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Woods,
The Ninth of January, 1905
"Sire! We workers, our children and wives, the helpless old people who are our parents, we have come to you, Sire, to seek justice and protection. We are in great poverty, we are oppressed and weighed down with labours beyond our strength; we are insulted, we are not recognised as human beings, we are treated like slaves who must bear their lot in silence. And we have suffered it, but we are being driven ever deeper into beggary, lawlessness and ignorance. Despotism and arbitrary rule are strangling us, and we are suttocating. Sire, our strength is at an end. The limit of our patience has been reached: the terrible moment has come for us when it is better to die than to continue suffering intolerable torment."
With these words, the working class of Russia made its first decisive entrance upon the stage of history, appealing to the clemency of the tsar, the "little father" , with a petition in its hands and a priest at its head. Eleven months later, the same working class rose against the autocracy, arms in hand, under the leadership of a Marxist party. In the intervening months, the first Russian Revolution unfolded on an epic scale, involving every layer of the proletariat and all other oppressed layers of society, passing through every imaginable phase of struggle and utilizing every conceivable fighting method, from economic strikes and petitions to the authorities through the political general strike and mass demonstrations, to an armed insurrection. The 1905 revolution already revealed, albeit in an embryonic fashion, all the basic processes which were to be repeated on a higher scale twelve years later. It was a dress rehearsal, without which the final victory of the proletariat in October 1917 would have been impossible. In the course of 1905, all ideas, programmes, parties and leaders were put to the test. The experience of the first revolution was decisive for the future evolution of all the tendencies in Russian Social Democracy.
Yet the truth is that the beginning of the revolution found the party in a lamentable state. The split between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had, in effect, thrown it right back. The internal faction fight had virtually paralysed its activities for many months. The
activists inside Russia were confused and disorientated. Having lost control of the Party centre abroad, the Bolsheviks were deprived of an organ, until the first issue of Vperyod came out in December 1904. An acute shortage of funds meant that even Vperyod led a precarious existence. The Mensheviks had more resources, but were relatively weaker on the ground in the interior, with the exception of certain areas such as the South and the Caucasus.
The weakness of the Party coincided with a new upswing in the workers' movement, which was therefore obliged to express itself through other channels. In an effort to check the growth of Marxist influence among the workers, as we have seen* , the authorities encouraged the setting up of legal trade unions, under the vigilant eye of the police. Typical of these 'Zubatov' unions was the St Petersburg 'Assembly of Russian Factory and Workshop Workers' , set up by Father Grigory Gapon with police permission, on condition of its maintaining a strictly nonpolitical character.
Father
Gapon's 'union' was in reality a friendly society which organised insurance schemes, libraries and social activities, such as musical evenings which the workers attended with their families. It was intended as a safety-valve where workers, to some extent, could give voice to their grievances, but where all mention of politics was rigorously prohibited. Since the Assembly's leaders did everything in their power to exclude revolutionaries, it is not surprising that the revolutionary workers and intellectuals looked upon the new organisation with extreme suspicion and hostility.
However the efforts of the police and their union stooges to clamp the workers' movement into a straitjacket of legal constraints was doomed to failure. The rising tide of discontent which affected all layers of society in the course of the Russo-Japanese War, began to affect even the most backward strata of the working class. Up to this moment, the opposition to tsarism had mainly come from the liberal intelligentsia and the students. The big batallions of the working class seemed to have stood aside from the struggle. But, despite the appearance of calm, the factories and workers' districts were seething with discontent. All that was required was some focal point which
would enable this subterranean process to find a voice and a conscious, organised expression.
After the assassination of Plehve, the regime, hopelessly compromised by military defeats and feeling the ground tremble beneath its feet, tried to forestall revolution from below by making concessions from the top. The 'Spring' of Autumn 1904 gave the workers more room to breathe. From September 1904 a series of mass meetings were held in the Petersburg factories, under the auspicies of Gapon's 'Assembly' which became increasingly popular with the workers. Fresh layers of workers, with no experience of struggle, were becoming organised. Gapon's organisation now had 8,000 members and branches in at least eleven districts of the city. This was a far larger number of workers than had ever participated in the Social Democratic organisations.
Gradually, the advanced Social Democratic workers overcame their instinctive aversion and began cautiously to explore work in this union. On the face of it, the prospects were not at all promising. The workers who joined Gapon's union were not like the old, conscious Social Democratic workers, but completely raw, politically untutored masses, who brought with them all the prejudices imbibed for a thousand years from a backward peasant milieu, soaked in religion, superstition and a slavish worship of the tsar, the "batyushka' the little father' . Insofar as injustice existed, the Russian peasant reasoned, this was the fault of the 'tsar's servants'. , not the monarch who was the 'people's protector' . It was no accident that the union was headed by a priest. Father Gapon, an able organiser and a natural leader, spoke a language which the workers could understand. With its curious mixture of militancy and religion, class struggle and monarchism, it corresponded to the first, confused gropings towards consciousness of millions of the most downtrodden layers of society.
