SIDE by side with the formation of the industrial proletariat, socialism developed in Russia toward the middle of the last century on a somewhat confused and complex basis of ideas, and grew steadily stronger by its diversity. But from the beginning, both the socialist movement and the proletariat showed certain fundamental characteristics which were to give them a future unparalleled in history.
It is essential to glance at the origins of the Russian Social-Democratic movement, its precursors and its notable exponents, in order to understand Bolshevism and its representatives at different stages of its evolution from Lenin to Stalin.
In Russia a poverty-stricken working class grew up slowly around the earliest spinning mills, iron-works and factories. The first rudimentary strikes caused by the cruel labour conditions Occurred at Moscow, Kazan, Yaroslavl, Tambov, Kaluga, Voronezh and Tula. Under Alexander I about half the 200,000 persons employed in industry remained serfs, bound to the works or the factory by their master's orders; the rest, with the "freedom" to work sixteen hours and more a day, overwhelmed by fines, privation and persecution, were hardly better treated. Nicholas I, sometimes called the "Iron Tsar"—for in its political regime Russia experienced the iron age before the steel—even promulgated a law making it a crime at common law to go on Strike. The peasants, transferred by force from the village to the factory, generally remained peasants, passing part of the year at work on the land. All of them preserved close links with the village and retained their peasant psychology long after the change in their work.
Industry, aided by foreign capital and technique, made rapid and continuous progress; in less than forty years after the abolition of serfdom it recruited more than a million and a half peasants. The mass of the Russian proletariat, therefore, derives directly from the countryside, whereas the proletariat of the West had for its basic nucleus the descendants of mediaeval guild workers, from whom it inherited urban culture and its own traditions. This is its most distinctive characteristic.
The early revolutionary tradition of the Russian working class bore the imprint of peasant influence. From the sixteenth century onwards, declares M. Pokrovsky the historian, Russia was perhaps the most rebellious country in Europe. Each of the other great countries had its peasants' civil war; Russia had four in two centuries—those of the "Time of Trouble," of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, of Stenka Razin and of Pugachev. Peasant revolt was not entirely crushed out, in spite of implacable repression. And since the freeing of the serfs in 1861, some two thousand local risings have been counted, down to the insurrection on a large scale in 1905. "Revolution," wrote Leroy-Beaulieu, "is latent in the Russian people." Such is the mark on contemporary events. Strong characteristics of peasant mentality were transmitted to the workers' movements: passive resignation interspersed with violent rebellion, individual mistrust and collective credulity, simplicity of ideas, mystical feeling and fanatical prejudice—all have come down to the Russian workers from this little developed class which, according to Karl Marx, represents barbarism in the heart of civilisation.
Russia, where capitalism developed late and inadequately, possessed no bourgeoisie capable of becoming a ruling class. Peter the Great himself created the first factories; Catherine II followed his example, and later on Imperial initiative was required for the construction of the first railways. Nowhere in the world did the Government control so many productive industries, of which the distillation of vodka was not the least important. Industry advanced slowly at first, sheltered by protective duties. A bourgeoisie feeble in economic activity could not claim the political role of a Third Estate. Russia never had any equivalent of the English Magna Carta or the French Declaration of Rights. Thus the intelligentsia, consisting of the generous and learned élite of the aristocracy and the landed gentry, cadres of the army and the cultivated bourgeoisie, after attempting single-handed a desperate and vain struggle against absolutism, was to provide skeleton cadres for the workers' and peasants' revolution.
In spite of certain national characteristics, there was nothing exclusively Russian about Tsardom. "The type of domination exercised by the Romanovs is absolutely identical with that of the Valois and the Tudors," remarks Pokrovsky. The pioneers of liberalism came for the most part from free-masonry, which was twice dissolved. Novikov and Radishchev, the earliest, expiated their humanitarian anticipations, the one in prison, the other in exile, thanks to Catherine II, friend of Voltaire and of the encyclopaedists. The attempt at a revolution made by the Decembrists (1825) was merely a conspiracy against the domination of the nobility, and had no links with the people. But the most resolute leaders were already thinking in terms of republicanism with slightly socialist tendencies. The Decembrists, members of lodges and other secret societies, had among them officers who had come into contact with the French Revolution through the Napoleonic armies, and intellectuals in charge of capitalist enterprises. The torture of the ringleaders, Pestel, Ryleyev, Kakhovskoi, Muraviev-Apostol, Bestuyev-Riumin, and the deportation of one hundred and fifty conspirators put an end for a long time to dreams of liberty, equality and fraternity. The reign of Nicholas I began under the auspices of the executioner.
Despotism grew yet stricter under the Iron Tsar, but even so a varied and intense spiritual life found some expression. Driven from politics, free thought sought a refuge in literature and philosophy. The great writers of Russia, from Pushkin to Tolstoy, gave lustre to this epoch. Lermontov was followed by Nekrassov, Gogol by Dostoievsky; Goncharov and Turgenev were succeeded by Ostrovsky and Shchedrin. Thus literature took the place of the public platform; poetry and the novel, satire and the drama combined to discredit serfdom, to ridicule bureaucracy, and to outwit the censorship. Bielinsky raised literary criticism to the height of a criticism of society and founded the tradition which Dobroliubov, Chernishevsky, and Pissarev were to follow. Enlightened youth passionately embraced the doctrines of Fichte and Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach, later of John Stuart Mill and Spencer, Büchner and Darwin. Petrashevsky's circle studied Saint-Simon and Fourier, Cabet and Proudhon, Louis Blanc and Lamennais, which earned for its members prison and exile, after a condemnation to capital punishment commuted to forced labour at the last minute. It was only by a very narrow margin that the pen of Pushkin was not broken in the adventure of the Decembrists; and by even less was Dostoievsky to escape death on the scaffold in 1849, with the petrashevtsy, before enduring the long torments of the House of the Dead.
In the 'forties two currents of earlier origin divided the intelligentsia into "Slavophils" and "westerners." Reacting against the brutal reforms of Peter the Great, introduced with violence in order more quickly to imitate European evolution, the slavophils, hostile to exterior influences and the imitation of the foreigner, idealised the Russian past, argued that the backwardness of "Holy Russia" was superior to the "decadent West," and insisted on the jealous and mystical conservation of the aristocracy, the Orthodox Church and the national characteristics. They repudiated rationalism, science and democracy as the products of an exhausted civilisation. The westerners wished to raise their country to the level of cultivated Europe, to secularise Russian life, to liberate the genius of the people and to introduce the rights of man. But with Alexander Herzen a new tendency arose, a purely Russian form of socialism which attempted a synthesis. Later, under the varied influences of his successors, this was destined to assume a very different form and finally to become the movement known as Populism (narodnichestvo).
