Trotsky once remarked that theory is the superiority of foresight over astonishment. As Lenin had predicted, the revolution was given a powerful impetus by Russia’s military defeats. At the beginning of the war, Lenin was completely isolated. His views on the war were not even shared by many of his closest comrades. But now things were different. Finally, events were proving him right. The turning point was probably in April – June 1915. His letters begin to reflect a new confidence and optimism:

Events in Russia have completely endorsed our position, which the social-patriot donkeys (from Alexinsky to Chkheidze) have christened defeatism. The facts have proved that we are right!! The military reverses are helping to shake the foundations of tsarism, and facilitating an alliance of the revolutionary workers of Russia and other countries. People say: what will ‘you’ do, if ‘you’, the revolutionaries, defeat tsarism? I reply: (1) our victory will fan the flames of the ‘Left’ movement in Germany a hundredfold; (2) if ‘we’ defeated tsarism completely, we would propose peace to all the belligerent powers on democratic terms and, if this were rejected, we would conduct a revolutionary war. (LCW, To A.G. Shlyapnikov, 23/8/1915, vol. 35, pp. 204-5.)

The corruption of the regime was palpable at all levels, at the court, in the army, and in industry. There was a cosy relation between the government and the big arms manufacturers.

The huge Putilov plant, for example, received 113 million roubles worth of orders for shells – far more than it could deliver on time – at a price six times higher than the average market price. Putilov used the cash to subsidise the loss-making parts of his business, including his own fabulous lifestyle, so that his company eventually went bankrupt and had to be sequestered by the state in 1916. (O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, p. 273.)

No wonder Lenin wrote sarcastically in response to the tearful complaints of the pacifists: “War is a ‘terrible’ thing? Yes. But it is a terribly profitable thing.” (LCW, May Day and the War, 1915, vol. 36, p. 325.)

The war brought rising prices, bread shortage, speculation, and black marketeering. Fabulous profits were made by the arms manufacturers. The unbearable conditions of the masses called forth a wave of strikes. In 1915 there were 1,063 strikes, 15 times more than in the second half of 1914 (i.e., the first six months of the war). The number of strikers reached 569,999 – more than 15 times more. The strikes affected especially the big factories. The upswing in the strike movement began in April – June 1915. In these three months alone there were 440 strikes and 181,600 strikers, double the figures for the eight previous months of the war. The rising graph of the strike movement served notice on the regime that the patience of the working class was reaching its limits. A key role in this was played by the textile workers of Ivanovo-Voznesensk and Kostroma. They were the first to move.

In spite of everything, some victories were won. In July, the Bolsheviks managed to hold a conference of the Petrograd Party in Oranienbaum, with 50 delegates representing 500 members. This was a considerable achievement under the conditions. There was also a conference in Kiev. Gradually, contacts between the towns were improving. The shooting in Ivanovo-Voznesensk provided the basis for the call for a general political strike of textile workers. This began on 8 August, and initially began with economic demands. On the night of 10 August, 19 workers’ leaders were arrested. On the next day, more than 25,000 workers from 32 factories took part in a street demonstration. When the workers turned up at the jail to demand the release of their arrested comrades, the troops opened fire, killing 100 people and wounding another 40. Among the dead were members of the Bolshevik Party. But no amount of shooting could stop the movement. Like a hydra-headed monster, no sooner had the regime lopped off one head than two more grew in its place. Strikes broke out in other areas: in Petersburg, Tver, Tula, Kharkov, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinoslav, and other areas. The stormy outbreak of strikes announced the reawakening of the proletariat.

The strike curve continued its upwards course. From August to October 1915 there were officially 340 strikes, and 246,000 strikers. A key role in the movement was played by Bolshevik worker-activists, trained in the school of struggle in the period 1912-14. Thus, history does not pass in vain. Despite the war, despite the arrest and exile of the leadership, despite the disruption of the Party’s structures and the reduction of its organisation to a minimum, despite everything, something remained. That ‘something’ was the revolutionary consciousness imbibed by the proletariat from its earlier experiences and retained through its most active and developed layer, which had been biding its time patiently in the hope of better days. Now, sensing a change in the mood of the workers, these activists – a big majority of them Bolsheviks – once more came to the fore. The strikebreaking role of the defencists provoked a growing rejection on the factory floor. Workers at many factories carried resolutions demanding the recall of their representatives from the War Industry Committees.