The figure of Gapon himself is shrouded in an enigma. The prevailing opinion in Marxist circles at the time was that he was a simple police agent, who in all probability had deliberately planned the massacre of the 9 January 1905 with the authorities. The notorious Stalinist Short Course states baldly that "In 1904, prior to the Putilov strike, the police had used the services of an agent
See Militant International Autumn 1986
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provocateur, a priest by the name of Gapon.... Gapon undertook to assist the tsarist Okhrana (secret police, AW) by providing a pretext for firing on the workers and drowning the working class
Gapon was undoubtedly mixed up with the police prior to the 9th January and later, after the defeat of the revolution, was accused by the Social Revolutionaries of doing the same thing, for which he was assassinated. Nevertheless, the idea that Gapon consciously led the workers to be slaughtered is clearly false. All along he gives the impression of being carried along by events beyond his control or understanding. On the eve of the massacre, this 'leader of men' gave voice to his perplexity: "What would come of it? Good heavens, I don't know. Something big, but what exactly, I can't say. Who can make head or tail of all this?" 2. After the massacre, Gapon recoiled in horror, denouncing the tsar and appealing for an armed uprising. For a time he swung left, even gravitating close to the Bolsheviks before relapsing and finally ending up as the victim of a terrorist's bullet.
The Putilov strike
The accumulated rage and bitterness of the factory workers finally exploded in a strike at the Putilov arms works-a strategic centre of the St Petersburg proletariat-in December. The spark which ignited the powder-keg was the dismissal of four activists of Gapon's union. Starting in September 1904, there had been mass workers meetings in the factories under the auspices of the union, which gave the workers a chance to express their grievances and begin to acquire an idea of their own strength. The employers became alarmed and decided to crack down. On the 28 December, a mass meeting of workers from eleven factories was convened by Gapon's organisation. The increasingly radicalised mood of the workers was slowly pushing even the Gaponite leaders to more militant positions, at least in words. An indication of the sea-change was the fact that representatives of the Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries were invited to attend.
At this meeting it was decided to send a delegation with a petition to the management, the factory inspectors and the authorities in St Petersburg, setting forth the workers' grievances. The idea of a petition was probably conceived by Gapon as a way of diverting the movement into safe channels. Possibly Gapon really believed he could act as a mediator between the "little father' and his 'children' . But once put forward, in
Father Gapon, second from right, with the
situation of ferment among the masses, even this apparently innocuous idea had a logic of its own.
The idea of an appeal to the tsar and a petition of demands immediately caught the imagination of the masses, corresponding to their first gropings in the direction of revolutionary consciousness. Mass meetings were held all over the capital, which indicated a swift process of radicalisation among the workers. Gapon dashed from one meeting to another, delivering increasingly radical speeches under the impact of the mood of the masses, who revered him. An eye-witness account gives a vivid impression of the electric atmosphere at these meetings, with their quasievangelical character, Gapon calling upon the Almighty to lead the workers in struggle, urging the workers to stand together and, if necessary, die together: "All those present were in a state of rapture-many were weeping, stamping their feet, banging chairs, beating with their fists against the walls and raising their hands on high, they swore to remain firm to the end." 3.
Gapon's authority appeared to be unassailable. By contrast, the revolutionary Social Democrats were at first regarded with suspicion by the workers. The report of the St Petersburg Bolsheviks to the Third Congress in April shows that they had been very slow to intervene in what they saw as a reactionary police union, only beginning to pay it serious attention when the strike was well underway. In some parts of the city, notably the Vyborg district, they got a sympathetic hearing. But elsewhere in the city, they were given a rough ride. Often i the chairman would
St. Petersburg Chief of Police. not even allow them to speak. "Up to the ninth of January," the Petersburg delegate reported, "the attitude of the workers towards the (Bolshevik) committee was extremely hostile. Our agitators were beaten up, leaflets were destroyed, and the first 500 roubles sent to the Putilov workers by the students were accepted grudgingly." 4. A Menshevik writer bears this out: 'In the Narva district, where the movement had originated, as late as the eighth of January, the workers enthusiastically welcomed the political content of Gapon's petition. When a lone Social Democrat attempted to deliver a political speech, a howl went up from the assembled workers: 'Down with him!' "Throw him out!' "5.
Marxists isolated
Yet despite the hypnotic effect exercised by Gapon on the workers at the time, he was merely an accidental figure thrown up by the movement of the masses, like a fleck of foam on the crest of a mighty wave, which flashes brightly for a moment before vanishing forever. His very success consisted in the fact that he was the personification of the first incohate, spontaneous, instinctive movement of the working class, the first stirrings of consciousness of the masses. Inevitably, such a movement tends to seek out the line of least resistance, the well-worn paths, familiar sounding phrases and famous leaders. As always, the watchword of the movement of the masses is 'unity'. At one mass meeting, Gapon chided a Social Democratic speaker with the words: "Do not introduce discord: let us march towards
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40 MIR Winter 1988: Bolshevism Part Seven our sacred goal under a single peaceful banner, common to one and all." 6. The numerical weakness and isolation of the Social Democracy at the beginning of the revolution was revealed in the words of Livshits, giving voice to the frustration of the party activists in Petersburg at their inability to exercise a decisive influence before the 9 January: "We Party workers". "knew very well that the forthcoming peaceful procession would not lead to anything worthwhile and would bloodshed. But where was the force that could have forestalled this terrible misdeed, for which tsarism and clericalism was responsible? Such a force did not exist." 7. (My emphasis, AW) Martov, in his history of the Russian Social Democracy, written only a few years later, confirms that " ...the Social Democracy of both factions could not but notice that the stormy events in Petersburg in January 1905 took place not only outside the immediate leadership of the Social Democracy, but even without a significant participation by it as an organised whole."
