17.11.2022

Memory wars

In the last of three articles marking the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Jack Conrad looks at the differences between Lenin and the Old Bolsheviks in the spring of 1917

As already argued, the Provisional government acted not in the interests of the proletariat and peasantry, but of the capitalists and landlords (and, behind them, Anglo-French imperialism). Ipso facto the Bolsheviks concluded that the proletariat and peasantry (in the form of the soviets) had “placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie”.

Although Alexander Kerensky’s ministry, formed in July 1917, contained many who had previously been hunted by the tsarist secret police - Matvey Skobelev, Irakli Tsereteli, Viktor Chernov, Nikolai Avksentiev, Boris Savinkov, Alexei Nikitin, etc - no Marxist will find such a designation at all odd. Programme, policy and practice determines class content. Not only did the Provisional government continue Russia’s involvement in World War I, as well as upholding the secret treaties and plans for annexations: whatever the changing combination of bourgeois and socialist parties, the Provisional government also cynically prevaricated over peasant demands for land redistribution and fearfully delayed elections to the Constituent Assembly.

What was Lenin’s approach during this “first stage of the revolution”? Did he junk his call for overthrowing tsarism and installing a workers’ and peasants’ republic? Yes, of course he did ... it did not take a cover-to-cover study of Hegel’s Logic, or the “recovery of the dialectic”, to recognise such a qualitative development.

After their own fashion others did exactly the same. The right Menshevik leader, Georgi Plekhanov junked his defence of tsarism in the name of victory over Prussian militarism; Leon Trotsky junked his ‘Not a tsar’s government, but a government of the people’; and the followers of Alexander Parvus junked his ‘Not a tsar’s government, but a workers’ government’. Nor were the Menshevik Internationalists, the Socialist Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists, or anyone else on the left unaware that one of their key demands had been realised. The Romanovs had fallen. Tsarism was no more. Russia had become a de facto republic.

Common sense, let alone Marxism, requires recognition of such a development. If Trotsky had not made a “complete break” from his ‘Not a tsar’s government’ slogan, his close friends would have been well advised to seek out suitable psychological treatment for the poor fellow. Ditto Lenin’s friends, or anyone else’s for that matter.

Obviously the demand to overthrow the tsar was now totally obsolete. Future progress, for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, lay in combating the “honest” popular illusions in revolutionary defencism, exposing the true nature of the Provisional government and raising sights with the prospect of the workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviets assuming undisputed, sovereign, state power. Strangely, however, in his 1924 Lessons of October, Trotsky claims that this involved the Bolsheviks - most notably Lenin, in his ten April theses - abandoning, not concretising, the established slogan of the ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’. Instead, supposedly, there was to be the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism.

In other words, Trotsky, according to his own account, came over to the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1917 because Lenin had come over to Trotskyism in the spring of 1917 - clearly a desperate, but extraordinarily bold, move dictated by the conditions of 1924. Lenin lay dead and the triumvirate of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin were seeking to curb Trotsky’s power - he headed the Red Army - not least out of the fear that he would stage some kind of Bonapartist coup. Either way, though his Lessons of October story is repeated endlessly by his epigones - and not a few bourgeois academics - it hardly counts as serious history.

No, there is, with the Bolsheviks, an unmistakable continuity. Not that the standing programme went without modification. Until 1917 the assumption had been that insurgent workers and peasants would overthrow tsarism and replace it with their own regime. A regime that could have any number of names, but would, of necessity, have to be embodied in a governing party or - more likely, given the centrality of the peasantry - a coalition of governing parties

The reality, whereby the victorious power of workers, soldiers and peasants siphoned off power to the bourgeoisie and landlords in the form of the Provisional government, was totally unexpected. I make no excuse for once again turning to Lenin. In the article, ‘The dual power’, he says the following:

The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about a dual power. This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old ‘formulas’ - for example, those of Bolshevism - for, while they have been found to be correct on the whole, their concrete realisation has turned out to be different. Nobody previously thought, or could have thought, of a dual power.¹

Exactly. The Bolshevik’s central demand for the ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ had been proven to be “correct on the whole”, but needed modifying, supplementing, given the unexpected dual-power situation.

