Lenin’s demand for the opening up of the ranks to let the workers in was entirely in tune with the real situation in Russia. Great events had shaken and transformed the consciousness of the mass of the workers. Decades of slow and painful work were now rewarded by a sudden upsurge in interest in the ideas of revolutionary socialism. The congress launched a new weekly paper, Proletary, to replace the Vperyod, and elected a new central committee to replace the old conciliationist one. The congress thus resolved the old unsatisfactory division between the Party’s central organ, Central Committee, and Party Council, reducing these to a single centre, the CC, which was later divided into two parts, the exterior and the interior. Lenin, for the time being, remained outside Russia, while the Russian Bureau of the CC, based in St. Petersburg, was made up of Bogdanov, Krassin, and Postolovsky, with Rumyantsev later being co-opted on. Lenin was, in effect, in charge of the Foreign Bureau of the CC, which maintained close links with the Russian Bureau, but also had direct links with the local Party committees, with whom it carried on a regular correspondence.

The scope for the work inside Russia was now considerably easier. Although arrests were still made, sentences tended to be more lenient. Sometimes the local police were overruled by liberal provincial governors. The police themselves were losing their nerve. Under these circumstances, the local committees were able to meet almost daily. A typical local committee would consist of not more than a dozen people. Every member of a committee had a direct responsibility for some aspect of the work, either press, finance or agitation, or responsibility for a particular district or factory. They were linked to the workers through party circles. There were also Social Democratic student organisations, and beyond these a wider periphery of sympathisers. As soon as even one worker joined in a factory, he or she was expected to begin working under the direction of the local committee. We have already seen some of the negative features of the committeemen. But it would be wrong to lose sight of their positive side. They were professional revolutionaries, dedicated to the party, hard-working and self-sacrificing. Working under difficult conditions, they were almost always on the move. They lived a hand-to-mouth existence, on very low wages, around 25-35 roubles a month, funds permitting, which was not always the case! Some had a private income. Others were sometimes forced to do part-time jobs. Some, like Krassin, as we have seen, worked as a ‘cover’, which sometimes gave rise to amusing circumstances:

In St. Petersburg there was an insurance company, not inaptly named Nadezhda (Hope) whose directors made it their policy to employ as clerks men known to be active revolutionaries: they found that, although they seldom remained with the firm for long owing to the high incidence of arrests, they were exceptionally honest. (J.L.H. Keep, The Rise of the Social Democracy in Russia, p. 181.)

After 9 January, Buzinov recalled the dramatic transformation undergone by his fellow workers. Work became a matter of secondary importance, as they eagerly gathered in the workshops to read the latest political leaflet or newspaper. (See GD Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg, p. 239.) The Party publications, with their limited print run and infrequent publication, were now hopelessly inadequate to keep pace with the demand. The old Iskra had a print run of around 10-15,000 (fortnightly, although for a brief period it appeared weekly). Now the audience for a revolutionary socialist newspaper was at least 10 or 20 times that figure. The underground print shops could not keep up with the needs of the moment. But the possibility of launching a legal paper did not arise until later in the year when Trotsky and Parvus took over the old liberal Ruskaya Gazeta and transformed it into a legal organ of the Marxists. With its low price of one kopeck, and its popular style, circulation shot up from 30,000 to 100,000, reaching a staggering 500,000 by December. By comparison, the Bolshevik legal paper Novaya Zhizn’ (New Life), had a circulation of 50,000 – which was still five times more than the total print run of the old Iskra. But that was not until the autumn. In the meantime, the local Party groups had to make do with whatever leaflets and other material they could duplicate on their humble hand-operated mimeograph machines.

The congress had given a much-needed boost to the morale of the Bolsheviks, who began to grow at a considerable pace. New branches and district committees were set up. Factory cells were established, as well as Bolshevik trade union factions, designed to take advantage of the new opportunities for legal trade union work in which, however, the Mensheviks had gained a head start. Bolshevik agitation and propaganda was carried out by small specialised groups of 10 to 12 people. Each agitator-organiser was responsible for a single district. The opportunities for carrying socialist ideas to the workers were now immense. Millions of leaflets were published by both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in the course of the year.

The old forms of propaganda were dead and propaganda had turned into agitation. With the colossal growth of the working-class movement, verbal propaganda and even agitation as a whole could not meet the needs of the movement. What was needed was popular literature, a popular newspaper, literature for the peasants and for the non-Russian nationalities. (N.K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 127.)

These, and other pressing needs, immediately raised the question of finance. The question of arms, too, required large sums of money. The income of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks did increase. Martov states that:

The budget of the revolutionary organisations, consisting in the period 1901-2 of a few hundred roubles, by mid-1905 had grown to tens of thousands of roubles a year. (J. Martov et al, Obshchestvennoe Dvizhenie v Rossii v Nachale 20 Veka, vol. 2, p. 63.)

But the demands were constantly outstripping the available resources. David Lane, on the basis of a study of the Bolshevik and Menshevik press, concludes that, in February, the St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committee raised a total of 2,400 roubles, of which 265r was spent on the press and 375r on organisation. There was a separate arms fund of 1,295r, of which 850r had already been spent. If we include a further 981r represented by a separate strike fund, this means that the total income of the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks in February 1905 was about 4,680 roubles. However, in just the first two weeks of July, the expenditure of the Bolsheviks had risen to 800r on arms, 540r on organisation and 156r on literature.

The Mensheviks’ income from 15 February to 15 March, was larger than the Bolsheviks, being 4,039r (2,000r of which came from one contributor): of this sum, 1,250r were spent on arms, ‘organisation’ in various regions came to 1,126r and 630r were spent on the printing presses. (D. Lane, The Roots of Russian Communism, p. 78.)

