhetoric is emblazoned in a
chapter title from one of Lenin’s pamphlets: ‘Control Measures Are Known to All and Easy to Take’.28 Land to the peasant, extensive economic regulation, peace diplomacy – these policies were all supported by the political rivals of the Bolsheviks, at least officially. And so, Lenin insisted, the only reason (and Lenin literally meant only) that these policies were not carried out was the inherent class nature of the bourgeois vlast.

  Lenin’s pamphlets from autumn 1917 also contain the famous and revealing image of the cook administering the state. The Russian word used by Lenin – kukarkha, a female cook – makes clear that he is alluding to the notorious circular of the tsarist education official cited in chapter One that discouraged the education of the children of cooks and similar persons:

  We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled workman or a kukharka is not capable of stepping immediately into the administration of the state. In this we agree with the [liberal] Kadets, with Breshkovskaya, and with Tsereteli [leading figures in the SR and Menshevik parties respectively]. But we are different from these citizens in that we demand an immediate break with the prejudice that that only the rich, or chinovniki [bureaucrats] from rich families, are in a position to administer the state, and to carry out the ordinary, day-to-day work of administration.29

  Lenin is here truly Ilich, that is, son of Ilya, the educational reformer who fought within the tsarist system to make schools as widely available as possible.

  Thus Lenin’s heroic scenario gave the Bolsheviks a programme that struck many as a plausible response to the accelerating crisis – and struck others as unmitigated demagoguery. The resulting polarization first came to a head in July 1917, when a popular demonstration against the Provisional Government almost turned into an attempted coup d’état. Lenin did not support any attempt at a coup at this time because he felt that the project of a government based on the soviets did not yet have strong majority support. Nevertheless, the Bolshevik party was implicated and orders were issued for the arrest of Lenin, Zinoviev, Trotsky (who had now joined the Bolshevik party) and other leaders. Lenin and Zinoviev evaded arrest and holed up in a hut near Lake Razliv in Finland, not too far from Petrograd (Krupskaya remained in Petrograd). Lenin had once more returned to the underground.

  Lenin’s hideout near Lake Razliv, Finland, August 1917.

  The real turning point came in August 1917. The forces of order – the army, the landowners, the bureaucracy and the businessmen – did not fail to perceive the phantom status of the Provisional Government and began to pin their hopes on the new head of the army, Lavr Kornilov. Kornilov’s confused attempt at a coup was beaten back by the combined efforts of the socialist parties, but the Bolsheviks were the ones who reaped the political credit.

  Understandably so – the socialist moderates had wagered on a strategy of coalitions uniting socialists and non-socialists, a strategy widely perceived as bankrupt. The masses began to agree with the Bolsheviks: a coalition vlast was a bourgeois vlast, and the bourgeois vlast was leading the country to ruin.

  The accelerating polarization of Russian society confirmed what can be termed the ili-ili (either-or) strategy of the Bolsheviks. As Stalin wrote in August 1917:

  Either, or!

  Either with the landlords and capitalists, and then the complete triumph of the counterrevolution.

  Or with the proletariat and the poor peasantry, and then the complete triumph of the revolution.

  The policy of conciliation and coalition is doomed to failure.30

  The moderate socialists followed the contrasting logic of ni-ni: neither the counterrevolutionary forces of the right nor the extremist forces on the left – neither Kornilov nor Lenin – but rather a broad coalition of constructive forces. The concrete makeup of the various coalitions shifted over the year, but they were always based on ni-ni logic. But the moderate socialists who placed their political wager on ni-ni coalitions saw their original prestige dissolve and their reputations destroyed.

  Starting in September, Lenin began to bombard his fellow Bolsheviks with letters, articles, whatever it took, in order to convince them that the time for an uprising had come and could not be delayed. The stars were now all in alignment: coalition-mongering was completely discredited, the Bolsheviks had substantial majorities in the most important soviets, the peasants were taking matters into their own hands, a revolutionary situation was brewing in other countries at war. Any delay would mean a disastrous acceleration of economic and military collapse.

