ahmed shawki, "80 years since the Russian Revolution"

(...) [conditions as seen by Trotsky, 1932]

1. The rotting away of the old ruling classes—the nobility, the monarchy, the bureaucracy.

2. The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the people.

3. The revolutionary character of the peasant question.

4. The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nations.

5. The significant weight of the proletariat.

To these organic preconditions we must add certain conjunctural conditions of the highest importance.

6. The revolution of 1905 was a great school, or in Lenin’s words, the ‘dress rehearsal’ of the revolution of 1917. The soviets, as the irreplaceable organizational form of the proletarian united front in the revolution, were created or the first time in the year 1905.

7. The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of their immobility and thereby prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

But all these conditions, which fully sufficed for the outbreak of the revolution, were insufficient to assure the victory of the revolution. For this victory one condition more was needed:

8. The Bolshevik Party.

(...) The consequences of such uneven and combined development are made clear by looking at Russia’s economy. Trotsky points out that while "peasant cultivation as a whole remained, right up to the revolution, at the level of the seventeenth century, Russian industry in its technique and capitalist structure stood at the level of the advanced countries, and in certain respects even outstripped them."

(...) [absolutely]--Lenin believed that "by directing socialism towards a fusion with the working-class movement, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did their greatest service," because the previous "separation of the working-class movement and socialism gave rise to weakness and underdevelopment in each: the theories of the socialist, unfused with the workers’ struggle, remained nothing more than utopias, good wishes that had no effect on real life; the working-class movement remained petty, fragmented, and did not acquire political significance, was not enlightened by the advanced science of its time."

(...) unlike the Mensheviks, Lenin refused to subordinate the demands of the working class to those of the bourgeoisie or to compromise the independence of the labor movement politically and organizationally. Though Russia’s economic level permitted only a bourgeois revolution, the development of a combative working class meant that the bourgeoisie would be incapable of taking the lead... Because of this, Lenin argued, the working-class would take the lead in the democratic revolution. He went on to argue that since the peasantry had a real interest in ending Tsarism and destroying the remnants of feudalism, the "only force capable of gaining ‘a decisive victory over Tsarism’ is the people, i.e., the proletariat and the peasantry.… The revolution’s ‘decisive victory over Tsarism’ means the establishment of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry…

(...) [for Trotsky] "But if the working class must lead the revolution, then the working class cannot be expected to stop its struggle after the overthrow of the autocracy. Lenin’s "democratic dictatorship" is an impossibility"

(...) [the permanent revolution] But this proposition clearly leads to a difficulty—one that all Russian Marxists understood: Russia was economically and culturally too backward for socialism. How did Trotsky propose to overcome this problem? Given that Russia in isolation did not have the economic prerequisites to build socialism, the Russian revolution would have to be a prelude to revolutions in Europe and elsewhere.

(...) [February 1917] The February revolution brought a bourgeois government headed by Prince Lvov to office—but it also created another center of power: the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Indeed, in the first days after the fall of the Tsar, effective power was in the hands of the Soviets. The old state had collapsed and the bourgeoisie was reluctant to take power. But so too was the leadership of the Soviets—then in the hands of the Mensheviks and the peasant party, the Social Revolutionaries (SRs). In their view, the aim of the revolution was the achievement of a bourgeois democratic republic. They were ready and eager to support the new government to see that the tasks of the "bourgeois revolution" were carried out. As the Menshevik Potresov expressed it: "at the moment of the bourgeois revolution, the [class] best prepared, socially and psychologically, to solve national problem is [the] bourgeoisie."

(...) [April Theses] The new editors of Pravda, Kamenev and Stalin, who returned from exile in Siberia, "Pronounced that the Bolsheviks would decisively support the Provisional Government ‘insofar as it struggles against reaction or counter-revolution’ forgetting that the only important agent of counter revolution at the time was this same Provisional Government," writes Tony Cliff caustically.64 Although there was considerable opposition within the party to the political line adopted towards the Provisional Government, it would take Lenin’s return from exile, on April 3, 1917, to decisively shift the party—indeed, the whole course of the revolution.

(...) The response to Lenin’s speech was that of stunned silence. He was denounced from all sides. "A man who talks that kind of stupidity is not dangerous," exclaimed Stakevich, a moderate socialist. Bogdanov, a Menshevik: "That is raving, the ravings of a lunatic! It is indecent to applaud this claptrap!" A member of the Bolsheviks, Zalezhki, noted: "On that day (April 4) Comrade Lenin could not find open sympathizers even in our own ranks." Lenin’s speech, she remembers "produced on everyone a stupefying impression. No one expected this. On the contrary, they expected Vladimir Ilych to arrive and call to order the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee and especially Comrade Molotov, who occupied a particularly irreconcilable position with respect to the Provisional Government.

(...) In effect, Lenin was adopting Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’ position. The first stage of the revolution had created a situation of "dual power," in which the working class and rebellious soldiers were not yet conscious of the need to sweep away the bourgeois Provisional Government. The task now was to win over a majority of the proletariat to the side of Bolshevism.

