Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (13 page)

A second self-inflicted blow came in the form of police socialism. This evolved from an idea of a Moscow police official named Zubatov. Rather than allow workers to be organized illegally by left-wing sympathizers, why not have loyalist leaders who would encourage them to support the autocracy? Wherever they were set up Zubatov unions became a cover for radicals and blew up in the face of their sponsors. The Bloody Sunday demonstration was organized by such a union, the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers, and led by a priest, Father Gapon. It was not the massive demonstration which provoked revolution. There was a third, fatal, self-inflicted blow. Local security officials gave a lunatic order to fire on the demonstrators and, even more ludicrously, to fire on disorganized bystanders later in the day. It was tsarist credibility which was shot to ribbons, though not all parts of Russian society were equally alienated. A revolutionary process had been started.

As 1905 progressed workers, peasants, professors, industrialists, financiers, some landowners and nationalists joined in for a variety of reasons. Even military units like the famous battleship
Potemkin
mutinied. Autocracy was under assault from all quarters and it only escaped by the skin of its teeth. The most acute phase of the crisis came in October. It was precipitated by a general strike which spread to many cities and a railway strike which shut down large parts of the country. For once, the path of concession was chosen to resolve the crisis but only because everyone involved except Nicholas believed a repressive response would only lead to another Bloody Sunday debacle and perhaps a troop mutiny which might bring down the tsar and even the dynasty.

Against his instincts and principles Tsar Nicholas was forced by his court camarilla to sign a manifesto apparently promising democratic reforms. In early 1906 a parliament, known as the Duma, was set up. It supported radicals and was disbanded. The same happened to the Second Duma though after its disbandment in June 1907 the laws were changed by the Prime Minister, Peter Stolypin, to limit the vote essentially to the propertied classes. Bit by bit the apparent concessions of the October Manifesto were shown to be misleading. The autocracy retracted as many of its concessions as it could. However, the Manifesto had done its work. It split the opposition. Large parts of the propertied elite went back to support the tsar’s initiative since it appeared to give them what they wanted – namely a say in how the country was governed. The eruption of revolution had caused them to lose confidence in the tsar and they believed they would be better able to control their own fate themselves. In the meantime, however, the autocracy was climbing back into the saddle.

An important sign of the success of the manoeuvre was the fact that in the next major crisis, the Moscow uprising of December, the government was able to use guards troops to shell the rebel districts and restore order. Throughout 1906 and into 1907 troops fought strikers in cities and peasant rebels in villages. Thousands died on both sides but there was no doubt by then that the government would prevail and by early 1907 the revolution had failed. Tsarism was unable to retract all its concessions but it did retain the upper hand in government.
³

Stuck in Geneva and other centres of emigration, Lenin and the rest of the Russian radicals abroad agonized over events which were only dimly and belatedly reported. They had not foreseen the dramatic turn the revolution took in January because their own sources of information were intermittent and partial and the major west European press was largely imperceptive and not very interested up to that point. From January onward, however, the Russian revolution was the great cause of democrats, liberals and socialists throughout the continent. Autocracy, the cossack, the knout (a Russian whip) and the ‘Stolypin necktie’ (the hangman’s noose) were universally hated symbols of the anachronism that was Russian government. This opened up many platforms in the west to Russian speakers and helped raise funds for political and humanitarian causes. None the less, many of the radicals, particularly the younger ones, wanted to be closer to the action. Trotsky returned in February. After the October Manifesto broader circles deemed it safe to make a cautious return. Plekhanov and the older generation, by and large, did not join them, in Plekhanov’s case because of health reasons.

For Lenin, in particular, 1905 was a complicated year. Faction fighting did not diminish. If anything, the raised stakes made it yet more bitter. Then there was frustration, something that, as we know, Lenin supported rather badly. There was the frustration of not knowing exactly what was going on and the even greater frustration of not being able to exert influence on events. At the same time, of course, there was also hope and, from time to time, elation. The long-awaited revolution was on the move. At last, theory could be put into practice and practice could confirm old theories or stimulate new ones.

