It was during his exile, that Lenin devised his plan for the unification of Russian Marxists into a national party. The key to this was the production of a widely distributed national newspaper, Iskra, to be produced fortnightly, to become the champion of revolutionary Marxism. However, since police persecution made the regular publication of a revolutionary newspaper in Russia impossible, Lenin planned to publish the paper abroad, using a chain of agents to smuggle it into Russia and distribute it.
Repression by the Tsarist authorities, and the arrest and exile of militants as soon as they came to police attention, meant a lack of continuity in leadership; the resulting political and organisational inexperience meant that SD in Russia was fragmented and immersed in local work which, in turn, led to a bending to local pressures with the consequent spontaneous generation of reformist tendencies. Lenin saw that a necessary step towards eliminating such shortcomings and welding the diverse local currents into a single, All-Russian Social Democratic movement, was the creation of an All-Russian political newspaper. Without such a newspaper the party could neither effectively communicate its propaganda and agitation, even to its own members, nor focus its activities. The role of a newspaper had also to be as a collective organiser; likened by Lenin to the scaffolding round a building under construction, “which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organised labour”[11]. He posed the simple question, if Russian SDs were unable to organise their own paper, how on earth could they organise to overthrow the Tsar?
The technical tasks of supplying the newspaper with copy, and of regularly distributing it, required an organised, disciplined network of party agents. To be successful, these agents would have to work in close and regular contact with the local party organisations and have their active support. For Lenin, this had the hugely important consequence of unifying the disparate elements that then formed SD in Russia. The Central Committee was to be the brains of the organisation, the agents the skeleton, and the local organisation, the eyes, ears and muscles.
Because of Plekhanov’s eminence, the strategy of building a revolutionary party around a Marxist newspaper could only succeed if the paper were associated with him, and its editorial board included leading members of the Emancipation of Labour Group (founded in 1883 and led by Plekhanov, Zasulich, and another prominent Marxist, Pavel Axelrod)[12]. With fellow exile Arsenyev Potresov (who had inherited some money which he used to finance the publication of Marxist works), Lenin and Martov determined on joining forces with their co-thinkers in the Emancipation of Labour Group. By the time of his release from exile on 29 January 1900, Lenin’s life-goal – the building of the Russian revolutionary Marxist Party – was decided. He began to put this plan into effect immediately his term of exile ended.
For six months Lenin criss-crossed European Russia illegally, visiting Social Democratic groups in Ufa (February), Moscow (February, where he heard of preparations for the Second Congress of the RSDLP, which given the thrust of his activities, it is likely that he welcomed), St Petersburg (February, in May when he and Martov were arrested and detained for ten days, and again in June), Pskov (March), Riga (March), Podolsk (June), Nizhni-Novgorod (June) and Samara (July)13. He also established written contact with Social Democratic groups and individuals in various other Russian towns, invariably gaining their support for Iskra. By the summer, Lenin, aided by Martov and Potresov, had established a network of individuals, groups and agents who were committed to supporting both Iskra as a publication, and the concept of a centralised party composed of professional revolutionaries organised around, and by the paper.
In St Petersburg (June), Lenin met Zasulich who had been sent by the Group to establish contacts with the interior, and, together, they negotiated its participation in the publication of an All-Russian Marxist newspaper. Zasulich was one of the most popular individuals amongst Russian Marxists. As a young girl she had (in the year before Trotsky was born) attempted to shoot General Trepov, the police chief of St Petersburg, in protest at his torture of political prisoners. She had an exceedingly sharp mind and rare personal insight, affectionately known as “auntie” to a generation of Russian Marxists because so many had turned up on her doorstep to be fed and housed. It was through Zasulich that the Group could claim a direct link to Marx and Engels[14].
On 16 July 1900, Lenin and Potresov left Russia for Zurich to meet the Emancipation of Labour Group which, in fact, was a small propaganda circle, relatively few in number and poorly organised. On the other hand, when Lenin went abroad he stood in first place amongst the internal, Russian, SDs; he was one of the few people to have met most of the important Social Democratic groups, he had shown an excellent grasp of Marxist theory in his debates with the Economists, he had a solid store of practical revolutionary experience and, most importantly, he had a vision of a practical programme that would unify the movement and give it direction[15]. Lenin was important to the émigré group because it was not until they met him, that they had any regular links with SDs inside Russia[16].
Whilst the initial discussions between Plekhanov, Axelrod and Zasulich on the one side, and Lenin and Potresov on the other, were extremely tense, working relations were established, meaning that Iskra had an editorial board of six, consisting of Lenin, Martov and Potresov, and Plekhanov, Axelrod and Zasulich, with Plekhanov having two votes. The tone of the meeting in which this last point was agreed, was so bad that Lenin said later that he felt he “had been fooled and utterly defeated” since the voting system would give Plekhanov “complete domination” over Iskra[17]. It is clear from Lenin’s report of the discussions with the Group that he saw the arrangement for the editorial board as a purely temporary measure, and it was necessary to determine a plan by which the Iskraists would take editorial control.
