Written 1-3 (14-16) September 1917
The term compromise in politics implies the surrender of certain demands, the renunciation of part of one’s demands, by agreement with another party.
The usual idea the man in the street has about the Bolsheviks, an idea encouraged by a press which slanders them, is that the Bolsheviks will never agree to a compromise with anybody.
The idea is flattering to us as the party of the revolutionary proletariat, for it proves that even our enemies are compelled to admit our loyalty to the fundamental principles of socialism and revolution. Nevertheless, we must say that this idea is wrong. Engels was right when, in his criticism of the Manifesto of the Blanquist Communists,[1] he ridiculed their declaration: “No compromises!”[2] This, he said, was an empty phrase, for compromises are often unavoidably forced upon a fighting party by circumstances, and it is absurd to refuse once and for all to accept “payments on account”. The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution.
To agree, for instance, to participate in the Third and Fourth Dumas was a compromise, a temporary renunciation of revolutionary demands. But this was a compromise absolutely forced upon us, for the balance of forces made it impossible for us for the time being to conduct a mass revolutionary struggle, and in order to prepare this struggle over a long period we had to be able to work even from inside such a ‘pigsty’. History has proved that this approach to the question by the Bolsheviks as a party was perfectly correct.
Now the question is not of a forced, but of a voluntary compromise.
Our Party, like any other political party, is striving after political domination for itself. Our aim is the dictatorship of the revolutionary proletariat. Six months of revolution have proved very clearly, forcefully and convincingly that this demand is correct and inevitable in the interests of this particular revolution, for otherwise the people will never obtain a democratic peace, land for the peasants, or complete freedom (a fully democratic republic). This has been shown and proved by the course of events during the six months of our revolution, by the struggle of the classes and parties and by the development of the crises of 20-21 April, 9-10 and 18-19 June, 3-5 July and 27-31 August.
The Russian revolution is experiencing so abrupt and original a turn that we, as a party, may offer a voluntary compromise – true, not to our direct and main class enemy, the bourgeoisie, but to our nearest adversaries, the ‘ruling’ petty-bourgeois-democratic parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
We may offer a compromise to these parties only by way of exception, and only by virtue of the particular situation, which will obviously last only a very short time. And I think we should do so.
The compromise on our part is our return to the pre-July demand of all power to the Soviets and a government of SRs and Mensheviks responsible to the Soviets.
Now, and only now, perhaps during only a few days or a week or two, such a government could be set up and consolidated in a perfectly peaceful way. In all probability it could secure the peaceful advance of the whole Russian revolution, and provide exceptionally good chances for great strides in the world movement towards peace and the victory of socialism.
In my opinion, the Bolsheviks, who are partisans of world revolution and revolutionary methods, may and should consent to this compromise only for the sake of the revolution’s peaceful development – an opportunity that is extremely rare in history and extremely valuable, an opportunity that only occurs once in a while.
The compromise would amount to the following: the Bolsheviks, without making any claim to participate in the government (which is impossible for the internationalists unless a dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasants has been realised), would refrain from demanding the immediate transfer of power to the proletariat and the poor peasants and from employing revolutionary methods of fighting for this demand. A condition that is self-evident and not new to the SRs and Mensheviks would be complete freedom of propaganda and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly without further delays or even at an earlier date.
The Mensheviks and SRs, being the government bloc, would then agree (assuming that the compromise had been reached) to form a government wholly and exclusively responsible to the Soviets, the latter taking over all power locally as well. This would constitute the ‘new’ condition. I think the Bolsheviks would advance no other conditions, trusting that the revolution would proceed peacefully and party strife in the Soviets would be peacefully overcome thanks to really complete freedom of propaganda and to the immediate establishment of a new democracy in the composition of the Soviets (new elections) and in their functioning.
Perhaps this is already impossible? Perhaps. But if there is even one chance in a hundred, the attempt at realising this opportunity is still worthwhile.
What would both ‘contracting’ parties gain by this ‘compromise’, i.e. the Bolsheviks, on the one hand, and the SR and Menshevik bloc, on the other? If neither side gains anything, then the compromise must be recognised as impossible, and nothing more is to be said. No matter how difficult this compromise may be at present (after July and August, two months equivalent to two decades in ‘peaceful’, somnolent times), I think it stands a small chance of being realised. This chance has been created by the decision of the SRs and Mensheviks not to participate in a government together with the Cadets.
The Bolsheviks would gain the opportunity of quite freely advocating their views and of trying to win influence in the Soviets under a really complete democracy. In words, ‘everybody’ now concedes the Bolsheviks this freedom. In reality, this freedom is impossible under a bourgeois government or a government in which the bourgeoisie participate, or under any government, in fact, other than the Soviets. Under a Soviet government, such freedom would be possible (we do not say it would be a certainty, but still it would be possible). For the sake of such a possibility at such a difficult time, it would be worth compromising with the present majority in the Soviets. We have nothing to fear from real democracy, for reality is on our side, and even the course of development of trends within the SR and Menshevik parties, which are hostile to us, proves us right.
The Mensheviks and SRs would gain in that they would at once obtain every opportunity to carry out their bloc’s programme with the support of the obviously overwhelming majority of the people and in that they would secure for themselves the ‘peaceful’ use of their majority in the Soviets.
Of course, there would probably be two voices heard from this bloc, which is heterogeneous both because it is a bloc, and because petty-bourgeois democracy is always less homogeneous than the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
One voice would say: we cannot follow the same road as the Bolsheviks and the revolutionary proletariat. It will demand too much anyway and will entice the peasant poor by demagogy. It will demand peace and a break with the Allies. That is impossible. We are better off and safer with the bourgeoisie; after all, we have not parted ways with them but only had a temporary quarrel, and only over the Kornilov incident. We have quarrelled, but we shall make it up. Moreover, the Bolsheviks are not ‘ceding’ us anything, for their attempts at insurrection are as doomed to defeat as was the Commune of 1871.
The other voice would say: the allusion to the Commune is very superficial and even foolish. For, in the first place, the Bolsheviks have learnt something since 1871; they would not fail to seize the banks, and would not refuse to advance on Versailles. Under such conditions even the Commune might have been victorious. Furthermore, the Commune could not immediately offer the people what the Bolsheviks will be able to offer if they come to power, namely, land to the peasants, an immediate offer of peace, real control over production, an honest peace with the Ukrainians, Finns, etc. The Bolsheviks, to put it bluntly, hold ten times more ‘trump’ than the Commune did. In the second place, the Commune, after all, means a strenuous civil war, a set-back to peaceful cultural development for a long time to come, an opportunity for all sorts of MacMahons[3] and Kornilovs to operate and plot with greater ease – and such operations are a menace to our whole bourgeois society. Is it wise to risk a Commune?
Now a Commune is inevitable in Russia if we do not take power into our own hands, if things remain in as grave a state as they were between 6 May and 31 August. Every revolutionary worker and soldier will inevitably think about the Commune and believe in it; he will inevitably attempt to bring it about, for he will argue:
‘The people are perishing; war, famine and ruin are spreading. Only the Commune can save us. So let us all perish, let us die, but let us set up the Commune.’
Such thoughts are inevitable with the workers, and it will not be as easy to crush the Commune now as it was in 1871. The Russian Commune will have allies throughout the world, allies a hundred times stronger than those the Commune had in 1871… Is it wise for us to risk a Commune? I cannot agree, either, that the Bolsheviks virtually cede us nothing by their compromise. For, in all civilised countries, civilised ministers value highly every agreement with the proletariat in war-time, however small. They value it very, very highly. And these are men of action, real ministers. The Bolsheviks are rapidly becoming stronger, in spite of repression, and the weakness of their press… Is it wise for us to risk a Commune?
We have a safe majority; the peasant poor will not wake up for some time to come; we are safe for our lifetime. I do not believe that in a peasant country the majority will follow the extremists. And against an obvious majority, no insurrection is possible in a really democratic republic. This is what the second voice would say.
There may also be a third voice coming from among the supporters of Martov or Spiridonova, which would say: I am indignant, ‘comrades’, that both of you, speaking about the Commune and its likelihood, unhesitatingly side with its opponents. In one form or another, both of you side with those who suppressed the Commune. I will not undertake to campaign for the Commune and I cannot promise beforehand to fight in its ranks as every Bolshevik will do, but I must say that if the Commune does start in spite of my efforts, I shall rather help its defenders than its opponents.
The medley of voices in the ‘bloc’ is great and inevitable, for a host of shades is represented among the petty-bourgeois democrats – from the complete bourgeois, perfectly eligible for a post in the government, down to the semi-pauper who is not yet capable of taking up the proletarian position. Nobody knows what will be the result of this medley of voices at any given moment.
* * *
The above lines were written on Friday 1 (14) September, but due to unforeseen circumstances (under Kerensky, as history will tell, not all Bolsheviks were free to choose their domicile) they did not reach the editorial office that day. After reading Saturday’s and today’s (Sunday’s) papers, I say to myself: perhaps it is already too late to offer a compromise. Perhaps the few days in which a peaceful development was still possible have passed too. Yes, to all appearances, they have already passed.[4] In one way or another, Kerensky will abandon both the SR Party and the SRs themselves, and will consolidate his position with the aid of the bourgeoisie without the SRs, and thanks to their inaction… Yes, to all appearances, the days when by chance the path of peaceful development became possible have already passed. All that remains is to send these notes to the editor with the request to have them entitled: ‘Belated Thoughts’. Perhaps even belated thoughts are sometimes not without interest.
Written not later than 3 (16) September 1917
It is now quite clear that we made a mistake by not withdrawing from it.
Everybody is being bamboozled by hopes from Stockholm. Meanwhile the Stockholm Conference is being ‘postponed’ from month to month.
And Zimmerwald is ‘waiting’ for Stockholm! The Kautsky men plus the Italians; i.e. the Zimmerwald majority, are ‘waiting’ for Stockholm.
And we are joining in this comedy, bearing responsibility for it before the workers.
It is a disgrace.
We must withdraw from Zimmerwald immediately.
By staying there for information only, we lose nothing, but we are not going to be held responsible for the comedy of ‘waiting’ for Stockholm.
In leaving rotten Zimmerwald we must decide immediately, at the plenary meeting on 3 (16) September 1917, to call a conference of the Left-wingers, and entrust this to the Stockholm representatives.
What has happened is that, after we made a blunder by staying in Zimmerwald, our Party, the world’s only internationalist party with seventeen newspapers etc., is playing at compromise with the German and Italian Martovs and Tseretelis, just as Martov is compromising with Tsereteli, just as Tsereteli is compromising with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and as the Socialist-Revolutionaries are compromising with the bourgeoisie.
And this is called ‘standing for’ the Third International!!!
A letter to the Central Committee and the Petrograd and Moscow Committees of the RSDLP(B)
Written 12-14 (25-27) September 1917
The Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of both capitals, can and must take state power into their own hands.
They can because the active majority of revolutionary elements in the two chief cities is large enough to carry the people with it, to overcome the opponent’s resistance, to smash him and to gain and retain power. For the Bolsheviks, by immediately proposing a democratic peace, by immediately giving the land to the peasants and by re-establishing the democratic institutions and liberties which have been mangled and shattered by Kerensky, will form a government which nobody will be able to overthrow.
The majority of the people are on our side. This was proved by the long and painful course of events from 6 May to 31 August and to 12 September. The majority gained in the Soviets of the metropolitan cities resulted from the people coming over to our side. The wavering of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and the increase in the number of internationalists within their ranks prove the same thing.
The Democratic Conference[5] represents not a majority of the revolutionary people, but only the compromising upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie. We must not be deceived by the election figures: elections prove nothing. Compare the elections to the city councils of Petrograd and Moscow with the elections to the Soviets. Compare the elections in Moscow with the Moscow strike of 12 (25) August. Those are objective facts regarding that majority of revolutionary elements that are leading the people.
The Democratic Conference is deceiving the peasants; it is giving them neither peace nor land. A Bolshevik government alone will satisfy the demands of the peasants.
* * *
Why must the Bolsheviks assume power at this very moment?
Because the impending surrender of Petrograd will make our chances a hundred times less favourable.
And it is not in our power to prevent the surrender of Petrograd while the army is headed by Kerensky and co.
Nor can we ‘wait’ for the Constituent Assembly, for by surrendering Petrograd, Kerensky and co. can always frustrate its convocation. Our Party alone, on taking power, can secure the Constituent Assembly’s convocation; it will then accuse the other parties of procrastination and will be able to substantiate its accusations.
A separate peace between the British and German imperialists must and can be prevented, but only by quick action.
The people are tired of the waverings of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. It is only our victory in the metropolitan cities that will carry the peasants with us.
* * *
We are concerned now not with the ‘day’, or ‘moment’ of insurrection in the narrow sense of the word. That will be only decided by the common voice of those who are in contact with the workers and soldiers, with the masses.
The point is that now, at the Democratic Conference, our Party has virtually its own congress, and this congress (whether it wishes to or not) must decide the fate of the revolution.
