From Propaganda to Agitation¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter traces the pivotal transition within Russian Social Democracy from the narrow, sect-like work of propaganda circles to the mass agitational methods demanded by the gathering storm of class struggle. This shift, far from smooth, provoked sharp internal conflict. Figures like the future economist Boris Krichevsky attacked Plekhanov’s Emancipation of Labour Group for its supposed “constitutionalism,” failing to grasp the necessity of advancing democratic slogans alongside elementary class demands. The old guard, wedded to the habits of small-group education, resisted the new orientation, and the change was accomplished only through painful arguments and splits.
Plekhanov’s 1892 article ‘On the Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats during the Famine in Russia’ provides the chapter’s theoretical anchor. He delivers the classic Marxist distinction: a propagandist gives many ideas to a few people; an agitator gives a single idea to the masses. A sect can be satisfied with propaganda; a political party cannot. History is made by the masses, and agitation forges the necessary link between leaders and the crowd. Plekhanov insisted on penetrating the broadest layers with slogans beginning from the most immediate economic demands—the eight-hour day being paramount. The chapter uses this to refute the reformist canard that Marxists are uninterested in reform. On the contrary, Marxists have always fought for better wages, conditions, and democratic rights. The real distinction lies elsewhere: reforms can only be won through working-class struggle against capital and its state, and their consolidation requires the socialist transformation of society—a goal unthinkable without the daily battles that organise, train, and educate the class.
The material basis for this agitational turn was the explosive development of Russian capitalism in the 1890s. St. Petersburg stood at the movement’s heart. Its metal workers—80 per cent concentrated in giant factories like the Putilov works—formed the heavy battalions of labour. The city’s working class grew by 82 per cent between 1881 and 1900, far outstripping Moscow’s 51 per cent. A relatively high proportion—74 per cent—were literate. This was a youthful, uprooted population: over two-thirds of the city’s inhabitants and over 80 per cent of its workers had been born elsewhere, driven from the countryside by hunger. The decisive sector was metal, while Moscow was dominated by textiles. Well over half of St. Petersburg’s workers were employed in factories of 500 or more; nearly two-fifths in works exceeding 1,000. Conditions were appalling: 10- to 14-hour days, overcrowded barracks, polluted air and water, defective sewage—earning the capital its reputation as Europe’s unhealthiest. Textile workers, about half of them women, endured particularly barbaric conditions, their emaciated, haggard appearance noted even by government inspectors. This most exploited section proved extremely volatile. The strikes of 1878–79 had already frightened the authorities into concessions—the Factory Acts of 1882 and 1885—but the subsequent slump allowed the capitalists to take revenge through layoffs and wage cuts.
The chapter concludes by examining the western fringes of the empire—Poland and Lithuania—where industrialisation had arrived earlier and literacy was higher. Here, the Social Democracy was quickly penetrated, but the movement was immensely complicated by national oppression. Tsarist Russia, Lenin’s “veritable prison-house of nations,” intensified forced Russification and compulsory conversion to Orthodoxy under Pobedonostsev and Nicholas II. The dismemberment of Poland and the horrific repression following 1863 kept alive a bitter hatred for Russia. The authorities cracked down ruthlessly on Polish Social Democratic groups, but the movement proved hydra-headed. The Baltics became a focal point for Marxist agitation and the entry point for illegal literature linking the émigré Emancipation of Labour Group with the underground interior. The Łódź strike and May Day demonstration of 1892 had already indicated the explosive nature of the situation.