Central to the whole discussion was the agrarian question – an issue upon which the whole fate of the Russian Revolution hinged. The experience of the revolution showed the inadequacy of the old agrarian programme based on the otrezki (the cut-off lands). Lenin was in favour of adopting a much more radical agrarian programme based on the slogan of confiscation of land from the feudal landowners. This slogan was absolutely central to Lenin’s perspectives for the Russian Revolution. It was the slogan of a ‘people’s revolution’ – a thoroughgoing revolutionary transformation, led by the working class in alliance with the poor peasants. The basic task would be a radical solution of the landlords’ estates land problem by means of a complete agrarian revolution leading to confiscation to be carried out by peasant committees to smash the power of the landlords and, depending on circumstances – i.e., triumph of the armed uprising – a democratic republic and the nationalisation of the land.
Lenin advocated a revolution to clear out all the accumulated rubbish of feudalism. It was based on the perspective of a revolutionary struggle against the autocracy and armed insurrection, not class collaboration with liberals and parliamentary cretinism. The Mensheviks opposed calling on peasants to seize the land in favour of pettifogging reformism of the worst kind. In place of the revolutionary initiative of the masses, they favoured parliamentary manoeuvres and deals with the liberals behind the backs of the masses. Their policy on the land question flowed from their general reformist line. In contrast, Lenin pointed out that the land question would be solved by revolutionary means or not at all. In opposition to the reformist demand for the municipalisation of land (presumably under the rule of the autocracy!), he put forward the demand for the nationalisation of the land. However, Lenin was careful to point out – contrary to the prejudice of the Narodniks, who mistakenly saw in this the overthrow of capitalism – that land nationalisation is a bourgeois demand, which does not in itself signify the abolition of bourgeois property, but only of landlord-feudal property. As to the class forces of the revolution, Lenin spelled this out a thousand times: the bourgeois liberals were a counter-revolutionary force. The bourgeois-democratic revolution could only be carried out by an alliance of workers and poor peasants (semi-proletarian masses of town and countryside). Actually, the nationalisation of the land in the context of the bourgeois-democratic revolution means the most radical ‘clearing of the decks’ for the free development of capitalism. Together with the revolutionary overthrow of the autocracy, and its replacement by a democratically elected Constituent Assembly, it would mean the establishment of a bourgeois democratic regime under the most favourable conditions for the working class. The possibility of carrying out the socialist revolution in backward Russia before Western Europe never occurred to Lenin – or anyone else at this time, except for Trotsky.
Plekhanov also adamantly rejected the demand for nationalisation. Resorting to demagogic arguments, Plekhanov accused Lenin of putting forward the same arguments of the Social Revolutionaries, and argued that the demand for the division of the landlords’ estates was reactionary:
I say that the peasant idea of a general distribution of the land is a reactionary feature. And precisely in view of this reactionary feature, which has been refuted throughout our whole political history, I pronounce myself against the nationalisation of the land. So how can this feature be cited in evidence against me? Lenin is looking at nationalisation through the eyes of a Social Revolutionary. He has even begun to take over their terminology – for example, he is holding forth about the notorious people’s creativity.
With his customary irony, he went on:
It is pleasant to recall old friends, but it is unpleasant to see Social Democrats defending Narodnik positions. The agrarian history of Russia is more similar to the history of India, Egypt, China and other Eastern despotisms, than to the history of Western Europe… In order to smash despotism, it is necessary to eliminate its economic basis. Therefore I am against nationalisation now; when we argued this against the Social Revolutionaries, Lenin found that my arguments were correct. Lenin says “we will render nationalisation harmless”, but, in order to render nationalisation harmless, it is necessary to find a guarantee against restoration; but such a guarantee does not exist and cannot exist. Remember the history of France; remember the history of Britain; in each of these countries after a broad revolutionary swing, restoration followed. The same thing can happen to us; and our programme must be such that in carrying it out, it must cause the least harm in the case of restoration.
And Plekhanov concludes:
And that is why I reject nationalisation. Lenin’s draft is closely linked to the utopia of the seizure of power by the revolutionaries, and that is why those of us who have no taste for such a utopia must speak out against it. Municipalisation is another matter. (Congress Minutes, Chertvyortiy S’yezd RSDRP, Protokoly, pp. 59-60 and pp. 60-61.)
Plekhanov’s comments at least had the merit of clarity. When he accuses Lenin of linking his radical agrarian programme to the seizure of power by the revolutionaries, he is not far from the truth, although he presents it in the form of a caricature. The essence of Lenin’s solution to the agrarian problem was precisely a revolution in which the proletariat would base itself on a thoroughgoing peasant revolution to overthrow tsarism and institute a democratic republic. This demanded that the party should stand for the most radical programme of revolutionary democratic demands, and above all a revolutionary solution to the land problem. By contrast, Plekhanov and the Mensheviks attempted to frighten the Party with the philistine idea that revolution inevitably produces counter-revolution. Here we have in an extreme form the notion that the working class must do nothing to ‘provoke’ the counter-revolution, and, by extension, must cling to the shirt tails of the liberals. Lenin answered that the only full guarantee against the danger of restoration was the complete victory of the revolution. In this little episode are encapsulated two entirely different perspectives, two entirely different psychologies even.
