Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B)¶
Core Argument¶
The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B), held in Petrograd from 24-29 April 1917 as the Party's first legal conference, marked a decisive turning point in Bolshevik strategy. Lenin's resolution on the war established the fundamental class analysis that would guide the Party through the revolutionary months ahead. The war remained imperialist because power had passed to the landowners and capitalists, who confirmed Tsar Nicholas II's secret treaties promising profits from robbing China, Persia, Turkey, and Austria. No proletarian party could support the war, the Provisional Government, or its loans. Revolutionary defencism reflected the interests of well-to-do peasants and small proprietors who profited from oppressing weak peoples, while deceived proletarians and semi-proletarians had no such interest; concessions to defencism were impermissible.
The resolution insisted that the war could not be ended by one side's unilateral refusal to fight, but only by state power passing to the proletariat and semi-proletariat in several belligerent countries. The revolutionary class, having taken state power in Russia, would undermine capitalist economic rule, render capitalists politically harmless, and immediately offer all nations a democratic peace renouncing annexations and indemnities. Only a victorious class could change policy; without undermining capitalist rule, peace terms remained worthless. The Russian example would inevitably be followed by workers in Germany and France, both perishing from war. If British, Japanese or American capitalists resisted, a revolutionary war would defeat them.
The conference exposed the June 1917 offensive, declared by Tsereteli in the name of peace, as serving the imperialist designs of Britain, France, Italy, Japan and America. The 'socialist' ministers had done what Guchkov and Milyukov could not: put the army at the disposal of unabrogated secret treaties. After Kornilov's revolt, tactics required revision: the Bolsheviks must fight Kornilov but not support Kerensky, exposing his weakness while campaigning for partial demands that bring the proletariat closer to power.
The conference treated insurrection as an art, as Marx insisted. Success required reliance on the advanced class, a revolutionary upsurge of the people, and a turning-point when enemy vacillation was strongest. These three conditions distinguished Marxism from Blanquism. The objective conditions for a victorious insurrection now existed: the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, created by the experience of July, August, and the Kornilov revolt; a country-wide revolutionary upsurge existed; and the enemy and petty bourgeoisie were vacillating enormously. The Party must therefore adapt its tactics to insurrection, cementing the Bolshevik group without fearing to leave waverers behind.
The conference recognised that the imperialist war had accelerated capitalism into state monopoly capitalism, the immediate stepping stone to socialism. The Russian revolution was only the beginning of the world socialist revolution. Without socialist victory, any peace was merely a truce before renewed slaughter.