The 1905 ‘dress rehearsal’

Before looking at the development of Bolshevism and Menshevism, it’s useful to look first at the revolutionary events of 1905, described by Lenin as a ‘dress rehearsal’ for 1917.

The revolutionary events of 1905 were triggered by Russia’s disastrous war with Japan which exposed the rottenness of the Tsarist autocracy and its generals. At the beginning of January, a city-wide general strike gripped Petrograd, called in response to the sacking of four trade unionists. On ‘Bloody Sunday’, January 9th, an unarmed demonstration to the Tsar’s Winter Palace was mowed down by his troops, leaving a thousand dead. This only deepened the strike wave which spread across all the main cities in the following months. This was accompanied by peasant land seizures and mutinies in the Black Sea fleet.

Events culminated in the uprising of December 1905. Although defeated, the 1905 revolution taught important lessons and created important traditions - to be built on again in 1917.

1905 confirmed that the so-called 'liberal' bourgeoisie were not to be trusted. Having taken one look over the precipice of revolution; the capitalists had hurriedly backed away into the camp of reaction. This had left the way clear for the army to bloodily defeat the workers and peasants.

Soviets

The new unheard-of level of workers' activity in 1905 gave birth to a new form of organisation - the soviet. These workers' councils, comprising of elected deputies from each section of the workers in struggle, invented to organise the general strike and the struggle for power, were an important step forward. Not only the workers, but also the peasants and the revolutionary parts of the army had looked to the soviets for a lead. Trotsky, at that time outside the Bolshevik faction of the RDSLP, became President of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies and was afterwards exiled to Siberia.

The soviet showed itself to be a flexible way of judging the mood of the workers, able to rapidly respond to new demands, democratically debate ideas and to provide clear leadership at each stage of the movement. After 1905, the idea of soviets was never forgotten. The Russian workers immediately returned to this form of organisation in the revolutionary events of 1917. In many ways, the history of the 1917 Russian Revolution boils down to a history of the Bolshevik Party gaining a majority in the soviets and then being in a position to lead the struggle for power.

As Lenin explained in his pamphlet ‘State and Revolution’ ⁴ the soviets could also become the embryo of a workers' government, evolving from bodies organising the revolution – to bodies democratically organising the new worker’s state.

History demonstrates that, in times of revolutionary struggle, the working class always throws up collective assemblies of some kind. In Paris in 1971, the Commune; in Chile in 1972-73, the ‘Cordones’; more recently in Sudan, the neighbourhood ‘Resistance Committees’. Strike committees, linked together nationally, could also play a similar role. The exact form of organisation that will arise will depend on the particular traditions and character of each struggle.

However, it’s worth adding that genuine soviets – or their equivalents - arise only when the mass movement enters into an openly revolutionary stage. From the first moment of their appearance, they start to become competitors and opponents of the official organs of government – locally and nationally. The soviets initiate a period of ‘dual power’ – an idea that we’ll return to in later lessons.

The Proletariat and the Peasantry

The Russian proletariat was such a small minority of the nation that it could only hope to lead a struggle against the Tsarist state if it had the mighty support of the poor peasantry.

This vast potential ally of the Russian working class was facing a desperate situation thanks to the unequal land distribution and backwardness of agriculture, held back by the inefficient methods of farming on small peasant plots using outdated technique. In 1905 about half of the privately owned land belonged to just 30,000 great landowners - covering an area equivalent to the land of 10 million peasant families. Trotsky comments in Chapter Three ⁵ of his ‘History’ that “these land statistics constitute the finished programme of a peasant war”.

The law of combined development meant that the peasant had a desperate battle to try and match prices with those set by the more productive farming methods of modern agriculture. However, Trotsky explains how, before history could progress to voluntarily introducing more rational and intensive methods, through a socialist revolution, during the 1905 revolution the peasants looked towards one last alternative strategy that they hoped might succeed - forcibly seizing land from the landlords.

Scared by the struggles of 1905, the landlords made some concessions to the better-off peasants through a large-scale selling-off of land. Then, in 1906, the government introduced a law giving the rich peasants, known as ‘kulaks’ (a nickname literally meaning 'fist' in Russian) the right to buy-off sections of the villages' communal land, even if the majority of peasants were against it. This was an attempt to create a layer of wealthy capitalist kulak farmers in the country to provide a much-needed point of support for the Tsar's regime - described by the then President of the Council of Ministers, Stolypin, as “banking on the strong ones”.

However, the measure created far more opposition for the counter-revolution than it ever gained it in support. It did lead to a boom in agriculture from 1908-12 but only drove the mass of the peasantry further into ruin, unable to compete with the cheap grain the new farmers could produce. Many sold up their small parcels of land to become landless workers, adding further explosive material to the proletarian population.