Minority

The simple fact of the matter is that the Bolsheviks were not the majority in the soviets. Much against their expectations, they found themselves in a small minority. A real shock - especially given their role in 1905, elections in the workers’ curia of the duma, the circulation of Pravda, etc. However, hundreds of thousands - millions - were newly swept up into political action. By instinct they were leftwing, loathed the elite and wanted some kind of radical democracy. But to begin with they were nonplussed by the alphabet soup of parties, groups and factions. They knew, for example, that social democrats were on their side, were good people, but the profound differences separating the RSDLP (Central Committee) from the RSDLP (Organising Committee) largely escaped them.

The Bolsheviks had, in particular, suffered from severe police oppression under tsarism: eg, their duma deputies were arrested in November 1914; despite repeated name changes Pravda was repeatedly closed down and core leaders were either exiled in Siberia or forced to live abroad. Though still functioning in Petrograd’s Vyborg district, the Bolsheviks were very weak organisationally. In contrast, the Mensheviks and SRs operated with much more freedom: eg, their duma deputies remained at large and, therefore, enjoyed parliamentary immunity. Duma Mensheviks, along with representatives of the Workers’ Group, took the lead in establishing the Petrograd soviet.

It is no surprise that most workers and soldiers in Petrograd voted for delegates identified with those who appeared in the daily press, who appeared in clear public sight: “visibility rather than political creed had greater meaning at the initial stage,” writes Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.² Certainly, Alexander Kerensky, famous for his duma theatrics, became the acknowledged leader of the February revolution. He, and other key right socialists, steered the insurrectionary workers and soldiers to the duma’s Tauride Palace and a liberal-socialist Provisional government - a dual-power situation fully approved of by the Menshevik/SR agreementist majority in the Petrograd soviet.

Being a minority necessitated tactical innovation, and the spade-work was undoubtedly begun by Kamenev and Stalin. When they returned to Petrograd from their Siberian exile, it was only natural that they took over command of Pravda from Shliapnikov and Molotov. They were part of the established core leadership of the Bolshevik Party (besides Lenin himself, of course, there was Zinoviev and perhaps, a little later, Bukharin).

The Bolsheviks had to learn how to speak to the newly politicised masses. Slogans that were perfectly suitable for factional struggles and polemics, including at the international level, had to give way to slogans, demands and aims that could be understood by millions ... and, crucially could move them into political action.

In other words, the task the Bolsheviks set themselves was to become the majority. Politically, ideas about launching a direct revolutionary assault on the citadels of state power had to be put aside. Instead there had to be persuasion, agitation and education. In short, it was necessary to demand soviet power, overcome illusions in the Provisional government and its right socialist backers, expose the annexationist war aims, press for elections to a Constituent Assembly … and, crucially, bring on board the peasant masses by calling for the confiscation of the landed estates, etc.

This was a perspective agreed in February-March 1917 by the Shliapnikov, Molotov and Zaluytsky Russian bureau of the Bolshevik central committee, agreed by the Petrograd committee, agreed by the Kamenev and Stalin returnees, agreed by Lenin in ‘Letters from afar’ and his April theses. Indeed what is remarkable about the Bolsheviks in 1917 - and before that too - is their strategic unity. No other party compares. The Mensheviks were, in comparison, a collection of warring factions, groups and trends, and the SRs were at loggerheads too.

And, remember, the Bolsheviks were no mere confessional sect. Their unity came about because there was unity. Not because of a mental straightjacket imposed by bureaucratic centralism or some leadership cult. No, within the limits of the programme, the Bolsheviks operated according to the ‘freedom of criticism, unity in action’ principles of democratic centralism. There were plenty of arguments, sharp exchanges and even temporary falling-outs, but on the fundamentals they were united.