The point is to make the task clear to the Party. The present task must be an armed uprising in Petrograd and Moscow (with its region), the seizing of power and the overthrow of the government. We must consider how to agitate for this without expressly saying as much in the press.
We must remember and weigh Marx’s words about insurrection, “Insurrection is an art”,[6] etc.
* * *
It would be naive to wait for a ‘formal’ majority for the Bolsheviks. No revolution ever waits for that. Kerensky and co. are not waiting either, and are preparing to surrender Petrograd. It is the wretched waverings of the Democratic Conference that are bound to exhaust the patience of the workers of Petrograd and Moscow! History will not forgive us if we do not assume power now.
There is no apparatus? There is an apparatus – the Soviets and the democratic organisations. The international situation right now, on the eve of the conclusion of a separate peace between the British and the Germans, is in our favour. To propose peace to the nations right now means to win.
By taking power both in Moscow and in Petrograd at once (it doesn’t matter which comes first, Moscow may possibly begin), we shall win absolutely and unquestionably.
N Lenin
A letter to the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B)
Written 13-14 (26-27) September 1917
One of the most vicious and probably most widespread distortions of Marxism resorted to by the dominant ‘socialist’ parties is the opportunist lie that preparation for insurrection, and generally the treatment of insurrection as an art, is ‘Blanquism’.
Bernstein, the leader of opportunism, has already earned himself unfortunate fame by accusing Marxism of Blanquism, and when our present-day opportunists cry Blanquism they do not improve on or ‘enrich’ the meagre ‘ideas’ of Bernstein one little bit.
Marxists are accused of Blanquism for treating insurrection as an art! Can there be a more flagrant perversion of the truth, when not a single Marxist will deny that it was Marx who expressed himself on this score in the most definite, precise and categorical manner, referring to insurrection specifically as an art, saying that it must be treated as an art, that you must win the first success and then proceed from success to success, never ceasing the offensive against the enemy, taking advantage of his confusion, etc., etc.?
To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third point. And these three conditions for raising the question of insurrection distinguish Marxism from Blanquism.
Once these conditions exist, however, to refuse to treat insurrection as an art is a betrayal of Marxism and a betrayal of the revolution.
To show that it is precisely the present moment that the Party must recognise as the one in which the entire course of events has objectively placed insurrection on the order of the day and that insurrection must be treated as an art, it will perhaps be best to use the method of comparison, and to draw a parallel between 3-4 July and the September days.
On 3-4 July it could have been argued, without violating the truth, that the correct thing to do was to take power, for our enemies would in any case have accused us of insurrection and ruthlessly treated us as rebels. However, to have decided on this account in favour of taking power at that time would have been wrong, because the objective conditions for the victory of the insurrection did not exist.
- We still lacked the support of the class which is the vanguard of the revolution.
We still did not have a majority among the workers and soldiers of Petrograd and Moscow. Now we have a majority in both Soviets. It was created solely by the history of July and August, by the experience of the ruthless treatment meted out to the Bolsheviks, and by the experience of the Kornilov revolt.
- There was no country-wide revolutionary upsurge at that time. There is now, after the Kornilov revolt; the situation in the provinces and assumption of power by the Soviets in many localities prove this.
- At that time there was no vacillation on any serious political scale among our enemies and among the irresolute petty bourgeoisie. Now the vacillation is enormous. Our main enemy, Allied and world imperialism (for world imperialism is headed by the ‘Allies’), has begun to waver between a war to a victorious finish and a separate peace directed against Russia. Our petty-bourgeois democrats, having clearly lost their majority among the people, have begun to vacillate enormously, and have rejected a bloc, i.e. a coalition, with the Cadets.
- Therefore, an insurrection on 3-4 July would have been a mistake; we could not have retained power either physically or politically. We could not have retained it physically even though Petrograd was at times in our hands, because at that time our workers and soldiers would not have fought and died for Petrograd. There was not at the time that ‘savageness’, or fierce hatred both of the Kerenskys and of the Tseretelis and Chernovs. Our people had still not been tempered by the experience of the persecution of the Bolsheviks in which the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks participated.
We could not have retained power politically on 3-4 July because, before the Kornilov revolt, the army and the provinces could and would have marched against Petrograd.
Now the picture is entirely different.
We have the following of the majority of a class, the vanguard of the revolution, the vanguard of the people, which is capable of carrying the masses with it.
We have the following of the majority of the people, because Chernov’s resignation, while by no means the only symptom, is the most striking and obvious symptom that the peasants will not receive land from the Socialist-Revolutionaries’ bloc (or from the Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves). And that is the chief reason for the popular character of the revolution.
We are in the advantageous position of a party that knows for certain which way to go at a time when imperialism as a whole and the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary bloc as a whole are vacillating in an incredible fashion.
Our victory is assured, for the people are close to desperation, and we are showing the entire people a sure way out; we demonstrated to the entire people during the ‘Kornilov days’ the value of our leadership, and then proposed to the politicians of the bloc a compromise, which they rejected, although there is no let-up in their vacillations.
It would be a great mistake to think that our offer of a compromise had not yet been rejected, and that the Democratic Conference may still accept it. The compromise was proposed by a party to parties; it could not have been proposed in any other way. It was rejected by parties. The Democratic Conference is a conference, and nothing more. One thing must not be forgotten, namely, that the majority of the revolutionary people, the poor, embittered peasants, are not represented in it. It is a conference of a minority of the people – this obvious truth must not be forgotten. It would be a big mistake, sheer parliamentary cretinism on our part, if we were to regard the Democratic Conference as a parliament; for even if it were to proclaim itself a permanent and sovereign parliament of the revolution, it would nevertheless decide nothing. The power of decision lies outside it in the working-class quarters of Petrograd and Moscow.
All the objective conditions exist for a successful insurrection. We have the exceptional advantage of a situation in which only our victory in the insurrection can put an end to that most painful thing on earth, vacillation, which has worn the people out; in which only our victory in the insurrection will give the peasants land immediately; a situation in which only our victory in the insurrection can foil the game of a separate peace directed against the revolution – foil it by publicly proposing a fuller, juster and earlier peace, a peace that will benefit the revolution.
Finally, our Party alone can, by a victorious insurrection, save Petrograd; for if our proposal for peace is rejected, if we do not secure even an armistice, then we shall become ‘defencists’, we shall place ourselves at the head of the war parties, we shall be the war party par excellence, and we shall conduct the war in a truly revolutionary manner. We shall take away all the bread and boots from the capitalists. We shall leave them only crusts and dress them in bast shoes. We shall send all the bread and footwear to the front.
And then we shall save Petrograd.
The resources, both material and spiritual, for a truly revolutionary war in Russia are still immense; the chances are a hundred to one that the Germans will grant us at least an armistice. And to secure an armistice now would in itself mean to win the whole world.
* * *
Having recognised the absolute necessity for an insurrection of the workers of Petrograd and Moscow in order to save the revolution and to save Russia from a ‘separate’ partition by the imperialists of both groups, we must first adapt our political tactics at the Conference to the conditions of the growing insurrection; secondly, we must show that it is not only in words that we accept Marx’s idea that insurrection must be treated as an art.
At the Conference we must immediately cement the Bolshevik group, without striving after numbers, and without fearing to leave the waverers in the waverers’ camp. They are more useful to the cause of the revolution there than in the camp of the resolute and devoted fighters.
We must draw up a brief declaration from the Bolsheviks, emphasising in no uncertain manner the irrelevance of long speeches and of ‘speeches’ in general, the necessity for immediate action to save the revolution, the absolute necessity for a complete break with the bourgeoisie, for the removal of the present government, in its entirety, for a complete rupture with the Anglo-French imperialists, who are preparing a ‘separate’ partition of Russia, and for the immediate transfer of all power to revolutionary democrats, headed by the revolutionary proletariat.
Our declaration must give the briefest and most trenchant formulation of this conclusion in connection with the programme proposals of peace for the peoples, land for the peasants, confiscation of scandalous profits, and a check on the scandalous sabotage of production by the capitalists.
The briefer and more trenchant the declaration, the better. Only two other highly important points must be clearly indicated in it, namely, that the people are worn out by the vacillations, that they are fed up with the irresolution of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks; and that we are definitely breaking with these parties because they have betrayed the revolution.
And another thing. By immediately proposing a peace without annexations, by immediately breaking with the Allied imperialists and with all imperialists, either we shall at once obtain an armistice, or the entire revolutionary proletariat will rally to the defence of the country, and a really just, really revolutionary war will then be waged by revolutionary democrats under the leadership of the proletariat.
Having read this declaration, and having appealed for decisions and not talk, for action and not resolution-writing, we must dispatch our entire group to the factories and the barracks. Their place is there, the pulse of life is there, there is the source of salvation for our revolution, and there is the motive force of the Democratic Conference.
There, in ardent and impassioned speeches, we must explain our programme and put the alternative: either the Conference adopts it in its entirety, or else insurrection. There is no middle course. Delay is impossible. The revolution is lying.
By putting the question in this way, by concentrating our entire group in the factories and barracks, we shall be able to determine the right moment to start the insurrection.
In order to treat insurrection in a Marxist way, i.e. as an art, we must at the same time, without losing a single moment, organise a headquarters of the insurgent detachments, distribute our forces, move the reliable regiments to the most important points, surround the Alexandrinsky Theatre,[7] occupy the Peter and Paul Fortress, arrest the General Staff and the government, and move against the officer cadets and the Savage Division[8] those detachments which would rather die than allow the enemy to approach the strategic points of the city. We must mobilise the armed workers and call them to fight the last desperate fight, occupy the telegraph and the telephone exchange at once, move our insurrection headquarters to the central telephone exchange and connect it by telephone with all the factories, all the regiments, all the points of armed fighting, etc.
Of course, this is all by way of example, only to illustrate the fact that at the present moment it is impossible to remain loyal to Marxism, to remain loyal to the revolution unless insurrection is treated as an art.
N Lenin
They Are Trying to Frighten Us With Civil War
Written 16 (29) September 1917
The bourgeoisie, frightened by the refusal of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to join a bloc with the Cadets, and by the probability of the democrats being quite capable of forming a government without them and governing Russia against them, are doing their best to intimidate the democrats.
Scare them as much as you can! This is the slogan of the whole bourgeois press. Scare them with all your might! Lie, slander, but frighten them!
Birzhevka does its scaring by fabricating news about Bolshevik activities. Others by spreading rumours about Alexeyev’s resignation, and about the imminent German offensive against Petrograd, as if the facts do not prove that it is the Kornilov generals (to whom Alexeyev undoubtedly belongs) who are capable of opening the front to the Germans in Galicia and near Riga and near Petrograd, and that it is the Kornilov generals who are arousing the greatest hatred in the army against the General Staff.
To make this method of intimidating the democrats more ‘solid’ and convincing, they refer to the danger of ‘civil war’. Of all the methods of intimidation, that of scaring with civil war is perhaps the most widespread. Here is the way the Rostov-on-the-Don Committee of the People’s Freedom Party [Cadets] formulated this widespread idea, heartily welcomed in philistine circles, in its resolution of 1 (14) September (Rech, No. 210):
The Committee is convinced that civil war may sweep away all the gains of the revolution and drown in rivers of blood our young, still unstable freedom, and is of the opinion that it is necessary to make an energetic protest against developing the revolution as proposed by the unrealisable socialist utopias if we are to save the gains of the revolution.
Here, the fundamental idea which is to be met with innumerable times in Rech editorials, in the articles of Plekhanov and Potresov, in the editorials of Menshevik papers, etc., etc., is expressed in the clearest, most precise, well considered and substantial form. It will therefore be useful to take up this idea in greater detail.
Let us try to make a more concrete analysis of the civil war question, on the basis of the half year’s experience of our revolution, among other things.
This experience, similarly to the experience of all European revolutions, from the end of the eighteenth century on shows that civil war is the sharpest form of the class struggle, it is that point in the class struggle when clashes and battles, economic and political, repeating themselves, growing, broadening, becoming acute, turn into an armed struggle of one class against another. More often than not – one may say almost always – in all more or less free and advanced countries the civil war is between those classes whose antagonistic position towards each other is created and deepened by the entire economic development of capitalism, by the entire history of modern society the world over – civil war is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
During the past half year of our revolution, we have experienced very strong spontaneous outbursts (20-21 April, 3-4 July) in which the proletariat came very close to starting a civil war. On the other hand, the Kornilov revolt was a military conspiracy supported by the landowners and capitalists led by the Cadet Party, a conspiracy by which the bourgeoisie has actually begun a civil war.
Such are the facts. Such is the history of our own revolution. More than anything we must learn from this history, we must give a great deal of thought to the course it has taken and to its class significance.
Let us try to compare the germs of the proletarian civil war and the bourgeois civil war in Russia from the standpoint of (1) the spontaneous nature of the movement; (2) its aims; (3) the political consciousness of the masses participating in it; (4) the forces in the movement; (5) its tenacity.
We think that if all the parties which are now ‘unnecessarily throwing about’ the words ‘civil war’ were to approach the question in this way, and make a real attempt to study the germs of the civil war, the class-consciousness of the entire Russian revolution would gain a very great deal.