Herzen reconciled in one eclectic doctrine his faith in the universal subversive mission of the Slav peasants with his borrowings from the revolutionary theories of the West, above all from Proudhon. He elaborated a conception which would resolve at the same time "the Russian question and the social question," predicted the end of bourgeois Europe on the morrow of a devastating war, and foretold the advent of communism in the world at a signal from Russia, where the peasants would set an example to all humanity. For the Russian people, so Herzen and his disciples, influenced by the slavophils, believed, had the advantage above all others of its ancient institutions: the village community (obshchina or mir) had by its very nature a tendency towards socialism and constituted the embryo of the federalist and co-operative organisation of the future. Rural Russia, then, would initiate the era of social revolution and the march towards communism.
Through Haxthausen in Germany, Mackenzie Wallace in England and Leroy-Beaulieu in France, much is already known outside Russia of the system of collective property and agricultural exploitation of the mir, to which Herzen, his rival Bakunin, and his followers and critic's Chernishevsky and Lavrov, genuine theoreticians of Populism in the 'sixties, attached such hopes. Populists of all colours, whether disciples of direct action like Bakunin or propagandists like Lavrov, believed that bourgeois evolution is not progress but regression, and that the backward Russian economy was an ideal to be brought to perfection. On the original basis of the mir, completed by artels, or associations of artisans, a unique civilisation could be built up, avoiding all the evils of capitalism, provided only that the land was handed over to the communes, and the factories to the workers. But from the general tendency of Populism, various different schools, based on natural science, political economy, or sociology, were developed. There is a great gulf between the radical and explosive peasant anarchism of Bakunin and the balanced and educative evolutionary socialism of Lavrov. Herzen's successors repudiated his pan-Slavic messianism, his mysticism and utopianism, while adopting his slogan: Land and liberty, and his famous advice: Go to the people. Many also followed his example of emigration to the West, where he published Polarnaya Zviezda (The Pole Star) and Kolokol (The Bell), as weapons in the struggle against Tsarism.
Bakunin, "the apostle of universal destruction," believed that the desires of the Russian people tended spontaneously towards a seizure of the land by those who tilled it, and to communal autonomy in opposition to any form of government. He preached a permanent peasant revolt, even though it must be partial and doomed to checks, while he dreamed of a universal uprising of which Stenka Razin and Pugachev were the precursors. He also held a high opinion of brigands, those "instinctive revolutionaries." It was he who issued to the young students the urgent slogan: Go to the people, originated by Herzen and repeated by Lavrov. In effect he said to them: "You must abandon at once this world which is destined to perish, these universities, these academies and schools.... You must go among the masses.... All science must be submerged along with the world of which it is the expression." A new Stenka Razin was approaching, he added, but this time in numbers, multiplied and therefore invincible.... The final revolt was to bring about an anarchist federation of free communes without a central power and without a State.
In readiness for the great day when the irresistible conflagration would break out, helped on by local riots, Bakunin sought to prepare his tools, that is to say persons who were fore-armed and ready for anything. For their instruction he drew up a book of rules from which they were to derive inspiration-a strange document which contrasted with the high morality of the young Populists and was more likely to repulse than to attract them. This Catechism for a Revolutionary, introduced into Russia by his disciple Nechayev, contained many sections. In the first, Attitude of a Revolutionary towards Himself, Bakunin advocated the renunciation of every interest, sentiment and personal bond; a break with the civilised world, its laws and conventions; to know only one science, that of destruction; to despise public opinion; to hate accepted morals and customs; to be ruthless, expecting in return no mercy, but to be always ready to die and prepared to bear torture; to stifle in one's self all family sentiment, friendship, love, gratitude, and honour; to find no other satisfaction than that of the success of the revolution, and to this end to destroy all obstructionists. In the second part, Attitude of a Revolutionary to his Comrades, the writer recommended solidarity between the brethren in so far as each one was useful to the cause; every comrade should have one or two second or third class revolutionaries at his disposal, as a sort of capital to be used with economy; in case of misfortune a comrade should only be saved from danger if his revolutionary value was such as to justify the necessary expenditure of forces. In the third, Attitude of a Revolutionary to Society, Bakunin urged the need to penetrate into every milieu, including the police, the Church and the Court; to make out a list of those who must be condemned to death in the order of their importance, and another of those who might be spared until such time as their wicked conduct incited the people to revolt; to exploit rich and influential persons, discovering their secrets in order to blackmail them; to enter into pretended conspiracies with liberals in order to deceive them, make use of them and compromise them; to lead on and inveigle the doctrinaires and garrulous conspirators so that the majority might more rapidly be ruined and the rare few might be trained and tempered for the struggle; to make use of women according to their quality—the lives of the mediocre might be sacrificed, but the best were to be looked on as "the most precious treasure." Finally, in the fourth, The Attitude of the Association towards the People, the author urges that the misfortunes and sufferings under which the people labour must be aggravated by all possible means, to exhaust their patience and drive them to universal revolt; for this the revolutionaries must unite with bandits, "the only genuine revolutionaries in Russia," and form an irresistible force capable of destroying everything in its way.... No resume can give any idea of the tone of cold hatred and explicit cynicism of the famous anonymous Catechism, which no study of the origins of Bolshevism can afford to neglect.
Herzen had said: "We lack all the riches and all the inheritance of the West. We have no heritage from Rome, from antiquity, from chivalry, from feudalism, nothing Catholic, hardly anything bourgeois in our traditions. Therefore no regrets or relies, no respect for the past can hold us back." Bakunin showed this in his writings without taking responsibility for it, and Nechayev demonstrated it later by his actions, from which even Bakunin himself recoiled in horror or disgust. By lies and impostures, tricks and intimidations, intrigues and blackmail—since all means are justified—but also by hard and obstinate work and extraordinary energy, the confidential bearer of the Catechism succeeded in forming and directing a secret society, called the Narodnaya Rasprava (the People's Avenger), which was destined to come to a bad end; one of the members was assassinated by the others at the instigation of Nechayev, who had spread false rumours of his treason, in order to get rid of him. The affair resulted in hundreds of arrests and a prosecution that resounded throughout the country. This incredible drama is known in Europe and America through Dostoievsky's book, The Possessed. The Catechism, when it was revealed, scandalised revolutionary circles, and Bakunin refrained from laying claim to the authorship, which, for a long time, was attributed to Nechayev. The latter took refuge in Switzerland, where he accorded to Bakunin just that revolting treatment laid down in the rules for a perfect revolutionary, summed up in the formula: "Drag him as deeply as possible through the mire." The master broke with his fanatical and perverse pupil, whose unlimited devotion to the cause of the people he could not but admire, but whom even he considered too devoid of scruples. The term Nechayevshchina is still used to describe a pseudo-revolutionary lack of morality. But it must not be forgotten that Nechayev was the first genuine "practitioner" of subversive organisation in Russia, and the first professional revolutionary for whom the desired ends justified the use of any means. Many imitators were to follow in his steps.