Some peasants sought refuge in co-operatives, supported and idealised by the rich ‘narodnik’ intelligentsia (from 'narod', meaning people), but these proved no solution, real power again belonging to the richest peasants within the 'commune'.

‘Narodnik’ ideas had arisen amongst the liberal Russian intellectuals in the mid-19th century. These looked to the peasantry as being the revolutionary section of Russian society and believed that Russia could advance to a form of ‘socialism’ based on peasant collectives without undergoing a capitalist development. But these utopian ideas inevitably failed to succeed.

One section of the Narodniks then turned to the idea of using individual terrorism in the hope of provoking a peasant uprising. The hanging of Lenin’s brother after an assassination attempt on the Tsar certainly influenced the young Lenin to reject these mistaken Narodnik ideas. Instead, he turned turn towards the 'Emancipation of Labour Group' which Plekhanov had set up as a break from Narodnik politics, basing itself on the ideas of Marxism.

After 1900 several of the remaining Narodnik groups formed the "Social - Revolutionaries" (SRs) a 'left' party based largely on the peasantry, that was to become a significant factor in the 1917 revolutions.

Contrary to Narodnik ideas, Marxism explained that a movement based on the hope of an independent peasant struggle was doomed to failure. A peasant does not produce collectively, instead they primarily have their own individual interests at heart. The peasantry also becomes divided into rich and poor parts, It could not act as an independent revolutionary force like either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. It vacillated like the rest of the intermediate 'petty-bourgeois' layer, between these two classes, looking for leadership.

What was to be unique about the Russian Revolution was that for the first time in history - and in the absence of a strong capitalist class to offer it leadership - the peasantry was instead able to find a lead from a sufficiently strong and revolutionary proletariat.

Menshevism and Bolshevism

From the foundations built by Plekhanov, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was built and grew in the underground workers movement.

Although we haven’t got room here to provide a detailed history, since it is often raised by opponents of Trotsky, it’s worth mentioning that at an early stage in its development, the RSDLP congress of 1903 unexpectedly split into two factions over seemingly insignificant disagreements about Party Rules.

Lenin, leader of the majority ‘Bolshevik’ group initially tried to bring about unity with the minority ‘Menshevik’ group, but soon correctly realised that they actually represented two definite opposing tendencies within the RSDLP and formally set up his Bolshevik faction. Under the impact of events, such as the defeated revolution of 1905, the two tendencies gradually crystallised out into two distinct political parties. Lenin's Bolsheviks finally made a formal split in 1912, although only once they were confident that they had the support of the large majority of the organised working class.

It’s true that Trotsky disagreed with Lenin in the 1903 dispute and so found himself in the Menshevik minority at first. Trotsky then took up an independent position outside both groups, trying for a while to build on the mood for unity created by the experiences of 1905 to campaign for the two factions to unite. However, he was honest enough to admit in later life that he had made the mistake of over-estimating the importance of winning over the 'left-wing' of the Mensheviks, whereas Lenin had correctly recognised that the political differences had become insurmountable.

But the real differences between the two wings weren’t organisational but political. Trotsky soon broke with the Mensheviks over the question that was to mark the central political difference between the two tendencies - the attitude of the workers’ movement to the supposedly ‘progressive’ capitalists. On that, Lenin and Trotsky were united – in fact, it was Trotsky who provided the greatest political clarity on this key issue.

Permanent Revolution

In direct opposition to the Mensheviks, Lenin explained that the proletariat should ally itself, not with the bosses, but rather with the poor peasant masses, and fight for the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”.

By 'dictatorship', Lenin meant not a lack of democracy but that a workers' and peasants' government would have to fight against the desperate resistance of Tsarism, the landlords and the bourgeoisie. The use of the term ‘democratic’ expressed recognition of the ‘bourgeois’, rather than ‘socialist’ character of the tasks to be carried out by the revolution – such as land reform, democratic freedom, an end to national oppression and the development of a modern economy.

However, Lenin warned, the peasantry could not be a socialist ally of the workers because it had its own petty-bourgeois interests at heart and would be satisfied with the limited gains of the bourgeois revolution. But he also believed that, once the ‘democratic dictatorship’ had been victorious, the proletariat would not then simply have to submit to a peasant counter-revolution. For Lenin, the fate of the revolution was inextricably linked with the world revolution - and a bourgeois revolution in Russia would spur on the proletariat of the advanced countries that were ripe for socialist revolution.

