The events of the First 1905 Revolution, are given only in enough detail to show the very different experiences of Lenin and Trotsky; differences which played a major role in the subsequent development of the conflicting theories of Permanent Revolution (ToPR) and the Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry (RDDPP).
Trotsky returned to Russia early, in February, and was at the very heart of the St Petersburg Soviet from its inception, gaining a unique insight into working class psychology and the dynamics of proletarian struggle. Due to a conjunction of circumstances, Trotsky played a much greater role in determining the course of the 1905 Revolution than any other member of the RSDLP, specifically: the absence from Russia of other leading figures in the RSDLP; Trotsky’s exceptional all-round leadership abilities; the split in the RSDLP which allowed considerable scope for personal and independent activity separate from, and outside, party discipline; the relatively short duration of the St Petersburg Soviet (the ‘Fifty Days’) which meant that there was little time for either the Bolshevik or Menshevik faction to come to dominate it; and the conservatism of the Bolshevik “committee-men” (both in not opening the party to young workers, and their subsequent opposition to participation in the St Petersburg Soviet), which allowed others to take the lead in core working class activities.
Trotsky’s experience as a leader of the day-to-day struggle of the workers gave him a deep understanding of just how much the workers would sacrifice for their class aims, and how determined they would be to retain leadership of the struggle once they embarked on the path of direct action, and confirmed unambiguously in his mind that:
“the proletariat, once having power in its hands, would not be able to remain confined within the bourgeois framework of the revolution. On the contrary, precisely in order to guarantee its victory, the proletarian vanguard in the very earliest stages of its rule would have to make extremely deep inroads not only into feudal but also into bourgeois property relations”[1].
At the start of 1905, the workers’ response was largely spontaneous, with neither Bolsheviks nor Mensheviks having any substantial weight in the workers’ movement[2]. The beginning of the revolution found the RSDLP seriously weakened both by the split in the leadership and by arrests inside Russia (including nine of the original eleven members of the CC)[3] which had left the organisation confused and disorientated. The emphasis on internal party discussions after the Second Congress had paralysed public activity for many months and, until Vperyod appeared in January 1905, the Bolsheviks were without a public face, with a consequent lack of focus and organisation[4]. Lenin, for much of 1905, concentrated his attention on Bolshevik membership and structure, launching a new weekly paper, Proletarii, organising a Bolshevik-only Congress in London from 12-26 April, and working towards healing the split in the RSDLP.
Immediately, Lenin had to correct the errors and mistakes of the Bolshevik committee-men: he had to persuade them to increase the recruitment of young workers, and to place these new recruits in local leadership roles. During this period, at the Third (Bolshevik-only) Congress, on the basis of actual events, he redefined the main ally of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution as the peasantry as a whole. This proposed class alliance was the basis on which he developed, over 1905, the slogan that would be at the core of Bolshevik governmental policy until 1917, the RDDPP. As the proposed key for a successful revolution, this perspective was at the heart of Bolshevik strategy and, in the summer of 1905, in a key text, The Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution[5] (hereinafter referred to as Two Tactics), Lenin described how the strategy and tactics for a successful bourgeois-democratic revolution flowed from this central concept.
Then, in November, he had to persuade the committee-men to participate in the activities of the Soviet as loyal members. Simultaneously he had to publicly campaign and argue that a principled unification of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was possible and necessary. This required organising a preparatory Bolshevik Conference in December 1905 in Finland, and then preparing for, and participating in, the Unity Congress, April 1906, in Stockholm.
It can be seen that while Trotsky was more directly engaged with the workers themselves, Lenin’s activity in 1905 was overwhelmingly concerned with working to re-orient and re-group the party to meet new events.
-
Trotsky, L.D., 1905 Vintage Books, New York, 1972, pvi
-
Knei-Paz, B., The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, Clarendon Press Oxford, 1978, p207
-
Woods, A., Bolshevism the Road to Revolution, Wellred Publications, London, 1999, p173
-
Woods, A., ibid p160
-
Lenin, V.I., The Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, June – July 1905, CW 9:15-140