The September strike in Petrograd involved 150,000 workers, protesting at the arrest of 30 Bolshevik workers from the Putilov works. There were also strikes in Moscow and elsewhere. The masses stirred and dimly remembered the old slogans which had not been heard in the factories, except in whispers, since that fateful summer of 1914. Now they were on everyone’s lips again – those slogans which became popularly known as Lenin’s ‘Three whales’: For a Democratic Republic! For the confiscation of all landed estates! For the eight-hour working day! And above all, in this bloody dance of death of the nations, for the international solidarity of the working class! Down with the war! And a curse on all those responsible for it!

In May 1915, the bourgeoisie moved to set up ‘War Industry Committees’ (VPK), in part to try to get some control over the lucrative war industries, while simultaneously establishing their patriotic credentials as the would-be saviours of Russia, in the hope of winning concessions from the Tsar. As part of this tactic, they attempted to involve the workers in the war effort and boost production.

In May 1915, on the initiative of leading Moscow industrialists and businessmen, an All-Russian Trade and Industry Convention was held, without prior notification to the government. The main business of this meeting was the establishment of a Central War Industry Committee with a number of subsections. All industry was now being mobilised for the immediate dispatch of munitions, clothing, and equipment to the front. Everyone of importance in Russia became active in the cause. (A. Kerensky, The Kerensky Memoirs: Russia and History’s Turning Point, p. 136.)

In June 1915 a congress of these committees decided to set up ‘workers’ groups’ in them. Here again we see the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism. The Mensheviks again revived the idea of a ‘Labour Congress’, trying to work in ‘legal’ conditions in wartime. More than anything else, this shows how far removed these ‘realistic’ labour leaders were from reality. Under wartime conditions, the tsarist regime was even less likely to permit genuine organisations of the working class.

The Mensheviks and SRs supported participation in these committees, demagogically arguing that they represented ‘workers’ control’ and could be used to defend the workers’ interests against capital. They played with the idea of soviets, conveniently overlooking the fact that real soviets are organs of struggle, not talking-shops that aim to bring about conciliation between the classes. As Lenin explained:

Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and similar institutions must be regarded as organs of insurrection, of revolutionary rule. It is only in connection with the development of a mass political strike and with an insurrection, and in the measure of the latter’s preparedness, development and success that such institutions can be of lasting value.

The Bolsheviks were radically opposed to participation in these committees, which were organisations of the bourgeoisie set up to help the imperialist war effort. Nevertheless, complicated tactical questions were involved here, which could not be reduced to a simply negative attitude. Under conditions where it was necessary to take advantage of each and every legal opening, it would be correct, Lenin explained, to participate in the first round of elections to these committees exclusively for the purpose of agitation and propaganda and to build the organisation:

We are opposed to participation in the war industries committees, which help persecute the imperialist and reactionary war. We are in favour of utilising the election campaign; for instance, we are for participation in the first stage of the elections for the sole purpose of agitation and organisation. (LCW, Several Theses, vol. 21, p. 401 and p. 402.)

The Petrograd Committee called on the workers to participate massively in the first round of elections, holding factory meetings where they should clearly and publicly explain the Party’s position and try to get elected in order to go to a citywide meeting. There they should read out a speech denouncing the war and call for a boycott of the War Industry Committees. In order to hold elections to the War Industry Committees, the regime was indeed compelled to call open mass meetings in the factories. Only factories of more than 500 were allowed to participate. The Bolsheviks, who had their main strength in the big factories, actively participated in them and the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks struggled for influence in these election campaigns, carrying their different message to the masses. Some Mensheviks were elected, but the main beneficiaries were the Bolsheviks. Lenin was delighted at the victory which he considered very important. After the success of the Bolsheviks in the election campaign, the bourgeois Gvozdev angrily demanded the holding of new elections. The Liquidators were only too pleased to go along with this.

