Lenin successfully ‘rearms’ the party

The last two lessons discussed how Lenin – now back in Petrograd, and Trotsky – still imprisoned in a detention camp in Canada, were both putting forward a position calling for a proletarian-led socialist revolution – contrary to the position of the editors of Pravda like Kamenev and Stalin.

Remarkably, given Lenin’s almost total political isolation on his arrival in Petrograd on April 4^th, by the time Trotsky arrived in early May, the vast majority of the Bolsheviks had already been won to Lenin’s position.

To explain this rapid turnaround, it is important to remember the preceding history of the Bolshevik party. The theoretical and practical struggle against both Tsarism and Menshevism had built the party on a solid foundation of revolutionary workers who had a strong tradition of opposition to class collaborationism; a tradition in total contradiction to the position then being put forward by Kamenev and Stalin in March 1917. In particular, the party had gained strength in the upward years of 1912-14, recruiting a proletarian layer that Lenin had then looked to with confidence as being the ''class-conscious workers, from among whom in spite of all difficulties a new staff of leaders will arise” [Chapter Sixteen of Trotsky’s ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ ²⁵ ]

Lenin was now relying on this revolutionary backbone of Bolshevism to defeat the dogmatic position of the party leadership. Indeed, these worker-Bolsheviks, who had played such a decisive role during the February revolution, had, in effect, already been following Lenin's line. Unlike the Mensheviks, the Bolshevik ranks had acted uncompromisingly both during and after the revolution. They ensured that momentum was kept up with their agitation for the eight-hour day and their efforts to make sure that Tsarist officials were arrested and a workers’ militia set up.

As Olminsky recalled: “We (or at least many of us) were unconsciously steering a course toward proletarian revolution, although thinking we were steering a course toward a bourgeois-democratic revolution. In other words, we were preparing for the October revolution while thinking we were preparing the February.” Lenin’s formula had led to an element of contradiction in the theoretical education of the Bolshevik cadres, although the revolutionary side had won out in February. As one remarked in the discussion on Lenin’s theses: “The prognosis made by the Bolsheviks proved wrong, but their tactics were right.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

The worker-Bolsheviks thought it obvious that the class which had won the victory should seize the power but had to draw back in the face of the theoretical obstacles thrown up by Stalin, Kamenev and co. These leaders, returning from exile, had gained their commanding positions due to their prestige. However, they were out of touch with the mood of the workers, having spent months or even years alone or in small groups outside active work. Their views corresponded to the difficult days at the start of the war, made worse by their subsequent isolation.

The party ranks were far more conscious of the enormous shifts of opinion produced by the war and the revolution. The workers fought instinctively against the leaders, illustrated by the Vyborg district's angry protest against Pravda’s line, but lacked the theoretical resources to defend their position. Armed with the April Theses, the party ranks immediately saw a way forward and came over to Lenin’s position. As one delegate - Ludmila Stahl - said to the Petrograd city conference on April 14th: “All the comrades before the arrival of Lenin were wandering in the dark, we knew only the formulas of 1905. Our comrades could only limit themselves to getting ready for the Constituent Assembly by parliamentary means and took no account of the possibility of going farther. In accepting the slogans of Lenin, we are now doing what life itself suggests to us. We need not fear the Commune and say that we already have a workers’ government; the Commune of Paris was not only a workers’, but also a petty bourgeois government.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

Lenin’s confidence in the proletarian core of the party was proved to be well-founded. District after district declared for Lenin’s position so that by April 24^th, the date set for the decisive all-Russian Bolshevik Conference, the whole of the Petrograd organisation was in favour of his ‘Theses’. The conference, held from April 24^th to the 29^th, gave overwhelming support to Lenin’s position. The initial vote for the conference praesidium gave an indication of the way things would go with neither Kamenev nor Stalin being elected. After that, the opposition gained at most seven votes from the 149 delegates.

The conference also confirmed that the party had grown greatly, both politically and qualitatively, with the reported membership standing at 79,000, of whom 15,000 lived in Petrograd. (This from 8,000 nationally after the February revolution.) The loss of a few old Bolsheviks from the party during the debate had clearly been no great loss.