Anyway, winning a Bolshevik majority in the workers’ and soldiers’ soviets would secure the ground for the “second stage of the revolution” and with it the transfer of all power into “the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants”. The “only possible form of revolutionary government” was a “republic of soviets of workers’, agricultural labourers’ and peasants’ deputies”, writes Lenin. Surely, to repeat, a concrete application of the ‘revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ slogan. Lenin made no claims that the party’s “immediate task” was to “introduce” socialism. In fact, he vehemently denied such accusations (made by Plekhanov and other Mensheviks). There was to be rule not by workers alone, but by workers, soldiers and peasants. Introducing socialism against the wishes of the majority was, of course, dismissed as impossible - that, or simply suicidal. Banks should be nationalised, though, and production and distribution put under workers’ control. Such measures might be classified as “taking steps towards socialism”. But - and this is the key point - they would not meet with peasant objections (quite the contrary: peasants would be assured by the Bolsheviks’ determination to save the country from total breakdown by using decisive measures).

Innovations

Kamenev and Stalin quickly recognised that the slogan, ‘revolutionary defeatism’, was open to misinterpretation. Not only by enemies - that was natural - but by the Bolsheviks’ potential mass base: ie, the soviet constituency (not least, in this case, by the armed forces). To preserve content, revise the manner of presentation. The innovation was to demand the publication of the secret treaties: eg, the deal with Anglo-French imperialism that, after the defeat of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire, Russia would be free to grab hold of Constantinople and the Dardanelles strait. By the simple device of publication, the defencism of the rightwing Mensheviks and SRs could be exposed for what it was: not defence of the February revolution, but defence of tsarism’s war aims. Naturally, as it turned out, the Provisional government prevaricated - a virtual admission of guilt.

Kamenev-Stalin certainly rejected impatient calls for the immediate overthrow of the Provisional government. Given the huge pro-Provisional government majority in the soviets, such a proposition would obviously come over as anti-democratic, putschist, even pro-German. Instead, the brief Kamenev-Stalin duumvirate substituted a perspective of giving the Provisional government “critical support”: ie, in their Pravda editorials and articles, Kamenev and Stalin explained that the Bolsheviks would support the Provisional government insofar as it denounced the predatory war, insofar as it agreed to start immediate peace negotiations, insofar as it supported the right of nations to self-determination, insofar as it promoted working class interests, insofar as it organised elections to a Constituent Assembly, insofar as it agreed to redistribute land to the peasants, etc. Of course, neither the Provisional government nor the right-Menshevik and SR majority in the soviets would do any such thing. In that case the Bolsheviks would “energetically criticise each failure of the Provisional government”. Such an approach would therefore help the masses learn who was their false friend and who was their real friend.

Kamenev was not seeking to foster illusions in the Provisional government. On the contrary, he was attempting to overcome such illusions. Indeed, in his first Pravda editorial (March 14 1917) Kamenev declared:

… the paths of democratic forces and of the Provisional government will diverge … when the bourgeoisie comes to its senses, it will inevitably attempt to halt the revolutionary movement and not permit it to develop to the point of satisfying the essential needs of the proletariat and the peasantry . . . . This full satisfaction of their demands is possible only when full and complete vlast [power] is in their own hands. Insofar as the revolution is going to develop and to deepen, it will come to this - to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.³

So the Kamenev-Stalin emphasis was on ‘critical’ rather than ‘support’ - a judgement surely confirmed by the March 28-April 4 1917 All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP, where Kamenev is reported as saying this:

In Steklov’s resolution [Yuri Steklov joined the Bolsheviks in 1903 - his resolution had been chosen by the conference as the alternative to the one being supported by Kamenev - JC] the point dealing with support is absolutely inacceptable. It is impermissible to have any expression of support, even to hint at it. We cannot support the government, because it is an imperialist government, because, despite its own declaration, it remains in an alliance with the Anglo-French bourgeoisie. In the Communist manifesto there is a statement to the effect that we give support to the liberal bourgeoisie, but only in the event of its being attacked. But from Steklov’s report it is obvious that it is not they who are being attacked, but rather it is they themselves who are attacking the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.