The realists of the 'sixties succeeded the idealists of the 'forties, and were succeeded in their turn by the men of action of the 'seventies. In contrast to the Bakuninists, believing in riot and anarchism, and to the Lavrists, believing in propaganda and education, a very small group grew up around Peter Tkachev, in 1875, believing in a quite different ideology, that of Russian Jacobinism, whose symptomatic importance was not seen until the following century. By his belief in the mir and his reliance on the creative faculty of the peasant, Tkachev ranks as a Populist, but his conception of the path of the revolution and the means of attaining it, showed him to be a Jacobin and intellectually close to Blanqui. He explained in Nabat (The Tocsin) that a revolution must first of all seize the power, since this is an indispensable step to achieving final success. Propaganda can only give results after the power has been taken over: it must follow the coup d'état and not precede it. The coup d'état will be achieved by a conspiracy carried out by a small, disciplined minority. It must be carried out by violence, which necessitates a centralised, carefully chosen, disciplined and hierarchic Party, which would watch over the safety of its militants, carry out reprisals against its executioners and avenge its martyrs. "Neither now nor in the future can the people achieve the social revolution if left to itself. We alone, the revolutionary minority, are capable of rapidly carrying out this task.... The people cannot save itself ... it cannot give expression to its real needs, nor breathe life into the idea of social revolution." The fewer revolutionary elements there are among the people, the smaller will be its role in the upheaval, and the greater the authority which will revert to the thinking minority, who will introduce communism. "The people, deprived of leaders, is not fit to build up a new world on the ruins of the old.... This role and this mission belong only to the revolutionary minority." Tkachev foreshadowed the terrorism which was soon to come, and the Bolshevism of the future.
Already in 1866 a first attempt had been made on the life of the Emperor, an isolated gesture by the student Karakozov. Towards the end of the 'seventies, the violence of the tyranny began to give rise to violent opposition. Revolvers, bombs and daggers replied to persecutions, deportations, executions and long prison sentences. The Populists, disillusioned with their peaceful movement "towards the people," began to defend themselves against the police with arms, and declared war against the Government which ruled by terror. In 1876 they created, at the instigation of Alexander Mikhailov, the first revolutionary Socialist Party in Russia, the Zemlya i Volya (Land and Liberty) group, which absorbed the existing circles of intellectuals and the various scattered revolutionaries, and which staged at St. Petersburg the first workers' demonstration in the streets where a student addressed the crowd. The members of Chaikovsky's circle, founded a few years earlier, joined the group, as did also Mark Natanson, Sophia Perovskaya, Stepniak and Kropotkin. The organisation had a Central Committee, sections for work and a section of fighters. In 1878, Vera Zasulich fired at General Trepov, who had ordered a political prisoner to be whipped, and Stepniak stabbed Mesentzev, the Chief of Police. In 1879, a Prince Kropotkin, cousin of the foregoing, and Governor of Kharkov, was assassinated, but Soloviev just failed in his attempt on Tsar Alexander II. This series of attacks was quite open; "Land and Liberty" claimed full responsibility. Under the redoubled blows of the repression, the terrorists elaborated their technique, preparing a bloody revenge. But the best men, such as Ossinsky, Lizogub and Vittenberg were sacrificed. Opinion among the zemlievoltsy became divided on the question of tactics, some believing, with Alexander Jeliabov, in systematic terrorism, others preferring, with George Plekhanov, the use of persuasive propaganda. In 1879, at the secret Congress of Voronezh, the party split into the Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) and the Chorny Perediel (The General Distribution).
The Executive Committee of the People's Will at once took up the struggle, and a few months later, Sophia Perovskaya, daughter of the Governor-General of St. Petersburg, attempted, with Mikhailov's and Hartman's assistance, to blow up the Imperial train. Her friend, Jeliabov, and her comrades, Kibalchich and Vera Figner, made similar attempts at other points on the railway line, but without success. In 1880, the worker Khalturin succeeded in exploding a charge of dynamite in the Winter Palace, narrowly missing the Tsar. Finally, in 1881, Sophia Perovskaya directed the attempt in which both Alexander II and Grinevetsky, his murderer, were killed, but which cost the lives of all the regicides, Perovskaya, Jeliabov, Mikhailov, Ryssakov and Kibalchich, all of whom were hanged a month later. Contrary to their expectations, the event did not provoke the smallest reaction from the peasant population, who remained inert. Following the advice of Pobiedonostsev, the new Tsar refused to listen to the demands of the People's Will, which, through the pens of Mikhailovsky and Tikhomirov, promised to cease all terrorist activity if he would grant a Constitution and certain liberties. The Okhrana was created following the death of Alexander and a period of crushing reaction set in, during which the desperate efforts of the Narodovoltsy, "the advance-guard without arms," gradually weakened under the blows of the autocracy. Tikhomirov's retraction, Degayev's treason and Lopatin's arrest hastened the decline. The later conspiracies miscarried and the People's Will was brought to the point of death by the execution of five students, implicated in a plot against Alexander III. Among them was Alexander Ilyich Ulianov, whose younger brother, Vladimir, was later to be known as Lenin.
The lessons of this tragedy were not to be forgotten, and the example of the Narodovoltsy has become a part of the national revolutionary tradition. Karl Marx was right when he wrote to his eldest daughter, in the very year in which the People's Will was crushed:
These are admirable men, without any melodramatic pose, full of simplicity, real heroes. Making an outcry and taking action are two things completely opposite which cannot be reconciled. The Executive Committee in St. Petersburg, although it acts with such decision, publishes manifestoes of an extreme moderation. The Executive Committee is endeavouring to convince Europe that its modus operandi is a specifically Russian form of action, which in any case is historically inevitable, and on which one can no more moralise, for or against, than on the catastrophe of Chios.
"A specifically Russian form of action"—this is certainly the characteristic which must be underlined in the attitude of those men who regarded terrorism as a "painful and terrible necessity," and who protested with eloquence against the assassination of President Garfield, declaring: "Violence is only justifiable against violence."
The lassitude and pessimism which followed on the voluntary sacrifice of the revolutionary élite could not prevent the growth and strengthening Of that force which was truly capable of overthrowing Tsarism. Under the pressure of war and the requirements of the world market, a primarily agricultural State was impelled in the process of economic evolution towards capitalism and modification of its social system.