Let us begin with the spontaneous nature of the movement. For the 3-4 July movement we have the testimony of such witnesses as the Menshevik Rabochaya Gazeta and the Socialist-Revolutionary Dyelo Naroda, which have recognised the spontaneous origin of the movement. This testimony I quoted in an article published in Proletarskoye Dyelo and issued as a separate leaflet entitled ‘An Answer’. For obvious reasons, however, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are defending themselves and the part they played in persecuting the Bolsheviks, officially continue to deny the spontaneous nature of the outburst of 3-4 July.
Let us put the controversial matter aside for the present. Let us take what is undisputed. No one denies the spontaneous nature of the 20-21 April movement. The Bolshevik Party joined this spontaneous movement under the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’; independently of the Bolsheviks it was joined by the late Linde, who led 30,000 armed soldiers into the street ready to arrest the government.[9] (The action of these troops, let us say in parenthesis, has not been investigated and studied. If it is examined closely, and 20 April is given its place in the historic sequence of events, i.e. if it is seen as a link in the chain which extends from 28 February to 29 August, it becomes clear that the fault and the error of the Bolsheviks was the insufficient revolutionism of their tactics, and by no means the excessive revolutionism the philistines accuse us of.)
The spontaneous nature of the movement leading to the proletariat beginning civil war is thus beyond doubt. On the other hand, there is not even a trace of anything resembling spontaneity in the Kornilov revolt; it was merely a conspiracy of generals who hoped by fraud and by the force of military command to carry part of the army with them.
It is beyond all doubt that the spontaneity of the movement is proof that it is deeply rooted in the masses, that its roots are firm and that it is inevitable. The proletarian revolution is firmly rooted, the bourgeois counter-revolution is without roots – this is what the facts prove if examined from the point of view of the spontaneous nature of the movement.
Let us now look at the aims of the movement. The movement of 20-21 April came very close to adopting the Bolshevik slogans, whereas that of 3-4 July was directly connected with them, was under their influence and guidance. The Bolshevik Party spoke quite openly, definitely, clearly, precisely, for all to hear, in its papers and in verbal propaganda of the chief aims of the proletarian civil war – the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry, peace and an immediate offer of peace, confiscation of the landed estates.
We all know the aims of the Kornilov revolt, and no one among the democrats disputes that those aims were a dictatorship of the landowners and the bourgeoisie, dispersal of the Soviets, and preparations for the restoration of the monarchy. The Cadet Party, this main Kornilovite party (by the way, it ought to be called from now on the Kornilov party), possesses a larger press and greater forces for propaganda than the Bolsheviks, but it has never dared and still does not dare to tell the people openly either about the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or about the dispersal of the Soviets, or about the Kornilovite aims in general!
As far as the aims of the movement are concerned, the facts tell us that the proletarian civil war can come out with an open exposition of its final aims before the people and win the sympathies of the working people, whereas the bourgeois civil war can attempt to lead part of the masses only by concealing its aims; this is the tremendous difference in them as far as the class-consciousness of the masses is concerned.
The only objective data on this question seem to be those on party affiliation and elections. There do not appear to be any other facts which allow a clear judgment of the class-consciousness of the masses. It is clear that the proletarian-revolutionary movement is represented by the Bolshevik Party, and the bourgeois counter-revolutionary movement by the Cadet Party, and this can hardly be disputed after six months experience of the revolution. Three comparisons of a factual nature can be made that concern the question under consideration. A comparison of the May elections to the local councils in Petrograd with the August elections to the city council shows a decrease in Cadet votes and a tremendous increase in Bolshevik votes. The Cadet press admits that, as a rule, Bolshevism is strong wherever masses of workers or soldiers are concentrated.
In the absence of any statistics concerning the fluctuation of the party membership, attendance at meetings, etc., the conscious support of the party by the masses may be judged only from published data concerning cash collections for the party. These data show a tremendous mass-scale heroism on the part of worker Bolsheviks in collecting money for Pravda for the papers that have been suppressed, etc. The reports of such collections have always been published. Among the Cadets we see nothing of the kind; their party work is obviously being ‘nourished’ by contributions from the rich. There is no trace of active aid on the part of the masses.
Lastly, a comparison of the movements of 20-21 April and 3-4 July on the one hand, and the Kornilov revolt on the other, shows that the Bolsheviks indicated point-blank to the masses who their enemy in the civil war is, namely, the bourgeoisie, the landowners and capitalists. The Kornilov revolt has already demonstrated that the troops who followed Kornilov did so because they had been completely deceived, a fact made obvious the moment the Savage Division and Kornilov’s contingents came up against the Petrograd masses.
Furthermore, what data indicate the strength of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the civil war? The Bolsheviks are strong only in the numbers and class-consciousness of the proletarians, in the sympathy with the Bolshevik slogans displayed by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik ‘rank and file’ (i.e. workers and poor peasants). It is a fact that these slogans actually won over the majority of the active revolutionary masses in Petrograd on 20-21 April, 18, 20 June and 3-4 July.
A comparison of the data on the ‘parliamentary’ elections and the data on the above-named mass movements fully corroborates, in respect of Russia, an observation often made in the West, namely, that the revolutionary proletariat is incomparably stronger in the extra-parliamentary than in the parliamentary struggle, as far as influencing the masses and drawing them into the struggle is concerned. This is a very important observation in respect of civil war.
It is quite clear why in all the circumstances and the entire situation of parliamentary struggle and elections the strength of the oppressed classes is less than the strength they can actually develop in civil war.
The strength of the Cadets and the Kornilov revolt is the strength of wealth. The press and a long series of political actions show that Anglo-French capital and imperialism are in favour of the Cadets and the Kornilov movement. It is common knowledge that the entire Right wing of the Moscow Conference of 12 (25) August gave frantic support to Kornilov and Kaledin.[10] It is common knowledge that the French and British bourgeois press ‘aided’ Kornilov. There are indications of his having been aided by the banks.
All the power of wealth stood behind Kornilov – and what a miserable and rapid failure! There are only two social forces among Kornilov’s supporters apart from the wealthy – the Savage Division and the Cossacks. In the case of the former it is only the power of ignorance and deception, and this power is the more formidable the longer the press remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie. After a victory in the civil war, the proletariat would undermine this source of ‘power’ once and for all.
As to the Cossacks, they are a section of the population consisting of rich, small or medium landed proprietors (the average holding is about fifty dessiatins) in one of those outlying regions of Russia that have retained many medieval traits in their way of life, their economy and their customs. We can regard this as the socio-economic basis for a Russian Vendée.[11] But what have the facts of the Kornilov-Kaledin movement proved? Not even Kaledin, the ‘beloved leader’ supported by the Guchkovs, Milyukovs, Ryabushinskys and co., has succeeded in creating a mass movement!! Kaledin marched towards civil war much more ‘directly’, much more forthrightly than did the Bolsheviks. Kaledin went specifically ‘to rouse the Don’, and still he has not aroused a mass movement in his ‘home’ region, in a Cossack region far removed from Russian democracy in general. On the part of the proletariat, on the contrary, we observe spontaneous outbursts of the movement in the very centre of the influence and power of anti-Bolshevik, all-Russia democracy.
Objective data on the attitude of various strata and economic groups of the Cossacks towards democracy and towards the Kornilov revolt are lacking. There are only indications to the effect that the majority of the poor and middle Cossacks are rather inclined towards democracy and that only the officers and the top layer of the well-to-do Cossacks are entirely in favour of Kornilov.
However that may be, the extreme weakness of a mass Cossack movement in favour of a bourgeois counter-revolution has been historically proved since the experience of 26-31 August.[12]
There remains the last question, that of the tenacity of the movement. As far as the Bolshevik, proletarian revolutionary movement is concerned, we have proof that the struggle against Bolshevism has been conducted during the six-month existence of a republic in Russia both ideologically, with a gigantic preponderance of press organs and propaganda forces on the side of the opponents of Bolshevism (even if we risk classing the campaign of slander as ‘ideological’ struggle), and by means of repressions, which include hundreds of people arrested, our main printing-plant demolished, and the chief newspaper and a number of other papers suppressed. The result can be seen in the facts – a tremendous growth of support for the Bolsheviks in the August Petrograd elections, and in both the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, a strengthening of the internationalist and Left trends that are drawing close to Bolshevism. This means that the tenacity of the proletarian revolutionary movement in republican Russia is very great. The facts tell us that the combined efforts of the Cadets, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks have not succeeded in weakening that movement in the least. On the contrary, it was the alliance of the Kornilovites with ‘democracy’ that strengthened Bolshevism. The only possible means of struggle against the proletarian revolutionary trend are ideological influence and repressions.
Data on the tenacity of the Cadet-Kornilov movement are still lacking. The Cadets have suffered no persecution at all. Even Guchkov has been set free and Maklakov and Milyukov were not even arrested. Rech has not been suppressed. The Cadets are being spared. The Kornilovite Cadets are being courted by Kerensky’s government. Suppose we put it this way: assuming that the Anglo-French and the Russian Ryabushinskys will give millions and millions more to the Cadets, to Yedinstvo, Dyen, etc., for the new election campaign in Petrograd, is it probable that the number of their votes will now increase, after the Kornilov revolt? Judging by meetings, etc., the answer to this question can hardly be anything but negative.
* * *
Summing up the results of the analysis in which we compared the data furnished by the history of the Russian revolution, we arrive at the conclusion that the beginning of the proletariat’s civil war has revealed the strength, the class-consciousness, deep-rootedness, growth, and tenacity of the movement. The beginning of the bourgeoisie’s civil war has revealed no strength, no class-consciousness among the masses, no depth whatsoever, no chance of victory.
The alliance of the Cadets with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks, i.e. against the revolutionary proletariat, has been tried in practice for a number of months, and this alliance of the temporarily disguised Kornilovites with the ‘democrats’ has actually strengthened and not weakened the Bolsheviks, and led to the collapse of the ‘alliance’, and to the strengthening of the Left opposition among the Mensheviks.
An alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks against the Cadets, against the bourgeoisie, has not yet been tried; or, to be more precise, such an alliance has been tried on one front only, for five days only, from 26 August to 31 August, the period of the Kornilov revolt, and this alliance at that time scored a victory over the counter-revolution with an ease never yet achieved in any revolution; it was such a crushing suppression of the bourgeois, landowners’, capitalist, Allied-imperialist and Cadet counter-revolution, that the civil war from that side ceased to exist, was a mere nothing from the very outset, collapsed before any ‘battle’ had taken place.
In the face of this historic fact the entire bourgeois press and all its chorus (the Plekhanovs, Potresovs, Breshko-Breshkovskayas, etc.) are shouting with all their might that an alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries ‘threatens’ the horrors of civil war!
This would be funny, if it were not so sad. It is sad indeed that such an open, self-evident, glaring absurdity, such a flouting of the facts of the whole history of our revolution, can still find listeners… This only proves that the selfish bourgeois lie is still widespread (and this cannot be avoided as long as the press is monopolised by the bourgeoisie), a lie that shouts down and drowns the most undoubted, palpably obvious lessons of the revolution.
If there is an absolutely undisputed lesson of the revolution, one fully proved by facts, it is that only an alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, only an immediate transfer of all power to the Soviets would make civil war in Russia impossible, for a civil war begun by the bourgeoisie against such an alliance, against the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, is inconceivable; such a ‘war’ would not last even until the first battle; the bourgeoisie, for the second time since the Kornilov revolt, would not be able to move even the Savage Division, or the former number of Cossack units against the Soviet Government!
The peaceful development of any revolution is, generally speaking, extremely rare and difficult, because revolution is the maximum exacerbation of the sharpest class contradictions; but in a peasant country, at a time when a union of the proletariat with the peasantry can give peace to people worn out by a most unjust and criminal war, when that union can give the peasantry all the land, in that country, at that exceptional moment in history, a peaceful development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the Soviets. The struggle of parties for power within the Soviets may proceed peacefully, if the Soviets are made fully democratic, and ‘petty thefts’ and violations of democratic principles, such as giving the soldiers one representative to every five hundred, while the workers have one representative to every thousand voters, are eliminated. In a democratic republic such petty thefts will have to disappear.
When confronted with Soviets that have given all the land to the peasants without compensation and offer a just peace to all the peoples – when confronted with such Soviets the alliance of the British, French and Russian bourgeoisie, the Kornilovs, Buchanans, Ryabushinskys, Milyukovs, Plekhanovs and Potresovs is quite impotent and is not to be feared.
The bourgeoisie’s resistance to the transfer of the land to the peasants without compensation, to similar reforms in other realms of life, to a just peace and a break with imperialism, is, of course, inevitable. But for such resistance to reach the stage of civil war, masses of some kind are necessary, masses capable of fighting and vanquishing the Soviets. The bourgeoisie does not have these masses, and has nowhere to get them. The sooner and the more resolutely the Soviets take all power, the sooner both Savage Divisions and Cossacks will split into an insignificant minority of politically-conscious Kornilov supporters and a huge majority of those in favour of a democratic and socialist (for it is with socialism that we shall then be dealing) alliance of workers and peasants.