Trotsky's main difference with Lenin was that he drew the conclusion that the peasantry could never play an independent role as a class and either had to support the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. He felt that it was, therefore, incorrect to talk of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ as this suggested that the peasantry could play equally as important a role as the working-class.

Trotsky drew the conclusion from the 1905 events that, in the given conditions in Russia, only two perspectives were possible - either the ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ with the peasants being used as an instrument of reaction, which would fall into the camp of Tsarist reaction - or the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ with the working-class coming to power, leaning on the peasantry as an instrument of revolution.

Drawing on his analysis of the ‘Law of Combined Development’, Trotsky put forward his famous theory of ‘Permanent Revolution’, an approach which was to provide the clearest perspective for the events of 1917. Just as Russia combined backward feudalism with the latest advances of international capitalism, so, Trotsky argued, the Russian revolution could combine the overthrow of feudalism with a 'permanent' or 'uninterrupted' move to socialist tasks, ending in international revolution. Prior to 1917, Lenin’s formula left it unclear as to how far the revolutionary workers in Russia could go beyond implementing just the ‘bourgeois’ tasks of the revolution but Trotsky proposed that the Russian proletariat itself might come to power and, rather than be limited to merely bourgeois tasks, begin the international socialist revolution in Russia itself.

So, for Trotsky, the proletariat through its own rule could begin the socialist tasks of building a workers' state and taking the means of production from the capitalists, without having to artificially hold back its demands. However, Trotsky, like Lenin, agreed that the fate of the revolution would rest with the European proletariat who, spurred on by the Russian workers, could come to power. By linking revolutions, they could together build a socialist federation to protect backward Russia from bourgeois restoration.

Trotsky feared that Lenin's imprecise formula could, at the critical moment, open the door to Menshevism by suggesting that the workers might need to be held back in case they tried to go too far beyond bourgeois limits. As early as 1909 – quoted in Appendix II to Volume One ⁶ - Trotsky wrote: "If the Mensheviks, starting from the abstraction 'Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution' arrive at the idea of adapting the whole tactic of the proletariat to the conduct of the liberal bourgeoisie, then the Bolsheviks starting from an equally bare abstraction 'a democratic and not a socialist dictatorship' will arrive at the idea of a bourgeois democratic self- limitation of the proletariat in whose hands the governmental power will be found. To be sure, the difference between them on this question is very considerable: while the anti-revolutionary sides of Menshevism are expressed in their full strength even now, the anti-revolutionary traits of Bolshevism threaten a great danger only in the case of a revolutionary victory".

Trotsky's warnings were to be precisely borne out by the struggles within the Bolshevik party in 1917. Fortunately, Lenin’s own intervention ensured that Bolshevism did not retreat in the hour of revolution. In the key moments of 1917, Lenin and Trotsky were to find themselves united against the opposition of, yes, the Mensheviks but, also, even some of the Bolsheviks’ own party leadership - in warning of the disastrous results of any alliance of the workers’ movement with the so-called 'liberal' Russian bourgeoisie.

Stalinism and Bolshevism

In reality, Menshevism and Bolshevism were heading down two completely different roads - one towards reform, the other towards revolution. Bolshevism reflected the pressure of the revolutionary aspirations of the workers and poor peasants. Their small forces were left to fight alone alongside the workers during those difficult years of reaction after 1905. Menshevism, reflecting the thin upper layer of workers and petty officials who had no stomach for the socialist fight, preached collaboration with the liberal bourgeoisie. According to the Mensheviks, feudalism, capitalism and socialism must follow each other in a clearly defined and well separated succession in every country so that for now any talk of socialism in Russia was dangerous adventurism. For a layer of middle-class intellectuals their simplified view of Marxism seemed to reassuringly justify their own cowardice when it came to revolutionary struggle.

But it’s also important to recognise - especially since they were always the ones falsely throwing mud at Trotsky – that it was the Stalinists that resurrected Menshevik ideas when they later betrayed the revolution. It was under Stalin that the banner of international revolution was replaced with the slogan of ‘socialism in one country’ and the "two-stage" theory of colonial revolution was adopted. The socialist revolution was relegated to a distant future goal while workers in the meantime were urged to build alliances with the 'liberal bourgeoisie'.

This abandonment of Marxism led to countless tragedies such as the bloody defeat of the Chinese revolution of 1925-7, not to mention other defeats such as in Spain in the 1930s and Chile in 1973. And even where capitalism was defeated, the colonial revolution became derailed along the distorted lines of ‘Proletarian Bonapartism’ - where petty-bourgeois leaders set up totalitarian regimes in the image of Stalinist Russia, instead of ensuring that the proletariat played a leading role in carrying out the revolution and the establishment of a healthy socialist regime.