For Lenin, the lessons learned confirmed the need for a party to co-ordinate and lead the uprising across all of Russia, the necessity of an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, and of winning over at least a section of the armed forces[73]. Trotsky did not draw up a similar detailed list. His major analysis, Results and Prospects, deals with the general perspective for revolution in Russia, and although it states that a class alliance between the proletariat and peasantry was essential for victory, precise details are lacking. However, in his review of the activities of the Petersburg Soviet[74], Trotsky foresaw that any new revolutionary upsurge would lead to the creation of Soviets all over the country, led and co-ordinated by an All-Russian Soviet whose programme would be based on the lessons learned in the ‘Fifty Days’. In particular Trotsky proposed the same solution as Lenin for overcoming the core weakness of a purely urban revolution – to establish revolutionary co-operation with the army and the peasantry, and to create Councils of Peasants’ Delegates (Peasants’ Committees) as local organs of the agrarian revolution. Interestingly, also as Lenin, he also called for the Soviet to organise elections to a Constituent Assembly!
In 1905 the proletariat emerged as the key driving force of the revolution against the autocracy. However, 1905 also confirmed that no revolution could succeed in Russia without the support of the peasantry. Indeed, the Achilles’ heel of the 1905 Revolution consisted of the fact that the proletarian advanced guard was exhausted before the bulk of the working people, the peasants, moved into action (for an analysis of strike statistics for 1905-06, see Lenin[75]).
The undoubted winner in 1905, in electoral terms, was the populist Socialist Revolutionary (SR) Party which gained the votes of the overwhelming majority of the peasantry. While mouthing Marxist and socialist phrases about land to the peasant, the SRs were generally reformists with a sprinkling of terrorist activists. This party would continue to receive the votes of the bulk of the peasants until at least the elections to the Constituent Assembly at the end of 1917.
To Trotsky, the general strike and creation of the Soviets proved once and for all, the superiority of town over countryside, and the proletariat as the only force capable of leading the revolution to overthrow the autocracy. Unfortunately, while he recognised the key role of the Social Democratic Party in the revolution, there was no clear recognition of the necessity of a disciplined, Leninist party; rather, Trotsky appeared more concerned with demonstrating the need for the party to work within and through the mass organisations thrown up by the class in the process of the struggle. Nevertheless, 1905 did confirm to him the necessity of gaining the support of the peasantry, since without that support the struggle for the army could not be won. The key to winning this support was for the RSDLP to revolutionise feudal ownership[76].
In 1905, for the first time, revolutionary SD became a key force within the working class across the whole of Russia, and the decisive role of the party for any successful overthrow of the autocracy was confirmed to Lenin. Within a space of nine months, the consciousness of the workers advanced by leaps and bounds on the basis of their own experiences: from priest and petition in January, through economic strikes for better wages and conditions, to the highest expressions of the class struggle – the political general strike, workers’ self-defence squads, and armed insurrection in December. Under Lenin’s leadership the Bolshevik faction overcame its mistakes and advanced to the head of the revolutionary proletariat. Qualitatively, the need for an organisational weapon – the Bolshevik Party – to lead the workers to victory was proved, and its leadership was tempered in the heat of the 1905 Revolution.
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Lenin, V.I., Lessons of the Moscow Uprising, Aug 1906, CW 11:171-178
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Trotsky, L.D., The Soviet and Our Revolution, 1907, see www. marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/ourrevo/ch05.htm
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Lenin, V.I., Strike Statistics in Russia, Jan 1911, CW 16:393-421
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Trotsky, L.D., 1905, Vintage Books, New York, 1972, p49