The victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, Lenin wrote in Two Tactics, would require a dictatorship because without a dictatorship, it would be impossible to break the desperate resistance of the landlords, big business and Tsarism, and repel their counter-revolutionary attempts[53]. By its origin and fundamental nature, such a democratic dictatorship must be the organ of popular insurrection. But what would be its form? Investigating this question shows that Lenin intended the democratic dictatorship to be a stage on the path to a bourgeois-democratic Constituent Assembly.
Lenin argued that the Russian Revolution was of a bourgeois-democratic character, but recognised that such a description did not define the balance of class forces and the governmental power in the revolution. For Lenin, always sensitive to the needs of the peasants, the heart of this democratic revolution was the resolution of the agrarian question – the destruction of all remnants of feudalism. Lenin insisted that the task of the working class was to strive, through its independent organisations and efforts, for the widest and most radical development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. He was for an utterly uncompromising struggle to demolish all economic, political and social vestiges of feudalism. The struggle against Tsarism was to be used to create the most favourable conditions for the establishment of a genuinely progressive constitutional democratic framework for the benefit of the Russian workers’ movement.
Initially, Lenin was more concerned with defining the tasks the democratic dictatorship would have to carry out, and at this stage was severely critical of those who, in his opinion, showed ‘lifeless scholasticism’ in attempting to define too closely the form. For him the RDDPP was the movement, the alliance of workers and peasants that overthrew Tsarism, after which it was any form of revolutionary government required to repulse all attempts at restoration[54] [occasionally he added the condition that the participation of the proletariat in the government was necessary].
The formation of the St Petersburg Soviet suggested to Lenin that the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies should be regarded as the embryo of the RDDPP[55]. However, the formal purpose of the RDDPP was to convene a popular Constituent Assembly; to put into effect the minimum programme of proletarian democracy which was the only programme capable of safeguarding the interests of the people which had risen against the autocracy. Somebody had to convene the Constituent Assembly, somebody had to guarantee the freedom and fairness of the elections, somebody had to invest the Assembly with power and authority. Obviously only a revolutionary government, the organ of the insurrection, could genuinely desire this and be capable of doing what was necessary to achieve it[56]. The Soviet perfectly fitted that specification.
Lenin made it clear: the major political task of the provisional revolutionary government, the government of the victorious popular insurrection, would be to secure and convene a Constituent Assembly that would express the will of all the people with full power and authority. This Constituent Assembly was, of course, a democratic institution elected by universal suffrage – that is, a bourgeois institution. The Constituent Assembly would be the Russian governmental form that rested on the bourgeois state relations resulting from the seizure of power by the proletariat and peasantry. This sets a clear limit on the tasks and duration of the RDDPP.
Nevertheless, Lenin felt it necessary to explain in some detail its practical tasks and political programme. In 1905, in The Revolutionary Army and the Revolutionary Government[57], Lenin listed six fundamental points that he considered had to become the political banner and the immediate programme of any provisional revolutionary government. These were designed to enlist the sympathy of the people for that government and were to be regarded as the most urgent tasks, on which the entire revolutionary energy of the people would be concentrated. There was, of course, as was usual with Lenin, considerable overlap with what he wrote elsewhere. (See, for example, The Democratic Tasks of the Revolutionary Proletariat[58] and Victorious Revolution[59].)
The six points were:
[1] Convening a Constituent Assembly of all the people, elected by secret ballot in universal, direct, and equal elections (one person one vote, etc.). However, this slogan did not stand in isolation, but in conjunction with the following Bolshevik slogans:
•the revolutionary overthrow of the Tsarist autocracy, and its replacement by the democratic republic, and
•the sovereignty of the people, safeguarded by a democratic constitution, i.e., the concentration of supreme governmental authority entirely in the hands of a legislative assembly composed of representatives of the people and forming a single chamber.
[2]Creation of a democratic political system. Political freedom was economically equivalent to:
•free development of capitalism, but no privileges for either the capitalists or the landlords,
•abolition of all survivals of serfdom, and
•the raising of the living and cultural standards of the masses, especially of the lower strata.