The second round of elections was marked by a reign of police terror. The government was determined not to permit a repeat and took the precaution of arresting leading Bolsheviks. Under these conditions, the Bolsheviks – who were in a ‘left bloc’ with the left SRs – went to the factory meetings to denounce the traitors and demonstratively walk out. There were protest meetings in a number of factories. After the experience in Petrograd, the government took no chances with the election in Moscow: there were massive police raids. Even so, the defencists’ campaign was not a success. Out of a total of 244 War Industry Committees, ‘workers’ groups’ were only set up in 58 – mostly in small, backward factories. In the main working class centres, the tactic of active boycott triumphed. The chief of the Moscow Okhrana wrote in a report:

Literally, nearly all (sic) the beginnings of this group suffer shipwreck because of the hostile attitude of the overwhelming majority of the workers, influenced by the Bolsheviks. (Quoted in Istoriya KPSS, vol. 2, p. 581.)

Throughout the war, the Bolsheviks inside Russia were faced with extremely difficult conditions. By contrast, the right-wing Mensheviks (the ‘defencists’) enjoyed a privileged position because of their innate opportunism and their willingness to subordinate the workers’ interests to the bourgeoisie. Although the Bolsheviks had more support among the most active and conscious workers, the defencists had the advantage of their legal status. In addition to their representatives on the workers’ sections of the War Industry Committees, they had ample funds from their liberal friends, and possessed legal journals like Delo (The Cause) and Ekonomicheskoe Obozrenie (Economic Review). Their ‘Labour Group’ even had premises on one of the main streets in Petersburg (the Liteiny) where they could meet freely and receive reports from the Duma from Chkheidze and Kerensky. These legal meetings were well attended, and the Bolsheviks used to attend them in order to expose the policies of the defencists – which, on at least one occasion, ended in the arrest of the unwelcome ‘guest’. Nevertheless, the tsarist authorities were suspicious of them, and eventually, patriotism notwithstanding, began to crack down on the Labour Group also.

These objective difficulties made it both necessary and correct to try to arrive at working agreements with other tendencies in the workers’ movement. They attempted to form a united front with those Social Democratic groups that defended an internationalist position. The Bolshevik bureau had on several occasions participated in negotiations with other tendencies in the Petrograd working class movement during the war, notably the Inter-District Committee (Mezhraiontsy) who, as Shlyapnikov states, were politically indistinguishable from the Bolsheviks, but who stubbornly clung to a ‘non-factional’ position which kept them from uniting with the Bolsheviks. (See A. Shlyapnikov, On the Eve of 1917, p. 164.) By December 1916, very close contacts already existed between the Bolsheviks and the Mezhraiontsy, who were finally persuaded by Trotsky to join the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1917. As a matter of fact, there was always a large number of Social Democratic workers – both individuals and groups – who were not formally aligned with Bolsheviks or Mensheviks. The immense difficulties of the war years, the weakness of the party’s central organisation, led to a situation where many local groups existed in isolation. “Similar groups of social democrats,” writes Shlyapnikov, “which had no permanent link with the overall city organisation existed in large numbers in Petersburg. Several of these circles kept apart and isolated through fear of provocateurs.” (Ibid., p. 152.)

The attempt to form a united front was not confined to the Mezhraiontsy. There were also proposals from the Bolsheviks for a united front with left Mensheviks (the ‘initiative group’) and they also offered practical agreements to the non-defencist left, represented by Chkheidze, the leftward-leaning chairman of the Menshevik Duma fraction, and even Kerensky of the Duma Trudovik group. The latter at the time even called himself an internationalist and a supporter of Zimmerwald (!). However, they refused to break with the defencist right-reformists. They were besotted with the idea of parliamentary action and, above all, they feared a break with the liberal bourgeoisie. At bottom, all these elements feared the mass movement like the plague.

The attempt to secure practical agreements or episodic blocs for specific aims does not at all imply the shelving of differences. On the contrary. The prior condition for the united front tactic is complete freedom of criticism. Lenin treated with justified contempt the notion that unity means the mixing up of programmes and banners. In his article ‘The Defeat of Russia and the Revolutionary Crisis’, written in November 1915, Lenin writes:

There is nothing more puerile, contemptible and harmful, than the idea current among revolutionary philistines, namely, that differences should be ‘forgotten’ ‘in view’ of the immediate common aim in the approaching revolution. People whom the experience of the 1905-14 decade has not taught the folly of this idea are hopeless from the revolutionary standpoint. (LCW, The Defeat of Russia and the Revolutionary Crisis, vol. 21, p. 379.)

Not playing at unity, but an open struggle for the leadership of the working class was the banner of Lenin.