In the next twelve months Lenin cemented the foundations of a national newspaper as organiser of a revolutionary Social Democratic party. In September 1900, the Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra[18] was published, aggressively attacking all the reformist and non-Marxist currents within Russian SD. In December the first issue of Iskra was printed in Leipzig, and in February 1901, the second issue was published in Munich, both on secret presses supplied by the German Social Democratic Party. That Lenin made Leipzig and then Munich, rather than Zurich, the city in which Iskra was published, could be ascribed to his intent to minimise the influence of the members of the Group. In the late spring of 1901, Lenin proposed a detailed and concrete plan for the unification of Russian revolutionary Social Democratic organisations, to be grouped around Iskra. In April 1901, the third issue of Iskra was published and Krupskaya became secretary to Iskra’s editorial board. By this time Lenin was, de-facto, editor-in-chief, Iskra was becoming identified with him, and the organisation was commonly known as the Iskra organisation[19]. In May 1901, the fourth issue of Iskra carried Lenin’s Where to Begin[20], which was spontaneously re-issued by local Social Democratic organisations in Russia as a separate pamphlet.
The editorial board gave Plekhanov the task of producing a draft programme for the RSDLP, but in the early part of 1902, Lenin submitted a counter-proposal which could only be seen as a challenge to Plekhanov’s authority. This caused considerable difficulties in the relations between the two men[21], and the discussions on drafting the party programme led to such bitter exchanges that it was necessary for Zasulich and Martov to act as peacemakers and intermediaries, for Plekhanov and Lenin, respectively. Fortunately, both were naturally conciliatory, and were friends who shared lodgings. However, as these dealings proceeded, Martov and Potresov increasingly came under the influence of Zasulich[22]. After nearly a year of each man nit-picking over the other’s draft, Plekhanov’s programme was submitted to the 1903 Congress with only one real change – the addition of a short section by Lenin on the agrarian question[23].
In March 1902, What Is To Be Done? [24] was published in Stuttgart and Krupskaya recorded that its publication was greeted enthusiastically by “everyone” including Plekhanov and Martov, and especially those who understood the practicalities of work inside Russia[25]. In this, one of his most influential works, Lenin elaborated the ideological foundations of a new type of party – the Revolutionary Marxist Party. It was a summary of Iskra tactics and Iskra organisational policy.
Iskra was becoming, as Lenin had hoped and planned, a rallying centre for Russian SDs, a mechanism for training, educating and informing party workers, and it had a decisive role in unifying the dispersed Social-Democratic circles. In a number of Russian cities (St Petersburg, Moscow, Samara, and others), groups and committees of the RDSLP were organised along the Iskra line. The agents of the editorial board – nine in number at the end of 1901 – travelled secretly all over European Russia contacting local groups, welding these into compact groups of professional revolutionaries, establishing groups where none existed, and co-ordinating their work. They delivered party literature, helped to establish illegal print shops, and collected the information needed by Iskra. Moreover, they fought ideologically to win the groups to a Leninist position against the Economists and other non-Iskra groupings[26].
In April 1902, the owner of the Munich printing press decided to cease printing Iskra and the editorial board agreed to transfer to London rather than Zurich. Lenin and Krupskaya left Munich for London and on 1 June 1902, Iskra No 21 which carried the draft programme of the party, was published there. From mid-1902 onwards, Lenin’s major activity was preparing for the forthcoming Second Congress of the RSDLP (travelling, meeting, speaking, writing, forming an organising committee, making conference arrangements, delegates’ arrangements, etc.).
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Lenin, V.I., Where to Begin, 1901, CW 5:19
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Woods, A., op cit, p113
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Sennett, A., Permanent Revolution in Spain PhD Thesis University of Manchester, 1992, p37. Not to be confused with long-time friend of Krupskaya and fund-raiser for Iskra, the feminist Mrs A. M. Kalmykova who used ‘Auntie’ as an alias. See Wolfe B.D., Three Who Made a Revolution, Penguin, London 1984, p123
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Trotsky, L.D., On Lenin, George Harrap and Co., London, 1971, p39
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Harding, N., op cit, p31
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Lenin, V.I., How the Spark was Nearly Extinguished, 1900, CW 4:333-349
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Lenin, V.I., Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra, 1900, CW 4:351-356
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Woods, A., op cit, p113-124
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Lenin, V.I., Where to Begin, May 1901, CW 5:13-24
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Krupskaya, N., op cit, p61
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Trotsky, L.D., On Lenin, George Harrap and Co., London, 1971, p35
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Wolfe, B.D., Three Who Made a Revolution, Pelican, London, 1984, p256-7
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Lenin, V.I., What Is To Be Done?, March 1902, CW 5:347-529
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Krupskaya, N., op cit, p60
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Cliff, 1975 op cit, p100-102