5. The ‘Plan’ For an All-Russia Political Newspaper¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 5: The ‘Plan’ For an All-Russia Political Newspaper¶
The publication of ‘Where to Begin?’ provoked sharp hostility from rival factions within Russian Social Democracy. B. Krichevsky and Martynov of Rabocheye Dyelo accused Iskra of belittling the everyday economic struggle and seeking to subordinate the entire party to an autonomous editorial board, while L. Nadezhdin dismissed the proposal as mere “armchair work”. Rabocheye Dyelo went further, claiming the plan aimed to obliterate existing party organisations. Yet no local committee formally protested; they understood the proposal for what it was—a strategic suggestion, not an ultimatum. Iskra contrasts Rabocheye Dyelo’s crude demagogy with Nadezhdin’s more substantive, if misguided, criticism.
The plan is not a bookish abstraction but a practical method. The newspaper is compared to a builder’s guideline, enabling scattered bricklayers—the local organisations—to lay bricks along a common line, and to scaffolding that reveals the contours of a future structure while facilitating communication between workers. Nadezhdin’s objection that it is easier to gather around concrete local activities—such as demonstrations or work among the unemployed—misses the point. Such activities are merely field operations, suffering from the same fragmentation the newspaper is designed to overcome. Only a regular, all-Russia newspaper can establish real, sustained contacts between towns, exchange experience and forces, and systematically train professional revolutionaries. It would allow local circles to assign a portion of their forces to common work, receive a general design, and learn from each other’s successes. Distribution would make communication the rule, not the exception, enabling the transfer of cadres. The newspaper would fan every spark of class struggle into a general conflagration, systematically gathering and training a regular army of fighters.
The ‘tactics-as-plan’ rejects any immediate call for assault. Nadezhdin’s ‘eve-of-the-revolution point of view’ is absurd: he claims it is too late to discuss an all-Russia organisation, yet simultaneously advocates local newspapers and an ‘organisation of average people’. Iskra’s position is that excitative terror is nonsense, and that localism flings the door open to Economism. Because the masses are not yet ours, shouting for assault is stupid; the task is to introduce systematic organisation into the regular troops so they lead the masses, not become overwhelmed by them. Those who make nation-wide political agitation the cornerstone of their programme stand least risk of missing the revolution. The organisation centred on an all-Russia newspaper ensures flexibility: it can adapt to both outbreaks and calm, conduct continuous political agitation, and prepare for armed uprising. Such an organisation, built through common work for a common newspaper, is the most practical plan for immediate preparation of the uprising while maintaining day-to-day work.