Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (12 page)

Lenin complained that ‘Shells rained on my head’ [SW 1 409] and he sought to return fire. Three words, above all, characterized Lenin’s views on Party organization: authority, centralism and discipline. The key concepts he was attacking were autonomy, reformism, anarchism and, even, democracy, a term Lenin used in a particular sense in this pamphlet to mean something like decentralization, a situation in which the members could readily overrule the leaders rather than the other way about. Altogether, they made up the ever-expanding category of ‘opportunism’. In his view the demands from certain quarters for ‘autonomy’, that is decentralization, were inappropriate. For Lenin, the moment was one of transition. ‘Previously, our Party was not a formally organized whole, but merely a sum of separate groups’, a point he reiterated several times. The looser relations this imposed were no longer applicable: ‘
Now
we have become an organized Party, and this implies the establishment of authority … the subordination of lower Party bodies to higher ones.’ [SW 1 398–9. See also 420] Lenin supported ‘top downward’ [SW 1 424] organization and, in a phrase that resounds today, defended bureaucracy over democracy in that ‘Bureaucracy
versus
democracy is in fact centralism
versus
autonomism; it is the organizational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as opposed to the organizational principle of opportunist Social-Democracy.’ [SW 1 424] The crucial point here is: what did Lenin mean by bureaucracy? Earlier Lenin had argued that bureaucracy, in the sense of careerism, place-seeking and wrangling over cooption rather than ideas, was unquestionably ‘undesirable and detrimental to the Party’. [SW 1 396] Looking further into the debate it seems that what Lenin meant by bureaucracy in the positive sense was a permanent central Party apparatus which issued instructions to the lower ranks. ‘Democracy’ weakened the principle if it meant the lower ranks had the right to decide whether to accept or reject instructions from above. So do we have, in
One Step Forward
, the blueprint for Bolshevism that is somewhat elusive in
What is to be Done?

At one level, as the extracts above indicate, Lenin was being more forthright about the need for a strongly led party where the organizational principle was, in his expression, from the ‘top downward’. In addition the rhetoric indicated an increasingly unbridgeable gulf between the participants. Actual manoeuvrings and deep squabbles had become endemic. Lenin’s determination and lone battle had, indeed, brought shells raining down on him from all directions. Plekhanov had written an article pointedly entitled ‘What Should Not Be Done’ and Martov had complained of
A State of Siege
in the Party in a pamphlet of that name. Discussions to bring unity led to deeper disaster. In October Lenin wrote that ‘You can’t imagine even a tenth of the outrages to which the Martovites have sunk. … War has been declared.’ [CW 36 128] Party bodies voted in favour of one side and then the other as the search for compromise continued. Plekhanov said he could not bear to ‘fire on his comrades’ and that ‘rather than have a split it is better to put a bullet in one’s brain.’ [quoted in SW 1 400] Lenin himself was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he walked into the back of a tram and, according to Krupskaya, ‘very nearly had his eye knocked out.’ [Krupskaya 94] He resigned from central Party bodies, including the
Iskra
editorial board, in November, and wrote harshly about Plekhanov who, he said, had ‘cruelly and shamefully’ let him down by reopening discussion with the Martovites. [CW 34 186] By late November he was coopted onto the Party Central Committee. The bewildering array of attacks and counter-attacks continued. However, in the light of the actual struggle, can one conclude that, as Lenin wrote later, ‘Bolshevism exists as a political movement and as a political party since 1903’? [Weber 34]

