A Documentary History of Communism in Russia

From Lenin to Gorbachev

Robert V. Daniels

• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780874516166
• eBook ISBN: 9781611680584
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An extensive revision of the valued but unobtainable 1960 edition. Nearly 300 key documents are now readily available in translation.

CHAPTER ONE

Leninism and the Bolshevik Party, to 1917

The background of the Communist movement was dominated by one powerful figure, Lenin. The disciplined organization, the revolutionary mission, and stern enforcement of Lenin’s version of doctrinal orthodoxy were all firmly established in the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Party long before 1917. The reactions of other Marxists testify eloquently to the unique impress which Lenin’s personality made in the movement. When revolution came in 1917, Lenin was prepared to strike for power and hold it at any cost.

Lenin as a Marxist

As early as 1894, when he was twenty-four, Lenin (born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov) had become a revolutionary agitator and a convinced Marxist. He exhibited his new faith and his polemical talents in a diatribe of that year against the peasant-oriented socialism of the Populists led by N. K. Mikhailovsky.

. . . Now—since the appearance of Capital—the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically demonstrated proposition. And until some other attempt is made to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of any form of society—form of society, mind you, and not the mode of life of any country or people, or even class, etc.—another attempt which would be just as capable as materialism of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” and of presenting a living picture of a definite formation and at the same time of explaining it in a strictly scientific way, until then the materialist conception of history will be synonymous with social science. Materialism is not “primarily a scientific conception of history,” as Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific conception of history. . . .

. . . Russian Marxists . . . began precisely with a criticism of the subjective methods of earlier socialists. Not satisfied with merely stating the fact that exploitation exists and condemning it, they desired to explain it. Realizing that the whole post-Reform^* history of Russia consisted in the impoverishment of the mass and the enrichment of a minority, observing the colossal expropriation of the small producers side by side with universal technical progress, noting that these opposite tendencies arose and became intensified wherever, and to the extent that, commodity production developed and became consolidated, they could not but conclude that they were confronted with a bourgeois (capitalist) organization of social economy, which necessarily gave rise to the expropriation and oppression of the masses. Their practical program was quite directly determined by this conviction; this program was, to join the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the struggle of the propertyless classes against the propertied, which constitutes the principal content of economic reality in Russia, from the most out-of-the-way village to the most up-to-date and perfected factory. How were they to join it? The answer was again suggested by real life. Capitalism had brought the principal branches of industry to the stage of large-scale machine industry; by thus socializing production, it had created the material conditions for a new system and had at the same time created a new social force—the class of factory workers, the urban proletariat. Subjected to the same bourgeois exploitation—for such, in its economic essence, is the exploitation to which the whole toiling population of Russia is subjected—this class, however, has been placed in a special, favourable position as far as its emancipation is concerned; it has no longer any ties with the old society, which is wholly based on exploitation; the very conditions of its labour and circumstances of life organize it, compel it to think and enable it to step into the arena of the political struggle. It was only natural that the Social Democrats should direct all their attention to, and base all their hopes on, this class, that they should make the development of its class consciousness their program, that they should direct all their activities towards helping it to rise and wage a direct political struggle against the present regime and towards drawing the whole Russian proletariat into this struggle. . . .

NOTES

FROM: Lenin, “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats” (April, 1894; in V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950–52, Vol. I, book 1, pp. 110, 165–66).

^*I.e., since the emancipation of the serfs in 1861—Ed.

The Foundation of the Russian Marxist Party

While Marxism had been winning adherents among the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia for more than a decade previously, an avowedly Marxist party was not organized until 1898. In that year a “congress” of nine men met at Minsk to proclaim the establishment of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. The manifesto issued in the name of the congress after the police broke it up was drawn up by the economist Peter Struve, a member of the moderate “legal Marxist” group who soon afterward left the Marxist movement altogether. The manifesto is indicative of the way Marxism was applied to Russian conditions, and of the special role for the proletariat which the Russian Marxists envisaged.

. . . Fifty years ago the invigorating storm of the Revolution of 1848 burst over Europe.

For the first time the modern working class appeared on the scene as a major historical force. With its forces the bourgeoisie succeeded in removing many antiquated feudal-monarchial systems. But the bourgeoisie quickly perceived in its new ally its most hostile foe, and betrayed both it and itself and the cause of freedom into the hands of reaction. However, it was already late: the working class, pacified for the time being, after ten or fifteen years appeared again on the stage of history with redoubled force, with matured consciousness, as a full-grown fighter for its own liberation.

All this time Russia apparently remained aside from the main road of the historical movement. The class struggle was not apparent there, but it was there, and the main thing was that it was steadily growing and maturing. The Russian government, with laudable zeal, itself planted the seeds of class struggle by cheating the peasants, patronizing the landlords, fattening up the big capitalists at the expense of the toiling population. But the bourgeois-capitalist order is unthinkable without a proletariat or working class. The latter is born together with capitalism, grows together with it, gets stronger, and in proportion to its growth is thrown more and more into conflict with the bourgeoisie.

The Russian factory worker, serf or free, has always carried on a hidden or open struggle with his exploiters. In proportion to the development of capitalism, the proportions of this struggle have grown, they have embraced more and more layers of the working class population. The awakening of the class self-consciousness of the Russian proletariat and the growth of the spontaneous workers’ movement have coincided with the conclusive development of international Social Democracy as the bearer of the class struggle and the class ideal of the conscious workers of the whole world. . . . Vainly the government imagines that by concessions it can calm the workers. Everywhere the working class is becoming more demanding, the more they give it. It will be the same with the Russian proletariat. They have given in to it up to now only when it demands, and in the future will give it only what it demands.

