On 3 April, after weeks of frustrating negotiations to arrange his return through Germany, Lenin arrived at the Finland Station in revolutionary Petrograd. From the moment of his arrival, he adopted a belligerent stance in relation to the bourgeois Provisional Government and the defencist-reformist politicians who were propping it up.
Immediately on his return to Russia, Lenin opened up a struggle against those Bolshevik leaders who had capitulated to the pressures of petty-bourgeois ‘public opinion’, and had come out in support of the bourgeois Provisional Government. Only after an extremely sharp internal fight did he succeed in rearming and reorienting the Bolsheviks. In this struggle Lenin counted on the support of the Party rank and file, and the working class which, as he never tired of pointing out, is a hundred times more revolutionary than the most revolutionary party. In fact, the line of Kamenev was not well received by the Party in Petrograd, which called for his expulsion. The working-class Bolshevik stronghold of Vyborg demanded the expulsion of Stalin also. (M. Liebman, Leninism Under Lenin, p. 123.)
At the very moment of his arrival in the Finland Station, Lenin served notice of his intentions. Demonstratively turning his back on the assembled dignitaries who had turned up to greet him, he faced the workers with the words: “Long live the socialist world revolution!” This opening shot immediately confirmed the worst suspicions of the party leaders: that Lenin had gone over to – ‘Trotskyism’. A fierce faction fight ensued, culminating in the April Conference in which Lenin triumphed all along the line. Krupskaya writes:
The comrades were somewhat taken aback for the moment. Many of them thought that Ilyich was presenting the case in much too blunt a manner, and that it was too early yet to speak of a socialist revolution. (N.K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 347 and p. 348.)
It is obvious that Krupskaya is expressing herself in a diplomatic manner. The differences were of the most serious kind, and the struggle, though not long, was bitterly fought. When Lenin first defended his position in public, the audience was left speechless.
In his memoirs, Raskolnikov, who was present, recalls what happened when Kamenev walked into Lenin’s compartment:
Hardly had he entered the compartment and sat down than Vladimir Ilyich turned on Comrade Kamenev. “What’s this you’re writing in Pravda? We’ve seen several issues, and really swore at you…” we heard Ilyich say in his tone of fatherly reproof, in which there was never anything offensive.
Immediately after his arrival at the Finland Station, he was taken to a fashionable residence, the property of a famous ballerina, where in a big room complete with grand piano Lenin was regaled with welcoming speeches – the kind of thing he hated:
A celebration in honour of Ilyich was held here. One after another speakers voiced their feeling of profoundest joy at the return to Russia of the Party’s battle-hardened leader.
Ilyich sat and listened with a smile to all the speeches, waiting impatiently for them to finish.
When the list of speakers was exhausted, Ilyich at once came to life, got to his feet and set to work. He resolutely assailed the tactics which the leading Party groups and individual comrades had been pursuing before his return. He caustically ridiculed the notorious formula of support for the Provisional Government ‘in so far as… to that extent’, and gave out the slogan, ‘No support whatsoever to the government of capitalists’, at the same time calling on the Party to fight for power to be taken over by the Soviets, for a socialist revolution.
Using a few striking examples, Comrade Lenin brilliantly demonstrated the whole falsity of the policy of the Provisional Government, the glaring contradiction between its promises and its actions, between words and deeds, emphasising that it was our duty to expose ruthlessly its counter-revolutionary and anti-democratic pretensions and conduct. Comrade Lenin’s speech lasted nearly an hour. The audience remained fixed in intense, unweakening attention. The most responsible Party workers were represented here, but even for them what Ilyich said constituted a veritable revelation. It laid down a ‘Rubicon’ between the tactics of yesterday and those of today.
Comrade Lenin posed the question clearly and distinctly: ‘What is to be done?’ and summoned us away from half-recognition, half-support of the Government to non-recognition and irreconcilable struggle.
