The Petersburg League of Struggle¶
Core Argument¶
Digest: The Petersburg League of Struggle
This chapter traces the transition of Russian Social Democracy from narrow, circle-based propaganda to mass agitation among the St. Petersburg proletariat in the mid-1890s, culminating in the formation of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of Labour in November 1895. The core narrative thrust is the dialectical tension between the patient, theoretical training of worker cadres—exemplified by the earlier Brusnyev group and Lenin’s own methods in the study circles—and the explosive, practical demands of a rising strike wave that forced a strategic rupture with the “circle mentality.”
The chapter draws heavily on the contrast between two approaches. The older method, described by Brusnyev himself, aimed to turn workers into “fully developed and conscious social democrats” capable of replacing intellectual propagandists. Lenin’s work in the circles, as recounted by Krupskaya, combined close study of Marx’s Capital with detailed attention to workers’ lived conditions, linking their immediate grievances to the structure of society. Yet this approach, however valuable for building cadres, bred a conservative insularity. Martov’s mortification at being handed books on ancient history rather than being invited into organisation work is cited as evidence of the stultifying effects of the old “circle” habits. The “Vilna turn”—the pamphlet On Agitation—provided the theoretical justification for a shift to economic agitation via leaflets, a method that Krupskaya later contrasts favourably with the French Socialist Party’s abstention from the Paris postal strike.
The chapter’s key claim is that the transition to mass agitation, though resisted by veteran propagandists like Krassin, Radchenko, and Babushkin, was historically necessary and spectacularly successful. The evidence is drawn from multiple contemporary sources: the League’s production of over thirty leaflets in a single strike; the workers’ quasi-religious reverence for the “students” who printed them; Trotsky’s account of the intoxicating effectiveness of hectographed proclamations; and the case of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk weavers’ strike, where the local League initially refused responsibility for agitation. The polemical thrust is directed against two tendencies simultaneously: the conservative “circle mentality” that would have reduced the movement to a sect, and the superficial “economism” of those who, in reaction, abandoned theory altogether. Trotsky is quoted to frame the dilemma: every party passes through a period of pure propaganda, but those who cannot step beyond it become “conservative sectarians.”
The chapter culminates in the strike wave of May 1896, when the textile workers’ flying pickets transformed the situation overnight, placing the Marxists at the head of a mass movement for the first time. The conclusion is that the small forces of Marxism, by boldly participating in agitation, broke down the barriers between themselves and the masses, opening the road to a united party of the Russian proletariat.