In yesterday’s amendments to the resolution we stated that support at the present time is impossible. In view of the dual power, the will of the revolutionary people is embodied not in the Provisional government, but in the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies [as we have seen, a proposition that needs qualifying]; and also that the latter must be strengthened and that they must come to a clash with the Provisional government. Our task is to point out that the only organ worthy of our support is the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. The task of the Congress [of the soviets] is to proclaim to all Russia that the sole expresser of the will of the revolutionary people is the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, and that we must strengthen and support them and not the Provisional government.⁴

What of Stalin? Opening the debate at the March-April conference, he began by speaking on behalf of the Central Committee, but then, in closing, expressed himself as being more inclined towards the resolution of the Kransnoyarsk Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Cossacks’ Deputies: “support the Provisional government in its activities only in so far as it follows a course of satisfying the demands of the working class and the revolutionary peasantry in the revolution that is taking place”.

So, on this question, there was a difference of nuance, presentation, not substance between Kamenev and Stalin. It should, however, be added that there was a very small rightwing Bolshevik faction which left the March conference over the question of defencism. True, Kamenev had written about soldiers staying at their posts, but, once again at the March-April conference (during the joint session with the Mensheviks), he says this:

To pose here the question of defencism and anti-defencism is to repeat the discussion which we have already had. We have come to the conclusion that it is impermissible to vote for the [social-pacifistic] resolution of the Executive Committee [of the SR-Menshevik-dominated Petrograd soviet]. It is not a socialist resolution. The Executive Committee assumes in it the viewpoint of Henderson and Thomas. It is impossible to vote for a resolution which says nothing about peace, about the abrogation of the secret treaties left over from tsarism. Another resolution must be counterposed to it. Our task is to fuse the socialist-internationalists around that resolution.

Enter Lenin

However, from afar (ie, from Switzerland), Lenin feared that, under the direction of Kamenev-Stalin, Pravda had gone soft on the Provisional government. He intransigently demanded that the Bolsheviks should offer no support whatever. Politically the Provisional government was pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist … and counterrevolutionary. Hence his clash with Kamenev and Stalin.

There are all manner of reports of Lenin angrily berating Kamenev and other top leaders after his arrival at the Finlyandsky Station on April 3 1917. Having brushed aside Provisional government dignitaries and their bouquets of flowers, Lenin made his famous speech on top of an armoured car. According to the report carried in Pravda, he “greeted the revolutionary Russian proletariat and the revolutionary Russian army”, who had succeeded not only in “liberating Russia from tsarist despotism, but in starting a social revolution on an international scale, and added that the proletariat of the whole world looked with hope to the Russian proletariat’s bold steps”.⁵

Lenin appears at the Tauride Palace on April 4 for the last day of the Bolshevik conference. He apologises for his lateness. Speaking to his 10, hastily written, theses - now universally known as the April theses - Lenin condemns the ongoing war as “predatory” and insists that “not the slightest concession to ‘revolutionary defencism’ is permissible”. A revolutionary war is only possible if (a) power has passed to the working class and the poorest sections of the peasantry; (b) all annexations are denounced in word and deed; (c) there is a “complete break” with “all capitalist interests”.

Let me give a brief résumé of the April theses.

Thesis 1: there are ‘honest’ revolutionary defencists amongst the masses who have been deceived by the bourgeoisie. The party must patiently explain their errors. Thesis 2: we must “adapt ourselves” to speak to unprecedentedly large masses who have just awoken to political life.

Thesis 3: no support should be given to the Provisional government. Calling it to renounce annexations breeds illusions. The Provisional government is an imperialist government.

