Report at a Meeting of Bolshevik Delegates to the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies¶
Core Argument¶
In this speech of 4 April 1917, delivered to Bolshevik delegates at the Tauride Palace, Lenin launched a frontal assault on the political line that had dominated the Party leadership since the February Revolution. His core argument is that the Provisional Government is as imperialist as the Tsarist regime it replaced, and that the widespread mood of ‘revolutionary defencism’ among the masses—the belief that Russia must continue the war to defend the revolution—is a fatal deception fostered by the bourgeoisie. Lenin insists that no genuinely democratic peace is possible without the overthrow of capital, and that the war can only be ended by a clean break with international finance capital, not by appeals to the goodwill of individual statesmen.
Lenin draws heavily on the experience of the Paris Commune, arguing that the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is the only possible form of revolutionary government—a state form without parallel except for the Commune itself. He attacks the conciliatory line of figures such as Steklov and Chkheidze, accusing them of betraying socialism by adopting resolutions that amount to political fraud. The polemic is sharpest against those within the Bolshevik ranks who show trust in the Provisional Government: “If that is so, our paths diverge. I prefer to remain in a minority.” He cites Karl Liebknecht as the sole exemplar of internationalist integrity, worth more than “110 defencists of the Steklov and Chkheidze type.”
The speech advances a series of concrete demands: abolition of the police, standing army, and bureaucracy, to be replaced by the arming of the whole people and elective, displaceable officials paid no more than the average wage of a competent worker; confiscation of all landed estates and nationalisation of land under the control of local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies; and the amalgamation of banks under Soviet control. Lenin insists that the Party’s minimum programme is out of date and must be revised, and he proposes changing the Party’s name from Social-Democratic to Communist, on the grounds that the term ‘Social-Democracy’ has been “rotten through and through” by the treachery of its official leaders—Scheidemann, Plekhanov, Guesde—who have sided with their governments.
The theoretical context is Lenin’s analysis of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, and his insistence that the war is the product of international finance capital, not individual malice. He draws on the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences to argue that the ‘Centre’—the vacillating tendency represented by Kautsky, Longuet, Chkheidze, Turati, and MacDonald—must be broken with decisively. The speech is a sustained polemic against any idea of unification with the Mensheviks or defencists, which Lenin denounces as “betrayal of socialism.” He calls for the immediate convocation of a Party congress and the creation of a revolutionary International against the social-chauvinists and the Centre. The closing note is one of strategic patience: even if the Bolsheviks remain in a minority, they must explain their position “with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience,” trusting that the masses will overcome their errors through experience.