THE REVOLUTION SEEN FROM GENEVA – 1905

For Lenin, the new situation did not so much stimulate new initiatives, though there were some, as reinforce the importance of the themes he was already dealing with. His major concerns – breaking with the circle mentality and developing a proper Social Democratic party and analysing what form a revolution could take in Russia’s peculiar conditions – became increasingly important and dominate his writings and actions in the first phase of the revolution. Unlike 1917, when the abdication occurred at the beginning of the revolution and conditions of relative freedom emerged rapidly, in 1905 it was only after the October Manifesto that Lenin felt the situation had changed sufficiently for him to venture back to Russia. For the first ten months of 1905 Lenin remained in western Europe. Despite a growing number of articles analysing events in Russia the old themes of the Party dispute continued to be uppermost in Lenin’s thoughts.

Lenin and the Party in 1905

A central focus of the dispute, and the centrepiece of Lenin’s strategy for ending it, was the idea of convening a new Party Congress to thrash the issues out. Although his detractors would claim he was being insincere, Lenin appealed time and time again for a Third Congress to represent the whole Party. However, the minority had adopted boycott tactics towards Party bodies on and off since 1903 and continued to do so with respect to the proposed congress. In the last issue of
Vpered
to appear before Lenin’s departure from Geneva for the congress in London he published his ‘Open Letter’ to Plekhanov [CW 8 335
–
43] imploring him one more time to submit ‘the entire conflict to the judgment of the Party itself’. [CW 8 343] Even though this appeal was rhetorical and the earlier ones may have been bluff, they were a bluff that should have been called. Through them, Lenin was able to command at least a substantial proportion of the moral high ground in the eyes of Party members. They, too, were largely baffled by the vehemence and obstinacy of the leadership factions particularly in the eye of an increasing revolutionary storm.

It was thus not entirely Lenin’s fault that when the Third Congress convened in London on 25 April 1905 all the delegates were Leninists. Lenin used the congress, which lasted until 12 May, to establish a Leninist grip on key Party institutions. Existing papers –
Iskra
and
Vpered
– were declared disbanded and a new paper,
Proletarii
, set up as the official Party newspaper under Lenin’s editorship. An all-Leninist Central Committee was elected composed of Lenin, Bogdanov, Krasin, Postalovsky and Rykov. Lenin even wrote to the International Socialist Bureau in Brussels in June demanding it recognize
Proletarii
as the only official newspaper and de-recognize
Iskra
. Calls for unity became muted in the face of the new tactic. It was at this point that the split looked at its deepest and most irreconcilable. However, appearances were still deceptive. The International Socialist Bureau was not prepared to grant Lenin his victory and his tone became more conciliatory. Once again detractors might say the apparent willingness to compromise was tactical and insincere but that is speculative and is not necessarily true. Lenin’s stunning letter to Plekhanov of late October underlined the complexity. In it he said the ‘need for social democratic unity can no longer be put off’. In a sentence which could only be heartily endorsed by any baffled observer trying to thread a way through this labyrinth, Lenin continued ‘We are in agreement with you on over nine-tenths of the questions of theory and tactics, and to quarrel over one-tenth is not worthwhile.’ [CW 34 364]

None the less, the new sense of urgency over reconciliation was clear as was its prime motivation. The October Manifesto had changed the situation making revolutionary unity more imperative than ever, not

least because there was agreement that there should be a united front to

get real democratic concessions out of the autocracy.