Lenin fully recognises, in thesis 4, that the Bolsheviks are a “small minority” in most soviets, as against the bloc of all the petty bourgeois opportunist elements, from the “Popular Socialists and the SRs, down to the Organising Committee (Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc), Steklov, etc, etc, who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat”.

Lenin calls for a “republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom”. Thesis 5: he is against a parliamentary republic. The standing army and the police should be abolished. In their place will be the armed people. Salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, must not “exceed the average wage of a competent worker”.

Thesis 6: the “weight of emphasis” in the agrarian programme should “be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies”. Landed estates should be confiscated, nationalised and disposed of according to wishes of local soviets. Lenin recommends setting up model farms on each large estate.

Thesis 7: banks should be merged into a single national bank and controlled by workers’ soviets.

Thesis 8: Lenin’s stated intention is not to immediately ‘introduce socialism’. Thesis 9: Lenin does, though, want to amend the Bolshevik programme, when it comes to imperialist war and the Commune state. He also wants a name change. Instead of Social Democratic, he proposes ‘Communist Party’.

Finally, thesis 10 calls for a new International against the social-chauvinists and against the ‘centre’.

Of course, the idea that Lenin was met with widespread hostility - even a blank wall of incomprehension - by his Bolshevik comrades is impossible to credit. Lenin was never an isolated figure within the ranks of Bolshevism. Far from it. He was the accepted vozhd (leader). His writings, resolutions and speeches provided Bolshevism with its best weapons. Bolshevik leaders, cadre and rank-and-file members alike would carefully study every word - but that did not mean bovine acceptance of everything Lenin had to say.

What the Bolshevik March-April conference agreed was to debate Lenin’s 10 theses. Many agreed with Lenin, many wanted clarification on this or that question. After all, Lenin himself admits to “insufficient preparation”.⁶

Unity

Lenin rejected outright any suggestion of unity between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. However, this is not as straightforward as it might first appear. Firstly, it needs to be understood that in the provinces the majority of party committees were joint Bolshevik-Menshevik - a situation that lasted beyond the October revolution in the remoter places. No less to the point, what Kamenev had his sights on was not unity with right Mensheviks such as Iraki Tsereteli (as alleged by Trotsky). No, the aim was to unite with left Mensheviks on the basis of the Zimmerwald-Kienthal conferences. In short, a Bolshevik-Menshevik Internationalist unification (nor should we forget the Mezhraiontsy group that Trotsky joined when he eventually retuned to Russia).

Lenin, of course, would have none of that. He had already organised a distinct Zimmerwald left (with a view to establishing a Third International). The Menshevik Internationalists fervently opposed the war and wanted peace, but also unity with the social-imperialist right. That is what made the Menshevik Internationalist centrists like the Zimmerwald majority - including, of course, Trotsky.

The centrists attacked, fought, denounced the social-imperialists - that is beyond dispute. But in the name of winning their base, in the name of overcoming misunderstandings, in the name of re-cementing working class unity, the centrists excused negotiations, diplomatic compromises … and fostered false hopes in them. After all, the social-imperialists declared themselves to be loyal Marxists, partisans of the working class, dedicated opponents of capitalism, imperialism and national chauvinism, and proven champions of socialism. Their support for the war - whether it be in France, Russia, Germany, Austria or Britain - was justified, naturally enough, not on the basis that they had betrayed socialism, gone over to supporting the bourgeoisie. No, opportunism is seldom, if ever, honest. Instead the social-imperialists sneakily talked of resistance to militarism, defence of democracy, the rights of small nations, social progress, etc. This was viewed and presented by the centrists not as pretence, lies and sheer deception: rather as potential leverage.

So centrism was - still is - a form of opportunism in its own right, which Lenin, in the spring of 1917, was insistent that the Bolsheviks should draw a distinct line of demarcation against. There had to be a split with the social-imperialists … and the centrists too.