This is confirmed from the Bolshevik side by the minutes of the Third Congress which state that: "The January events found the Petersburg committee in an extremely deplorable state. Its links with the working masses had been utterly disorganised by the Mensheviks. Only with great difficulty did they manage to maintain themselves in the City, Vasily Island and the Vyborg district." Yet in 24 hours the whole situation was transformed. Marx once wrote that the revolution at times needs the whip of counter- revolution to drive it forward. It took the massacre of Bloody Sunday to knock out of the heads of the masses the century-old illusions in tsarism. In a revolutionary situation, the workers' consciousness grows by leaps and bounds. Indeed, sudden and sharp shifts in the mood of the masses constitutes the essential element of a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary period. By the end of the year, the revolutionary Social Democracy had definitely established itself as the hegemonic force within the working class, striving to place itself at the head of the revolutionary nation.
In point of fact, the rapid growth of the forces of Russian Marxism in 1905 was not at all accidental. The terrain had been prepared over a long period through decades of Social Democratic agitation, propaganda and organisation. A considerable number of advanced workers had been in contact, to a greater or lesser extent, with the Social A far Democratic propaganda circles. larger number had been touched by the mass agitation carried out systema tically by the Social Democrats for at least ten years prior to the 9 January. That the basic slogans of the Marxists had left their mark on the consciousness of the working class was demonstrated by the fact that a number of key Social Democratic demands found their way into Gapon's famous petition-from the eight-hour day to the demand for a Constituent Assembly. Gapon's move. ment, designed to build a solid wall between the mass of the workers and the Marxists, in the end served as a Bloody Sunday In reality, Gapon was stirring up forces neither he nor anyone else could control. While the revolutionaires branded him an agent provocateur, the authorities cursed him as a dangerous agent of the revolution. Irrespective of his subjective intentions, the latter description was far nearer the truth. The petition aroused tremendous enthusiasm when it was read out in mass workers' assemblies where it was everywhere approved with acclamation. With breathtaking naivety, Gapon wrote to the Minister of the Interior on the eve of Bloody Sunday, requesting legal permission for a peaceful demonstration in front of the Winter Palace: "The tsar has nothing to fear," he wrote, "I, as the representative of the Assembly of Russian Workers, my colleagues, and the worker comrades-and even the so called revolutionary groups of different trends-guarentee the inviolability of his person. Let him come forth like a true tsar, with courage in his heart, to meet his People and take unto his hands our petition." Signed:
"The Priest Gapon and Eleven Workers' Deputies, Petersburg, 8th January." 10.
an attempt to underline their peaceful intentions, banned the display of red flags. The Social Democrats, despite their grave misgivings about the demonstration, decided, correctly, to participate alongside the rest of their class. This the organisers agreed to only on condition that they marched at the rear of the demonstration, a measure which, in the event, saved the lives of many of While the leaders of the union were straining every nerve to convince the government of their peaceful intentions, the latter, in a state of near panic, was preparing to teach the masses a bloody lesson.
At two o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday January 9, the workers began to assemble before the Winter Palace. The was soon packed with a huge square multitude not only of workers but students, socialist groups, women, children and old people-in all about 140,000 "As agreed, the march to the palace was a peaceful one, without songs, banners or speeches. People wore their Sunday clothes. In some parts of the city they carried icons and church banners. Everywhere the petibegged to be allowed to pass. They wept, they tried to go around the barrier, they tried to break through it. The soldiers fired all day long, the dead were counted in by the hundreds, the wounded in the thousands. An exact count was impossible since the police carted away and secretly buried the bodies of the dead at night." I1. At least 4,600 people were killed and wounded, The massacre of the Ninth of January reveals 'Nicolas the Bloody', as he justly became known, not only as a cruel and contemptible man, but also as an exceedingly stupid monarch. "The shots fired on the 22 January* 1905," recalls Eva Broido, "woke echoes all over Russia. Everywhere the masses were stirred out of their complacency: the old belief in the goodness of the father' the tsar was dead. Even the most backward workers understood At an emotional meeting held on the night of Bloody Sunday, Gapon announced to the assembled workers "We no longer have a tsar." Crowds of workers roamed the streets, angry and desperate but without leadership. And suddenly, the same revolutionaries who had been rejected, shouted down and even beaten up, became the focal point of intense interest. The Petersburg delegate at the Third Congress related how on the evening of the Ninth the Bolshevik agitators took to the streets looking for groups of workers to address, but found that things had already gone beyond that stage. The workers had learnt in a matter of hours more than decades of agitation and propoganda could ever teach them. "We were passed by carriages carrying the dead, behind which crowds of people 'Down with the tsar!' You only had to throw arms at a crowd like this and they would have gone anywhere you wanted. On Vasily Island a scrap iron shop was broken into and the crowd armed themselves with old This created a pathetic impression. Everywhere you could hear the cry: 'Arms! Arms!' By evening the the organisation underwent a radical transformation. Our agitators were listened to with * The Old Style pre-revolutionary calendar, retained in Russia until 1918, was thirteen days behind the New Style.