In his history of the Social Democracy, Martov gives a whole series of figures for the financial state of both Menshevik and Bolshevik groups in 1905, which show how far the demands of the situation outstripped the income raised from the members in subscriptions. Thus, the Baku committee, in February, raised a total of 1,382 roubles, of which only 38 (3 per cent) came “from workers”. Only 14 per cent of the income of the Sevastopol committee came from subscriptions. The situation in Riga was better, but still only amounted to 22 per cent. However, in the Bolshevik stronghold, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, the corresponding figure was 53 per cent. (J. Martov et al, Obshchestvennoe Dvizhenie v Rossii v Nachale 20 Veka, vol. 3, p. 569.) Both factions received large donations from wealthy sympathisers. But the Mensheviks, with their far looser organisation, were always far more dependent upon this source than the Bolsheviks, who strove for, and finally achieved, an organisation built upon the kopecks of the workers – the only real foundation for a workers’ party. By contrast, we have already seen how, in early 1905, almost half of the income of the Mensheviks came from a single contributor. On 15 February, according to the same source, the Petersburg Mensheviks’ income totalled 247 roubles “of which 200 roubles were from a sympathiser”. (D. Lane, The Roots of Russian Communism, p. 78.) The situation with the Jewish Bund was completely different. Despite their opportunistic policy, the Bund had a well-established, centralised working-class organisation, about which Lenin spoke enviously more than once. Fifty per cent of their needs were met from the workers’ donations.

Throughout 1905, neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks could keep up with the demand for socialist literature. Everywhere there was a thirst for the written word. The workers wanted to know. Workers who had been hostile or indifferent, or simply too afraid to accept a socialist leaflet, now eagerly sought out those of their comrades whom they knew to be somehow involved in revolutionary politics: “If earlier no one (even) saw them,” recalls the smith Alexei Buzinov, who worked in the Nevsky Ship and Machine Works, “or perhaps did not want to notice them in order to keep out of trouble, now everyone suddenly knew that these were smart, well-informed people. Many dug around in their past, memories began to come to light, and it turned out that someone here and there, somehow or other, had been in contact with socialists… From their side, I do not recall a single reproach, personal or otherwise, for earlier threats or insults. In the workers’ attitude towards them, it began to be recognised that the socialists were the leaders of the labour movement. They were paid heed to, they were looked after in a special way, with a kind of crude but touching good-heartedness.” (GD Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labour, Society and Revolution, p. 238.)

Like the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks also had some wealthy sympathisers who were systematically tapped for cash. Well-heeled civil servants, Zemstvo liberals, doctors, and other professional people provided money through donations, put up full-timers and even hid fugitives. The radicalisation of the professional layers was shown by the number of resolutions of sympathy and solidarity with the workers’ movement passed by professional unions. The engineers’ union actually elected the Bolshevik Krzhizhanovsky to its Executive Committee. Many intellectual unions collected money and gave assistance to the labour movement in the course of the year. The engineers voted at their congress not to participate in the compilation of black lists of worker activists. In Odessa, the director of a big printing works always helped the Bolsheviks out in a financial crisis. The industrialist Savva Morozov donated 2,000 roubles a month to Krassin from late 1903 onwards. Krassin’s biography states that he raised the necessary funds for Novaya Zhizn’ “mainly through the generosity of his employer, the manufacturer Savva Morozov.” (L. Krassin, Leonid Krassin: His life and work, 1929, p. 36.)

Maxim Gorky, whose fame as a writer was already established, played a key role in raising this kind of money, enlisting the aid of many other writers and prominent intellectuals, whose enthusiasm had been aroused by the revolution. Students and other middle-class people were approached for donations. Even the odd landowner, like A. Tsurupa, gave regular contributions. The collaboration of some of these wealthy sympathisers went well beyond the passive role of supplying sums of money, and some of them showed a real commitment and even took big risks for the workers’ cause. Such a case was that of a nephew of Morozov, Nikolai Schmidt, himself the owner of a furniture factory in the Presnya district of Moscow. Although only 23 years old, Nikolai went over to the side of the workers in 1905. He provided funds not only for the Bolshevik paper Novaya Zhizn’, but also to purchase weapons. His factory, which played an important part in the Moscow uprising, was known to the police as a ‘devils’ nest’. Schmidt paid a terrible price for his devotion to the workers’ cause.

These donations became very important because the amount of money raised from subscriptions, paper and literature sales was nowhere near enough to meet the demands of the new situation. Immediately after the Third Congress of the Party, Krassin was put in charge of secret military work. He organised the establishment of underground bomb factories and arms dumps. Arms were smuggled in from abroad. Local Party committees began to set up military groups (boyeviye komitety). The military committees were charged with obtaining arms and setting up fighting units. This work was stepped up in the autumn when it became clear that a decisive showdown was inevitable. Some of the money was raised from wealthy sympathisers. Yet another source of finance were the ‘appropriations’, bank robberies carried out by Bolshevik armed units. Lenin wrote many times on this question in his writings of 1905 on the revolutionary army and militia. In these writings Lenin insisted that the work of the armed units was necessarily bound up with the revolutionary movement of the masses and only permissible in such a situation. This was not a terrorist conspiracy but part of a broad movement and a united front including fighting agreements with all forces prepared to conduct a fight against the dictatorial regime. Such activities, it must be stressed, have nothing whatsoever in common with the kind of terrorism, guerrillaism and the like which has unfortunately become a feature of the modern period when, in the absence of an authoritative Marxist leadership, all kinds of primitive methods of struggle have re-emerged from the dustbin of history.