When power passes to the Soviets, the resistance of the bourgeoisie will result in scores and hundreds of workers and peasants ‘keeping track of’, supervising, controlling and registering every single capitalist, for the interests of the workers and peasants will demand struggle against the capitalists’ deception of the people. The forms and methods of this accountancy and control have been developed and simplified by capitalism itself, by such capitalist creations as banks, big factories, trusts, railways, the post office, consumers’ societies and trade unions. If the Soviets punish those capitalists who evade the most detailed accounting or who deceive the people, punish them by confiscating all their property and arresting them for a short time, that will be sufficient to break all the resistance of the bourgeoisie by bloodless means. For it is through the banks, once they are nationalised, through the unions of employees, through the post office, the consumers’ societies and the trade unions, that control and the accounting will become universal, all-powerful and irresistible.
And Russia’s Soviets, the alliance of her workers and poor peasants, are not alone in the steps they take towards socialism. If we were alone, we should not be able to accomplish this task peacefully, for it is essentially an international task. But we have enormous reserves, the armies of the most advanced workers in other countries, where Russia’s break with imperialism and the imperialist war will inevitably accelerate the workers’ socialist revolution that is maturing.
* * *
Some speak about ‘rivers of blood’ in a civil war. This is mentioned in the resolution of the Kornilovite Cadets quoted above. This phrase is repeated in a thousand ways by all the bourgeois and opportunists. Since the Kornilov revolt all the class-conscious workers laugh, will continue to laugh and cannot help laughing at it.
However, the question of ‘rivers of blood’ in the present time of war can and must be studied by an approximate computation of forces, consequences and results; it must be taken seriously and not as an empty stock phrase, not as simply the hypocrisy of the Cadets, who have done everything in their power to enable Kornilov to drown Russia in ‘rivers of blood’, and to restore the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the power of the landowners and the monarchy.
‘Rivers of blood’, they say. Let us analyse this aspect of the question as well.
Let us assume that the vacillations of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries continue; that these parties do not hand over power to the Soviets; that they do not overthrow Kerensky; that they restore the old rotten compromise with the bourgeoisie in a somewhat different form (say, ‘non-partisan’ Kornilovites instead of Cadets); that they do not replace the apparatus of state power by the Soviet apparatus, do not offer peace, do not break with imperialism, and do not confiscate the landed estates. Let us assume that this is the outcome of the present wavering of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, of this present ‘12 (25) September’.
The experience of our own revolution tells us most clearly that the consequence of this would be a still further weakening of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, their further separation from the masses, an incredible growth of indignation and bitterness among the masses, a tremendous growth of sympathy with the revolutionary proletariat, with the Bolsheviks.
Under such conditions, the proletariat of the capital will be still closer to a Commune, to a workers’ uprising, to the conquest of power, to a civil war in its highest and most decisive form, than it is at present; after the experience of 20-21 April and 3-4 July such a result must be recognised as historically inevitable.
‘Rivers of blood’, shout the Cadets. But such rivers of blood would give victory to the proletariat and the poor peasantry, and it is a hundred to one that this victory would bring peace in place of the imperialist war, i.e. that it would save the lives of hundreds of thousands of men who are now shedding their blood for the sake of a division of spoils and seizures (annexations) by the capitalists. If 20-21 April had ended by the transfer of all power to the Soviets, and the Bolsheviks in alliance with the poor peasantry had won in the Soviets, it would have saved the lives of the half million Russian soldiers, who certainly perished in the battles of 18 June, even if it had cost ‘rivers of blood’.
This is how every class-conscious Russian worker and soldier figures, this is how he must figure, if he weighs and analyses the question of civil war now being raised everywhere; and, of course, such a worker or soldier, who has experienced many things and given thought to them, will not be frightened by the cries of ‘rivers of blood’ raised by individuals, parties and groups willing to sacrifice more millions of Russian soldiers for the sake of Constantinople, Lvov, Warsaw and ‘victory over Germany’.
No ‘rivers of blood’ in an internal civil war can even approximately equal those seas of blood which the Russian imperialists have shed since 19 June (2 July) (in spite of the very great chances they had of avoiding this by handing over power to the Soviets).
All you Milyukovs, Potresovs and Plekhanovs be careful about your arguments against ‘rivers of blood’ in civil war while this present war continues, for the soldiers have seen seas of blood and know what they mean.
The international situation of the Russian revolution now, in 1917, the fourth year of a terrifically burdensome and criminal war, that has worn out the peoples, is such that an offer of a just peace on the part of a Russian proletariat victorious in the civil war would have a hundred to one chance of achieving an armistice and peace without the shedding of further seas of blood.
For a combination of warring Anglo-French and German imperialism against the proletarian socialist Russian Republic is impossible in practice, while a combination of British, Japanese and American imperialism against us is extremely difficult to realise and is not at all dangerous to us, if only because of Russia’s geographical position. On the other hand, the existence of revolutionary and socialist proletarian masses in all the European states is a fact; the maturing and the inevitability of the worldwide socialist revolution is beyond doubt, and such a revolution can be seriously aided only by the progress of the Russian revolution and not by delegations and not by playing at Stockholm conferences with the foreign Plekhanovs or Tseretelis.
The bourgeoisie wails about the inevitable defeat of a Commune in Russia, i.e. defeat of the proletariat if it were to conquer power.
These are false, selfish class wailings.
If the proletariat gains power it will have every chance of retaining it and of leading Russia until there is a victorious revolution in the West.
In the first place, we have learned much since the Commune, and we would not repeat its fatal errors, we would not leave the banks in the hands of the bourgeoisie, we would not confine ourselves to defence against the Versaillais (or the Kornilovites) but would take the offensive against them and crush them.
Secondly, the victorious proletariat would give Russia peace, and no power on earth would be able to overthrow a government of peace, a government of an honest, sincere, just peace, after all the horrors of more than three years butchery of the peoples.
Thirdly, the victorious proletariat would give the peasantry the land immediately and without compensation. And a tremendous majority of the peasantry – worn out and embittered by the ‘playing around with the landowners’ practised by our government, particularly the coalition government, particularly the Kerensky government – would support the victorious proletariat absolutely, unreservedly, with every means in its power.
You Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries are all talking about the ‘heroic efforts’ of the people. Only recently I came across this phrase for the nth time in the leading article of your Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee. With you it is a mere phrase. But the workers and peasants read it and think about it, and such deliberation – reinforced by the experience of the Kornilov revolt, by the ‘experience’ of Peshekhonov’s ministry, by the ‘experience’ of Chernov’s ministry and so forth – every such deliberation inevitably leads to the conclusion that this ‘heroic effort’ is nothing but confidence of the poor peasantry in the city workers as their most faithful allies and leaders. The heroic effort is nothing but the victory of the Russian proletariat over the bourgeoisie in civil war, for such a victory alone will save the country from painful vacillations, it alone will show the way out, it alone will give land and peace.
If an alliance between the city workers and the poor peasantry can be effected through an immediate transfer of power to the Soviets, so much the better. The Bolsheviks will do everything to secure this peaceful development of the revolution. Without this, even the Constituent Assembly, by itself, will not save the situation, for even there the Socialist-Revolutionaries may continue their ‘playing’ at agreements with the Cadets, with Breshko-Breshkovskaya and Kerensky (in what way are they better than Cadets?) and so on, and so forth.
If even the experience of the Kornilov revolt has taught the ‘democrats’ nothing, and they continue the destructive policy of vacillation and compromise, we say that nothing is more ruinous to the proletarian revolution than these vacillations. That being the case, do not frighten us, gentlemen, with civil war. Civil war is inevitable, if you do not wish to break with Kornilovism and the ‘coalition’ right now, once and for all. This war will bring victory over the exploiters, it will give the land to the peasants, it will give peace to the peoples, it will open the right road to the victorious revolution of the world socialist proletariat.
Written 22 September (5 October) 1917
The so-called Democratic Conference is over. Thank God, one more farce is behind us and still we are advancing, provided fate has no more than a certain number of farces in store for our revolution.
In order correctly to judge the political results of the Conference, we must attempt to ascertain its precise class significance as indicated by objective facts.
Further break-up of the government parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks; their obvious loss of the majority among the revolutionary democrats; one more step towards linking up Mr. Kerensky and Messrs. Tsereteli, Chernov and co. and exposing the Bonapartism they share – such is the class significance of the Conference.
In the Soviets, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have lost their majority. They therefore have had to resort to a fraud – they have violated their pledge to call a new congress of the Soviets in three months. They have evaded reporting back to those who elected the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets; and they have rigged the ‘Democratic’ Conference. The Bolsheviks spoke of this fraud prior to the Conference, and the results fully confirmed their correctness. The Liberdans[13] and the Tseretelis, Chernovs and co. saw that their majority in the Soviets was dwindling, therefore they resorted to a fraud.
Arguments like that which say that co-operatives and also ‘properly’ elected city and zemstvo representatives ‘are already of great significance among the democratic organisations’, are so flimsy that it is nothing but crass hypocrisy to advance them seriously. First of all, the Central Executive Committee was elected by the Soviets, and its refusal to deliver a report and relinquish office to the Soviets, is a Bonapartist fraud. Secondly, the Soviets represent revolutionary democracy insofar as they are joined by those who wish to fight in a revolutionary way. Their doors are not closed to members of the co-operatives and city dwellers. Those same Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks ran the Soviets.
Those who remained only in the co-operatives, who confined themselves only to municipal (city and zemstvo) work, voluntarily separated themselves from the ranks of revolutionary democracy, thereby attaching themselves to a democracy that was either reactionary or neutral. Everybody knows that cooperative and municipal work is done not only by revolutionaries, but also by reactionaries; everybody knows that people are elected to co-operatives and municipalities primarily for work that is not of general political scope and importance.
The aim of the Liberdans, Tsereteli, Chernov and co. when they rigged the Conference was to bring up reserves secretly from among the adherents of Yedinstvo and ‘non-partisan’ reactionaries. That was the fraud they perpetrated. That was their Bonapartism, which allies them with the Bonapartist Kerensky. They robbed democracy while hypocritically keeping up democratic appearances – this is the essence of the matter.
Nicholas II stole, figuratively, large sums from democracy. He convened representative institutions but gave the landowners a hundredfold greater representation than the peasants. The Liberdans, Tseretelis and Chernovs steal petty sums from democracy; they convoke a Democratic Conference where both workers and peasants point with full justice to the curtailment of their representation, to lack of proportionality, to discrimination in favour of members of the co-operatives and municipal councils closest to the bourgeoisie (and reactionary democracy).
The Liberdans, Tseretelis and Chernovs have parted ways with the masses of poor workers and peasants. They saved themselves by the fraud that keeps their Kerensky going.
The demarcation of classes is progressing. A protest is growing in the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, a direct split is maturing because the ‘leaders’ have betrayed the interests of the majority of the population. The leaders are relying on the support of a minority, in defiance of the principles of democracy. Fraud is inevitable as far as they are concerned.
Kerensky is revealing himself more and more as a Bonapartist. He was considered a Socialist-Revolutionary. Now we know that he is not merely a ‘March’ Socialist-Revolutionary who ran over to them from the Trudoviks ‘for advertising purposes’. He is an adherent of Breshko-Breshkovskaya, the Socialist-Revolutionary Mr. Plekhanov, or Mr. Potresov in their Dyen. The so-called Right wing of the so-called socialist parties, the Plekhanovs, Breshkovskayas, Potresovs, is where Kerensky belongs; this wing, however, does not differ substantially from the Cadets in anything.
The Cadets have good reason to praise Kerensky. He pursues their policies and confers with them and with Rodzianko behind the back of the people; he has been exposed by Chernov and others as conniving with Savinkov, a friend of Kornilov’s. Kerensky is a Kornilovite; by sheer accident he has had a quarrel with Kornilov himself, but he remains in the most intimate alliance with other Kornilovites. This is a fact, proved by the revelations about Savinkov, by Dyelo Naroda and by the continuation of the political game, Kerensky’s ‘ministerial leapfrog’ with the Kornilovites disguised under the name of the ‘commercial and industrial class’.
Secret pacts with the Kornilov gang, secret hobnobbing (through Tereshchenko and co.) with the imperialist ‘Allies’; secret obstruction and sabotage of the Constituent Assembly; secret deception of the peasants by way of service to Rodzianko, i.e. the landowners (by doubling the price of bread) – this is what Kerensky is really doing. This is his class policy. This is his Bonapartism.
To conceal this from the Conference, the Liberdans, Tseretelis and Chernovs had to resort to a fraud.
The Bolshevik participation in this hideous fraud, in this farce, had the same justification as their participation in the Third Duma;[14] even in a ‘pigsty’ we must uphold our line, even from a ‘pigsty’ we must send out material exposing the enemy for the instruction of the people.
