On 12 April, 1905, the first genuinely Bolshevik Party Congress opened its doors in London. On the agenda were the following questions: 1) the armed uprising; 2) the attitude to the government’s policy, including the slogan of the provisional revolutionary government; 3) the attitude to the peasant movement; 4) relations between workers and intellectuals within the party; 5) party rules; 6) the attitude to other parties (including the Mensheviks); 7) the attitude to the non-Russian Social Democratic organisations; 8) the attitude to the liberals; 9) practical agreements with the Social Revolutionaries, and organisational questions. Present at the Congress were 24 delegates with full voting rights representing 21 committees, as well as a number of other party groups, including the Vperyod editorial board and the Bolshevik Organisation Abroad, which had a consultative vote. Lenin was present, nominally as a delegate from Odessa.
The Congress took place in the white heat of revolutionary upswing. The Party was faced with a whole series of pressing political and tactical questions: the attitude to the government’s concessions (the Shidlovsky Commission), the slogan of a parliament (Zemsky Sobor), the constituent assembly, armed uprising and the provisional revolutionary government, legal and semi-legal work, the national and agrarian questions, and so on. But the question which dominated all others was the armed insurrection. Lenin was particularly emphatic about this:
The entire history of the past year proved that we underestimated the significance and inevitability of the uprising. Attention must be paid to the practical aspect of the matter. (LCW, The Third Congress of the RSDLP, 12 (25) April-27 April (10 May), vol. 8, p. 370.)
Lunacharsky (Voinov) opened the debate. The revolution in Russia had already begun in the sense that the masses had decisively entered the arena of struggle. What was now needed, he argued, was to give an organised form to this semi-spontaneous movement. Otherwise, all the heroism and energies of the workers could be dissipated in disorganised and aimless local uprisings. In the previous period, when the objective conditions for revolution were absent, the Russian Marxists, Plekhanov, in the first instance, had laid heavy stress on attacking the voluntarist theories of the Narodniks, those ‘romantic revolutionaries’ who imagined that all that was needed was a decisive push by small terrorist groups to detonate the masses into action. For this subjective idealism, the problem of armed insurrection was something independent of time and space. For the Marxists, for whom the revolution must be the work of the workers themselves, it arises inevitably at a certain point in the development of the class struggle. Where the necessary objective conditions were absent, to put forward constantly the idea of insurrection and armed struggle is mere Blanquism.
This term, which was commonly used by the Russian Marxists to denote revolutionary adventurism, takes its name from the famous French revolutionary and utopian communist, Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-81), who based himself on an ultra-left, conspiratorial conception of the revolution, as the work, not of the masses, but as a coup de main of a small revolutionary minority. Despite his undoubted sincerity and personal courage, Blanqui’s lack of theoretical understanding doomed him to play a negative role.
Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionary, a socialist only by sentiment, because of his sympathy for the sufferings of the people, but he has neither socialist theory nor definite practical proposals for social reforms. In his political activities he was essentially a ‘man of action’. (K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 381.)
The modern ultra-lefts have faithfully preserved all of Blanqui’s faults without possessing any of his virtues.
When the conditions were absent, the Russian Marxists concentrated on the slow work of developing Marxist cadres, emphasising theory and organisation, carefully husbanding resources and building links with the masses. But now, the entire situation had been transformed by the social earthquakes of war and revolution. After 9 January, Martov’s argument that you cannot ‘organise’ the revolution and his accusation of ‘Blanquism’ directed at the Bolsheviks smacked of sophistry. In reality, the Mensheviks’ attitude flowed from their entire conception of the revolution as a bourgeois-democratic revolution in which the working class must subordinate itself to the liberal bourgeoisie. The question of organising the workers for an armed uprising did not enter into their scheme of things, because they saw the workers’ role as merely backing up the liberals, and forcing the autocracy to retreat under the pressure of strikes and demonstrations directed towards placing the liberals in power. The Bolshevik position was radically different.
After the shock of Bloody Sunday, the consciousness of the masses was transformed. There was a wave of local strikes and demonstrations, often of a stormy character. One of the delegates recalled the electric mood in the factories:
After the January revolutionary week in Petersburg there was such a spate of anarchistic strikes that in many factories it was enough for only one of the workers to shout: “Down tools, lads!” for a strike to break out, and anyone who spoke out against it, received from the others the tag of “provocateur”.
The danger was that the energies of the workers would be dissipated in this way. What was required was to try to unify the movement so as to be able to concentrate ‘full strength at the point of attack’. The same delegate stressed the need to combat ultra-left adventurism and individual terrorism:
On the one hand, needless acts of petty terrorism, on the other, acts of senseless provocation, or clashes with the police and soldiers, when individual armed persons, by bringing their weapons into play, give the enemy reason and opportunity to fire upon and slaughter unarmed crowds. (Tretiy s’yezd RSDRP (Protokoly), p. 10 in both quotes.)