Some of the ambiguities present in
What is to be Done?
continue into
One Step Forward: Two Steps Back
. Kautsky is presented as an example of a centralizer. A contemporary dispute in the German Social Democratic Party about the right of the centre to intervene in the affairs of constituencies is held up as an analogy to what Lenin is writing about. He also claimed that he stood for ‘Social-Democratic European’ practices against his opponents who were ‘Social-Democratic Asiatics’. [SW 1 424] There are occasional tones of conciliation. The day after writing that ‘war has been declared’ Lenin joined Plekhanov in offering to coopt Martov on to the
Iskra
editorial board! On several occasions he stated that he recognized his opponents were honourable, though sometimes in such a patronizing way that one might doubt the sincerity involved. For example, Lenin said ‘it would be unwise to attribute to sordid motives even the most sordid manifestations of the squabbling that is so habitual in the atmosphere of émigré and exile colonies. It is a sort of epidemic disease engendered by abnormal conditions of life, disordered nerves, and so on.’ [SW 1 392] He used the same concept much more crudely towards the end of the pamphlet where he talked about a ‘sordid story brought about by [Martov’s] morbid imagination’ plus reference to ‘a number of
incorrect statements
(evidently due to his wrought-up condition)’. [SW 1 447
–
8] However, there is no doubt that the only way Lenin would join with the transgressors would be if they capitulated to his principles.

One Step Forward: Two Steps Back
also merits consideration beyond its detailed contents. Overall, Lenin was seeking a new level of Party organization which corresponded to the situation. His demand for a unified and disciplined party with a strong central executive, and this is clearly what he meant by ‘the bureaucratic principle’ of organization, was not unreasonable in itself. Other parties were evolving in much the same way, notably the liberals, who emerged as the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party, and the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party. The degree to which his conception of Party organization was fundamentally different from theirs is open to dispute. Many will also sympathize with his complaint that one of the roots of the problem lay in ‘intellectual individualism’ [SW 1 398] which accepted only ‘purely Platonic and verbal’ acceptance of organizational relations. [SW 1 399] At heart, Lenin could be seen to be trying to instil necessary discipline into a chronically individualist body of people. He said as much. ‘Sneering at discipline – autonomism – anarchism
–
there you have the ladder which our opportunism in matters of organization now climbs and now descends, skipping from rung to rung and skilfully dodging any definite statement of its principles.’ [SW 1 431]

By contrast, Lenin’s extraordinary insistence on following rules and minutes showed a mind desperate for a fixed point in an ever-shifting universe. He was looking for a solid foundation from which to build a disciplined party devoted to the undiluted goal of revolution and eluding the siren grasp of opportunism. In concrete terms this meant that, though he admired the heroic deeds and potential of the workers he believed they had to be guided, kept under control and that their movement must show discipline not the dreaded spontaneity beloved of the Economists and other of Lenin’s opponents.

However, few saw it in exactly that light, nor did they believe the issue was a matter of life or death. A decisive turning point was reached in summer 1904. Since February a group of Lenin’s supporters had urged conciliation. By July and August they completely dominated the Central Committee. Lenin had lost control of his last institutional redoubt. He was being edged out into the wilderness. Heavy blows from the international socialist community followed. In September he was attacked in print by the widely respected Rosa Luxemburg who accused him of ‘ultra-centralism’ and being ‘full of the spirit of the overseer’. His principles threatened to ‘bind’ the movement rather than develop it. His concern, she argued, was ‘not so much to make the activity of the party more fruitful as to control the party’.
¹
Kautsky, in turn, refused to print Lenin’s reply. No major figures in the European or Russian movements came to Lenin’s defence. He was desperate. Loss of influence also left him without funds and without an outlet for his writings. The leading figures of Russian and German Social Democracy – Plekhanov, Axel’rod, Zasulich, Martov, Kautsky and Luxemburg – were all opposed to him. His own supporters – Lengnik, Essen and Zemlyachka – were comparative nonentities. Stalwarts like Nosov, Krasin and Krzhizhanovsky had gone over to the ‘conciliators’. Even at this point Lenin refused to compromise. For him, the split was essential and had to be maintained despite the odds against him. He was alone with his own mini-group. As we shall see, his stance eventually attracted a rising generation, including Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, not to mention the crucial support of Gorky, but for the time being Lenin had alienated all the major figures of European Marxism.