The difference, however, is this, that the Third Duma was convened when the revolution was obviously ebbing, while at present there is an obvious upsurge of a new revolution; of the scope and the pace of this upsurge, however, we unfortunately know very little.
* * *
The most characteristic episode of the Conference was, in my opinion, Zarudny’s speech. He tells us that as soon as Kerensky ‘as much as hinted’ at reorganising the government, all the ministers began to hand in their resignations. “The following day”, continues the naive, childishly naive (a good thing if he is only naive), Zarudny, “the following day, notwithstanding our resignation, we were called, we were consulted, and finally we were prevailed upon to stay.”
“General laughter in the hall”, remarks at this point the official Izvestia.
Gay folk, those participants in the Bonapartist deception of the people by the republicans. We are all revolutionary democrats – no joking!
From the very beginning, [says Zarudny], we heard two things; we were to strive to make the army capable of fighting, and to hasten peace on a democratic basis. Well, as far as peace is concerned, I do not know whether, during the six weeks I have been a member of the Provisional Government, the Provisional Government has done anything about it. I did not notice it. (Applause and a voice from the audience: “It did nothing” [Izvestia remarks].) When I, as a member of the Provisional Government, inquired about it, I received no reply…
Thus speaks Zarudny, according to the report of the official Izvestia. And the Conference listen in silence, tolerate such things, do not stop the orator, do not interrupt the session, do not jump to their feet and chase out Kerensky and the government! How could they? These ‘revolutionary democrats’ are for Kerensky to a man!
Very well, gentlemen, but then, wherein does the term ‘revolutionary democrat’ differ from the terms ‘lackey’ and ‘scoundrel’?
It is natural that these lackeys are capable of roaring with laughter when ‘their’ Minister, noted for his rare naivety or rare stupidity, tells them how Kerensky keeps removing and replacing ministers (in order to come to terms with the Kornilov gang behind the back of the people and ‘in full privacy’). It is not surprising that the lackeys keep silent when ‘their’ Minister, who seems to have taken general phrases about peace seriously without seeing their hypocrisy, admits that he did not even receive a reply to his question about real steps towards peace. Such is the fate of lackeys, to allow themselves to be fooled by the government. But what has this to do with revolution, what has it to do with democracy?
Would it be surprising if revolutionary soldiers and workers were to get the idea that it would be good if the ceiling of the Alexandrinsky Theatre were to fall and crush all that gang of pitiful scoundrels who can sit there in silence when it is being demonstrated to them that Kerensky and co. are fooling them with their talk about peace, who can roar with laughter when they are told as clearly as can be by their own ministers that ministerial leapfrog is a farce (concealing Kerensky’s dealings with the Kornilovites). God save us from our friends, we can cope with our enemies ourselves! God save us from these claimants to revolutionary democratic leadership, we can cope with the Kerenskys, Cadets and Kornilovites ourselves!
* * *
And now I come to the errors of the Bolsheviks. To have confined themselves to ironic applause and exclamations at such a moment was an error.
The people are weary of vacillations and delays. Dissatisfaction is obviously growing. A new revolution is approaching. The reactionary democrats, the Liberdans, Tseretelis and others, wish only to distract the attention of the people with their farce of a ‘conference’, keep them busy with it, cut the Bolsheviks off from the masses and provide the Bolshevik delegates with the unworthy occupation of sitting and listening to the Zarudnys! And the Zarudnys are not the least sincere of them!
The Bolsheviks should have walked out of the meeting in protest and not allowed themselves to be caught by the conference trap set to divert the people’s attention from serious questions. The Bolsheviks should have left two or three of their 136 delegates for ‘liaison work’, that is, to report by telephone the moment the idiotic babbling came to an end and the voting began. They should not have allowed themselves to be kept busy with obvious nonsense for the obvious purpose of deceiving the people with the obvious aim of extinguishing the growing revolution by wasting time on trivial matters.
Ninety-nine per cent of the Bolshevik delegation ought to have gone to the factories and barracks; that was the proper place for delegates who had come from all ends of Russia and who, after Zarudny’s speech, could see the full depth of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik rottenness. There, closer to the masses, at hundreds and thousands of meetings and talks, they ought to have discussed the lessons of this farcical conference whose obvious purpose was only to give a respite to the Kornilovite Kerensky and make it easier for him to try new variations of the ‘ministerial leapfrog’ game.
The Bolsheviks, it turned out, had a wrong attitude to parliamentarianism in moments of revolutionary (and not constitutional) crises, an incorrect attitude to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.
How it happened can be understood – history made a very sharp turn at the time of the Kornilov revolt. The Party failed to keep pace with the incredibly fast tempo of history at this turning-point. The Party allowed itself to be diverted, for the time being, into the trap of a despicable talking-shop.
They should have left one hundredth of their forces for that talking-shop and devoted ninety-nine hundredths to the masses.
If the turn taken by history called for a compromise with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks (personally I believe it did) the Bolsheviks should have proposed it clearly, openly and speedily, so that they could immediately turn to account the possible and probable refusal of the Bonapartist Kerensky’s friends to agree to a compromise with them.
The refusal was already indicated by articles in Dyelo Naroda and Rabochaya Gazeta on the eve of the Conference. The masses should have been told as officially, openly and clearly as possible, they should have been told without the loss of a minute, that the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had rejected our offer of a compromise – Down with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks! The Conference could have afforded ‘to laugh’ at the naivety of Zarudny to the accompaniment of this slogan in the factories and barracks!
The atmosphere of a certain enthusiasm for the Conference and the situation surrounding it seems to have been built up from various sides. Comrade Zinoviev made a mistake in writing about the Commune so ambiguously (ambiguously, to say the least) that it appeared that the Commune, although victorious in Petrograd, might be defeated as in France in 1871. This is absolutely untrue. If the Commune were victorious in Petrograd it would be victorious throughout Russia. It was a mistake on his part to write that the Bolsheviks did right in proposing a proportional composition for the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet. The revolutionary proletariat would never do anything worthwhile in the Soviet as long as the Tseretelis were allowed proportional participation; to let them in meant depriving ourselves of the opportunity to work, it meant the ruin of Soviet work. Comrade Kamenev was wrong in delivering the first speech at the Conference in a purely ‘constitutional’ spirit when he raised the foolish question of confidence or non-confidence in the government. If, at such a meeting, it was not possible to tell the truth about the Kornilovite Kerensky that had already been told both in Rabochy Put and the Moscow Sotsial-Demokrat, why not refer to those papers and make it well known to the masses that the Conference did not want to listen to the truth about the Kornilovite Kerensky?
It was a mistake on the part of the Petrograd workers’ delegations to send speakers to such a conference after Zarudny had spoken and the situation had been made clear. Why cast pearls before Kerensky’s friends? Why divert the attention of proletarian forces to a farcical conference? Why did those delegations not go quite peacefully and legally to the barracks and the more backward factories? That would have been a million times more useful, essential, serious and to the point than the journey to the Alexandrinsky Theatre and chats with cooperators who sympathise with Yedinstvo and Kerensky.
Ten soldiers or ten workers from a backward factory who have become politically enlightened are worth a thousand times more than a hundred delegates hand-picked from various delegations by the Liberdans. Parliamentarianism should be used, especially in revolutionary times, not to waste valuable time over representatives of what is rotten, but to use the example of what is rotten to teach the masses.
Why should those same proletarian delegations not ‘use’ the Conference to publish, say, two posters explaining that the Conference is a farce and to display them in barracks and factories? One of the posters could depict Zarudny in a fool’s cap, dancing on the stage and singing the song “Kerensky sacked us, Kerensky took us back”. Around him stand Tsereteli, Chernov, Skobelev and a cooperator arm-in-arm with Liber and Dan, all rolling with laughter. Caption: They are happy.
Poster number two. Zarudny again in front of the same audience saying: “I asked about peace for six weeks. I got no answer.” The audience is silent, their faces express ‘statesmanlike importance’. Tsereteli looks particularly important as he writes in his notebook:
‘What a fool that Zarudny is! The imbecile should be carting dung instead of being a minister. He is an advocate of the coalition and undermines it worse than a hundred Bolsheviks! He was a minister but he never learned to speak like one, he should have said: “I continuously followed the campaign for peace for six weeks and I am fully convinced of its final success precisely under the coalition government in accordance with the great idea of Stockholm, etc., etc.” Then even Russkaya Volya would have praised Zarudny as the knight of the Russian revolution.’
Caption: ‘Revolutionary-democratic’ conference of male prostitutes.
* * *
Written before the end of the Conference; change the first phrase to something like “In all essentials the so-called Democratic…”
Written 22-24 September (5-7 October) 1917
Friday 22 September 1917
The more one reflects on the meaning of the so-called Democratic Conference, and the more attentively one observes from outside – and it is said that the bystander sees most – the more firmly convinced one becomes that our Party committed a mistake by participating in it. We should have boycotted it. One may ask if there is any use in analysing such a question since the past cannot be remedied. Such an objection to criticising the tactics of yesterday, however, would be clearly unfounded. We have always condemned, and as Marxists we must condemn, the tactics of those who live ‘from hand to mouth’. Momentary success is not enough for us. In general, plans calculated for a minute or a day are not enough for us. We must constantly test ourselves by a study of the chain of political events in their entirety, in their causal connection, in their results. By analysing the errors of yesterday, we learn to avoid errors today and tomorrow.
A new revolution is obviously maturing in the country, a revolution of other classes (other than those that carried out the revolution against tsarism). At that time it was a revolution of the proletariat, the peasantry and the bourgeoisie in alliance with Anglo-French finance capital against tsarism.
The revolution now maturing is one of the proletariat and the majority of the peasants, more specifically, of the poor peasants, against the bourgeoisie, against its ally, Anglo-French finance capital and against its government apparatus headed by the Bonapartist Kerensky.
At the moment we shall not dwell on the facts testifying to the rise of a new revolution, since, judging by the articles in Rabochy Put, our Central Organ, the Party has already made clear its views on this point. The new revolutionary upsurge seems to be a phenomenon commonly recognised by the Party. Data on this process of maturing, of course, still have to be summarised, but they must form the subject of other articles.
At the present moment it is more important to call the closest attention to the class differences between the old revolution and the new, to weigh up the political situation and our tasks from the point of view of this basic fact, class relations. At the time of the first revolution the vanguard was formed by the workers and soldiers, i.e. by the proletariat and the advanced sections of the peasantry.
This vanguard carried along not only many of the worst vacillating elements of the petty bourgeoisie (remember the indecision of the Mensheviks and Trudoviks on the question of a republic), but also the monarchist party of the Cadets, the liberal bourgeoisie, thereby making it a republican party. Why was such a change possible?
Because economic domination is everything to the bourgeoisie, and the form of political domination is of very little importance; the bourgeoisie can rule just as well under a republic, its domination is even more certain under a republic, in the sense that under a republican political order, no changes in the composition of the government or in the composition and the grouping of the ruling parties affect the bourgeoisie.
Of course, the bourgeoisie stood for and will stand for a monarchy, because the cruder armed protection of capital by monarchist institutions is more obvious and ‘closer’ to all the capitalists and landowners. However, under a strong pressure ‘from below’, the bourgeoisie has always and everywhere ‘reconciled’ itself to a republic, as long as it could maintain its economic domination.
The relation of the proletariat and the poor peasantry, i.e. the majority of the people, in respect of the bourgeoisie and Allied (and world) imperialism is such that it is impossible for them to ‘carry’ the bourgeoisie with them. Moreover, the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie and the more well-to-do strata of the democratic petty bourgeoisie are patently against a new revolution. This fact is so obvious that there is no need to dwell on it here. The Liberdans, Tseretelis and Chernovs illustrate this most clearly.
The class relations have changed. This is the crux of the matter.
Different classes now stand ‘on the one and the other side of the barricade’.
That is the main thing.
That, and that alone, is the scientific reason for speaking of a new revolution which – arguing purely theoretically, taking the question in the abstract – could be accomplished legally if, for instance, the Constituent Assembly, convoked by the bourgeoisie, produced a majority opposed to the bourgeoisie, if the majority belonged to the parties of the workers and poor peasants.
The objective relations of the classes, their role (economic and political) outside and inside representative institutions of the given type; the rise or decline of the revolution; the relation of extra-parliamentary to parliamentary means of struggle – these are the chief, the basic objective facts which must be considered if the tactics of boycott or participation are to be deduced in a Marxist way and not arbitrarily, according to our ‘sympathies’.
The experience of our revolution clearly demonstrates how to approach the boycott question in a Marxist way.
Why did the boycott of the Bulygin Duma[15] prove correct tactics?
Because it was in accordance with the objective alignment of social forces in their development. It provided the maturing revolution with a slogan for the overthrow of an old order which, to distract the people from the revolution, was convoking a clumsily fabricated compromise institution (the Bulygin Duma) which did not show promise of any earnest ‘anchoring’ in parliamentarianism. The extra-parliamentary means of struggle of the proletariat and the peasantry were stronger. These are the elements that went into shaping the correct tactics of boycotting the Bulygin Duma, tactics which took account of the objective situation.