The delegates discussed in a businesslike manner all the technical details: the drawing up of strategic maps of towns, the training of competent officers, the raising of funds, but above all the need for every branch to possess detailed knowledge of local conditions and the mood of the workers. Side by side with the technical and organisational preparation, there was to be a stepping up of the ideological, agitational, and propaganda work, as an integral part of preparing for the overthrow of tsarism. Agitation was to be carried on, not only among the workers, but also among the intellectuals, students, youth, women, the non-Russian nationalities, and, as much as possible, among the peasants, beginning with the village poor. Special attention was devoted to work in the army, with the aim of winning over the soldiers to the side of the workers. The troops were to be leafleted, and a commission of experienced specialists was set up, under the control of the Central Committee, to work out a programme of transitional demands for soldiers.
Nevertheless, even at a time when the question of armed insurrection had been pushed to the fore by events, the fundamental task of the Party was still that of winning over the masses. Without that, all the talk about overthrowing tsarism would have been so much empty chatter. The congress, however, confirmed many of Lenin’s fears that the Bolshevik activists inside Russia had been slow to react to changing conditions. Accustomed to functioning over a long period in small, closed circles in the underground, the committeemen were ill at ease in the mass movement and used every excuse to avoid getting too closely involved with it. A formalistic conception of organisation, discipline, and centralism, together with certain ultra-left tendencies, served to cover up for an innate conservatism and cliquishness, inherited from the past. Lenin used the Congress as an arena to wage an implacable struggle against these tendencies.
On the question of participating in legal organisations such as trade unions, co-ops, insurance and benefit schemes, where the prevailing mood of the committeemen was for a boycott, Lenin warned that “the congress cannot lay down a hard and fast rule on this point. All methods should be used for agitation. The experience of the Shidlovsky Commission gives no ground whatever for a downright negative attitude”, and went on to shock the advocates of boycott by asserting that it would be correct, under certain circumstances, to participate even in a rigged tsarist parliament:
It is impossible to reply categorically whether it is advisable to participate in the Zemsky Sobor. Everything will depend on the political situation, on the electoral system, and on other specific factors which cannot be estimated in advance. Some say that the Zemsky Sobor is a fraud. That is true. But there are times when we must take part in elections to expose a fraud.
Lenin moved an addendum to the resolution on this question which stated:
As regards the actual and sham concessions which the weakened autocracy is now making to the democrats in general and to the working class in particular, the Social Democratic party of the working class should take advantage of them in order, on the one hand, to consolidate for the people every improvement in the economic conditions and every extension of liberties with a view to intensifying the struggle, and, on the other, steadily to expose before the proletariat the reactionary aims of the government, which is trying to disunite and corrupt the working class and draw its attention away from its urgent class needs at the moment of the revolution. (LCW, The Third Congress of the RSDLP, 12 (25) April-27 April (10 May), 1905, vol. 8, p. 375 and p. 376.)
Lenin’s flexible and dialectical understanding of revolutionary tactics and strategy clashed with the unyielding dogmatism of the committeemen, whose universe revolved around the axis of their narrow local circle, which they jealously guarded, on the one hand against the leadership in exile, on the other hand against the demands of the workers for a greater say in the running of inner-Party affairs. The class composition of the congress itself left a lot to be desired, as one of the delegates, Leshchinsky (Zharkov) commented:
Looking around me, at the composition of the present congress, I am astonished that in it there are so few workers, and yet, that workers suitable to be sent to the congress, without any doubt, could have been found. (Trettiy s’yezd RSDRP (Protokoly), p. 124.)
This is borne out by Krupskaya, who says in her memoirs:
There were no workers at the Third Congress – at least none of any mark…
There was no scarcity of committeemen though. Unless this makeup of the congress is borne in mind a great deal of what the congress records contain will not be properly understood.
In fact, the atmosphere at the congress became frequently heated, as Lenin tackled the prejudices of the practicos head on, while the latter did not conceal their resentment at the ‘interference’ of the exiles.
The committeeman was usually a rather self-assured person. He saw what a tremendous influence the work of the committee had on the masses, and as a rule he recognised no inner-Party democracy. ‘Inner-Party democracy only leads to trouble with the police. We are connected with the movement as it is,’ the committeemen would say. Inwardly they rather despised the Party workers abroad who, in their opinion, had nothing better to do than squabble among themselves – ‘they ought to be made to work under Russian conditions.’ The committeemen objected to the over-ruling influence of the centre abroad. At the same time they did not want innovations. They were neither desirous nor capable of adjusting themselves to the quickly changing conditions. (N.K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 125 and pp. 124-25.)