In his reply to the discussion on the agrarian question, Plekhanov summed up in a nutshell the Menshevik position. He accused Lenin of Blanquism:
This is how matters stand – between Lenin and me there are extremely serious differences of opinion. These differences must not be glossed over. They must be clarified in all their importance and extent. Our party is living through a serious moment. The decisions that you will take today or tomorrow on the disputed questions will determine to a significant extent the fate of our entire party and therefore of our entire country. And for that very reason, comrade Lenin’s draft expresses not only his private opinion on the agrarian question, but the whole character of his revolutionary thinking.
Blanquism or Marxism – that is the question which we will decide today. Comrade Lenin himself admitted that his agrarian draft was closely linked to his idea of seizure of power. And I am very grateful for his sincerity.
Now comes the crunch. Plekhanov revealed the attitude of the Mensheviks towards the seizure of power by the workers and peasants with these words:
After 17 October the seizure of power ceased being a utopia, comrade Lenin? But you spoke of this even before 17 October, and just as before 17 October I answered you. 17 October changes nothing in our evaluation of the idea of the seizure of power. Our standpoint consists in this, that the seizure of power is compulsory for us when we are making a proletarian revolution. But since the revolution now impending can only be petty bourgeois, we are duty bound to refuse to seize power. (Ibid., p. 139 and p. 142.)
Such was the argument of the Mensheviks in 1906-7. The revolution was a bourgeois revolution: the tasks before it were bourgeois-democratic; the conditions for socialism were absent in Russia. Therefore, any attempt by the workers to seize power was adventurism; the task of the workers was to seek alliance with the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, to assist them to carry through the bourgeois revolution.
What was Lenin’s reply to Plekhanov? He made no attempt to deny that the revolution was bourgeois-democratic, certainly not that it was possible to build socialism in Russia alone. All the Russian Marxists, the Mensheviks, Lenin, and Trotsky were agreed on these questions. It was ABC that the conditions for a socialist transformation were absent in Russia, but had matured in the West. Replying to Plekhanov’s dark warnings of “the danger of restoration”, Lenin explained:
If we mean a real, fully effective, economic guarantee against restoration, that is, a guarantee that would create the economic conditions precluding restoration, then we shall have to say: the only guarantee against restoration is a socialist revolution in the West. There can be no other guarantee in the full sense of the term. Without this condition, in whichever other way the problem is solved (municipalisation, division of the land, etc.) restoration will not only be possible but positively inevitable.
Thus, right from the start, Lenin conceived of the Russian Revolution as the prelude to the socialist revolution in the West. He tied the fate of the Russian Revolution in an indissoluble link with that of the international socialist revolution, without which it would inevitably succumb to internal reaction:
I would formulate this proposition as follows: the Russian Revolution can achieve victory by its own efforts, but it cannot possibly hold and consolidate its gains by its own strength. It cannot do this unless there is a socialist revolution in the West. Without this condition restoration is inevitable, whether we have municipalisation, or nationalisation, or division of the land: for under each and every form of possession and property the small proprietor will always be a bulwark of restoration. After the complete victory of the democratic revolution the small proprietor will inevitably turn against the proletariat; and the sooner the common enemies of the proletariat and of the small proprietors, such as the capitalists, the landlords, the financial bourgeoisie, and so forth are overthrown, the sooner will this happen. Our democratic republic has no other reserve than the socialist proletariat of the West. (LCW, Unity Congress of the RSDLP, vol. 10, p. 280 in both quotes, my emphasis.)
In his report of the Congress, Lenin commented:
The right wing of our Party does not believe in the complete victory of the present, i.e., bourgeois-democratic, revolution in Russia; it dreads such a victory, it does not emphatically and definitely put the slogan of such a victory before the people. It is constantly being misled by the essentially erroneous idea, which is really a vulgarisation of Marxism, that only the bourgeoisie can independently ‘make’ the bourgeois revolution, or that only the bourgeoisie should lead the bourgeois revolution. The role of the proletariat as the vanguard in the struggle for the complete and decisive victory of the bourgeois revolution is not clear to the right Social Democrats. (LCW, Report on the Unity Congress of the RSDLP, vol. 10, pp. 377-78.)
The differences between Bolshevism and Menshevism here stand out with complete clarity. And yet, there were differences and doubts among the Bolsheviks themselves on this issue. Among others, Suvorov, Bazarov, and also Stalin opposed nationalisation in favour of ‘sharing out’ the land among the peasants. This demand reflected a petty-bourgeois tendency, a thousand miles removed from Lenin’s position.
Since we are concluding a temporary revolutionary union with the struggling peasantry, since we cannot on that account ignore the demands of that peasantry, we must support those demands, if, as a whole and in general, they do not conflict with the tendencies of economic development and with the progress of the revolution. The peasants demand division; division is not inconsistent with the above-mentioned phenomena; therefore, we must support complete confiscation and division. From that point of view, both nationalisation and municipalisation are equally unacceptable. (J.V. Stalin in Congress Minutes, Chertvyortiy S’yezd RSDRP, Protokoly, p. 79.)
In order to defeat ‘municipalisation’, Lenin was forced to withdraw his own resolution and vote with the supporters of ‘division’. Under certain conditions, the division of the landlords’ estates would, of course, be a step forward, but Lenin’s demand for nationalisation was the only consistent revolutionary demand. In the end, the final resolution was an unsatisfactory compromise.