(...) Lenin’s isolation among the leaders of the Bolsheviks can be gauged by the outcome of a debate and vote on Lenin’s views at a Petrograd Committee meeting on April 8. Those opposing Lenin handily won the vote thirteen to two, with one abstention. Similar results were recorded in Moscow and other local Bolshevik committees. But several factors worked in Lenin’s favor. First, many of the rank and file members of the party were already unhappy with the line of accommodation to the Provisional Government being pushed by Kamenev, Stalin and the former Duma deputy M.K. Muranov. Indeed some members in Petrograd had called for their expulsion from the party. Moreover, even if the Bolsheviks’ Petrograd leadership tailed behind the Mensheviks and SRs, the Bolshevik members did not have the same instincts as those of the Mensheviks. As Trotsky notes, the whole history and training of the Bolsheviks led them in the direction of identifying with the masses rather than the new bourgeois government.

(...) Second, the very course of the revolution, and in particular the government’s continued escalation to the war effort, was a confirmation of the validity of Lenin’s views. Third, the numbers of workers, soldiers and peasants drawn into the revolution continued to grow—as did their hostility to the government and their gravitation to the Bolsheviks; fourth, the Bolshevik party itself entered a period of explosive growth. In the two months since February, party membership swelled from 24,000 to 80,000. Finally, Lenin carried enormous political weight among the cadres of the Bolshevik party. Indeed, Trotsky is undoubtedly right in saying that only Lenin could have reoriented the party so quickly and with so little damage. By mid-April, Lenin’s attempts to win over the party reached an important turning point: He succeeded in winning a majority at a conference of Bolsheviks held in Petrograd on April 14. By the end of April, Lenin had decidedly won the party over to his views.

(...) [precursors of July] No sooner had Lenin won the party over did the opposite danger come to the fore. The same militants who supported Lenin’s "no support for the Provisional Government" slogan tended to be involved in head-on clashes with the government. The slogan of "no support" was soon transformed into one of "Down with the Provisional Government." Lenin now swung from the party’s left to its right, calling such slogans "premature" and "adventurist." Petrograd’s workers were well ahead of the rest of the country, and the danger existed of a premature confrontation with the government which would leave the most militant sections of the movement isolated.

(...) [key] The government’s response to this crisis was to try to expand its base of support—especially among the Mensheviks and the SRs who still held a majority in the Soviets. In late April, these parties entered the Provisional Government. The right-wing SR Alexander Kerensky became minister of war. From May onwards, the revolution’s advance required fighting not only the bourgeoisie, but the leaders of the Mensheviks and SRs. From May to the October seizure of power, there is a visible and steady decline in the levels of support to both Mensheviks and SRs and a sharp swing to the left.

(...) The unavoidable confrontation came in July. Nearly a million demonstrators took to the streets of Petrograd on July 4, demanding an end to the war and the overthrow of the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks, having failed to restrain the demonstrators, decided to join them. In the confrontations that followed, there were hundreds of casualties. There is little doubt that had the Bolshevik Party called for the overthrow of the government, it could have achieved that aim. But Lenin and others were clear that the rest of Russia wasn’t yet ready to overthrow the Provisional Government.... [repression ensues]

(...) General Kornilov launched a coup attempt in late August. On August 26, he sent a representative to demand the surrender of the Provisional Government. He had the backing of all the top generals, big business and the British and French governments. But Kornilov’s coup failed largely because of the organized resistance led by the Bolsheviks. Lenin’s response to the Kornilov revolt was clear and immediate: "The Kornilov revolt is a most unexpected and downright unbelievably sharp turn in events. Like every sharp turn, it calls for a revision and change of tactics."81 The Bolshevik Party must lead the resistance to Kornilov, Lenin argued, because a successful coup from the right would be a tremendous setback to the revolution. Thus, Bolsheviks and their supporters were organized to fight Kornilov. This did not mean, however, extending support to the government. "Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled.… We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness.

(...) ON SEPTEMBER 1, the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet. On September 5, the Moscow Soviet followed suit. On September 9, Trotsky was elected president of the Petrograd Soviet. A clear majority of the working class was behind the Bolsheviks. Lenin launched an offensive within the party to prepare for an armed uprising and seizure of power. He met stiff resistance from the Bolshevik Central Committee. For almost a month, Lenin insistently argued for the party to prepare for an insurrection...

(...) [this is just great:] Like every other ruling class, the Russian bourgeoisie and aristocracy thought that nothing and no one could do without it. The conservative daily Novoe Vromia, wrote on the morning after the insurrection (October 26, 1917):

Let us suppose for a moment that the Bolsheviks do gain the upper hand. Who will govern us then: the cooks perhaps, those connoisseurs of cutlets and beefsteaks? Or maybe the firemen? The stable boys, the chauffeurs? Or perhaps the nursemaids will rush off to a meeting of the Council of State between the diaper washing sessions? Who then? Where are the statesmen? Perhaps the mechanics will run the theaters, the plumbers foreign affairs, the carpenters, the post office. Who will it be? History alone will give a definitive answer to this mad ambition of the Bolsheviks.