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enthusiasm. The organisers could go wherever they pleased. On each of the successive days the same mood could be observed." 13.
From exile in Switzerland, Lenin immediately hailed the January events as the beginning of the revolution in Russia: "The working class," he wrote, 'has received a momentous lesson in civil war: the revolutionary education of the proletariat made more progress in one day than it could have made in months and years of drab, humdrum, wretched existence. The slogan of the heroic St Petersburg proletariat, 'Death or Freedom!' is reverberating throughout Russia." 14. (My emphasis, AW)
The spontaneous mass movement in solidarity with the Petersburg workers which swept across the whole country was the final answer to all the Doubting Thomases who questioned the willingness of the workers to fight. Only two days before Bloody Sunday, the ex- Marxist Liberal, Struve, wrote in his journal Osvobozhdenie, "There is not yet such a thing as a revolutionary people in Russia," to which Trotsky replied scathingly, speaking of the Liberals: "They did not believe in the revolutionary role of the proletariat; instead, they believed in the force of the zemsty's petition* , in Witte, in Svyatopolk Mirsky, in jars of dynamite. There was no political prejudice in which they did not believe. Our belief in the proletariat was the only thing they regarded as prejudice." 15.
Revolution
begins
On the 10 January, barricades appeared in St Petersburg. By the 17 January, 160,000 workers were on strike in 650 factories in the capital. From 14-20 January a general strike gripped Warsaw which resembled an armed camp. A demonstration called by the Social Democrats and nationalists led to bloody clashes with the troops who fired up to 60,000 rounds in three days leaving, officially, 64 dead and 69 wounded of which 29 died later. But despite the repression, the strike movement swept like wildfire through Poland and the Baltic states. A similiar situation existed in the Caucasus where a political general strike broke out. The movement cut across all national lines: Polish, Armenian, Georgian, Lithuanian and Jewish workers expressed their solidarity with their Russian class brothers in the most practical way-by fighting against the hated Russian autocracy. Most seriously of all, from the government's point of view, a railway strike began in Saratov, in Central Russia, on January 12, which quickly spread to the other railway lines, ex-
tending twards vinces.
This movement of the working class provoked panic in government circles. After Bloody Sunday, the ruling clique intended to move quickly towards reaction, as indicated by the dismissal of the Liberal Svyatopolk Mirsky in favour of the conservative bureaucrat Bulygin, and the granting of almost unlimited dictatorial powers to General Trepov. Now all its calculations were thrown into disarray. Under the pressure of the growing strike movement, on the 18 February, the tsar issued his first Manifesto in which he hinted at a constitution and popular representation. By its united action, the working class had achieved more in one week than all the years of speechifying and petitions and banquets by the liberal bourgeois.
The movement of the workers had an electrifying effect on all classes in society. The public retreat of the regime encouraged not only the workers, but also the middle class, the bourgeois liberals and the students. "The worker's action strengthened the position of the radical elements within the intelligentsia just as the zemtsy's conference had earlier put a trump card in the hands of the opportunist elements." 16.
The shock-waves that flowed from the Ninth of January pushed the whole movement to the left. The tide began to flow strongly in favour of revolutionary action, and the revolutionary Social Democracy. Social Democratic workers, Bolshevik and Menshevik now came to the fore in every factory. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the role of these conscious worker agitators in the unfolding strike wave, despite its apparently 'spontaneous' character. The activities of the revolutionaries was greatly assisted by General Trepov who obligingly exiled large numbers of 'trouble makers' from St Petersburg to the provinces where they acted as a necessary 'leaven' to the revolutionary movement.
The possibilities which now unfolded before the Russian Marxists were now immense. But the Party, still reeling from the effects of the split, was in very poor shape to take advantage of the opportunities. Given the nature of underground work, it is very difficult to estimate the exact strength of the Bolsheviks at this time. The St Petersburg Party organisation did not formally split until December 1904, when the Mensheviks broke away. Up to that time, Lenin's supporters had been in the ascendant. But the internal struggle had had a damaging effect on the Party's work, turning it inwards. This is reflected in the number of Bolshevik leaflets issued in Petersburg in 1904:
the revolutionary wave to the most backward
pro-
41
only eleven for the whole against 55 in 1903 and 117 17.
year, as in 1905.
A recent detailed study reveals the crisis in the organisation in St Petersburg on the eve of the revolution: "The Social Democratic organisation in St Petersburg prior to January 1905, by almost any criteria, was weak. In December 1903, the joint Social Democratie organisation had about eighteen circles in the factories, and membership of circles was from seven to ten, which would give a total worker membership of not more than 180. If the students and intelligentsia had about the same, as seems likely, total membership would have been 360. During the winter of 1904 the Committee's membership and activities declined, and the links with abroad were weak or nonexistent... The same correspondent says that the Mensheviks too were losing support: in one region where they had fifteen to twenty circles, by December 1904 they had only four or five". 18
Lenin
After Bloody Sunday, this situation experienced a complete turn- about. But a cursory glance at Lenin's correspondence at this time reveals the deficient state of the organisation, particularly with regard to contact between the Bolshevik activists inside Russia and the leading centre abroad: "A nice business: we talk of organisation, of centralism, while actually there is such disunity, such amateurism among even the closest comrades in the centre, that one teeis like chucking it all in in disgust. Just look at the Bundists: they do not prate about centralism, but every one of them writes to the centre weekly and contacts are thus actually maintained... Really, I sometimes think that nine-tenths of the Bolsheviks are actually formalists. Either we shall rally all who are out to fight into a really iron strong organisation and with this small but strong party quash that sprawling monster, the new Iskra (ie Mensheviks, AW) motley elements, or we shall prove by our conduct that we deserve to go under for being contemptible formalists...