Lenin’s views on revolutionary tactics and strategy in 1905

One thing the Party factions did agree on was that the upcoming revolution in Russia would be bourgeois. Sadly, however, that did not mean they agreed on what was meant in practice by a bourgeois revolution. Lenin’s own version evolved as the revolutionary year unfolded. Lenin was particularly inspired by the already quoted ringing phrases in the original 1898 Party manifesto, drafted by Struve, that ‘The further east in Europe one proceeds, the weaker, more cowardly, and baser in the political sense becomes the bourgeoisie and the greater are the cultural and political tasks that devolve on the proletariat. The Russian working class must and will carry on its powerful shoulders the cause of political liberation.’
⁴
In March 1905, in an article in
Vpered
, Lenin launched his concept of a ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’. A further article in April elaborated his views and was published as a separate pamphlet. The formulation had already changed and was now, as the title proclaimed,
The Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry
. It achieved its most developed exposition in Lenin’s main pamphlet of 1905,
Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
, which Lenin worked on in June and July and was published in August. Here it interacted with the theme of the Party’s attitude to a provisional revolutionary government and to the theme of armed uprising.

Though sometimes apparently contradictory, Lenin’s views expressed in this pamphlet help clarify a great deal about his tactics and strategy in 1905 and in 1917. For those who doubted that he believed in the importance of the bourgeois revolution he stated clearly and unequivocally that ‘A bourgeois revolution is
absolutely
necessary in the interests of the proletariat.’ [CW 9 50] However, the complications began from there. An issue which arose immediately from that assumption was, what role would the Social Democrats play in such a revolution? Lenin’s formula was perhaps evasive but not unreasonable. Echoing the decision of the Third Party Congress on the issue he said participation in a provisional revolutionary government was possible but was ‘subject to the alignment of forces and other factors which cannot be exactly predetermined’.

[CW 9 24] It was, he said, ‘impossible at present to speak of concrete conditions’ under which the decision to join or not join should be made. [CW 9 32] For example, should the wavering bourgeoisie ultimately turn to tsarism for protection, the result would be disastrous for the left. ‘Social Democracy will find its hands actually tied in the struggle against the inconsistent bourgeoisie. Social Democracy will find itself “dissolved” in bourgeois democracy in the sense that the proletariat will not succeed in placing its clear imprint on the revolution.’ [CW 9 58]

Lenin’s fear that the distinctive proletarian imprint would ‘dissolve’ in the thick porridge of bourgeois democracy was, of course, related to his view of the fate of revolutionary socialism in the bourgeois democratic countries of the west. Lenin was determined to keep the distinctive proletarian imprint and remembering this helps us to see a consistency between his ideas in 1905 and 1917.

The parallels with 1917 do not end there. The issue of armed uprising had also raised its head and the deeper into the revolutionary year he went, the more anxious Lenin became that this question should be clearly addressed. Once again arguing more sensibly than some of his opponents on this uncomfortable issue, Lenin started out from the assumption that ‘Major questions in the life of nations are solved only by force. The reactionary class themselves are usually the first to resort to violence … as the Russian autocracy has systematically and unswervingly been doing everywhere ever since 9 January.’ [CW 9 132] However, far from being carried away with the prospect of violence Lenin’s views, though based on realism, seemed rather simplistic. In late October in a much-quoted passage he made one of his most sustained analyses of force which appears more naive than penetrating. Giving instructions on setting up revolutionary army contingents he said:

The contingents may be of any strength, beginning with two or three people. They must arm themselves as best they can (rifles, revolvers, knives, knuckledusters, sticks, rags coated in kerosene for starting fires, ropes or ropeladders, shovels for building barricades, pyroxilin cartridges, barbed wire, nails (against cavalry),
etc.
etc.). Under no circumstances should they wait for help from other sources, from above, from the outside; they must procure everything themselves. [CW 9 420]

The idea that such rag-taggle bands could fight their way into power was truly ludicrous.

What did these various formulations add up to? In brief, Lenin was saying that Russia’s revolution would be bourgeois, but it would have its own special characteristics. Clearly Lenin did not believe the socialist revolution was just around the corner. As in 1917 he pointed to the backwardness of the workers and the need to raise their consciousness as a process that would take some time. Exactly how much time Lenin was not prepared to say and, in 1905 as in 1917, the question remained ambiguous.