  At a small meeting of Bolshevik leaders on 10 October Lenin got his way on the main point: the course was set for a seizure of power. Lenin wanted an immediate armed uprising but his party comrades steered a more prudent course. The Second Congress of Soviets, a gathering of representatives from local soviets throughout the country, was due to meet in a couple of weeks, and the Bolsheviks could connect the insurrection to the opening of the Second Congress. The Petrograd Soviet – now with a Bolshevik majority and chaired by Lev Trotsky – organized a Military Revolutionary Committee. This committee, created openly and legally, became the organ of insurrection and on the night of 24 October it deposed the Provisional Government by force. The Second Congress then accepted the greatness thrust on them by the Bolsheviks and announced the formation of a new vlast, one based directly on the soviets. On 25 October, Lenin emerged from hiding to announce that ‘the oppressed masses will themselves create a vlast’, one in which ‘the bourgeoisie will have no share whatsoever’.31 The next day, he became Chairman of an all-Bolshevik Council of People’s Commissars.

  In the chaotic days that followed, the new Bolshevik state began to emerge. Lenin desired and expected a coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries as the representative of the peasants in ‘the revolutionary dictatorship of the workers and peasants’. Otherwise, he was dead set against anything that smelled of coalition or ‘conciliation’. Through much shuffling and hard-nosed negotiation at the top Lenin got his way, mainly because the masses shared his disgust with coalition.

  Although the Bolsheviks were committed to holding elections for a Constituent Assembly, they accorded no legitimacy to anything but a vlast based directly on the soviets. When the Constituent Assembly met in Petrograd on 5 January 1918 it was met with the demand that it recognize the sovereign authority of the soviets (and therefore the Bolshevik government). When the assembly refused, it was forcibly disbanded. The spirit of ili-ili, of polarization and civil war, had triumphed.

  Petrograd to Moscow

  On 12 March 1918 Lenin and Krupskaya again pulled up roots and boarded another train, this time accompanied by the entire Bolshevik government. For reasons of military security, Moscow was deemed a safer home for the new Soviet state than Petrograd. Lenin and Krupskaya were given rather spartan rooms in the Kremlin, adjoining the meeting rooms for the new government. This was the last move for Lenin. He never again left Moscow except to relax in nearby dachas (summer cottages).

  Three train rides, three Lenins: in 1914 an obscure émigré seeking safe haven in wartime Europe, in 1917 a revolutionary politician emerging from the underground, in 1918 a grimly determined statesman travelling with the government of all the Russias.

  The Bolshevik revolution in October 1917 had been a huge gamble, and even survival of the new ‘proletarian vlast’ was doubtful for most of the year 1918. Yet by the end of that year and for the first half of 1919 Lenin claimed that ‘things have turned out just as we said they would’. For a brief period he was a truly happy man, convinced that his heroic scenario was rapidly coming true on a global scale.

  Before arriving at this point, however, Lenin had to face what seemed like an endless succession of crises. In 3 March 1918 a humiliating peace treaty was signed with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. Lenin had to use all his influence to compel the reluctant Bolsheviks to sign. On 6 July the Left SRS staged their own uprising in protest against the foreign and domestic policies of their coalition partners. The crushing of the uprising by the Bolsheviks was accompanied by an end t
o meaningful electoral competition in local and central soviets. In the summer civil war and intervention intensified. On 30 August Lenin was shot and severely wounded by an SR terrorist. In response the Bolsheviks unleashed what they termed a Red Terror against the ‘class enemy’.32

  Lev Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk in 1918, where he led the delegation that negotiated the painful peace treaty with Germany.

  Out of this kaleidoscope of crises we shall take one Lenin document and try to see it in its full historical context. This particular document was only released after the fall of the Soviet Union and has since become rather notorious – indeed, it is often used as a sort of shorthand for the essential meaning of Lenin’s career. It is a telegram sent on 11 August 1918 to Bolsheviks in Penza, a province about 700 kilometres southeast of Moscow in the Volga region. Lenin demands energetic repression of peasant revolts that he blamed on kulaks (rich peasants):

  October 1918: Lenin shows the world he has recovered from his wounds by talking with his friend and secretary, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich.

  To Comrades Kuraev, Bosh, Minkin and other Penza communists:

  Comrades! The uprising in five counties by the kulaks must lead to

  merciless suppression. This is demanded by the interest of the whole revolution, for there is now everywhere ‘the last decisive battle’ with kulakdom. An example needs to be set.

  1. Hang (it must be hanging, so that the narod sees) no fewer than one hundred notorious kulaks, rich people, bloodsuckers.