"The Mensheviks have more money, more literature, more transportation facilities, more agents and more 'names, and a larger staff of contributors. It would be unpardonable childishness not to see that." 19. (My emphasis, AW)
* A reference to the campaign of banquets and petitions launched the previous Autumn by the Liberals organised around the 'zemstvos". See Militant International Review. Number 35, Summer 1987.
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42 MIR Winter 1988: Bolshevism Part Seven
While some element of exaggeration may be put down to Lenin's natural feelings of frustration and impatience, the accusation of 'formalism' directed against a layer of the Bolshevik professionals inside Russia was not at all accidental. Starting out from a position of clear superiority among the Party activists in Russia, the Bolshevik committeemen, when unexpectedly confronted with the explosive movement of the masses failed to react with the necessary flexibility, and consequently made mistakes and frequently lost the initiative.
In a sitation where hundreds of thousands of workers and youth were entering the arena of politics, seeking the revolutionary road, the most pressing need was to open up the party, and let in at least the best elements among the masses. But the committeemen, steeped in the habit of clandestine, small circle work, proved reluctant to move over and make way for the new, fresh layers. They found a hundred and one excuses for not 'opening up'-the workers were 'not ready' to join, the need to safeguard security, and so on and so forth. After all, they reasoned, wasn't the basic difference between Lenin and Martov at the Second Congress the need to safeguard the purity of the revolutionary vanguard by not swamping it with too many raw and untutored elements? We must not 'dilute the membership!
Yet that very Lenin who argued in favour of restricting Party membership in 1903, now argued even more vehemently in favour of opening the doors and windows and letting in the largest possible number of workers and youth: "We need young forces," he thundered, "I am for shooting on the spot anyone who presumes to say that there are no people to be had. The people in Russia are legion: all we have to do is to recruit young people more widely and boldly, more boldly and widely, and again more boldly without fearing them. This is a time of war. The youth-the students and still more the young workers- will decide the issue of the whole struggle. Get rid of all the old habits of immobility, of respect for rank and so on. Form hundreds of circles of Vperyodists (ie Bolsheviks, AW) from among the youth and encourage them to work at full blast. Enlarge the Committee threefold by accepting young people onto it, set up half a dozen subcommittees, 'co-opt' any and every honest and energetic person. Allow every subcommittee to write and publish leaflets and without any red tape (there is no harm if they do make a mistake: we on Vperyod will 'gently' correct them.) We must, with desperate speed, unite all people with revolutionary initiative and set them to
work. Do not fear their lack of training, do not tremble at their inexperience and lack of development.... (because) events themselves will teach them in our spirit. Events are already teaching everyone precisely in the Vperyod spirit.
'Only you must be sure to organise, organise, and organise hundreds oi circles, completely pushing into the background the customary, well-meant committee (hierarchic) stupidities. This is a time of war. Either you create new, young, fresh, energetic battle organisations everywhere for revolutionary Social Democratic work of all varieties among all strata, or you will go under, wearing the aureole of 'committee' bureaucrats." 20.
These lines strikingly reveal the whole essence of Lenin's method, particularly on organisational questions. While stressing the need for a strong, centralised revolutionary organisation, Lenin's attitude to organisational questions was always extremely flexible. After the Second Congress, the Mensheviks attempted to caricature Lenin as a hidebound bureaucrat, striving to create a party composed of an elite of intellectual professional revolutionaires which would exclude 'ordinary workers' who would have to submit to the commands of an 'all-powerful centre." This caricature, which has been maliciously repeated and exaggerated by bourgeois historians, is the opposite of the truth, as the above passage-very typical of the period with which we are dealing-irrefutably demonstrates.
Revolution or
reaction?
Unfortunately, a layer of Bolshevik organisers inside Russia, the so-called "committee-men', on occasion acted like the very caricature invented by the Mensheviks. They interpreted Lenin's organisational ideas as fixed and immutable formulas, to be applied mechanically, irrespective of the needs of the moment. Even the most correct idea, when carried beyond a certain limit, becomes transformed into its opposite. By making a fetish of organisational forms, and overlooking the dialectical method of applying these ideas in a rapidly changing situation, despite their undoubted capacity for self-sacrifice and hard work, the 'committee-men' frequently played a negative role in the development of the Party, until corrected by the intervention of Lenin.