Bogdanov moved a resolution, drawn up by Lenin, ‘On the Relations Between Workers and Intellectuals Within the Social Democratic Organisation’, which, while recognising the difficulties under conditions of illegality, argued in favour of applying the principle of elections more broadly, to open up the Party to the workers, to make room for the new, fresh layers on the Party’s leading committees.
This resolution called forth a storm of protest on the part of the committeemen. Kamenev (Gradov) was first on his feet:
I must decisively speak against approving this resolution. This question of the relation between the intellectuals and workers in Party organisations does not exist. (Lenin: It does exist!) No, it does not: it exists as an issue for demagogy – and that’s all.
Others argued that there was no time or forces to train workers, basing themselves on the famous quote from What Is To Be Done? which incorrectly asserts that socialist consciousness must be brought to the workers from without. Thus, Romanov (Leskov) complained: “It seems to me that here we are overestimating the psychology of the workers (sic!), as if the workers by themselves could become conscious Social Democrats.” (Quoted in Tretiy s’yezd RSDRP (Protokoly), p. 255 and p. 256.) Yet now the very author of What Is To Be Done? answered his critics by appealing to the class instinct of the workers, and deliberately shocked his audience by referring approvingly to the participation of the workers in the Party organisation during the period of ‘Economism’. In the English Collected Works, this speech of Lenin’s has, for reasons best known to the Stalinist editors, been left out. I quote here from the Congress minutes in Russian:
It has been said here that the bearers of Social Democratic ideas are predominantly the intellectuals. That is not true. In the epoch of Economism, the bearers of revolutionary ideas were workers, not intellectuals… It is further asserted that at the head of the splitters are usually situated intellectuals. That observation is very important but does not settle the matter. I long ago advised in my written works that workers should be brought onto the committees in the greatest possible number. The period following the Second Congress was characterised by the insufficient implementation of this obligation – that is the impression I have got from my conversations with the ‘practical workers’… It is necessary to overcome the inertia of the committeemen (applause and booing)… the workers have a class instinct, and with just a little bit of political experience they very quickly become staunch social democrats. I would be very pleased if, in the make-up of our committees, out of every two intellectuals there were eight workers. (Ibid., p. 262, my emphasis.)
This is the final answer to those who still persist in repeating Lenin’s mistake in What Is To Be Done?, where he erroneously asserts that the proletariat, left to itself, can only develop a ‘trade union consciousness’. Lenin never repeated that statement, and, in fact, repudiated it on more than one occasion. It was not Lenin, but the committeemen with their formalistic caricature of Bolshevism, who held this view, and who booed Lenin when he tried to correct them. So indignant was he at the contemptuous attitude of the intellectuals towards the workers that he deliberately provoked them by referring positively to the worker-Economists. As a matter of fact, many of the old worker-Economists of the Rabochaya Dyelo tendency subsequently joined the Bolsheviks whereas the Economist intellectuals, such as Martynov and Akimov, almost to a man, joined the Mensheviks. This is an interesting point which is never mentioned, but nonetheless true. Burning with indignation, Lenin again intervened:
I could hardly keep my seat when it was said that there are no workers fit to sit on the committees. The question is being dragged out: obviously there is something the matter with the Party. Workers must be given places on the committees. Oddly enough, there are only three publicists at the Congress, the others being committeemen: it appears however that the publicists are for placing the workers, whereas the committeemen for some reason are quite wrought up over it. (LCW, The Third Congress of the RSDLP, vol. 8, p. 411.)
All the passionate arguments put forward by Lenin and his supporters fell on deaf ears. The majority remained obdurate and Lenin’s resolution was rejected on the grounds that there was ‘no need’ for a special resolution on this subject. Subsequent events were to show just how right Lenin was. Despite this setback, the Third Congress marked a historic landmark. The basic ideas of Lenin on the leading role of the proletariat in the revolution, the need for absolute class independence and mistrust of the liberals, was adopted without dissent. The Party’s policy on the agrarian question (Lenin led off in this debate) was radically changed to include the confiscation of all the big landlords’ estates and the setting up of peasant committees. From this point onwards, the revolutionary solution of the agrarian problem lay at the heart of the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary strategy. The Party Rules approved at the Second Congress were basically reaffirmed, although Lenin made it abundantly clear that they were not to be interpreted in a narrow sense, but that the party organisation should be quickly opened up to include the best of the workers and the youth. With the bitter experience of the split still fresh in everyone’s memory, he also insisted on including in the Rules clear and specific guarantees for the rights of minorities within the Party. Minorities were to have the right to express their point of view freely at all levels of the Party, subject only to the condition that the raising of differences should not be done in such a way as to disorganise and undermine the practical intervention of the Party in the struggle against tsarism and capitalism.