[3] Arming the people, no independent power for either the police or the officials; their complete subordination to the people. All power – wholly, completely and indivisibly – in the hands of the whole people.
[4]Complete freedom for the oppressed and disfranchised nationalities.
[5]Introduction of the Bolshevik minimum programme: 8-hour day, free trade unions, the working class be free to struggle for socialism, etc.
[6]Formation of peasant revolutionary committees with responsibility for distributing the land seized without compensation by the revolutionary activities of the peasants during the democratic revolution. The provisional revolutionary government resting on the RDDPP would enact land to the peasant, and this would be formally approved by the subsequent bourgeois-democratic Constituent Assembly.
Of course, Lenin could give only a list of the most important factors required for winning the democratic republic. He did not claim his list was complete. Rather, his emphasis was on the revolutionary government striving to secure the support of the masses, as without the active revolutionary support of the people it would be a mere nothing.
The lynch-pin of the class alliance that would form the basis of the provisional RDDPP was item 6 on the list, proletarian support for the bourgeois measure of an end to serfdom: seizure of the land without compensation, and its distribution amongst the peasants by the peasants themselves. Here, the task is to be performed as an integral and essential part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution by a provisional revolutionary democratic dictatorship consciously restricting itself to bourgeois measures and resting on bourgeois property relations.
To sum up:
- The RDDPP was, in practice, whatever governmental structure was required to implement the sum-total of bourgeois-democratic changes envisaged in the Bolshevik minimum programme, and for the defence of the gains of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, until reaction had been defeated.
- The form of the government was not essential: the Soviets appeared suitable as did revolutionary peasant committees.
- A key and essential purpose of the provisional RDDPP was to ensure that a Constituent Assembly would be freely and fairly elected to be the government of a bourgeois Russian state.
- To preserve its alliances in the RDDPP the Bolshevik Party would limit its demands to its minimum programme.
It is quite clear that in 1905-06, Lenin’s schema for the Russian Revolution was a victorious uprising of the democratic forces, overthrowing the Tsarist autocracy, solving the land problem and leading to the provisional RDDPP. This would be followed by an elected bourgeois-democratic government (Constituent Assembly) resting on a capitalist state. During this last period there would be a determined counter-attack by the forces of reaction to take back some or all of the gains made, but the day would be saved by a socialist revolution in the West. The direct translation of the RDDPP into a socialist revolution in Russia alone was excluded. This was a scenario that ran through Lenin’s works up to, and including, early 1917. For example, in September 1914, he again drew attention to the link he placed between the socialist revolution in Europe and bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia. He explained that while in all the advanced countries the war had placed socialist revolution on the order of the day, in Russia it still remained the task of Russian SDs to achieve the three fundamental conditions for consistent democratic reform [a democratic republic with complete equality and self-determination for all nations, confiscation of the landed estates, and an eight-hour working day][60].
Lenin’s perspective may be briefly expressed as follows: The belated Russian bourgeoisie was incapable of leading its own revolution to the end. The complete victory of the revolution through the medium of the provisional RDDPP would purge the country of serfdom, invest the development of Russian capitalism with an “American” dynamic, strengthen the proletariat in the city, its allies in the country, and would open up broad possibilities within a democratic Russia for the struggle for socialism. Simultaneously, the victory of the Russian Revolution would provide a mighty impulse for the socialist revolution in Western Europe, and this latter would not only shield Russia from the dangers of restoration but also permit the Russian proletariat to achieve the conquest of power in a comparatively short historical interval.
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Lenin, V.I., Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, July 1905, CW 9:56
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Lenin, V.I., On the Provisional Revolutionary Government, May 1905, CW 8:464-465
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Lenin, V.I., Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, 1905, CW 10:21
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Lenin, V.I., Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, July 1905, CW 9:21
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Lenin, V.I., The Revolutionary Army and the Revolutionary Government, 1905, CW 8:566-567
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Lenin, V.I., The Democratic Tasks of the Revolutionary Proletariat, June 1905, CW, 8:511-518
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Lenin, V.I., Victorious Revolution, May – June 1905, CW8:450-451
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Lenin, V.I., War and Russian Social Democracy, Sept 1914, CW 21:33