The ultimate triumph of Soviet power, which many saw as something in the hazy distance of a more or less indefinite future, was brought down by Comrade Lenin to the plane of an urgently necessary conquest of the revolution, to be attained within a very short time. This speech of his was in the fullest sense historic. Comrade Lenin here first set forth his political programme, which he formulated next day in the famous theses of 4 April. This speech produced a complete revolution in the thinking of the Party’s leaders, and underlay all the subsequent work of the Bolsheviks. It was not without cause that our Party’s tactics did not follow a straight line, but after Lenin’s return took a sharp turn to the left. (F.F. Raskolnikov, Kronstadt and Petrograd in 1917, p. 71 and pp. 76-77.)
Taken aback by the conduct of the Bolshevik leader, so completely at variance with that of his lieutenants in Petrograd, the Mensheviks accused him of trying to stir up violence and civil war. In the pages of his journal Yedinstvo, Plekhanov called Lenin’s theses ‘ravings’. But the attitude of the Bolshevik leaders was not much different. When Lenin’s April Theses were published in the pages of Pravda, on 7 April, they appeared over a single signature – Lenin’s own. Not one of the other leaders was prepared to associate their name with Lenin’s position. The very next day, Pravda published an article by Kamenev entitled Our Disagreements, which disassociated the Bolshevik leadership from Lenin’s position, stating that it represented his own private views which were shared neither by the editorial board of Pravda nor by the Bureau of the Central Committee.
Notwithstanding the reaction of the Mensheviks and the Bolshevik leaders in Petrograd, Lenin was not insane and was, in fact, more ‘in touch’ with the real situation than his comrades in Russia. For him the essence of the question was very simple: it was necessary to prepare the working class for the seizure of power, not, of course, immediately. Lenin was no adventurist and the idea of a minority taking power was very far from his mind. No. The task of the hour was to arm the vanguard of the class – the most advanced sections of the workers and youth – with the perspective of winning over the masses to the programme of socialist revolution as the only way out. This correctly summed up the essence of the situation. But it clashed head-on with the slogan of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ which everyone knew was not the slogan of a socialist revolution.
The matter was finally settled at a citywide conference which lasted eight days, from 2-10 April, and is known to history as the April Conference. The conference was attended by 149 delegates representing 79,000 members – 15,000 of them in Petrograd. This was already an impressive result for a party that had been underground and now stood in opposition to the mainstream labour leaders. Rarely has so much depended on the outcome of a single meeting as this. Lenin confronted in open struggle his old colleagues of many years standing who, in the decisive moment, turned out to be his bitterest opponents. Ironically, these ‘Old Bolsheviks’ rallied under the banner of – Leninism! They presented themselves as the defenders of Leninist orthodoxy as summed up in the slogan of the ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’, which Lenin himself had advanced in 1905. But this formula had outlived its usefulness. The very development of the revolution had rendered it redundant.
Both Lenin and Trotsky, as we have seen, had come to the same conclusion. They understood that the Kerensky government could not seriously tackle the problems facing the workers and peasants; but that was precisely because it was a government of the bourgeoisie, not of the workers and peasants. Only the dictatorship of the proletariat, in alliance with the poor peasants, could begin to solve the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia. As Trotsky put it:
The ‘Old Bolsheviks’ – who pretentiously emphasised this appellation in April 1917 – were condemned to defeat precisely because they were defending exactly that element of the party tradition which had not passed the historic test.
The inner-party struggle was brief but sharp. But the great strength that Lenin had was the backing of the Bolshevik workers, who stood well to the left of the leadership. They felt from the beginning that there was something wrong with a policy that, against all their instincts and traditions, stood for reconciliation with the Mensheviks and a temporising attitude to the bourgeois Provisional Government. But the workers were unable to answer the ‘clever’ arguments of the leaders like Kamenev and Stalin who used their authority to silence the doubts of the rank and file. On the contrary, Lenin based himself on the support of the party’s working-class rank and file who instinctively accepted his revolutionary theses:
These worker-revolutionists only lacked the theoretical resources to defend their position. But they were ready to respond to the first clear call. It was on this stratum of workers, decisively risen to their feet during the upward years of 1912-14, that Lenin was now banking. (L. Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, p. 338 and p. 339.)