Not that Lenin rejected winning over the Menshevik Internationalists, the Mezhraiontsy, left Bundists, etc. Rather, what he rejected was the Bolsheviks moving in the direction of the Menshevik Internationalists, the Mezhraiontsy, left Bundists, etc.

What about the limits on the revolution and the possibilities of socialism set by the peasantry? Kamenev feared that Lenin - because of his ten years in exile, because communications were so problematic in a Europe rent by war, because events were moving at such incredible speed - had failed to fully grasp the actual state of play in Russia. Hence in Pravda Kamenev responded to the April theses in this manner:

As for comrade Lenin’s general scheme, it appears unacceptable, inasmuch as it proceeds from the assumption that the bourgeois democratic revolution is completed, and builds on the immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution.⁷

Clearly, Kamenev was not urging support for the Provisional government. No, he was urging the need to win the support of the peasantry and thus prepare the conditions for a second revolution. The peasant movement could not be “skipped”. The idea of playing at the seizure of power by the workers’ party without the support of the peasantry was not Marxism, he said, but Blanquism. Power had to be exercised by the majority. And Lenin, in some of his spring 1917 writings, certainly seemed to imply that the peasantry had gone over to social chauvinism and defence of the fatherland (ie, not ‘honest’ revolutionary defencism). Therefore, perhaps, he had concluded that the peasantry had become a hopeless cause.

While Kamenev worried that Lenin might possibly be demanding an immediate transition to a socialist revolution, Lenin reassuringly pointed out that he had actually warned against such a perspective: “It is not our immediate task to ‘introduce’ socialism ...”⁸ Obviously there were misconceptions on both sides, but - and this is surely what counts - unity was quickly re-cemented. In the case of the peasantry, Kamenev was clearly right and Lenin wrong. Subsequently, Lenin talked of the differences between himself and Kamenev being “not very great”. He also joined with Kamenev in opposing the leftist slogan of ‘Down with the Provisional government’, as raised by the Petrograd committee of the RSDLP. The situation was not yet ready for the overthrow of the Provisional government in March-April 1917. Hence, together with Kamenev, Lenin insisted that the “correct slogan” was “Long live the soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies”.⁹

Things were, though, exceedingly complex. Firstly, while state power had transferred, that did not by any means meet the immediate programmatic aims of the Bolsheviks. The Romanovs had been overthrown. To that extent, argued Lenin, the programme had been fulfilled. But the ‘revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants’ in the form of the soviets had voluntarily ceded power to the bourgeoisie. Instead of coming to power, the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry existed side by side with - and had subordinated itself to - a weak government of the bourgeoisie (ie, the Provisional government). Only once the Bolsheviks won a majority could they finish with dual power and complete the revolution.

The dictatorship (rule) of the proletariat and peasantry had therefore become interwoven with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The Russian Revolution had gone further than the classical bourgeois revolutions of England 1645 or France 1789, but, in Lenin’s words, it “has not yet reached a ‘pure’ dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”.¹⁰ There can be dual power but no dual-power state (whether it be a monarchy, a theocracy or a democratic republic). One or the other had to die.

On November 7 1917 that is exactly what happened. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was overthrown and a new era in world politics began.

VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p38.↩︎
T Hasegawa The February revolution, Petrograd, 1917 Leiden 2017, p341.↩︎
Translation in LT Lih, ‘Bolshevism was fully armed’ Weekly Worker February 26 2015: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1047/bolshevism-was-fully-armed.↩︎
Trotsky included the surviving minutes of the March conference in his The Stalin school of falsification London 1974, pp181-237. Provisional government thugs ransacked the Bolshevik HQ in July 1917. Though fragmentary, they make fascinating reading.↩︎
VI Lenin CW Vol 41 Moscow 1977, p399.↩︎
VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, pp21-24.↩︎
VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p50.↩︎
Ibid p52.↩︎
VI Lenin CW Vol 24, Moscow 1977, p244-45.↩︎
Ibid p61.↩︎