Big industry supplanted small rural industry, giant works the domestic workshop, and both drew labour from the enfranchised and poverty-stricken serfs; there was no transition stage. For a long time army requirements made the State the main customer of industry. A definite stimulus was given to metallurgical industry in the 'sixties by the railways, which advanced from 2,000 kilometres in 1860 to 10,000 in 1870, and then went on increasing at an average rate of 1,500 kilometres a year. Moreover the advance in transport stimulated trade of every kind in an immense country without roads fit for traffic. The 'sixties have been called by some a "brief eighteenth century"; they saw the initiation of a privileged minority of the bourgeoisie into intellectual life. At that time only ten per cent of the population was urban, and less than one per cent attended school. The proletariat was massed together in the industrial centres, where a primitive form of capitalism made profits of sixty per cent with poor equipment, by monstrous excesses and cruel spoliation of the workers, who were herded in barracks or crowded into cellars; and simultaneously the peasants, overwhelmed with charges on their steadily decreasing plots of land, fell into indescribable poverty. Tsarism suppressed by force strikes in the town and revolts in the country. But while the intellectuals exhausted themselves by individual actions which were doomed to defeat, a new movement was being born. From St. Petersburg to Odessa, workers' circles sprang up, putting forward political demands which conformed more and more to the programme of European socialism. As the antagonism between capital and labour gradually became more important than the struggle of the peasants against the landlords, the proletariat crystallised and the elements of a new party were prepared. During the 'eighties, and the years that followed, the signs become more marked, foreshadowing the Social-Democracy. Many Populists of yesterday, having learned from their failures, were converted to Marxism.
THE most important pioneer was George Plekhanov, who, as a student, took part in the St. Petersburg demonstration of 1876, in front of the Kazansky Cathedral, where two hundred and fifty workmen ventured for the first time to demonstrate in the streets. He separated himself from the Narodovoltsy to constitute the ephemeral group of Chorny Perediel. In 1882 he translated the Communist Manifesto, adding a preface of his own; in a letter to Lavrov he roundly criticised the Proudhonism of Stepniak, one of the surviving Populist terrorists, and declared himself ready to make Marx's Capital "a bed of Procrustes for all the contributors to the Messenger of the People's Will." In 1883, with Axelrod, Leo Deutsch and Vera Zasulich, former Bakuninists, he founded at Geneva soon after Marx's death the professedly Marxist group of the Emancipation of Labour. His pamphlets: Socialism and the Political Struggle, and Our Discords, caused a sensation, and made him famous as a theorist even before his incomparable power as a polemist in writing and in speech made him the central figure of the Russian Social-Democracy. In 1889, at the International Socialist Congress, he boldly declared that the Russian Revolution must conquer through the agency of the working-class or fail.
Socialist clubs became more numerous in Russia, strikes more frequent. An economic crisis in the 'eighties fed the class struggle. The workmen secured the first laws restricting the exploitation of labour. The great famine of 1891, followed by a fresh impetus to industry, accentuated the movement. Some groups amalgamated, others formed fighting alliances. A new generation of revolutionary intellectuals, among them men of powerful mental calibre, appeared: at St. Petersburg, Lenin and Martov; at Odessa, Riazanov; at Nicolayev, Trotsky. In 1898 the first Social-Democratic Congress was held at Minsk and adopted the text of a manifesto drawn up by Peter Struve; a year earlier had appeared the Bund, the Jewish workers' Socialist party. The nine members of the Congress were arrested or compelled to disappear, but the first step had been taken.
It was into one of these workmen's clubs guided by intellectuals working for the people's interests that Stalin entered at Tiflis. What part did he play in it, while the leaders of the Party were developing their first theoretical and practical controversies abroad? We have his own testimony on this point.
In 1926, Stalin, addressing the workers of Tiflis, delivered a speech in which he put in their place the servile officials who were already offering him incense to secure power and place for themselves.
I must, in all conscience, tell you, comrades, that I have not deserved half the eulogy that various delegates have here given me. It appears from them that I am one of the October heroes, the director of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the head of the Communist International, a peerless knight and all sorts of other things. This is mere fantasy, comrades, and a perfectly useless exaggeration. That is the way one speaks at the grave of a revolutionary. But I am not preparing to die. Therefore I must give you a true picture of what I once was and say to whom I owe my present position in the Party. Comrade Arakel (Okuashvili) has said that he once considered himself as one of my masters and me as his pupil. That is absolutely correct, comrades. I have been and still am a pupil of the pioneer workmen of the Tiflis railway workshops.
Even if this apparent modesty were affected and homage to the railway workers an astute demagogic device, the tone is none the less worthy and it is very possible that at that moment Stalin was expressing a genuine sentiment. In his autobiographical speech he went on to say:
Allow me to revert to the past. I remember the year 1898, when for the first time the workers in the railway workshops put me in charge of a club. That is twenty years ago. I remember how, at Comrade Sturua's rooms, in the presence of Sylvester Djibladze (he was then also one of my teachers), of Zakro Chodrishvili, of George Chkheidze, of Mikha Bochorishvili, of Ninua, and other advanced workers of Tiflis, I learned practical work. In comparison with these comrades I was then a tyro.
Perhaps I had a little more book-learning than many of these comrades. But in the practice of revolution I was certainly a beginner. Here, among these comrades, I received my first baptism of fire in revolution. Here, among these comrades, I became an apprentice of revolution. As you see, my first teachers were the workers of Tiflis. Allow me to express to them now the sincere gratitude of a comrade.
Then I remember the years 1905 to 1907, when at the desire of the Party I was thrown into the work at Baku. Two years of revolutionary work among the oil workers made me a practical fighter and a practical leader. In the society of the advanced section of workers at Baku such as Vatsek, Saratovetz and others, on the one hand, and on the other in the stormy conflicts between the oil workers and the oil masters, I learned for the first time what the leadership of great masses of workmen really meant. I had my second baptism of fire in revolution. Then I became a journeyman of revolution. Let me now express my sincere gratitude as a comrade to my Baku teachers.
The speech, deliberately unpolished, with its sometimes clumsy phrases, its naive metaphors and monotonous repetitions, reveals the characteristics of the speaker: a religious turn of mind finding expression in a style like a litany, the insistence on the metaphor of "baptism" and humility in public testimony. There is a repeated allusion to "practical" work, the real strength of a leader able to impose himself without being either orator or writer. Finally there is the anxiety to place himself on the low level of the mass of the people without attempting to raise his audience or to rise intellectually himself; he is careful to describe his past life as spent exclusively among the proletariat as he was later to try to pass for the son of a workman. The last part of the speech emphasises the picture:
I remember 1917, when by the decision of the Party, after prison and deportation, I was thrown into Leningrad. There, among the Russian workers, in close contact with the great educator of the proletariat throughout the world, Comrade Lenin, in the storm of the mighty struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, during the World War, I learned for the first: time to understand what it meant to be one of the leaders of the great working-class Party. There, in the midst of Russian workmen, liberators of oppressed nations and fighters in the proletarian struggle in all countries and among all nations, I received my third baptism of fire in revolutionary warfare. There, in Russia, under Lenin's direction, I became a master-worker in revolution. Let me express to my Russian teachers my sincere gratitude as a comrade and bow my head before the memory of my master Lenin.
From apprentice at Tiflis, to journeyman at Baku, to masterworker in our revolution at Leningrad—such, comrades, is the course of my apprenticeship to revolution. Such, comrades, is the true picture, honest and without exaggeration, of what I was and what I have become.