Some of the leadership tried to defend their position, although Stalin, noticeably, remained silent and waited for people to forget his errors. Some old Bolsheviks emphasised the length of their membership and how they were defending the real traditions of the party. In reality they were only defending that part of Bolshevism's traditions that had not passed the test of history.

The only exception to the leftward jump came when a proposal was made to take part in the planned recall conference of the Zimmerwald pacifists. Lenin objected that the Bolsheviks had to make a clean break with exactly these kinds of ‘centrist’ trends, but he was the only one to vote against. This was the last gasp of the tendency within the Bolsheviks to fear the party's ‘isolation’ from the movement - in reality only ever being a break with these failed leaders, not the masses themselves. In effect Lenin’s policy was realised, because the divided Zimmerwaldists never held their meeting.

The role of Lenin as an individual

Trotsky’s ‘History’ describes Lenin’s careful method of debate, a method which can be seen in all his speeches and articles of April 1917. Lenin always made his point boldly but avoided attacking party comrades by name except where absolutely necessary. In this way he made it easier for people to change their position in a debate and tried to reduce the chance of personal antagonisms which could damage the internal life of the party.

Lenin won through, because his position reflected not only the mood of the worker-Bolsheviks, but was also based on the objective needs of the situation. Stalin and Kamenev's opportunism was an attempt to adapt the party's policy to the temporary illusions of the masses - Lenin saw beyond those moods.

''The chief strength of Lenin lay in his understanding the inner logic of the movement and guiding his policy by it. He did not impose his plan on the masses; he helped the masses to recognise and realise their own plan. When Lenin reduced all the problems of the revolution to one - ‘patiently explain’ - that meant it was necessary to bring the consciousness of the masses into correspondence with that situation into which the historic process had driven them. The worker or soldier, disappointed with the policy of the Compromisers, had to be brought over to the position of Lenin and not left lingering in the intermediate stage of Kamenev and Stalin.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

Lenin was not the cause of the party struggle; his arrival simply hastened both the start and the rapid end to the crisis. “Without Lenin the crisis, which the opportunist leadership was inevitably bound to produce, would have assumed an extraordinarily sharp and protracted character. The conditions of war and revolution, however, would not allow the party a long period for fulfilling its mission. Thus, it is by no means excluded that a disoriented and split party might have let slip the revolutionary opportunity for many years. The role of personality arises before us here on a truly gigantic scale. It is necessary only to understand that role correctly, taking personality as a link in the historic chain.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

Marxists are sometimes accused of denying the role of the individual in history. On the contrary, Marxism understands exactly that living people make history, otherwise why struggle for cadres and parties? As Trotsky makes clear, “Lenin became the unqualified leader of the most revolutionary party in the world's history, because his thought and will were really equal to the demands of the gigantic revolutionary possibilities of the country and the epoch. Others fell short by an inch or two, and often more.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]

Trotsky is clear that, without Lenin, it is unlikely that the October Revolution of 1917 would have taken place. However, Lenin was not some accidental ‘genius’ who transformed Bolshevism by chance. Marxism explains that an individual gains their ideas and personality, not by chance, but through experience of life. Lenin was also a product of the whole preceding history of Bolshevism: “Lenin was not an accidental element in the historic development, but a product of the whole past of Russian history. … Along with the vanguard of the workers, he had lived through their struggle in the course of the preceding quarter century. … Lenin did not oppose the party from outside but was himself its most complete expression. In educating it he had educated himself in it. His divergence from the ruling circles of the Bolsheviks meant the struggle of the future of the party against its past. If Lenin had not been artificially separated from the party by the conditions of emigration and war, the external mechanics of the crisis would not have been so dramatic. From the extraordinary significance which Lenin’s arrival received, it should only be inferred that leaders are not accidentally created, they are gradually chosen out and trained up in the course of decades, that they cannot be capriciously replaced.” [Chapter Sixteen ²⁵ ]