The essence of the problem facing the Party was: how to establish firm links between the relatively small forces of the revolutionary vanguard and the mass of the workers and youth who were moving into struggle? The revolution does not
unfold in an orderly and pre- determined fashion, like an orchestra responding to the flourishes of a conductor's baton. It is a living play of forces, an equation even more complex than war between nations. The events of Bloody Sunday and afterwards, to pursue the military analogy, represented a general mobilisation of the working class. But that class, only just recovering from its naive illusions and striving to find the road to a complete overhaul of society, continually stumbling over the innumerable obstacles placed in its path, as yet lacked a general staff able to point the way forward to victory. Even the most courageous army never won a war without good generals. But the best of generals without an army do not count for much
Lenin understood clearly that all the Manifestos and promises of reform were only a smoke-screen to deceive the masses, behind which the reaction was playing for time and preparing its revenge. Time was therefore of the essence. In an uninterrupted stream of articles, he poured scorn on the Liberals with their illusions in peaceful constitutional reform, and flayed the Mensheviks for their illusions in the Liberals. One of the facets of Lenin's political genius was his ability to separate the essential from the inessential and grasp the essence of a problem. He quickly realised that it was now a question of 'either... or' '. The time for playing games was past. Either the working class, under a conscious revolutionary leadership, would succeed in gathering together all the oppressed masses under its leadership, above all the poor peasants and the oppressed nationalities, and smash the power of tsarism by an armed uprising, or, inevitably, the forces of black reaction would destroy the revolution, exacting a bloody revenge on the working class. There was no 'middle way'.
Everything, therefore, hinged on the Marxists' ability to win over a decisive majority of the working class and as quickly as possible make the necessary political, organisational and material preparation for a national armed uprising. This idea was at the kernal of all Lenin's pronouncements throughout 1905 and partly explains the urgent and at times uncharacteristically sharp tone of his correspondence with the interior.
Under the pressure of the mass movement, the Mensheviks, particularly the ones 'on the ground' in Russia, began to move left. Not only the Bolshevik Vperyod, but also the Menshevik Iskra published articles and diagrams on street fighting. However, the opportunist tendencies which were already appa-
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rent before the Ninth of January were revealed in the exaggerated role attributed by the Mensheviks to the liberal bourgeoisie and in Martov's insistence upon political, rather than technical preparation of the masses for armed uprising, of which Lenin tersely commented: "The separation of the 'technical' side of the revolution from the political side of the revolution is the greatest twaddle." 21.
Early in February, Gapon himself. having been pushed temporarily to the left by his experiences, issued an Open Letter to the Socialist Parties of all Russia, which included an appeal for an armed uprising: "I call upon all the socialist parties of Russia to enter immediately into an agreement among themselves and to proceed to the armed uprising against tsarism. All the forces of every party should be mobilised. All should have a single plan of action... The immediate aim is the overthrow of the autocracy, a provisional revolutionary government which will at once amnesty all fighters for political and religious liberties, at once arm the people, and at once convoke a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot. " 22.
United Front
This was given a warm welcome by Lenin, who, in his article, A Militant Agreement for the Uprising, 23. stressed the need for a united front of all revolutionary forces to prepare the uprising, on the basis of the old slogan 'march separately and strike together' However, here, and in all his other articles, Lenin is emphatic on the absolute necessity of maintaining the complete political independence of the working class and its party: "We see in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary proletariat the sole pledge of socialism's victory and the sole road to victory that is most free from vacillation. We shall never, therefore, not even at the most revolutionary moments, forego the complete independence of the Social Democratic Party or the complete intransigence of our ideology." 24.
Trotsky's position at this time was very close to that of Lenin. Despite this well-known fact, the Stalinist historians persist in describing Trotsky in 1905 as a 'Menshevik' ', as we read in the following, fairly typical, extract: "Trotsky's denial of a revolutionary democracy (?) was in effect defence of the Menshevik idea of the bourgeoisie's hegemony (!) in the forthcoming revolution." 25.
Yet the differences which separated Trotsky from the Mensheviks as early as February 1904 are attested to unambi-
Three days after Bloody Sunday a rail strike began in Central Russia, extending the revolutionary wave to the most backward provinces.
guously by the Menshevik leaders themselves. From late 1904 onwards, Trotsky and the German Left Social Democrat Parvus (Alexander Gelfand), worked out a body of ideas which were later to provide the basis for Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. We will deal with the nature of this theory and the position of Lenin and the Mensheviks later. But first, let us put the record straight.
"Trotsky, too, had a basic divergence of views with Iskra (the Menshevik organ, AW) on the political conclusions to be drawn from the situation created by the 9 January. Trotsky wrote that after 9 January the working class movement 'slipped into an uprising. Hence the Constituent Assembly in and for itself could no longer be the fundamental and generalising slogan of the party. After the 9 January it was necessary to prepare for an armed uprising and the replacement of the tsarist government by a Revolutionary Provisional Government that alone could convoke a Constituent Assembly." 26. These are the words of the Menshevik leader Theodor Dan, written at a time when he and Trotsky were bitter political enemies. The basic ideas contained here, based on Trotsky's pamphlet, Till the Ninth of January, are in complete agreement with the general position defended by Lenin. In his history of the Russian Social Democracy, Martov polemicises nof only against Lenin's position, but also against the theories of Trotsky and Parvus. 27.