If it be true that an individual cannot be judged by the notion he has of himself, still less on the view of himself he desires to present, nevertheless certain aspects of Stalin's individuality are involuntarily revealed in this case. In so far as "style is the man," Stalin is presented in a fairly crude light. As for any facts illustrating or illuminating the opening of his political career, they are almost entirely lacking in the literature relating to this period—historical documents, contemporary publications, party literature and polemics. To explain this gap in information is less important than to indicate its existence by way of explanation.
From his earliest steps in Social-Democracy Stalin showed the qualities which were later to attract the attention of the Party leaders and procure uninterrupted advancement. Devotion to the cause, the desire to be useful, and self-surrender, did not distinguish him from thousands of other revolutionaries of the same temper; but the sense for practical work, the power of acting when others prefer talking, a rare composure and exceptional firmness made him an executive agent of the first rank.
Practical activity meant the obscure and ungrateful task, effective but inglorious, of the hunted conspirator; it meant patient, meticulous organisation, continually countered or destroyed by the police but continually renewed, propaganda and agitation conducted by means of clandestine newspapers and pamphlets; it was what the world calls "doing the dirty work," specially difficult in Russia at that time. Stalin was in his element.
He had the defects of his qualities. With small aptitude for intellectual work, either theoretical or scientific, he was apparently absorbed in a thousand local details, in subterranean tasks and in the risks of open action. His outlook remained provincial, there was nothing in his employment as a tool of revolution to enlarge his views or mature him. Happily, if one may say so, for him as for all revolutionaries his imprisonment was, later on, to provide him with the enforced leisure to complete his studies.
Nevertheless some of his weaknesses even served his purpose in his original environment. To be understood by Georgian and Tartar peasants, even if they had donned the workman's blouse, recently emancipated serfs or sons of serfs, inaccessible to abstract ideas and ground down by poverty, what was needed was simple, rather coarse speech, appealing to immediate interest and suited to the mentality of the race and to local circumstances. Stalin spoke that language. Railwaymen, tobacco workers, shoemakers and navvies understood him. But he took no part in theoretical discussion, important at that time for the future of Social-Democracy and for the direction of the movement. There is not a trace of him to be found in this sphere, for he left none.
At that period, at the turn of the century, Plekhanov's party still had its inconsistencies; its theory was halting and ill-defined.
Marxism was making its way against the influence of earlier systems of thought, and was being transformed by new interpretations. Karl Marx was read and highly esteemed by intellectuals in Russia before Marxism became a cult, and the People's Will had paid him public homage. The very first translation of Das Kapital was published in St. Petersburg in 1872, and was the centre of discussion in the controversies between the different schools of socialism. The opinion of Marx and Engels on the agrarian community was a matter of never-ending discussion. Plekhanov and the Emancipation of Labour published abroad literature on Marxism which aroused livelier attention in Russia than anywhere else. "Marxist works appeared one after another, Marxist reviews and newspapers were founded, there were mass conversions to Marxism, Marxists were flattered and courted, and publishers were enthusiastic over the extraordinary sales of Marxist books..." wrote Lenin.
"Legal Marxism" (so called because the censorship did not understand economic studies written in learned terminology, and allowed them to be published without suspecting their significance, seeing in them merely a criticism of Populism) satisfied for some time the eager thirst of the intelligentsia for new knowledge, but it soon gave way to revolutionary and illegal Marxism. Modern socialist thought and the spontaneous workers' movement developed simultaneously and independently, until the time of their union.
Lenin called the interval between the foundation of the Emancipation of Labour group down to the accession of Nicholas II the "intra-uterine" period of the Party; there were then but few skilled exponents of the Social-Democratic programme. The next period, up to 1898, was "infancy:" there was elemental movement among the masses of the people, and strikes were frequent; the intellectuals mixed with the workmen and a new generation studied Marxism and gained strength by fighting. Then the Party was founded; according to its historian, V. Nevsky, it may have had about five hundred members. Next came "adolescence," and growing pains; "the adolescent's voice breaks," said Lenin, "and so did that of Social-Democracy."
The "Legal Marxists," under Peter Struve, Berdiayev, Bulgakov, Tugan-Baranovsky, developed rapidly, some in a liberal and bourgeois direction, some towards spiritualism and religion. Others, Social-Democrats, like Martinov and Krichevsky, abandoned revolutionary politics and became syndicalists (or trade unionists) under the name of "Economists." Long drawn out controversy developed between the spokesmen of the various camps. The working classes naturally could neither follow their arguments nor understand the points at issue, and sought their own road.
Those Social-Democrats who were most conscious of the requirements of revolution and most determined on methodical action now began seriously to organise the Party and to provide it with a directing brain. Lenin and Martov, on their return from exile in Siberia, where they had been thinking out the problems of the hour, went abroad for this purpose; together with Potressov they joined the veterans of the Emancipation of Labour. "The revolutionary struggle is often impossible without a revolutionary emigrants' group," thought Lenin, inspired by the example of Herzen and of Bakunin, of Tkachev and of Lavrov. In 1900 the three young men, with Plekhanov, Axelrod and Vera Zasulich, founded at Munich Iskra (the Spark), the journal of the Workers' Social-Democratic Party. The editors, to affirm the continuity of the Russian revolutionary tradition, adopted as a motto the phrase addressed by the martyred Decembrists to Pushkin: "The spark will kindle a flame." The prefatory declaration and the first article were by Lenin.
The best sketch of the situation at this time is given by the future leader of the revolution in words which reveal at this early date the keenness of his vision and his analytical ability:
The past few years have been marked by an astonishingly rapid spread of Social-Democratic ideas among our intelligentsia, and this tendency of educated thought is echoed by the independent movement of the industrial proletariat which is beginning to unite and to fight against its oppressors and is eagerly striving towards socialism. Circles of workers and Social-Democratic intelligentsia are springing up everywhere; local agitation leaflets are beginning to appear; the demand for Social-Democratic literature is increasing and is far outstripping the supply, while the intensified persecution of the Government is powerless to restrain this movement. The prisons and the places of exile are filled to overflowing. Hardly a month goes by without our hearing of socialists being "discovered" in some parts of Russia, of the capture of literature and printing presses-but the movement goes on and grows....
As for Social-Democracy, Lenin criticises its lack of concentration, its division into groups often ephemeral, disconnected and without tradition, with ideas often confused and contradictory. "Before we unite and in order to unite, resolute differentiation is essential."
In its prefatory announcement Iskra denounced the purely reformist Social-Democrats, who were influenced by the German revisionist, E. Bernstein. It demanded "the spirit of a clearly defined tendency," that is, of revolutionary Marxism, and envisaged "controversy among comrades" in its columns. It set out to provide a common programme for the whole Party, to create means of communication, of information, and for the spread of socialist literature. For these purposes it appealed not only to the workers and to the socialists, but "to all who are oppressed and crushed by our political system," to "all democratic elements."
