Chapter 3 Lenin and the Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 3: Lenin and the Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry¶
Between 1903 and 1905, Lenin fundamentally reoriented Bolshevik strategy, shifting from the urban petty bourgeoisie to the peasantry as the proletariat’s principal ally in the coming bourgeois-democratic revolution. All Russian Social Democrats agreed the revolution would be bourgeois-democratic, but Lenin insisted the liberal bourgeoisie could not lead it. With the peasantry constituting over eighty per cent of the population, they would replace the bourgeoisie as the revolution’s driving force. The central problem was the agrarian question: ending feudal obligations and redistributing land. Lenin identified two possible capitalist paths for Russian agriculture: the Prussian path of slow evolution under a constitutional monarchy, and the American path of revolutionary confiscation of feudal estates and distribution to peasants. He favoured the latter but stressed it remained a capitalist development.
The proletariat would lead the peasantry in a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry (RDDPP). Crucially, this government would implement only the Social Democratic minimum programme, solving the agrarian question within capitalism, not introducing socialism. Lenin explicitly ruled out a Social Democratic majority in such a government, as the proletariat was a minority. He rebutted Menshevik claims that participation would inevitably lead to attempting socialist revolution, insisting the bourgeois-democratic revolution would end when peasants solved the land problem, exhausting their revolutionary energy. The peasantry were allies only for the democratic revolution; land distribution would transform poor peasants into middle peasants concerned with protecting property. Between the democratic and socialist dictatorships there would be intermediary stages, with capitalism developing for decades while class differentiation occurred in the countryside.
Lenin’s agrarian programme evolved significantly during the 1905 Revolution. The 1903 demand for restitution of cut-off lands proved too conservative; by 1905, Lenin proposed confiscation of all landowners’ estates. Krupskaya’s memoirs reveal he was persuaded by Gapon and Matinshenko to replace the “pieces of land” slogan with confiscation of estates, crown and church lands. Lenin downplayed this qualitative change to win over conservative committee-men, a tactic repeated after 1917. The RDDPP’s formal purpose was to convene a bourgeois-democratic Constituent Assembly, with the Soviets seen as its embryo. Lenin believed the Russian revolution could achieve victory by its own efforts but could not consolidate gains without a socialist revolution in Western Europe, which alone could prevent restoration. This schema persisted until early 1917, consistently separating the bourgeois-democratic from the socialist revolution on the grounds each required different social forces.