The Bolsheviks on the Eve of the War¶
Core Argument¶
On the eve of the First World War, the chapter argues, Russia was in the grip of a pre-revolutionary crisis, with the Bolsheviks commanding the allegiance of the organised working class to an unprecedented degree. The narrative thrust is that the objective conditions for revolution were fully ripe, but the outbreak of war cut across the process before the subjective factor—the readiness of the working class and its vanguard to seize power—could be brought to completion.
The chapter documents the deepening splits within the ruling class as a key symptom of impending crisis. The Interior Minister Maklakov urged a crackdown on the workers, while Prime Minister Kokovtsov demurred, revealing the regime’s vacillation between repression and concession. The bourgeois liberals, terrified by the rising tide, began to distance themselves from the autocracy, demanding reforms to preserve the system. The Cadets even formed an ‘opposition committee’ in March 1914, including a Bolshevik, Skvortsov-Stepanov. Lenin advised participation only to extract practical aid for the illegal press, but the liberals’ response was predictably evasive. The Mensheviks, by contrast, placed their hopes in this liberal opposition, a mistake Lenin characterised as confusing revolution with counter-revolution in democratic guise. The real division, the chapter insists, was not between liberals and the autocracy but between the entire propertied bloc and the working class.
The Bolsheviks’ organisational and political strength is demonstrated through detailed statistics. By spring 1914, Pravda had a daily circulation of nearly 40,000, with subscribers in 944 areas by June. On ‘Press day’, donations and greetings came from 1,107 workers’ groups. In the elections to the Fourth Duma, Bolsheviks won six of nine workers’ seats; after the establishment of an independent Bolshevik Duma fraction in October 1913, the Bolshevik deputies received 85.7 per cent of workers’ signatures, against 14.3 per cent for the Liquidators. By 1914, Pravda had the support of 81 per cent of workers’ groups contributing to the workers’ press. The chapter concludes that the Bolsheviks had the backing of at least three-quarters of the organised working class.
Despite this, Lenin was uneasy. He criticised the Central Committee for lagging behind in organisational consolidation relative to its agitational work, and called for the renovation of leading bodies with fresh layers of workers. The Liquidators, now isolated, desperately sought unity through the Second International. At the Brussels meeting of July 1914, Kautsky, Vandervelde, and Huysmans attempted to force a bureaucratic merger, with Kautsky claiming that differences in German Social Democracy had not produced a split—a claim soon exposed as hollow. The Bolsheviks rejected the International’s arbitration, and Vandervelde’s threat of condemnation at the next Congress was rendered moot by the war.
The strike wave of July 1914 is presented as the climax of the pre-war movement. A strike of 50,000 Baku oil workers in May spread to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other centres. By 7 July, 130,000 workers were out in St. Petersburg alone; the strike continued even as the French President Poincaré conferred with the Tsar on war plans. The government closed Pravda and arrested Bolsheviks, an act the chapter treats as an official admission of revolutionary crisis. However, the movement was concentrated in the major industrial centres—St. Petersburg accounting for over 50 per cent of strike activity in 1914—leaving a gap between the vanguard and the more backward provinces and peasantry. Lenin counselled against premature insurrection, understanding that the attitude of the peasantry and army was decisive. Ultra-left elements among the young Bolsheviks, who pushed for barricade fighting, suffered a setback when 123 factory delegates were arrested. The chapter concludes that the July events could have developed into a revolutionary situation under normal circumstances, but the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the subsequent mobilisation cut them short. Tsarism, more afraid of social revolution than of war, plunged into the conflict.
The polemical targets are clear: the Menshevik Liquidators, whose conciliationism and faith in the liberals are repeatedly exposed; the Second International, whose bureaucratic methods and abandonment of principle are condemned; and the ultra-left