But the most striking ideas of the Social-Democratic organ were contained in the very first number, in Lenin's comprehensive article. The anonymous author did not pretend to add anything new on the general ideas of socialism. His exposition is in agreement with classic Marxism, of which Karl Kautsky had been the recognised exponent since the death of Engels, but with a specially clear understanding of Russian conditions. Following Plekhanov's example he refutes especially the Syndicalist thesis, with its tendency to restrict the worker to the economic struggle, condemning it as contrary to the general interests of the proletariat. He approves the unity of the socialist and the workers' movements, insisting on its absolute necessity from the national point of view: "Unity has in every case arisen from historical conditions and has been carried out by methods varying with the circumstances of time and place." Finally he emphasises the urgent necessity of a fighting political organisation under strict control: "No class has ever attained power without having found within itself political leaders, pioneers able to organise and direct the movement."
Axelrod, the able tactician of the first generation of Russian Social-Democracy, of which Plekhanov was the theorist, wrote that this article had affected him like "a vivifying stream of clear water." The newcomer showed the stature of a great leader. From 1900 to 1903 he was to play an increasingly important part among the Iskraists. "It was precisely during those few years," said Trotsky, "that Lenin became Lenin."
Before he left St. Petersburg, he had earned from his friends the name of the "old man," because of his assurance and his early won authority. His knowledge, already considerable, grew continually. Whether on economic and historical questions or on current matters of policy and tactics, he would always make a serious contribution showing personal and persistent effort to understand and develop the subject. Moreover, he excelled all others in his gift of bringing out the main lines in a mass of facts and figures, of emphasising the essential. His work on The Development of Capitalism in Russia shows how conscientiously and scrupulously he examined, scrutinised and compared statistics, what pains he took to draw from them conclusions for the future.
Like all the socialists of his time, he was above all a fervent democrat. His socialism aimed at conquering political democracy in order to complete it by economic democracy. "The difference between the political demands of the workers' democracy and those of the bourgeois democracy is not one of principle but of degree," he was to write in Iskra. Such reflections were to abound both from his pen and from that of others. For example: "Without political liberties, all forms of workers' representation will remain a miserable deception, the proletariat will continue imprisoned as heretofore, deprived of the air, the light, and the space which are indispensable to its complete emancipation." As for the nationalisation of the land, demanded by the descendants of the Populists, he predicted that it would lead to an "absurd experiment in State socialism" in the absence of "deeply rooted and firmly established democratic institutions."
He regarded himself as a pupil of Plekhanov, especially in theoretical and philosophical problems; he took respectful counsel of Axelrod, and he frequently exchanged views with Martov and Potressov. But at the same time he could not help being conscious of his superior ability as a commander; he thought, rightly or wrongly, that the moment was approaching when he must go beyond his masters, and he foresaw his destiny as organiser of the advance guard and leader of the masses in the coming social struggle. His whole effort was bent towards battle and victory, and that soon. He began prudently to think out his personal tactics in the hard tasks before him.
His writings in Iskra and in the review Zarya, his pamphlets and correspondence reveal glimpses of the ideas which were to detach him from the foremost phalanx of Social-Democracy and lead him to originate new paths. In 1902 he published a little book, What is to be Done?, in which his strength as a leader in civil war is shown with extraordinary force; it contains, among many germs of the doctrine which was to bear his name, his perfected and specifically Russian conception of the "professional revolutionary."
In a passage from Stalin's speech already quoted the expressions "I was thrown into the work at Baku," "I was thrown into Leningrad" were emphasised. He meant that the Party had been able to dispose of him like a soldier at the disposition of his superior officers, available, according to circumstances, for any place and any task. This was the method in which one section of the Party was eventually organised, in conformity with Lenin's view of the necessity of opposing the army of absolutist repression by an army of "professional revolutionaries." The police, in the document already quoted, attributed to the recidivist Djugashvili the trade of "clerk," and it is possible that Sosso practised it after leaving the Seminary, or after having worked for a few months at the Tiflis Observatory, for he had to live without counting on support from his relatives. But, as political action became more and more absorbing, he had to give himself up to it more and more until he became a "professional revolutionary" in the full sense of the term. It is important to examine the definition given by its initiator.
"We must educate men who devote to the revolution not only their free evenings, but their whole lives," wrote Lenin in the first number of Iskra. There lay the root principle of his organisation of the Party. In What is to be Done?, the same idea is driven home with characteristic insistence by repetition and by turning his opponents' arguments against themselves. "The struggle with the political police demands special qualities, professional revolutionaries"; it must be organised "in accordance with all the rules of the art." Parallel with mass action, there must be action by men selected, trained and prepared with a definite object in view. "It matters little whether they are students or workmen; they will be able to make themselves professional revolutionaries." The distinction between intellectuals and proletarians disappears in the close, secret association "which must include first and foremost men who adopt revolutionary action as a profession," whereas trade union organisation is necessarily on a large, public scale. It is not claimed that the argument is valid in all times and places; he is talking of Russia under the autocracy, where any workman's demonstration is forbidden.
Lenin sums up by asserting that there can be no serious revolutionary movement without an established directing organisation to ensure its continuance; the larger the fighting force, the more need there is of this directing group; it will consist mainly of professional revolutionaries, limited in number; it will accept none but militants who have served their apprenticeship in the struggle with the police, and are consequently able to evade them. "There are many people, but no men," that is to say, many discontented persons, many rebels, but no "directing minds, political leaders, men of talent." These must be educated. "Without the 'dozen' of tried and talented men (and talented men are not born by hundreds), professionally trained, schooled by long experience, and working in perfect harmony, no class in modern society is capable of conducting a determined struggle." It is a conception very near to Tkachev's, originating with Blanqui, but more precise and deepened in its application.
But this does not exhaust the question, and nothing escapes Lenin. How is the professional revolutionary to secure bread and butter? "We must arrange for him to live at the Party's expense, so that he can pass at will to secret action, move from place to place, as otherwise he will not acquire great experience, enlarge his horizon, or survive, for several years at least, the struggle with the police." The struggle demands thoroughly drilled specialists. "When we have detachments of revolutionary workers specially prepared by a long training (of course 'in all the arms' of revolutionary warfare), no police in the world will be able to master them."
An organisation of this kind could not be democratic, Russian autocracy permitted neither publicity nor elections, essential conditions of democracy, effectively and rightly used by socialist parties enjoying political liberty. "Rigorous secrecy, a minutely careful selection of members, and lastly complete fraternal confidence among revolutionaries," were essential in Russia. Here were the traditions of the Zemlievoltsy and of the Narodovoltsy. There are many objections, for which Lenin has an answer. "It is far more difficult to catch ten clever men than it is to catch a hundred fools," he replied to those who pointed to the ease with which a movement led by a handful of intellectuals could be decapitated. "The concentration of all secret functions in the hands of the smallest possible number of professional revolutionaries by no means signifies that they will do the thinking for everyone," that the mass will not take part "actively in the movement." It is a question of division of labour. And finally, categorically and frankly, he says point blank "What we need is a military organisation."