The question of arming the workers, which Lenin persistently raised, flowed from the needs of the moment. While making conciliatory noises, the government was systematically preparing the
forces of reaction. Shaken by the show of solidarity between the workers of different nationalities, the authorities set about trying to break this unity by organising bloody pogroms. As early as February, the agents of the regime incited the Tartars in Baku to launch a murderous assault on the Armenians in that city. Throughout the year 1905, all over Russia, lumpen gangs were bribed with money and vodka by the police to beat up and murder Jews, Socialists and students. In organising workers' defence the different party organisations co- operated in action. For practical purposes, agreements were arrived at involving Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Bundists, the socialists from other nationalities, and even petit-bourgeois organisations like the nationalist Polish Socialist Party, and the Social Revolutionaries (SR's)
The Shidlovsky
Commission
In theory, there would have been nothing wrong, under these conditions, with arriving at practical, episodic agreements even with the bourgeois Liberals, whilst maintaining complete organisational and political independence. But in reality, such agreements with the Liberals were virtually nonexistent. The latter were striving, not for an armed insurrection, but for a deai with tsarism, leaning for a time on the mass movement in order to frighten the regime into granting a constitution. Lenin's articles in this period were full of the sharpest attacks on the Liberals, warning against their treachery and combatting the Mensheviks' attempts to blur the dividing line between the work-
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MIR Winter 988: Bolshevism Part Seven
ing class and the bourgeois Liberals foment illusions in the latter.
In search of allies for the revolutionary proletariat, Lenin's attention was focused elsewhere. While the Mensheviks looked towards the Zemstvo Liberals, Lenin became increasingly convinced that the only possible ally for the workers in their struggle to overthrow the autocracy consisted in the peasantry, particularly the poor peasants. His vision of the revolution was that of the broadest possible movement of the workers and peasants, to overthrow tsarism, establish a provisional revolutionary government ('democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry') which, without going beyond the limits of capitalism, would carry through the most radical and farreaching democratic programme, first and foremost the confiscation of the big estates and the handing over of land to the peasants.
Up till 1905, the party's agrarian programme consisted of a series of limited demands which would alleviate the burdens on the peasantry, particularly the recovery of the 'otrezki' , or 'cut-off lands" , that is, the land which had been withheld from the peasants under the terms of the Emancipation of the Serfs Act of 1861. But now, the revolution in the urban centres was rapidly spreading to the villages. The old party programme was hopelessly antiquated, in a situation where the general sentiment among the peasants was in favour of seizing the landlords' estates.
Conscious of the danger facing it from all sides, the regime acted with a mixture of ruthlessness and cunning. While attempting to crush the movement by new arrests, deportations, martial law and pogroms, the government simultaneously attempted to woo the Liberal bourgeoisie with the Manifesto of February 18 and set in motion a manoeuvre designed to split and disorient the working class. Utilising the time- honoured trick of the ruling class in all countries when it feels its back to the wall, the tsarist government set up a commission headed by Senator Shidlovsky "to enquire into the causes of the discontent among the workers"
The aim of this strategem was clearly an attempt to defuse the situation, diverting the workers away from revolutionary action and prevent them from moving in the direction of Marxism. In an unprecedented move, the government announced that the workers would be represented on the commission by means of elected delegates.
This manoeuvre presented the Marxists with a tactical problem. On the one hand, the reactionary aims of the gorernment were quite clear. On the cther
hand, to refuse to participate would be to renounce a splendid opportunity to carry the ideas of revolutionary socialism to the mass of workers. For the Menshevik leaders, with their opportunistic leanings, there was no particular problem. They immediately advocated using the Commission as a tribune' from which to address the workers of all Russia. Among the Bolsheviks in Petersburg, however, the prevailing mood was initially in favour of a boycott. Similar moods existed also among the Menshevik workers who were far to the left of the leaders in exile. At the Third Congress, Rumyantsev (Filipov' in the minutes) stated that "There were no differences over the need to boycott the (Shidlovsky) Commission." 28. However, the general mood of the workers was overwhelmingly in favour of participation, and the Bolsheviks soon modified their position in favour of participating, at least in the election of delegates, taking full advantage of the legal opportunities for agitation among a wider layer of workers than would normally be possible.
Congress convened
The correctness of this decision was shown by subsequent events. On February 14, 400 candidates stood in the elections, of whom 20 per cent were Social Democrats, 40 per cent 'radicalised workers' and the remainder 'economist' workers and others. But despite being in a minority, the Bolshevik delegates managed to set the tone of the meeting. The arrest of a number of delegates created a mood of angry militancy in which the Bolsheviks succeeded in delivering what amounted to an ultimatum to Senator Shidlovsky, demanding freedom of speech and assembly, the right of delegates to conduct their activities without let or hindrance, the right to meet and discuss freely with their 'electorate' and the freeing of their arrested comrades. But when, on the following day, the votes were due to be taken, the government decided that things were getting out of hand and refused to accept the workers' demands, whereupon the boycott campaign now went ahead in earnest. Having been through the experience of the Commission, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the class, it was now relatively easy to expose the fradulent nature of the entire manoeuvre, while simultaneously agitating for the 8-hour working day, a state insurance policy, democratic elections and an end to the war. Three days later the authorities hastened to put an end to the one and only attempt to solve the labour problem' by legal means. The workers, meanwhile, had learned a great deal
from the experience which set an important precedent for the election of workers deputies which played a role in the establishment of the Soviet later on. 29.