Why had he become so implacable and how was he to dig himself out? The answer to the first question seems to be that Lenin, now thirty-four years old, had reached a decisive and maturing point in his development. The ideas of
What is to be Done?
and
One Step Forward: Two Steps Back
had become sacred to him. His interpretation of what they meant was his guiding light. He was no longer prepared simply to learn from and defer to the older generation. In addition, he wanted to assert his own ideas. As we have seen, at their heart was the deep conviction that the Party should be small, advanced and secret. To see his beloved Party adopting what he considered suicidal principles of broad membership was too much for him to accept. He would fight the process all the way. We might surmise here that Lenin’s background of prison and exile had convinced him of the need for conspiracy while many of his opponents had spent long years in western Europe and had been more deeply imbued with the spirit of liberal democracy and wanted to adapt it. Lenin had a different vision, which the struggle was hardening rather than softening. He was becoming a fundamentalist, unwilling to compromise what he considered to be the essence of his faith. He had always been self-confident and it was a virtue that stood him in good stead. At this conjuncture, however, one could say that it was, like other of his virtues at various times, threatening to turn into a vice. It was becoming a basis for dogmatism, narrowness and intolerance. Lenin knew what he wanted and had stopped listening even to his close friends if they tried to tell him any different. To his supporters it was admirable determination and clear-sightedness. His opponents could only shake their heads in sorrow and disbelief.

The confidence and determination were, however, what pulled him through. While one might argue about the exact meaning of Lenin’s written text, his actions seemed less ambiguous – he was building a centralized, revolutionary party around himself over which he would exert decisive influence. For the moment, however, it was only a small acorn.

The language of
One Step Forward: Two Steps Back
is also interesting from the point of view of nomenclature. The term Bolshevik does not appear at all, although the regular Russian word
bol’shinstvo
(majority) from which it is derived is used constantly by Lenin to describe the group to which he claimed to belong. The word Menshevik appears once, in inverted commas [SW 1 398], as does the term Leninism in the phrase ‘revolt against Leninism’ which Lenin said was coined by Martov. [SW 1 433] Clearly, the terminology still had not been defined any more than the Party differences themselves.

Perhaps the final, and most ironic, comment on the pamphlet, the dispute and the whole two-year obsession with organization, was that it diverted the émigré leadership from keeping a proper watch on Russian politics so that when the revolution of 1905 exploded out of the rumblings of the previous four years or so, the leaders of Russian Social Democracy were caught by surprise. Lenin’s schedule in December 1904 and early January 1905 was still taken up with lectures on the Party situation and on making final preparations for the emergence of his new publishing project
Vpered
(
Forward
). The revolution was a surprise.

Krupskaya describes how they first heard of the events of Bloody Sunday, 9 January (OS), in St Petersburg the day after they happened.

We went where all the Bolsheviks who had heard the Petersburg news were instinctively drawn – to the Lepeshinsky’s emigrant restaurant. We wanted to be together. The people gathered there hardly spoke a word to one another, they were so excited
… Everyone was so overwhelmed with the thought that the Revolution had already commenced, that the bonds of faith in the Tsar were broken, that now the time was quite near when ‘tyranny will fall and the people will rise up – great, mighty and free.’ [Krupskaya 108]

1905

Although revolution in the abstract was in the forefront of the minds of the émigrés, its actual outbreak in January 1905 was not. After four or five years of social disorder there was no immediate sign of escalation. In the mid-1890s St Petersburg had seen its first major strikes, beginning with women workers in a cigarette factory and later among metalwork
ers. In 1899 there was a student strike which led to university closure in St Petersburg. From then on rural and urban crises came and went. There were general strikes in Rostov, Odessa and elsewhere. Troops were called in with increasing frequency to deal with disturbances in town and country. One compilation suggests the army dealt with 19 disturbances in 1893; 33 in 1900; 271 in 1901 and 522 in 1902.
²
The newly formed SR Party, the deadly populist rival to the Social Democrats, instigated a terror campaign which brought about the death of many government officials from local policemen and police chiefs to several government ministers.

Yet, the main blows against the government did not come from radical bombers but were self-inflicted. In the face of growing internal disorder the autocracy embarked on an ill-fated war with Japan. Arrogant assumptions of easy victory turned into nightmare defeats on land and sea. Tsarist inefficiency was exposed in a bitter war of massive firepower and trench defences. The final straw came in January 1905 when one of Russia’s major strongholds in the Far East, Port Arthur, fell. The news arrived in St Petersburg at the same time as the Bloody Sunday demonstrations were being prepared and had a considerable impact, especially among the educated middle class.