THUS, in view of the coming revolution, Lenin provided for the formation of a real army, strong by its military discipline and practised in tactics. Stalin was one of the first recruits, and it was soon evident that he had the qualifications needed for a non-commissioned officer. Like his companions, he was busy with strikes, demonstrations, and the distribution of leaflets and of pamphlets drawn up by others. A radical democrat, George Tseretelli, at that time published in Tiflis a Georgian review of the extreme "left," Kvali (The Track) with the collaboration of N. Jordania, Ph. Makharadze, etc., who converted it into a socialist publication. From propaganda the Social-Democrats passed to agitation, that is, to use Plekhanov's words, that instead of instilling many ideas into a few individuals, they spread less ideas among more individuals. Mass action began to develop.
On May 1, 1900, the workers of Tiflis assembled for the first time in the suburbs with a red banner bearing the names: Marx, Engels, Lassalle. The penalties in the form of dismissals which followed sent into the countryside earnest agitators who began to convert the peasants to socialism. Next year on May 1 the workers demonstrated in the streets of Tiflis; there was a Cossack charge, and casualties, both killed and wounded. The Social-Democratic Committee was broken up, the militants prosecuted, and Sosso, whose lodgings were searched, became an outlaw, and changed his name several times: he was "David," "Nijeradze," "Chijikov," and for a long time "Koba," as he is sometimes still called. Some have seen in this last choice a borrowing from the novels of the Georgian poet, Alexander Kazbek, denoting a keen nationalist sentiment, but that is not certain for "Koba" is a name common enough in Georgia. Finally, he used to attend congresses under the name of Ivanovich before he definitely adopted the name "Stalin."
Brief reports have been discovered in the archives of the local police: "Joseph Djugashvili, employed at the Tiflis Observatory, intellectual, has connections with the railwaymen," a communication made on March 28, 1901, to the department of police. "On Sunday, October 28, at nine in the morning, Station Road, there was a meeting of advanced railwaymen, in which the intellectual, Djugashvili, took part." Other denunciations relate to his goings and comings and show his extreme prudence. His closest friend, R. Kaladze, has found nothing to write relating to this period. Bibineishvili notes that at this time "Comrade Sosso" made the acquaintance of a young Armenian Ter-Petrossian, a revolutionary of no particular opinions, and got him to serve the Party. The new recruit was later to gain a certain celebrity under the name of Kamo.
At the end of 1901 Sosso suddenly left Tiflis. Of this unexpected migration the Georgian Social-Democratic review Brdzolis Khma (The Echo of the Struggle) provides the only known explanation:
From the earliest days of his activity among the workmen, Djugashvili attracted attention by his intrigues against the principal leader of the Social-Democratic organisation, S. Djibladze. He was warned, but took no notice, and continued to spread slanders with the intention of discrediting the authorised and recognised representatives of the movement and of thus succeeding to the management of the local organisation.... He was brought before a Party tribunal, found guilty of unjust slander of S. Djibladze, and was excluded unanimously from the Tiflis organisation.
According to this version of the affair, he showed his greed of power and intrigues for its satisfaction at the very beginning of his career; the exclusion would explain the necessity of his betaking himself elsewhere. He went to Batoum, a port on the Black Sea.
Batoum is a small town of about 35,000 inhabitants in an unhealthy situation; it was formerly a fishing village and a nest of pirates. The population had increased tenfold in twenty years, thanks to the transit of petrol from Baku, and it had become the principal commercial port of the Caucasus and the terminus of the railway. The strongest workers' units were in the Rothschild and Mantashev works. Stalin worked among them, encouraged strikes, and took part in a street demonstration in 1902. The disciplinary measures taken against him at Tiflis did not prevent him from militant action elsewhere in the then primitive state of Social-Democratic organisation. But he had little inclination to measure himself against N. Chkheidze, I. Ramishvili, and other leading spirits at Batoum, and he created a separate group where he would not be overshadowed. From the recollections of the printer S. Todria it appears that C. Kandelaki was the only outstanding individual of this circle. The recent arrest of the principal representatives of the Party left the ground clear for the time being. Stalin seized the opportunity to incite unarmed workmen to attack the prison, an adventure which cost several of the assailants their lives. The workers of Batoum never forgave the useless shedding of the workers' blood.
This sanguinary affair led to the arrest of most of the militants, Kandelaki and Stalin among them. The latter passed eighteen months in prison. The following details on the prisoner Djugashvili were provided by the Colonel of Gendarmerie, Shabelsky, on June 17, 1902: "Height 2 archins, 4 1/2 vershoks. Body medium. Age 23. Special features: Second and third toes of the left foot attached. Appearance: Ordinary. Hair dark brown. Beard and moustaches: Brown. Nose straight and long. Forehead straight but low. Face long, swarthy and pockmarked." The police called him "the Pockmarked." According to certain doctors, the malformation of the foot, and the semi-impotence of the left arm, which the police did not remark, seem to confirm the alcoholic heritage on the paternal side mentioned by various persons.
Side by side with this information, R. Bibineishvili also gives (1930) a personal account of Stalin's bearing. He was, he says, calm, resolute and above all "implacable" (the word is several times repeated), very severe in matters of discipline and punctuality. At a committee meeting he once addressed an "implacable" rebuke to a comrade who was late, ending with: "You should not keep us waiting, even if your mother were dying." Condemned to three years "administrative exile" in Siberia, Stalin was sent by stages to the little village of Novaya Uda, in the Irkutsk province. All the revolutionaries gifted with some character and devoted to their cause had the same alternatives, the same experience and the same fate.
While new arrivals were constantly reaching the colonies of exiles, the road back to Russia by a thousand secret routes restored to the revolution its most active members. Among those who escaped was a young Marxist who hastened to attach himself to the Iskra organisation, with which he came into direct contact at Samara. Having learnt much in prison and in exile, Leon Trotsky had begun his career as a publicist and his socialist faith was clarified and strengthened. At the end of 1902 he arrived in London; he visited Lenin; on the way he had made acquaintance with Victor Adler at Vienna, and with Axelrod at Zurich.
Iskra found in the twenty-three-year-old member a brilliant contributor and propagandist, an eager student, an impassioned theorist, and a writer and orator who immediately made an impression in émigré centres. Lenin soon proposed that he should become a seventh member of the editorial board. "He is incontestably a man of the greatest ability, convinced, energetic, and will certainly go far," he wrote to Plekhanov. Foreseeing the coming discord in the Party, Lenin was anxious to secure an assured majority of the younger men against the veterans of the movement. Plekhanov scented the manoeuvre and opposed it. Preparation was then being made for the Second Congress of the Social-Democrats and, as the approach of great events demanded active intervention, concealed dissensions were developing in the background.