At this time, none of the main leaders of either the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks had yet returned to Russia, with the exception of Trotsky who arrived in Kiev in February where he established close contact with the key Bolshevik figure in Russia at that time, Leonid Krassin. Krassin was in charge of a large and well-equipped secret printing press 'somewhere in the Caucases'. But his role went far beyond that. A highly capable young engineer, Krassin was in many ways the prototype of a Bolshevik organiser.
"The party, like the revolution, was still young at that time, " Trotsky recalls in his autobiography, "and one was struck by the inexperience and lack of finish revealed both by the members and their actions in general. Krassin likewise was not wholly free from this fault. But there was something firm, resolute and 'administrative' about him. He was an engineer of some experience, he held a paying job and filled it well; he was valued by his employers, and had a circle of acquaintances that was much larger and more varied than that of any of the young revolutionaries of the day. In workers' rooms, in engineers' apartments, in the mansions of the liberal Moscow industrialists, in literary circles-everywhere, Krassin had connections. He managed them all with great skill and, consequently, practical possibilities that were quite closed to the others were opened to him. In 1905, in addition to participating in the general work of the party, Krassin had charge of the most dangerous fields of the work, such as armed units, the purchase of arms, the preparing of stocks of explosives, and the like. In spite of his broad outlook, he was primarily a man of immediate acheivement, in politics as well as in life. That was his strength but it was also his heel of Achilles." 30.
Lenin greatly appreciated people like Krassin who got on with the work quietly, efficiently and without fuss. Krassin's work went on in secret, but played an invaluable role in building the party in this stormy period. Politically, Krassin was a conciliator. But conciliationist moods were common among party activists in Russia, and still more among the workers, as was clearly reflected in the report of the Petersburg delegation to the party congress: "In the recent period the demand for an end to the split is becoming widespread. Worker Bolsheviks and Mensheviks are holding joint meetings, either with or without the intellectuals, and every-
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where the demand for unification is " 31. One way or the other, the split in the party had to be The obvious solution was the convening of a party congress. The Bolsheviks had been agitating for the convening of the Third Congress for months, but the Mensheviks, fearing they would be in a stonewalled.
Early in February, a police raid on the Moscow appartment of the writer Leonid Andreyev led to the arrest of all members of the Central Committee (mainly Mensheviks and conciliators). Those still at liberty contacted the Bolshevik 'Bureau of Majority Committees' with the intention of reaching agreement to convene a Congress. Though formally this was the responsibility of the Party Council, a majority of the party organisations inside Russia were clearly in favour. If two-thirds of the committees requested a congress, the Council was obliged by the rules to call one. By the beginning of April the Bolsheviks were able to prove conclusively that a total of 21 organisations inside Russia, including the CC, were in favour of a Congress. (These figures were accepted as correct by Martov. 32.) This represented 52 votes out of a total of 75 that would represent the whole party at a congress-many more than what would be required by the rules. An Open Letter to Plekhanov, as chairman of the Party Council, written by Lenin in the name the CC was published early in April. Yet the Council, openly flouting the rules and in contempt of democratic procedure, refused to call the congress. Given the irresponsible behaviour of the Council, the Bolsheviks had no alternative but to convene a Congress themselves, in the name of the Central Committee and the majority of party organisations in Russia. Mensheviks, although invited to attend, stayed away and organised their own conference in Geneva.
On April 12 1905, assembled in London for over two weeks of intense discussions on the fundamental problems of the revolution. The first genuinely Bolshevik Congress had been convened.
Part Eight of Alan Woods' series of articles on the history of Bolshevism, dealing with the Third Congress and the further development of the 1905 revolution, will appear in the next edition of the MIR. Back issues of the MIR containing parts 1 to 6 are available for 90p each, postage included, from World Socialist Books, 3-13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB. Cheques payable to World Socialist Books.
January 9th, 1905.
Footnotes 1. Stalin (and others?), 'History of the Party Communist Union of the Soviet (Bolsheviks)', p94.
2. Quoted in Martov et al, 'Obshehestvennoe Dvizhenie v Rossil, volume 2, p43. 3. ibid p45.
4. ibid p44.
5. Quoted in JLH Keep, 'The Rise of the Social Democracy in Russia', p157. 6. ibid p158.
7. Martov, op cit, volume 3, p540.
8. ibid, volume 2, p45 9.
Tretiy s'yezd RSDRP (Protokoly), p544.
10. Martov, op cit, volume 2, p45 7905', p92.
11. Trotsky, 12. Eva Broido, 'Memoirs of a Revolutionary, pilo.
Tretiy s'yezd, p545 14. Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 9, 15. Trotsky, op cit, p95.
16. ibid p96.
17. See David Lane, 'The Roots of Russian Communism', p7l.
18. ibid p72 19. Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 8, pp143-45.
20. ibid p146.
21. See Lenin, 'Collected Works', volume 3, 22. Quoted in Dan, Origins of Bolshevism. Lenin, Collected Works", volume 8, pp/58-166.
4. ibid pl59 5. VA Grinko (and others), 'The Bolshe vik Party's Struggle Against Trotskyism', 26. Dan, op cit, p305.
27. Martov, op cit, volume 3, pp553- 54.
28. Tretiy s'yezd, p179.
29. See Oskar Anweiler, 'Los Soviets', p43-44.
30. Trotsky, 'My Life', pp169-170. 31. Tretiy s'yezd, p549.
32. Martov, op cit, volume 3, p557.
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