Why did the tactics of boycotting the Third Duma prove incorrect?
Because they were based only on the ‘catchiness’ of the boycott slogan and on the revulsion felt towards the brutal reaction of the 3 (16) June ‘pigsty’. The objective situation, however, was such that on the one hand the revolution was in a state of collapse and declining fast. For the upsurge of the revolution a parliamentary base (even inside a ‘pigsty’) was of tremendous political importance, since extra-parliamentary means of propaganda, agitation and organisation were almost non-existent or extremely weak. On the other hand, the most openly reactionary nature of the Third Duma did not prevent it from being an organ reflecting real class relations, namely, the Stolypin combination of the monarchy and the bourgeoisie. This new relation of classes was something the country had to get rid of.
These very elements shaped the tactics of participation in the Third Duma that took proper account of the objective situation.
It is sufficient to give thought to these lessons gained from experience and the conditions required by a Marxist approach to the question of boycott or participation, to realise that participation in the Democratic Conference, the Democratic Council or the Pre-parliament would be wrong tactics.
On the one hand, a new revolution is maturing. The war is on the upgrade. The extra-parliamentary means of propaganda, agitation and organisation are tremendous. The ‘parliamentary’ tribune in the given Pre-parliament is insignificant. On the other hand, this Pre-parliament neither reflects nor serves a new relation of classes; for instance, the peasantry is here more poorly represented than in the already existing organs (Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies). The Pre-parliament is in substance a Bonapartist fraud, not only because the filthy gang of the Liberdans, Tseretelis and Chernovs, together with Kerensky and co. have given this Tsereteli-Bulygin Duma a fake, hand-picked composition, but also more profoundly because the only aim of the Pre-parliament is to trick the masses, to deceive the workers and peasants, to distract them from the new upsurge of the revolution, to dazzle the eyes of the oppressed classes by a new dress for the old, long tried-out, bedraggled, threadbare ‘coalition’ with the bourgeoisie (i.e. the bourgeoisie’s transformation of Tsereteli and co. into jesters helping to subordinate the people to imperialism and the imperialist war).
“We are weak now,” said the tsar in August 1905 to his feudal landowners. “Our power is wavering. The tide of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution is rising. We must trick the ‘plain man’, we must dangle something before his eyes…”
“We are weak now”, says the present ‘tsar’, the Bonapartist Kerensky, to the Cadets, the non-party Tit Tityches,[16] Plekhanovs, Breshkovskayas and co. “Our power is tottering. A wave of workers’ and peasants’ revolution against the bourgeoisie is rising. We must hoodwink the democrats by dying in new colours that jester’s costume which the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik ‘leaders of revolutionary democracy’, our dear friends the Tseretelis and Chernovs, have been wearing to fool the people since 6 (19) May 1917.[17] We can easily dangle a ‘Pre-parliament’ before their eyes.”
“We are strong now,” said the tsar to his feudal landowners in June 1907. “The wave of workers’ and peasants’ revolution is receding, but we cannot maintain ourselves as of old; deception alone will not suffice. We must have a new policy in the village, we must have a new economic and political bloc with the Guchkovs and Milyukovs, with the bourgeoisie.”
It is in this way that the three situations, August 1905, September 1917 and June 1907, may be presented to illustrate most vividly the objective basis for the boycott tactics and its connection with class relations. The oppressed classes are always being deceived by the oppressors, but the meaning of this deception differs at different moments in history. Tactics cannot be based on the bare fact that the oppressors deceive the people; tactics must be shaped after analysing class relations in their entirety and the development of both extra-parliamentary and parliamentary struggle.
Participation in the Pre-parliament is incorrect tactics that does not correspond to the objective relations of classes, to the objective conditions of the moment.
We should have boycotted the Democratic Conference; we all erred by not doing so, but mistakes are no crime. We shall correct the mistake only if we have a sincere desire to support the revolutionary struggle of the masses, only if we give earnest thought to the objective foundations of our tactics.
We must boycott the Pre-parliament. We must leave it and go to the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, to the trade unions, to the masses in general. We must call on them to struggle. We must give them a correct and clear slogan: disperse the Bonapartist gang of Kerensky and his fake Pre-parliament, with this Tsereteli-Bulygin Duma. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, even after the Kornilov revolt, refused to accept our compromise of peacefully transferring the power to the Soviets (in which we then had no majority); they have again sunk into the morass of filthy and mean bargaining with the Cadets. Down with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries! Struggle against them ruthlessly. Expel them ruthlessly from all revolutionary organisations. No negotiations, no communication with those friends of the Kishkins,[18] the friends of the Kornilovite landowners and capitalists.
* * *
Saturday 23 September
Trotsky was for the boycott. Bravo, Comrade Trotsky!
Boycottism was defeated in the Bolshevik group at the Democratic Conference.
Long live the boycott!
We cannot and must not under any circumstances reconcile ourselves to participation. A group at one of the conferences is not the highest organ of the party and even the decisions of the highest organs are subject to revision on the basis of experience.
We must at all costs strive to have the boycott question solved both at a plenary meeting of the Executive Committee and at an extraordinary Party congress. The boycott question must now be made the platform for elections to the Congress and for all elections inside the Party.
We must draw the masses into the discussion of this question. Class-conscious workers must take the matter into their own hands, organise the discussion and exert pressure on those at the top.
There is not the slightest doubt that at the ‘top’ of our Party there are noticeable vacillations that may become ruinous, because the struggle is developing; under certain conditions, at a certain moment, vacillations may ruin the cause.
We must put all our forces into the struggle, we must uphold the correct line of the party of the revolutionary proletariat before it is too late.
Not all is well with the ‘parliamentary’ leaders of our Party; greater attention must be paid to them, there must be greater workers’ supervision over them; the competency of parliamentary groups must be more clearly defined.
Our Party’s mistake is obvious. The fighting party of the advanced class need not fear mistakes. What it should fear is persistence in a mistake, refusal to admit and correct a mistake out of a false sense of shame.
* * *
Sunday 24 September
The Congress of Soviets has been postponed until 20 October (2 November). The tempo of Russian life is such that this almost means postponing it to the Greek calends.[19] The farce staged by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks after 20-21 April is being repeated for the second time.
Published 26 September (10 October) 1917
Russia is a country of the petty bourgeoisie, by far the greater part of the population belonging to this class. Its vacillations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are inevitable, and only when it joins the proletariat is the victory of the revolution, of the cause of peace, freedom, and land for the working people assured easily, peacefully, quickly and smoothly.
The course of our revolution shows us these vacillations in practice. Let us then not harbour any illusions about the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties; let us stick firmly to the path of our proletarian class. The poverty of the poor peasants, the horrors of the war, the horrors of hunger – all these are showing the masses more and more clearly the correctness of the proletarian path, the need to support the proletarian revolution.
The ‘peaceful’ hopes of the petty bourgeoisie that there might be a ‘coalition’ with the bourgeoisie and agreements with them, that it will be possible to wait ‘calmly’ for the ‘speedy’ convocation of the Constituent Assembly, etc., have been mercilessly, cruelly, implacably destroyed by the course of the revolution. The Kornilov revolt was the last cruel lesson, a lesson on a grand scale, supplementing thousands upon thousands of small lessons in which workers and peasants were deceived by local capitalists and landowners, in which soldiers were deceived by the officers etc., etc.
Discontent, indignation and wrath are growing in the army, among the peasantry and among the workers. The ‘coalition’ of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks with the bourgeoisie, promising everything and fulfilling nothing, is irritating the masses, is opening their eyes, is pushing them towards insurrection.
There is a growing Left opposition among the Socialist-Revolutionaries (Spiridonova and others) and among the Mensheviks (Martov and others), and has already reached 40 per cent of the Council and Congress of those parties. And down below, among the proletariat and the peasantry, particularly the poorest sections, the majority of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks belong to the Lefts.
The Kornilov revolt is instructive and has proved a good lesson.
It is impossible to know whether the Soviets will be able to go farther than the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and thus ensure a peaceful development of the revolution, or whether they will continue to mark time, thus making a proletarian uprising inevitable.
We cannot know this.
Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the ‘last’ chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.
The following lines are an essay in the presentation of such a programme.
Let us take it more to those down below, to the masses, to the office employees, to the workers, to the peasants, not only to our supporters, but particularly to those who follow the Socialist-Revolutionaries, to the non-party elements, to the ignorant. Let us lift them up so that they can pass an independent judgment, make their own decisions, send their own delegations to the Conference, to the Soviets, to the government and our work will not have been in vain, no matter what the outcome of the Conference. This will then prove useful for the Conference, for the elections to the Constituent Assembly, and for all other political activity in general.
Experience teaches us that the Bolshevik programme and tactics are correct. So little time passed, so much happened from 20 April to the Kornilov revolt.
The experience of the masses, the experience of oppressed classes taught them very, very much in that time; the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have completely cut adrift from the masses. This will most certainly be revealed in the discussion of our concrete programme insofar as we are able to bring it to the notice of the masses.
Agreements with the capitalists are disastrous
- To leave in power the representatives of the bourgeoisie, even a small number of them, to leave in power such notorious Kornilovites as Generals Alexeyev, Klembovsky, Bagration, Gagarin and others, or such as have proved their complete powerlessness in face of the bourgeoisie, and their ability of acting Bonaparte-fashion like Kerensky, is, on the one hand, merely opening the door wide to famine and the inevitable economic catastrophe which the capitalists are purposely accelerating and intensifying; on the other hand, it will lead to a military catastrophe, since the army hates the General Staff and cannot enthusiastically participate in the imperialist war. Besides, there is no doubt that Kornilovite generals and officers remaining in power will deliberately open the front to the Germans, as they have done in Galicia and Riga. This can be prevented only by the formation of a new government on a new basis, as expounded below. To continue any kind of agreements with the bourgeoisie after all that we have gone through since 20 April would be, on the part of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, not only an error but a direct betrayal of the people and of the revolution.
Power to the soviets
- All power in the country must pass exclusively to the representatives of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies on the basis of a definite programme and under the condition of the government being fully responsible to the Soviets. New elections to the Soviets must be held immediately, both to record the experience of the people during the recent weeks of the revolution, which have been particularly eventful, and to eliminate crying injustices (lack of proportional representation, unequal elections, etc.) which in some cases still remain.
All power locally, wherever there are not yet any democratically elected institutions, and also in the army, must be taken over exclusively by the local Soviets and by commissars and other institutions elected by them, but only those that have been properly elected.
Workers and revolutionary troops, i.e. those who have in practice shown their ability to suppress the Kornilovites, must everywhere be armed, and this must be done with the full support of the state.
Peace to the peoples
- The Soviet Government must straight away offer to all the belligerent peoples (i.e. simultaneously both to their governments and to the worker and peasant masses) to conclude an immediate general peace on democratic terms, and also to conclude an immediate armistice (even if only for three months).
The main condition for a democratic peace is the renunciation of annexations (seizures) – not in the incorrect sense that all powers get back what they have lost, but in the only correct sense that every nationality without any exception, both in Europe and in the colonies, shall obtain its freedom and the possibility to decide for itself whether it is to form a separate state or whether it is to enter into the composition of some other state.
In offering the peace terms, the Soviet Government must itself immediately take steps towards their fulfilment, i.e. it must publish and repudiate the secret treaties by which we have been bound up to the present time, those which were concluded by the tsar and which give Russian capitalists the promise of the pillaging of Turkey, Austria, etc. Then we must immediately satisfy the demands of the Ukrainians and the Finns, ensure them, as well as all other non-Russian nationalities in Russia, full freedom, including freedom of secession, applying the same to all Armenia, undertaking to evacuate that country as well as the Turkish lands occupied by us, etc.
Such peace terms will not meet with the approval of the capitalists, but they will meet with such tremendous sympathy on the part of all the peoples and will cause such a great world-wide outburst of enthusiasm and of general indignation against the continuation of the predatory war that it is extremely probable that we shall at once obtain a truce and a consent to open peace negotiations. For the workers’ revolution against the war is irresistibly growing everywhere, and it can be spurred on, not by phrases about peace (with which the workers and peasants have been deceived by all the imperialist governments including our own Kerensky government), but by a break with the capitalists and by the offer of peace.
If the least probable thing happens, i.e. if not a single belligerent state accepts even a truce, then as far as we are concerned the war becomes truly forced upon us, it becomes a truly just war of defence. If this is understood by the proletariat and the poor peasantry Russia will become many times stronger even in the military sense, especially after a complete break with the capitalists who are robbing the people; furthermore, under such conditions it would, as far as we are concerned, be a war in league with the oppressed classes of all countries, a war in league with the oppressed peoples of the whole world, not in word, but in deed.