It was not only a matter of difference of temperament, of divergences on certain methods of application of common principles, or on the questions of organisation and tactics. Up to the time of the Congress no sign of the differences appeared in Iskra. The paper suddenly rose to a superior intellectual level, and its editorials, by dint of strenuous effort, showed a united front to its readers. Hence its prestige and influence on the Russian revolutionaries of the time. Off the stage Plekhanov and Lenin were discussing the draft programme of the Party with acerbity, but yet no one suspected irreducible differences.
But Lenin, with that sixth sense which warned him of the imminence of a great political and social battle, wanted to accelerate the transformation of the Social-Democratic groups into fighting units. "Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia upside down," he would say, paraphrasing Archimedes. No one was so obsessed as he was with the necessity and urgency of this practical measure, and his whole heart was fixed on advancing as far as possible in this direction, without knowing exactly how far. As far as theory was concerned, he was at one with the other Iskraists. The contrast lay in the clearness, the categorical tone, and the combative spirit of his view.
In his first writings there are certain key ideas, which, without being peculiar to him, reveal the lucidity of his thought and express his convictions. His attention was especially directed towards the understanding of Russian realities: "Hopeless poverty, ignorance, the inequality and the humiliation of the peasant give our whole regime an Asiatic stamp." He looked on Tsarism as the "most powerful rampart of European reaction," a thought borrowed from Karl Marx, but he added: "and of Asiatic reaction." He saw in Russia "a State politically enslaved in which ninety-nine per cent of the population is completely perverted by political servility." These views were in keeping with his notion of the management and organisation of men—fierce reaction against the servility and perversion engendered by serfdom. A social system which was the outcome of two and a half centuries of serfdom largely accounted for political inertia. Lenin, like Karl Marx, knew that "the tradition of all the past generations weighs like a nightmare on the thought of the living."
In connection with the importance of the social system in historical development, it is necessary here to recall Kropotkin's words:
... A whole series of habits is born of domestic servitude, outward scorn of the individual personality, despotism by fathers, hypocritical submissiveness of wives, sons and daughters. At the beginning of the century domestic despotism prevailed everywhere in Europe—witness the writings of Dickens and Thackeray—but nowhere so much as in Russia. The whole of Russian life, in the family, in the relations between heads of departments and their subordinates, between officers and soldiers, employers and employed, bore the stamp of despotism. A whole system of habits and methods of thought, of prejudices and of moral baseness, of manners engendered by an idle life had gradually grown up....
What Turgenev called Nihilism, a movement erroneously confused in the West with terrorism and anarchism, and which Mikhailovsky considered to be the "infantile malady" of the revolutionary movement, was, in the 'sixties, a negation of this social system, a reasoned reaction, specifically Russian, against conventional falsehood, family and social hypocrisy, politeness and fashion, prejudices and tradition, dogmas and religion. But the nihilism of which Pissarev was the theoretician, the doctrine of "the thinking realist," nourished on the physical and natural sciences, positivist and materialist, iconoclastic and atheistic, remained an unmixed current of intellectual individualism, lacking contact with the people.
Lenin gave the workers a preponderant part in the liquidation of this burdensome past: "The industrial proletariat alone is able to fight the autocracy en masse and unhesitatingly." But he did not forget the claims of the peasant, "so that the cause of democracy and the political struggle for freedom may profit from the connection which many intellectuals and workers devoted to Social-Democracy have with the countryside." "The peasant," he wrote, "suffers as much, if not more, from the pre-capitalist regime, from survivals of feudalism, as from capitalism itself." This is why he demanded the expropriation of the landlords and nationalisation of the land. At the same time he reminded the workers that they needed the guidance of the intellectuals. Like Blanqui, he assigned an essential place to those who had left their class. "Demagogues are the worst enemies of the working class," he told the syndicalists. He fought against sham plebeian ignorance: "Without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement." He inveighed against the narrowness of nationalism: "Our young movement can only bear fruit by assimilating the experience of other countries."
His conception of the relations between workers and intellectuals is worth attention:
The history of all countries shows that the working class, left to its own resources, can develop only trade-union consciousness; that is, it may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions to fight against the employers, and to strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historic and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belong to the bourgeois intelligentsia. Similarly in Russia the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the labour movement; it arose as a natural, inevitable outcome of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.
It is true that the workers may contribute to this development: "but they do not contribute in their capacity as workmen, but in their capacity as a Proudhon or a Weitling," that is to say "in the degree in which they acquire the knowledge available in their time and increase it," by assimilating general culture. "There are some wretched intellectuals who think it is enough to speak to the workers of factory life and to go on repeating what they have known for a long time." Marxists must inoculate the people with the "bacillus of revolution."
He has this idea at heart and insists on it repeatedly: "The spontaneous development of the workers' movement leads to the domination of bourgeois ideology." Why? "For this simple reason, that bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than Social-Democratic ideology, and far more fully developed...." Consequently: "The workers can acquire political class consciousness only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle." It can only be found in the relations of all classes with one another and with the State. He quotes a whole page from Karl Kautsky, whose words are "profoundly true and important." Thus: "Socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other." The proletariat can create neither economic science nor modern technique. "The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia (K.K.'s emphasis). It was out of the heads of members of this stratum that modern socialism originated...." This should be borne in mind by anyone who desires to judge Lenin's disciples by the tenets of their master.
The political realism, the supple tactics, which were later to be praised even by his enemies, are already visible: "Social-Democracy does not tie a man's hands, is not limited to one plan or one fixed method once for all; it admits all means so long as they lie within the resources of the movement and permit the maximum results under the given conditions." He is anxious to use the university movement, then in the vanguard, and to associate it with working-class action. He thinks that the liberal opposition against the reactionary State should be supported, "to help forward all democratic opposition," to carry "to all classes of the population" the activities of Social-Democracy. Without allowing himself to be influenced by mistaken trade union purism, he envisages alliances with the bourgeois liberals. "Only those fear temporary alliances, even with uncertain elements, who lack confidence in themselves." His masterly intuition is perfectly shown in the words: "The whole of political life is an endless chain composed of an infinite number of links. The whole art of the politician consists in finding and taking firm hold of the link that it is most difficult to take from you, the most important at the given moment and the one which best guarantees to you the possession of the whole chain."
On the eve of assuming the responsibility of a revolution in his Party and pending the revolution in his own country, Lenin attained perfect mastery over his means. His confidence in himself was reinforced by his confidence in Marx and Engels, by intellectual agreement with Plekhanov and Kautsky, especially with his immediate master, the Plekhanov who had thrown in Iskra the prophetic warning: "In the great socialist movement two different tendencies are emerging and—who knows?—perhaps the revolutionary struggle of the twentieth century will bring a rupture between the Mountain and the Gironde of Social-Democracy." For Plekhanov such visions were an intellectual exercise; for Lenin realism in ideas was to be translated into serious action.