By the time the April Conference assembled, the battle had, to all intents and purposes, been won by Lenin and the party’s rank and file. Zalezhky, who was a member of the Petrograd Committee, states that “District after district adhered to them [Lenin’s theses]”.
Lenin’s opening speech emphasised the international dimension of the revolution:
The great honour of beginning the revolution has fallen to the Russian proletariat. But the Russian proletariat must not forget that its movement and revolution are only part of a world revolutionary proletarian movement, which in Germany, for example, is gaining momentum with every passing day. Only from this angle can we define our tasks.
This was the opening shot in the debate and Lenin weighs every word. What does it mean? Lenin answers the argument of the Mensheviks, Kamenev, and Stalin that the Russian workers cannot take power because the objective conditions in backward, feudal Russia do not permit it. And the answer is as follows: it is true that the objective conditions for socialism do not exist in Russia, but they do exist on a world scale. Our revolution is not an independent act, but part of the world revolution. If we have the possibility of assuming power before the German, French, and British workers, then we should do so. We can begin the revolution, take power, start to transform society on socialist lines, and this will give a powerful impulse to the revolution that is already maturing in Europe. We can begin, and with the help of the workers of Germany, France, and Britain, we shall finish the job. Of course, if we do not have the perspective of international revolution, our task would indeed be hopeless. But that is not the position. “Only from this angle can we define our tasks.” The same theme was hammered home repeatedly by Lenin during the course of the conference.
Yes, we are in the minority. Well, what of it? To be a socialist while chauvinism is the craze means to be in the minority. To be in the majority means to be a chauvinist.
Lenin’s resolution on the Current Situation stated:
“Operating as it does in one of the most backward countries of Europe amidst a vast population of small peasants, the proletariat of Russia cannot aim at immediately putting into effect socialist changes.
“But it would be a grave error, and in effect even a complete desertion to the bourgeoisie, to infer from this that the working class must support the bourgeoisie, or that it must keep its activities within limits acceptable to the petty bourgeoisie, or that the proletariat must renounce its leading role in the matter of explaining to the people the urgency of taking a number of practical steps towards socialism for which the time is now ripe.”
From the first premise it is customary to make the conclusion that “Russia is a backward country, a peasant, petty-bourgeois country, therefore there can be no question of a social revolution”. People forget, however, that the war has placed us in extraordinary circumstances, and that side by side with the petty bourgeoisie we have big capital. But what are the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies to do when they assume power? Should they go over to the bourgeoisie? Our answer is – the working class will continue its class struggle. (LCW, The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B), vol. 24, p. 227 (my emphasis), p. 245 and p. 306.)
But at this point we hear a clamour of protest from people who readily call themselves ‘Old Bolsheviks’. Didn’t we always maintain, they say, that the bourgeois-democratic revolution is completed only by the ‘revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’? Is the agrarian revolution, which is also a bourgeois-democratic revolution, completed? Is it not a fact, on the contrary, that it has not even started?
My answer is: The Bolshevik slogans and ideas on the whole have been confirmed by history; but concretely things have worked out differently; they are more original, more peculiar, more variegated than anyone could have expected.
To ignore or overlook this fact would mean taking after those ‘old Bolsheviks’ who more than once already have played so regrettable a role in the history of our Party by reiterating formulas senselessly learned by rote instead of studying the specific features of the new and living reality. (LCW, Letters on Tactics, vol. 24, p. 44.)
In answer to those elements who asserted that the proletariat had to obey the ‘iron law of historical stages’, could not ‘skip February’, had to ‘pass through the stage of the bourgeois revolution’, and who thereby tried to cover up their own cowardice, confusion and impotence by appealing to ‘objective factors’, Lenin replied scornfully:
Why didn’t they take power? Steklov says: for this reason and that. This is nonsense. The fact is that the proletariat is not organised and class conscious enough. This must be admitted; material strength is in the hands of the proletariat, but the bourgeoisie turned out to be prepared and class conscious. This is a monstrous fact, but it should be frankly and openly admitted, and the people should be told that they didn’t take power because they were unorganised and not conscious enough. (LCW, Report at a Meeting of Bolshevik Delegates, vol. 36, p. 437.)