And what does the Russian working class not need? It is completely deprived of what its foreign comrades freely and quietly enjoy: participation in the administration of the state, freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of organization and assembly—in a word, all those instruments and means with which the West-European and American proletariat improves its position and at the same time struggles for its final liberation, against private property and capitalism—for socialism. Political freedom is necessary for the Russian proletariat like fresh air is necessary for healthy breathing. It is the basic condition for its free development and the successful struggle for partial improvements and final liberation.

But the Russian proletariat can only win the political freedom which it needs by itself.

The farther east one goes in Europe, the more the bourgeoisie becomes in the political respect weaker, more cowardly, and meaner, and the larger are the cultural and political tasks which fall to the share of the proletariat. On its broad shoulders the Russian working class must bear and will bear the cause of the fight for political freedom. This is essential, but it is only the first step toward the realization of the great historical mission of the proletariat—towards the creation of that social order in which the exploitation of man by man will have no place. The Russian proletariat will throw off its burden of autocracy so that with all the more energy it will continue the struggle against capitalism and the bourgeoisie until the complete victory of socialism. . . .

As a socialist movement and inclination, the Russian Social-Democratic Party continues the cause and the traditions of all the preceding revolutionary movements in Russia; taking as the principal immediate task of the party the goal of conquering political freedom, Social Democracy moves toward the goal which has already been marked out by the glorious activists of the old “People’s Will.” But the means and the path which Social Democracy chooses are different. The choice of them is determined by its conscious desire to be and remain a class movement of the organized working masses. It is firmly convinced that “the liberation of the working class can only be its own business,” and it will undeviatingly make all its action conform to this fundamental basis of international Social Democracy.

Long live Russia, long live international Social Democracy!

NOTES

FROM: Manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, issued by the First Congress of the party, Minsk, March, 1898 (in The Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the Resolutions and Decisions of its Congresses, Conferences, and Plenums of the Central Committee [hereafter referred to as “CPSU in Resolutions”], 7th ed., Moscow, 1954, Vol. 1, pp. 11–14; editor’s translation).

Lenin’s Theory of the Party

Leaving Russia in 1900, Lenin went to Geneva to join Plekhanov’s circle of older Russian Marxists in publishing a paper for the new Social-Democratic party—Iskra, “The Spark.” In the course of this work he formulated what in retrospect proved to be the fundamental ideas underlying the Communist movement—his theory of the tightly organized and disciplined party of “professional revolutionaries.” This idea Lenin first developed in “What Is to Be Done?,” a lengthy polemic against the “Economists”—those Marxists who preferred to stress the economic struggle of the workers rather than a separate revolutionary movement. The publication of “What Is to Be Done?” in 1902 marks the true beginning of Leninism as a distinctive political current.

. . . It is no secret that two trends have taken shape in the present-day international Social-Democracy. The fight between these trends now flares up in a bright flame, and now dies down and smoulders under the ashes of imposing “truce resolutions.” What this “new” trend, which adopts a “critical” attitude towards “obsolete dogmatic” Marxism, represents has with sufficient precision been stated by Bernstein, and demonstrated by Millerand.^*

Social-Democracy must change from a party of the social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms. Bernstein has surrounded this political demand with a whole battery of symmetrically arranged “new” arguments and reasonings. The possibility of putting Socialism on a scientific basis and of proving from the point of view of the materialist conception of history that it is necessary and inevitable was denied, as was also the growing impoverishment, proletarianization, and the intensification of capitalist contradictions. The very conception, “ultimate aim,” was declared to be unsound, and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was absolutely rejected. It was denied that there is any counterdistinction in principle between liberalism and Socialism. The theory of the class struggle was rejected on the grounds that it could not be applied to a strictly democratic society, governed according to the will of the majority, etc.

Thus, the demand for a resolute turn from revolutionary Social Democracy to bourgeois Social-reformism was accompanied by a no less resolute turn towards bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. . . .

He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the new “critical” trend in Socialism is nothing more nor less than a new variety of opportunism. And if we judge people not by the brilliant uniforms they don, not by the high-sounding appellations they give themselves, but by their actions, and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means freedom for an opportunistic trend in Social-Democracy, the freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, the freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into Socialism. . . .

Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical activity. . . . Our Party is only in process of formation, its features are only just becoming outlined, and it is yet far from having settled accounts with other trends of revolutionary thought, which threaten to divert the movement from the correct path. . . . The national tasks of Russian Social-Democracy are such as have never confronted any other socialist party in the world. . . . The role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory. . . .

. . . The strikes of the nineties represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves, these strikes were simply trade union struggles, but not yet Social-Democratic struggles. They testified to the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers, but the workers were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of the nineties in spite of the enormous progress they represented as compared with the “riots,” remained a purely spontaneous movement.

We have said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. According to their social status, the founders of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement, it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. At the time of which we are speaking, i.e., the middle of the nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated program of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.

Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the masses of the workers, the awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with the Social-Democr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface (1960 Edition)
• Preface (Revised Edition)
• Preface (1993 Edition)
• Introduction: The Evolution of the Communist Mind-In Russia
• Chapter One: Leninism and the Bolshevik Party, to 1917
• Chapter Two: The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1921
• Chapter Three: Soviet Communism: The Era of Controversy, 1922-1929
• Chapter Four: The Transformation Under Stalin, 1929-1953
• Chapter Five: The Interval of Reform, 1953-1964
• Chapter Six: The "Era of Stagnation"
• Chapter Seven: Perestroika and the End of Communism, 1985-1991