The people must be particularly cautioned against the capitalists’ assertion which sometimes influences the petty bourgeoisie and others who are frightened, namely, that the British and other capitalists are capable of doing serious damage to the Russian revolution if we break the present predatory alliance with them. Such an assertion is false through and through, for ‘Allied financial aid’ enriches the bankers and ‘supports’ the Russian workers and peasants in exactly the same way as a rope supports a man who has been hanged. There is plenty of bread, coal, oil and iron in Russia; for these products to be properly distributed it is only necessary for us to rid ourselves of the landowners and capitalists who are robbing the people. As to the possibility of the Russian people being threatened with war by their present Allies, it is obviously absurd to assume that the French and Italians could unite their armies with those of the Germans and move them against Russia who offers a just peace. As to Britain, America and Japan, even if they were to declare war against Russia (which for them is extremely difficult, both because of the extreme unpopularity of such a war among the masses and because of the divergence of material interests of the capitalists of those countries over the partitioning of Asia, especially over the plunder of China), they could not cause Russia one-hundredth part of the damage and misery which the war with Germany, Austria and Turkey is causing her.
Land to those who till it
- The Soviet Government must immediately declare the abolition of private landed estates without compensation and place all these estates under the management of the peasant committees pending the solution of the problem by the Constituent Assembly. These peasant committees are also to take over all the landowners’ stock and implements, with the proviso that they be placed primarily at the disposal of the poor peasants for their use free of charge.
Such measures, which have long been demanded by an immense majority of the peasantry, both in the resolutions of congresses and in hundreds of mandates from local peasants (as may be seen, for instance, from a summary of 242 mandates published by Izvestia Soveta Krestyanskikh Deputatov), are absolutely and urgently necessary. There must be no further procrastination like that from which the peasantry suffered so much at the time of the ‘coalition’ government.
Any government that hesitates to introduce these measures should be regarded as a government hostile to the people that should be overthrown and crushed by an uprising of the workers and peasants. On the other hand, only a government that realises these measures will be a government of all the people.
Struggle against famine and economic ruin
- The Soviet Government must immediately introduce workers’ control of production and distribution on a nation-wide scale. Experience since 6 (19) May has shown that in the absence of such control all the promises of reforms and attempts to introduce them are powerless, and famine, accompanied by unprecedented catastrophe is becoming a greater menace to the whole country week by week.
It is necessary to nationalise the banks and the insurance business immediately, and also the most important branches of industry (oil, coal, metallurgy, sugar, etc.), and at the same time, to abolish commercial secrets and to establish unrelaxing supervision by the workers and peasants over the negligible minority of capitalists who wax rich on government contracts and evade accounting and just taxation of their profits and property.
Such measures, which do not deprive either the middle peasants, the Cossacks or the small handicraftsmen of a single kopek, are urgently needed for the struggle against famine and are absolutely just because they distribute the burdens of the war equitably. Only after capitalist plunder has been curbed and the deliberate sabotage of production has been stopped will it be possible to work for an improvement in labour productivity, introduce universal labour conscription and the proper exchange of grain for manufactured goods, and return to the Treasury thousands of millions in paper money now being hoarded by the rich.
Without such measures, the abolition of the landed estates without compensation is also impossible, for the major part of the estates is mortgaged to the banks, so that the interests of the landowners and capitalists are inseparably linked up.
The latest resolution of the Economic Department of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (Rabochaya Gazeta, No. 152) recognises not only the ‘harm’ caused by the government’s measures (like the raising of grain prices for the enrichment of the landowners and kulaks), not only “the fact of the complete inactivity on the part of the central organs set up by the government for the regulation of economic life”, but even the “contravention of the laws” by this government. This admission on the part of the ruling parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, proves once more the criminal nature of the policy of conciliation with the bourgeoisie.
Struggle against the counter-revolution of the landowners and capitalists
- The Kornilov and Kaledin revolt was supported by the entire class of the landowners and capitalists, with the party of the Cadets (‘people’s freedom’ party) at their head. This has already been fully proved by the facts published in Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee.
However, nothing has been done either to suppress this counter-revolution completely or even to investigate it, and nothing serious can be done without the transfer of power to the Soviets. No commission can conduct a full investigation, or arrest the guilty, etc., unless it holds state power. Only a Soviet government can do this, and must do it. Only a Soviet government can make Russia secure against the otherwise inevitable repetition of ‘Kornilov’ attempts by arresting the Kornilovite generals and the ringleaders of the bourgeois counter-revolution (Guchkov, Milyukov, Ryabushinsky, Maklakov and co.), by disbanding the counter-revolutionary associations (the State Duma, the officers’ unions, etc.), by placing their members under the surveillance of the local Soviets and by disbanding counter-revolutionary armed units.
This government alone can set up a commission to make a full and public investigation of the Kornilov case and all the other cases, even those started by the bourgeoisie; and the party of the Bolsheviks, in its turn, would appeal to the workers to give full cooperation and to submit only to such a commission.
Only a Soviet government could successfully combat such a flagrant injustice as the capitalists’ seizure of the largest printing presses and most of the papers with the aid of millions squeezed out of the people. It is necessary to suppress the bourgeois counter-revolutionary papers (Rech, Russkoye Slovo), presses, to declare private advertisements in the papers a state monopoly, to transfer them to the paper published by the Soviets, the paper that tells the peasants the truth. Only in this way can and must the bourgeoisie be deprived of its powerful weapon of lying and slandering, deceiving the people with impunity, misleading the peasantry and preparing a counter-revolution.
Peaceful development of the revolution
- A possibility very seldom to be met with in the history of revolutions now faces the democracy of Russia, the Soviets and the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties – the possibility of convening the Constituent Assembly at the appointed date without further delays, of making the country secure against a military and economic catastrophe, and of ensuring the peaceful development of the revolution.
If the Soviets now take full state power exclusively into their own hands for the purpose of carrying out the programme set forth above, they will not only obtain the support of nine-tenths of the population of Russia, the working class and an overwhelming majority of the peasantry; they will also be assured of the greatest revolutionary enthusiasm on the part of the army and the majority of the people, an enthusiasm without which victory over famine and war is impossible.
There could be no question of any resistance to the Soviets if the Soviets themselves did not waver. No class will dare start an uprising against the Soviets, and the landowners and capitalists, taught a lesson by the experience of the Kornilov revolt, will give up their power peacefully and yield to the ultimatum of the Soviets. To overcome the capitalists’ resistance to the programme of the Soviets, supervision over the exploiters by workers and peasants and such measures of punishing the recalcitrants as confiscation of their entire property coupled with a short term of arrest will be sufficient.
By seizing full power, the Soviets could still today – and this is probably their last chance – ensure the peaceful development of the revolution, peaceful elections of deputies by the people, and a peaceful struggle of parties inside the Soviets; they could test the programmes of the various parties in practice and power could pass peacefully from one party to another.
The entire course of development of the revolution, from the movement of 20 April to the Kornilov revolt, shows that there is bound to be the bitterest civil war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat if this opportunity is missed. Inevitable catastrophe will bring this war nearer. It must end, as all data and considerations accessible to human reason go to prove, in the full victory of the working class, in that class, supported by the poor peasantry, carrying out the above programme; it may, however, prove very difficult and bloody, and may cost the lives of tens of thousands of landowners, capitalists and officers who sympathise with them. The proletariat will not hesitate to make every sacrifice to save the revolution, which is possible only by implementing the programme set forth above. On the other hand, the proletariat would support the Soviets in every way if they were to make use of their last chance to secure a peaceful development of the revolution.
Written 29 September (13 October) 1917
Editor’s note:
This article consisted of six chapters, the last not being intended for publication but for circulation among members of the CC, the Petrograd and Moscow Committees and the Soviets. The article was first published in four chapters in Rabochy Put, No. 30 of 7 (20) October 1917; a comparison of the newspaper text and the manuscript shows that one of the chapters was omitted and Chapter V was headed as Chapter IV.
* * *
I
The end of September undoubtedly marked a great turning-point in the history of the Russian revolution and, to all appearances, of the world revolution as well.
The world working-class revolution began with the action of individuals, whose boundless courage represented everything honest that remained of that decayed official ‘socialism’ which is in reality social-chauvinism. Liebknecht in Germany, Adler in Austria, Maclean in Britain – these are the best-known names of the isolated heroes who have taken upon themselves the arduous role of forerunners of the world revolution.
The second stage in the historical preparation for this revolution was a widespread mass discontent, expressing itself in the split of the official parties, in illegal publications and in street demonstrations. The protest against the war became stronger, and the number of victims of government persecution increased. The prisons of countries famed for their observance of law and even for their freedom – Germany, France, Italy and Britain – became filled with tens and hundreds of internationalists, opponents of the war and advocates of a working-class revolution.
The third stage has now begun. This stage may be called the eve of revolution. Mass arrests of party leaders in free Italy, and particularly the beginning of mutinies in the German Army, are indisputable symptoms that a great turning-point is at hand, that we are on the eve of a world wide revolution.[20]
Even before this there were, no doubt, individual cases of mutiny among the troops in Germany, but they were so small, so weak and isolated that it was possible to hush them up – and that was the chief way of checking the mass contagion of seditious action. Finally, there developed such a movement in the navy that it was impossible to hush it up, despite all the severity of the German regime of military servitude, severity elaborated with amazing minuteness of detail and observed with incredible pedantry.
Doubt is out of the question. We are on the threshold of a world proletarian revolution. And since of all the proletarian internationalists in all countries only we Russian Bolsheviks enjoy a measure of freedom – we have a legal party and a score or so of papers, we have the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of both capitals on our side, and we have the support of a majority of the people in a time of revolution – to us the saying: “to whom much has been given, of him much shall be required” in all justice can and must be applied.
II
The crucial point of the revolution in Russia has undoubtedly arrived.
In a peasant country, and under a revolutionary, republican government which enjoys the support of the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties that only yesterday dominated petty-bourgeois democracy, a peasant revolt is developing.
Incredible as this is, it is a fact.
We Bolsheviks are not surprised by this fact. We have always said that the government of the notorious ‘coalition’ with the bourgeoisie is a government that betrays democracy and the revolution, that it is a government of imperialist slaughter, a government that protects the capitalists and landowners from the people.
Owing to the deception practised by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, there still exists in Russia, under a republic and in a time of revolution, a government of capitalists and landowners side by side with the Soviets. This is the bitter and sinister reality. Is it then surprising, in view of the incredible hardship inflicted on the people by prolonging the imperialist war and by its consequences, that a peasant revolt has begun and is spreading in Russia?
Is it then surprising that the enemies of the Bolsheviks, the leaders of the official Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the very party that supported the ‘coalition’ all along, the party that until the last few days or weeks had the majority of the people on its side, the party that continues to harry and abuse the ‘new’ Socialist-Revolutionaries, who have realised that the policy of coalition is a betrayal of the interests of the peasants – is it surprising that these leaders of the official Socialist-Revolutionary Party wrote the following in an editorial in their official organ, Dyelo Naroda of 29 September (12 October):
So far practically nothing has been done to put an end to the relations of bondage that still prevail in the villages of central Russia… The bill for the regulation of land relations in the countryside, which was introduced in the Provisional Government long ago, and which has even passed through such a purgatory as the Judicial Conference, has got hopelessly stuck in some office… Are we not right in asserting that our republican government is still a long way from having rid itself of the old habits of the tsarist administration, and that the dead hand of Stolypin is still making itself strongly felt in the methods of the revolutionary ministers?
This is written by the official Socialist-Revolutionaries! Just think: the supporters of the coalition are forced to admit that in a peasant country, after seven months of revolution, “practically nothing has been done to put an end to the bondage” of the peasants, to their enslavement by the landowners! These Socialist-Revolutionaries are forced to give the name of Stolypins to their colleague, Kerensky, and his gang of ministers.
Could we get more eloquent testimony than this from the camp of our opponents, not only to the effect that the coalition has collapsed and that the official Socialist-Revolutionaries who tolerate Kerensky have become an anti-popular, anti-peasant and counter-revolutionary party, but also that the whole Russian revolution has reached a turning-point?
A peasant revolt in a peasant country against the government of the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky, the Mensheviks Nikitin and Gvozdev, and other ministers who represent capital and the interests of the landowners! The crushing of this revolt by military measures by a republican government!
In the face of such facts, can one remain a conscientious champion of the proletariat and yet deny that a crisis has matured, that the revolution is passing through an extremely critical moment, that the government’s victory over the peasant revolt would now sound the death knell of the revolution, would be the final triumph of the Kornilov revolt?
III
It is obvious that if in a peasant country, after seven months of a democratic republic, matters could come to a peasant revolt, it irrefutably proves that the revolution is suffering nation-wide collapse, that it is experiencing a crisis of unprecedented severity, and that the forces of counter-revolution have gone the limit.
That is obvious. In the face of such a fact as a peasant revolt all other political symptoms, even were they to contradict the fact that a nation-wide crisis is maturing, would have no significance whatsoever.
But on the contrary, all the symptoms do indicate that a nation-wide crisis has matured.
