02.10.1997

Russian socialism

From ‘The Call’, paper of the British Socialist Party, September 27 1917

The Revolution has had a great effect on the socialist movement in Russia.

Before that, as is well known, two tendencies were struggling for power: one representing Marxism; another expressing the so-called ‘populist’ socialism. The former is familiar to all of us. The other is a specific Russian product of very long tradition which has at its base a faith in the socialist character and possibilities of the peasant village commune. It is a faith which moved ... Narodnaya Volya (‘People’s Will’), the modern Socialist-Revolutionists and on the whole the entire ‘intelligentsia’ (the young educated class) as it existed till very recently ...

The Revolution has brought this utopian socialism very much to the front. The agrarian question being the main social and economic question in Russia where 80% of the population are peasants, the party in whose programme it forms the central pivot, the party of the Socialist Revolutionists, naturally became the centre of attraction also. In addition, its socialism being of a vague character, it also attracted bourgeois elements who, without being socialists, were honest radicals. As a result this party, which before the Revolution consisted of a handful of enthusiasts and terrorists, has now become the most powerful party in the republic. It dominates the soviets, the municipalities and the government, on which it is represented by Kerensky ...

Marxist socialism was hitherto represented by two rival social democratic parties - one of opportunist tendencies, the Mensheviks, and the other of revolutionary tendencies, the Bolsheviks ...

The Revolution at first gave a great preponderance to the Mensheviks who, thanks to their intellectuals and their opportunism, succeeded in gaining the ear of the public - that is, chiefly of the radical bourgeoisie and non-socialist proletariat. But the failure of the opportunist tactics, as illustrated by the action and inaction of the coalition governments and by the counterrevolutionary coup of general Kornilov, has now inclined the balance in favour of the Bolsheviks, who at present have won the upper hand in the soviets and are the second strongest party at the Petrograd municipality.

So far the party development sketched out above may be regarded as quite normal. But underneath all a powerful factor is at work which presses more and more against the traditional party divisions and is calculated to upset them one day altogether. This is the attitude towards the war and the problems arising from it.

The Bolsheviks to a man are revolutionary internationalists ... Internationalist wings, though of a less revolutionary character, ... exist in the other two parties also - more numerous and powerful among the Mensheviks and less so among the Socialist-Revolutionists ...

Naturally these sections feel drawn to one another, and both, while still remaining opponents of Bolshevism, often find themselves cooperating with it.

The result is the same which is observable elsewhere. An internationalist socialist party is in the course of ‘becoming’, which will wipe out the old divisions and bring about a party orientation on new lines.

A Russian socialist