All through the war, Lenin had plenty of trouble in his own camp. Not for the first or last time, Lenin found himself isolated increasingly within the leadership of his own Party. Some Bolsheviks, admittedly only a few, even lost their bearings to the extent of going over to chauvinism, like the members of the Parisian émigré group who actually volunteered to serve in the French army. Not even the Bolsheviks were immune to the pressures of defencism. These were, after all, not rank-and-filers but members of the Bolshevik ‘Foreign Committee’. But the Party was hard up and didn’t even have the means to call a congress of the exiles. In any case, who would have attended? And would Lenin have had a political majority? That was far from clear. There were a lot of problems with different local groups of exiles, who were clearly showing signs of demoralisation, of which the case of the intellectuals in the Paris group was only one expression.
In a way, this was not all that surprising. After all, the war had caused a crisis in every section of the labour movement. It would be surprising if the prevailing atmosphere of war fever had no echo in the ranks of the Bolsheviks. Krupskaya remembered the general mood of confusion that reigned in the first months of the war:
People were not clear on the question, and spoke mostly about which side was the attacking side.
In Paris, in the long run, the majority of the group expressed themselves against the war and volunteering, but some comrades – Sapozhkov (Kuznetsov), Kazakov (Britman, Sviagin), Misha Edisherov (Davydov), Moiseyev (Ilya, Zefir), and others – joined the French army as volunteers. The Menshevik, Bolshevik, and Socialist-Revolutionary volunteers (about 80 men in all) adopted a declaration in the name of the ‘Russian Republicans’, which was printed in the French press. Plekhanov made a farewell speech in honour of the volunteers before they left Paris.
The majority of our Paris group condemned volunteering. But in the other groups, too, there was no definite clarity on the question. Vladimir Ilyich realised how important it was at such a serious moment for every Bolshevik to have a clear understanding of the significance of events. A comradely exchange of opinions was necessary: it was inadvisable to fix all shades of opinion right away until the matter had been thrashed out. That is why, in his answer to Karpinsky’s letter framing the views of the Geneva section, Ilyich wrote: “Would not this ‘criticism’ and my ‘anti-criticism’ make a better subject for discussion?”
Ilyich knew that an understanding could more easily be reached in a comradely discussion than by correspondence. Of course, this was no time to keep such an issue long confined to comradely talks within a narrow circle of Bolsheviks. (N.K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, pp. 285-86.)
What happened in Paris was an extreme case, and an isolated one. Few Bolsheviks were drawn to an open chauvinist position. But some veered towards pacifism. Sections of the Party in France (Montpellier) advanced the slogan: ‘Down with war!’ and ‘Long live peace!’ which Lenin subjected to withering criticism. In all his writings of this period, Lenin pours scorn on pacifism, which he regarded as a debilitating influence on the working class. Not the slogan of ‘peace’, but class war, was what was needed. This idea is repeated time and again in dozens of letters and articles:
The watchword of peace, in my opinion, is incorrect at the present moment. It is a philistine, parson’s watchword. The proletarian watchword must be civil war. (LCW, To A.G. Shlyapnikov, 17/10/1914, vol. 35, p. 164.)
In July 1915, Lenin wrote to the Dutch Marxist, David Wijnkoop, expressing his delight that the Dutch comrades had taken up the slogan of a people’s militia:
I welcome with the greatest joy the position taken up by you, Gorter, and Ravesteyn on the question of a people’s militia (we have that in our programme too). An exploited class which did not strive to possess arms, to know how to use them, and to master the military art would be a class of lackeys. (LCW, To David Wijnkoop, vol. 35, p. 195.)
The essence of Lenin’s position on war is this: that the only way to end the war was to overthrow capitalism. Any other proposal was essentially a lie and a diversion. The slogan of ‘peace’ could only play a progressive role to the degree that it was closely linked to this perspective.
The struggle against war is the preparation for revolution, that is to say, the task of working class parties and of the International. Marxists pose this great task before the proletarian vanguard, without any frills. To the enervating slogan of ‘disarmament’ they counterpose the slogan of winning the army and arming the workers. (L. Trotsky, Writings 1935-36, p. 26.)
The truth of these assertions was established by the Russian Revolution in 1917. But initially, Lenin’s position was greeted with doubts and even incredulity. Even among experienced Bolshevik leaders, there were doubts and hesitations. Lenin’s implacable stand against chauvinism, which concentrated its fire against the ‘Centre’, was only grudgingly accepted by his colleagues, many of whom had been conciliators before the war. Although he occupied a leading position in the party and was entrusted with overseeing the work in Russia, Kamenev clearly did not agree with Lenin’s policy of defeatism. His conduct at the trial of the Duma deputies, with whom he had been arrested, left a lot to be desired and was sharply criticised by Lenin.
It is indeed evident from several sources that Kamenev entertained the severest doubts about Lenin’s Theses, especially the propagation of defeatism. Most spectacularly at his trial in February 1915 he publicly repudiated all Lenin’s theories on the war and called in his defence the ‘social chauvinist’ Yordansky. That this was not merely a device to secure a lighter sentence is confirmed by the fact that when the police raided another conference of the Bolshevik deputies with party workers on 4 November they discovered in Petrovsky’s possession notes dictated to him by Kamenev amending the Seven Theses and above all sidestepping the call for defeatism. Kamenev’s objection to the slogan of Russia’s defeat was apparently widely shared among Bolsheviks. (McKean, St. Petersburg Between the Revolutions, p. 360.)
On the basis of a textual analysis of 47 leaflets and appeals published illegally by Bolshevik militants between January 1915 and 22 February, 1917, McKean finds that not a single leaflet mentioned the slogan of the defeat of Russia being the lesser evil. Ten leaflets made reference in the form of short phrases to the necessity of turning the imperialist war into a civil war and nine to the formation of a Third International. But in general the party’s illegal literature avoided themes likely to evoke a hostile response from the masses and concentrated, as before the war, on attacking the government’s policies towards the working class and advocating a revolutionary struggle against the autocracy as the only way of ending the war, based on the old Bolshevik slogans of a democratic republic, the eight-hour day, and confiscation of the estates of the gentry (the ‘three whales’).