Next to the agrarian question, the most important question in Russia’s state affairs is the national question, particularly for the petty-bourgeois masses of the population. And at the ‘Democratic’ Conference, which was fixed by Mr. Tsereteli and co., we find that the ‘national’ curia takes second place for radicalism, yielding only to the trade unions, and exceeding the curia of the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in the percentage of votes cast against the coalition (forty out of fifty-five). The Kerensky government – a government suppressing the peasant revolt – is withdrawing the revolutionary troops from Finland in order to strengthen the reactionary Finnish bourgeoisie. In the Ukraine, the conflicts of the Ukrainians in general, and of the Ukrainian troops in particular, with the government are becoming more and more frequent.
Furthermore, let us take the army, which in war-time plays an exceptionally big role in all state affairs. We find that the army in Finland and the fleet in the Baltic have completely parted ways with the government. We have the testimony of the officer Dubasov, a non-Bolshevik, who speaks in the name of the whole front and declares in a manner more revolutionary than that of any Bolsheviks that the soldiers will not fight any longer. We have governmental reports stating that the soldiers are in a state of “agitation” and that it is impossible to guarantee the maintenance of “order” (i.e. participation of these troops in the suppression of the peasant revolt). We have, finally, the voting in Moscow, where 14,000 out of 17,000 soldiers voted for the Bolsheviks.
This vote in the elections to the district councils in Moscow is in general one of the most striking symptoms of the profound change which has taken place in the mood of the whole nation. It is generally known that Moscow is more petty-bourgeois than Petrograd. It is a fact frequently corroborated and indisputable that the Moscow proletariat has an incomparably greater number of connections with the countryside, that it has greater sympathy for the peasant and is closer to the sentiments of the peasant.
In Moscow the vote cast for the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks nevertheless dropped from 70 per cent in June to 18 per cent. There can be no doubt that the petty bourgeoisie and the people have turned away from the coalition. The Cadets have increased their strength from 17 to 30 per cent, but they remain a minority, a hopeless minority, despite the fact that they have obviously been joined by the ‘Right’ Socialist-Revolutionaries and the ‘Right’ Mensheviks. Russkiye Vedomosti states that the absolute number of votes cast for the Cadets fell from 67,000 to 62,000. Only the votes cast for the Bolsheviks increased – from 34,000 to 82,000. They received 47 per cent of the total vote. There can be no shadow of doubt that we, together with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, now have a majority in the Soviets, in the army and in the country.
Among the symptoms that have not only a symptomatic, but also a very real significance is the fact that the armies of railway and postal employees, who are of immense importance from the general economic, political and military point of view, continue to be in sharp conflict with the government,[21] even the Menshevik defencists are dissatisfied with ‘their’ Minister, Nikitin, and the official Socialist-Revolutionaries call Kerensky and co. ‘Stolypins’. Is it not clear that if such ‘support’ of the government by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries has any value at all it can be only a negative value?
IV
* * *
V
Yes, the leaders of the Central Executive Committee are pursuing the correct tactics of defending the bourgeoisie and the landowners. And there is not the slightest doubt that if the Bolsheviks allowed themselves to be caught in the trap of constitutional illusions, ‘faith’ in the Congress of Soviets and in the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, ‘waiting’ for the Congress of Soviets and so forth – these Bolsheviks would most certainly be miserable traitors to the proletarian cause.
They would be traitors to the cause, for by their conduct they would be betraying the German revolutionary workers who have started a revolt in the navy. To ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets and so forth under such circumstances would be a betrayal of internationalism, a betrayal of the cause of the world socialist revolution.
For internationalism consists of deeds and not phrases, not expressions of solidarity, not resolutions.
The Bolsheviks would be traitors to the peasants, for to tolerate the suppression of the peasant revolt by a government which even Dyelo Naroda compares with the Stolypin government would be to ruin the whole revolution, to ruin it for good. An outcry is raised about anarchy and about the increasing indifference of the people, but what else can the people be but indifferent to the elections, when the peasants have been driven to revolt while the so-called ‘revolutionary democrats’ are patiently tolerating its suppression by military force!
The Bolsheviks would be traitors to democracy and to freedom, for to tolerate the suppression of the peasant revolt at such a moment would mean allowing the elections to the Constituent Assembly to be fixed in exactly the same way as the Democratic Conference and the ‘pre-parliament’ were fixed, only even worse and more crudely.
The crisis has matured. The whole future of the Russian revolution is at stake. The honour of the Bolshevik Party is in question. The whole future of the international workers’ revolution for socialism is at stake.
The crisis has matured…
* * *
Everything to this point may be published, but what follows is to be distributed among the members of the Central Committee, the Petrograd Committee, the Moscow Committee and the Soviets.
VI
What, then, is to be done? We must aussprechen was ist, ‘state the facts’, admit the truth that there is a tendency, or an opinion, in our Central Committee and among the leaders of our Party which favours waiting for the Congress of Soviets, and is opposed to taking power immediately, is opposed to an immediate insurrection. That tendency, or opinion, must be overcome.
Otherwise, the Bolsheviks will cover themselves with eternal shame and destroy themselves as a party.
For to miss such a moment and to ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets would be utter idiocy, or sheer treachery.
It would be sheer treachery to the German workers. Surely we should not wait until their revolution begins. In that case even the Liberdans would be in favour of ‘supporting’ it. But it cannot begin as long as Kerensky, Kishkin and co. are in power.
It would be sheer treachery to the peasants. To allow the peasant revolt to be suppressed when we control the Soviets of both capitals would be to lose, and justly lose, every ounce of the peasants’ confidence. In the eyes of the peasants we would be putting ourselves on a level with the Liberdans and other scoundrels.
To ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets would be utter idiocy, for it would mean losing weeks at a time when weeks and even days decide everything. It would mean faint-heartedly renouncing power, for on 1-2 November it will have become impossible to take power (both politically and technically, since the Cossacks would be mobilised for the day of the insurrection so foolishly ‘appointed’).[22]
To ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets is idiocy, for the Congress will give nothing, and can give nothing!
‘Moral’ importance? Strange indeed, to talk of the ‘importance’ of resolutions and conversations with the Liberdans when we know that the Soviets support the peasants and that the peasant revolt is being suppressed! We would be reducing the Soviets to the status of wretched debating parlours. First defeat Kerensky, then call the Congress.
The Bolsheviks are now guaranteed the success of the insurrection:
- We can (if we do not ‘wait’ for the Soviet Congress) launch a surprise attack from three points – from Petrograd, from Moscow and from the Baltic fleet;[23]
- We have slogans that guarantee us support – ‘down with the government that is suppressing the revolt of the peasants against the landowners!’
- We have a majority in the country;
- The disorganisation among the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries is complete;
- We are technically in a position to take power in Moscow (where the start might even be made, so as to catch the enemy unawares);
- We have thousands of armed workers and soldiers in Petrograd who could at once seize the Winter Palace, the General Staff building, the telephone exchange and the large printing presses. Nothing will be able to drive us out, while agitational work in the army will be such as to make it impossible to combat this government of peace, of land for the peasants, and so forth.
If we were to attack at once, suddenly, from three points, Petrograd, Moscow and the Baltic fleet, the chances are a hundred to one that we would succeed with smaller sacrifices than on 3-5 (16-18) July, because the troops will not advance against a government of peace. Even though Kerensky already has ‘loyal’ cavalry etc., in Petrograd, if we were to attack from two sides, he would be compelled to surrender since we enjoy the sympathy of the army. If with such chances as we have at present we do not take power, then all talk of transferring the power to the Soviets becomes a lie.
To refrain from taking power now, to ‘wait’, to indulge in talk in the Central Executive Committee, to confine ourselves to ‘fighting for the organ’ (of the Soviet), ‘fighting for the Congress’, is to doom the revolution to failure.
In view of the fact that the Central Committee has even left unanswered the persistent demands I have been making for such a policy ever since the beginning of the Democratic Conference, in view of the fact that the Central Organ is deleting from my articles all references to such glaring errors on the part of the Bolsheviks as the shameful decision to participate in the Pre-parliament, the admission of Mensheviks to the Presidium of the Soviet, etc., etc. – I am compelled to regard this as a ‘subtle’ hint at the unwillingness of the Central Committee even to consider this question, a subtle hint that I should keep my mouth shut, and as a proposal for me to retire.
I am compelled to tender my resignation from the Central Committee, which I hereby do, reserving for myself freedom to campaign among the rank and file of the Party and at the Party Congress.
For it is my profound conviction that if we ‘wait’ for the Congress of Soviets and let the present moment pass, we shall ruin the revolution.
* * *
PS: There are a number of facts which serve to prove that even the Cossack troops will not go against a government of peace! And how many are there? Where are they? And will not the entire army dispatch units for our support?
Endnotes
[1] Blanquists – supporters of a trend in the French socialist movement, headed by Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805 – 1881), the French revolutionary and Utopian communist. Substituting the actions of a small group of conspirators for those of a revolutionary party, they ignored the actual situation necessary for a victorious insurrection and spurned contact with the masses.
[2] See Engels, Friedrich, ‘The Program of the Blanquist Commune Refugees’, MECW, Vol. 24, p. 12.
[3] Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de MacMahon was the general of the Versailles army which suppressed the Paris Commune in May 1871.
[4] After the suppression of the Kornilov revolt the question of forming a new provisional cabinet came up for discussion. The new cabinet was expected to include Cadets in addition to Mensheviks and SRs. The Mensheviks and SRs, fearing that they might completely forfeit popular confidence, announced their refusal to join a cabinet which included Cadets.
On 1 (14) September 1917, the Provisional Government decided to form a Directory of five. Officially no Cadets were included in this cabinet, but its formation was a result of a behind-the-scenes compromise with them.
[5] The All-Russia Democratic Conference was called by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, which was dominated by Mensheviks and SRs, to decide the question of state power, but its actual purpose was to draw the attention of the masses away from the mounting revolutionary movement. The Bolsheviks decided to attend.
The Democratic Conference adopted a resolution on the establishment of a Pre-parliament (Caretaker Council of the Republic), which was an attempt to create the impression that Russia now had a parliamentary system.
Lenin believed participation in the Democratic Conference was a mistake. When he heard that Trotsky was in favour of a boycott, he wrote “Bravo, Comrade Trotsky!”, “Long live the boycott!” (‘From a Publicist’s Diary: The Mistakes of Our Party’.)
[6] Engels, Friedrich (in close collaboration with Marx and originally published under Marx’s name), Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany, MECW, Vol. 11, p. 85.
[7] Where the Democratic Conference was convened.
[8] The Savage Division – formed during the First World War from volunteer mountaineers of the North Caucasus. General Kornilov tried to use it as a battering ram in his assault on revolutionary Petrograd.
[9] Linde, Fedor (1881 – 1917) – Revolutionary and sergeant in the Finland Regiment.
[10] Tsarist General.
[11] Vendée – a province in France, which was a hotbed of counter-revolution during the French bourgeois revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. The backward peasants of the Vendée, who were strongly influenced by the Catholic clergy, were a tool in the hands of the counter-revolutionaries in their fight against revolutionary France.
[12] The Kornilov revolt of 8-13 September (New Style).
[13] Liberdan was an ironical nickname for the Mensheviks Mikhail Liber and Fyodor Dan.
[14] On 3 (16) June 1907, the tsar issued a manifesto dissolving the Second State Duma and amending the electoral law. The landowners, industrialists and merchants were given many more seats in the Duma, and the workers and peasants many less. The Third Duma, which was elected under the new law and met on 1 (14) November 1907, was out-and-out reactionary.
[15] The Bulygin Duma of 1905, named after Alexander Bulygin, Minister of the Interior, had no legislative functions, and was permitted merely to discuss certain questions as a consultative body under the tsar. The Bolsheviks boycotted the Duma. It was swept away by the general political strike in October 1905.
[16] A merchant from Alexander Ostrovsky’s comedy Shouldering Another’s Troubles, personifying the petty tyranny of the rich.
[17] The date the first coalition Provisional Government was announced.
[18] A leading Cadet and minister in the third Provisional Government.
[19] The calends was a feature of the Roman calendar, but it was not included in the Greek calendar. Consequently, to postpone something ad Kalendas Graecas – until the Greek calends – was a colloquial expression for postponing something forever.
[20] Revolts broke out in the German Navy in early August. Sailors of the warship Prinzregent Luitpold, which was at Wilhelmshaven, took absence without leave to fight for the release of their comrades who had earlier been arrested for staging a strike. On 16 August, the firemen of the Westphalia refused to work; at the same time the crew of the cruiser Nürnberg, which was out at sea, staged an uprising. The sailors’ movement spread to the ships of several squadrons at Wilhelmshaven.
These revolts were brutally crushed. Its leaders were shot and other active participants were sentenced to long terms of hard labour.
[21] From 23-26 September (6-9 October) 1917 there was a nationwide strike of railwaymen over wages.
[22] To ‘convene’ the Congress of Soviets for 20 October (2 November) in order to decide upon ‘taking power’ – how does that differ from foolishly ‘appointing’ an insurrection? It is possible to take power now, whereas on 20-29 October (2-11 November) you will not be given a chance to. – Lenin
[23] What has the Party done to study the disposition of the troops, etc? What has it done to conduct the insurrection as an art? Mere talk in the Central Executive Committee, and so on! – Lenin