There was no objective reason why the workers – who held power in their hands – could not have elbowed the bourgeoisie to one side in February 1917, no reason other than unpreparedness, lack of organisation, and lack of consciousness. But this, as Lenin explained, was merely the obverse side of the colossal betrayal of the revolution by all the so-called workers’ and peasants’ parties. Without the complicity of the Mensheviks and SRs in the Soviets, the Provisional Government could not have lasted even for an hour. That is why Lenin reserved his most stinging barbs for those elements among the Bolshevik leadership who had got the Bolshevik Party itself into tow with the Menshevik-SR bandwagon, which had confused and disoriented the masses, and deflected them from the road to power.
The person who now speaks only of a ‘revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ is behind the times, consequently, he has in effect gone over to the petty bourgeoisie against the proletarian class struggle; that person should be consigned to the archive of ‘Bolshevik’ pre-revolutionary antiques (it may be called the archive of ‘old Bolsheviks’).
Referring to the power of the working class, and the impotence of the Provisional Government, Lenin pointed out:
This fact does not fit into the old schemes. One must know how to adapt schemes to facts, instead of reiterating the now meaningless words about a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ in general.
Again:
Is this reality [of dual power] covered by Comrade Kamenev’s old-Bolshevik formula, which says that the “bourgeois-democratic revolution is not completed”?
It is not. The formula is obsolete. It is no good at all. It is dead. And it is no use trying to revive it. (LCW, Letters on Tactics, vol. 24, p. 45, p. 46 and p. 50, my emphasis.)
One point Lenin was particularly emphatic about. It was essential that the Bolsheviks maintain absolute independence from all other tendencies. Lenin was all too aware that in the general atmosphere of euphoria, there would be a strong pull in the direction of unification of ‘all progressive trends’. The history of conciliationism on the part of the Old Bolsheviks, particularly Kamenev, filled him with apprehension. That is why he wrote in his first telegram: “No rapprochement with other parties”. On the other hand, at the March Conference, Stalin was already contemplating the overcoming of “trivial differences” within the framework of a united party of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Stalin’s narrow committeeman’s mentality saw everything from the standpoint of organisation. A bigger party meant more members, more money, a bigger apparatus, and consequently a broader arena in which to develop his activities. Compared to this, what were a few theoretical differences but – “trivialities”? Here, in a particularly crude form, we see the difference between the psychology of a revolutionary and a bureaucrat.
The Old Bolsheviks thought they could bring about unity with the Mensheviks on the basis of the “Zimmerwald-Kienthal principles” precisely when the Zimmerwald movement had exhausted its historic mission and was in the process of breaking up. In any case, it had always been a compromise, a transitional step in the direction of a new and genuinely revolutionary International. Lenin had already made his mind up. Not ‘back to Zimmerwald’ but ‘forward to the Third International!’ was his slogan. In a letter to Radek dated 29 May he wrote:
I fully agree with you that Zimmerwald has become a hindrance and that the sooner we break with it the better (you know that I disagree with the conference on this point). We must speed up a meeting of the Lefts, an international meeting and only of the Lefts.
One week later he wrote:
If it’s true that that muddled wretched Grimm (no wonder we never trusted that ministerial scoundrel!) has handed over all Zimmerwald affairs to the Left Swedes and that the latter are convening a Zimmerwald conference within the next few days, then I – personally (I am writing this only in my own name) – would strongly warn against having anything to do with Zimmerwald.
“What a good chance this is to seize the Zimmerwald International now,” Grigory said today.
In my opinion, this is super-opportunist and harmful tactics. (LCW, To Karl Radek, 29 May (11 June), 1917, vol. 43, p. 632 and pp. 634-35.)