V. I.

Lenin

Thenew conditions for Social-Democratic work in Russia which have arisen since
the October revolution have brought the question of party literature to the
fore. The distinction between the illegal and the legal press, that melancholy
heritage of the epoch of feudal, autocratic Russia, is beginning to
disappear. It is not yet dead, by a long way. The hypocritical government of our
Prime Minister is still running amuck, so much so that Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov [2] is printed “illegally”; but
apart from bringing disgrace on the government, apart from striking further
moral blows at it, nothing comes of the stupid attempts to prohibit” that which the government is powerless to thwart.

Solong as there was a distinction between the illegal and the legal press, the
question of the party and non-party press was decided extremely simply and in an
extremely false and abnormal way. The entire illegal press was a party press,
being published by organisations and run by groups which in one way or another
were linked with groups of practical party workers. The entire legal press was non-party— since parties were banned—but it “gravitated”
towards one party or another. Unnatural alliances, strange
“bed-fellows” and false cover-devices were inevitable. The forced
reserve of those who wished to express party views merged with the immature
thinking or mental cowardice of those who had not risen to these views and who
were not, in effect, party people.

Anaccursed period of Aesopian language, literary bondage, slavish speech, and
ideological serfdom! The proletariat has put an end to this foul atmosphere
which stifled everything living and fresh in Russia. But so far the proletariat has won only half
freedom for Russia.

Therevolution is not yet completed. While tsarism is no longer strong
enough to defeat the revolution, the revolution is not yet strong
enough to defeat tsarism. And we are living in times when everywhere and in
everything there operates this unnatural combination of open, forthright,
direct and consistent party spirit with an underground, covert,
“diplomatic” and dodgy “legality”. This unnatural combination makes itself felt even in our newspaper: for all
Mr. Guchkov’s [3] witticisms about Social-Democratic tyranny forbidding the
publication of moderate liberal-bourgeois newspapers, the fact remains
that Proletary , [4] the Central Organ of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party, still remains outside the locked doors of
autocratic , police-ridden Russia.

Bethat as it may, the half-way revolution compels all of us to set to work at
once organising the whole thing on new lines. Today literature, even that
published “legally”, can be nine-tenths party literature. It must
become

party literature In contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the
profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism
and individualism, “aristocratic anarchism” and drive for profit,
the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of party literature , must develop this principle and put it into practice as fully
and completely as possible.

Whatis this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the
socialist proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or
groups: it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the
common cause of the proletariat. Down with non-partisan writers! Down with
literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of
the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great
Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious
vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of
organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.

“Allcomparisons are lame,” says a German proverb. So is my comparison of
literature with a cog, of a living movement with a mechanism. And I daresay there will ever be hysterical intellectuals
to raise a howl about such a comparison, which degrades, deadens,
“bureaucratises” the free battle of ideas, freedom of criticism, freedom of literary creation, etc., etc. Such outcries, in
point of fact, would be nothing more than an expression of
bourgeois-intellectual individualism. There is no question that literature
is least of all subject to· mechanical adjustment or levelling, to
the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question, either,
that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal
initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy,, form and
content. All this is undeniable; but all this simply shows that the
literary side of the proletarian party cause cannot be mechanically
identified with its other sides. This, however, does not in the least
refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois
democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an
element of Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the
other elements. Newspapers must become the organs of the various party
organisations, and their writers must by all means become members of these
organisations. Publishing and distributing centres, bookshops and
reading-rooms, libraries and similar establishments—must all be
under party control. The organised socialist proletariat must keep an eye
on all this work, supervise it in its entirety, and, from beginning to
end, without any exception, infuse into it the life-stream of the living
proletarian cause, thereby cutting the ground from under the
old, semi-Oblomov, [5] semi-shopkeeper Russian principle: the writer does
the writing, the reader does the reading..

Weare not suggesting, of course, that this transformation of literary work,
which has been defiled by the Asiatic censorship and the European bourgeoisie,
can be accomplished all at once. Far be it from us to advocate any kind of
standardised system, or a solution by means of a few decrees. Cut-and-dried
schemes are least of all applicable here. What is needed is that the whole of
our Party, and the entire politically-conscious Social-Democratic proletariat
throughout Russia, should become aware of this new problem, specify it clearly
and everywhere set about solving it. Emerging from the captivity of the feudal censorship, we have no desire to become, and
shall not become, prisoners of bourgeois-shopkeeper literary relations. We want
to establish, and we shall establish, a free press, free not simply from the
police, but also from capital, from careerism, and what is more, free from
bourgeois-anarchist individualism.

Theselast words may sound paradoxical, or an affront to the reader. What! some
intellectual, an ardent champion of liberty, may shout. What, you want to impose
collective control on such a delicate, individual matter as literary work! You
want workmen to decide questions of science, philosophy, or aesthetics by a
majority of votes! You deny the absolute freedom of absolutely individual
ideological work!

Calmyourselves, gentlemen! First of all, we are discussing party literature
and its subordination to party control. Everyone is free to write and say
whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association
(including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the
party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be
complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to
accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write
to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom
of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with
people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which
would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did
not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views. And to define the
border-line between party and anti-party there is the party programme, the
party’s resolutions on tactics and its rules and, lastly, the entire experience
of international Social-Democracy, the voluntary international associations of
the proletariat, which has constantly brought into its parties individual
elements and trends not fully consistent, not completely Marxist and not
altogether correct and which, on the other hand, has constantly conducted
periodical “cleansings” of its ranks. So it will be with us too,
supporters of bourgeois “freedom of criticism”, within the
Party. We are now becoming a mass party all at once, changing abruptly to an open organisation, and it is inevitable that we shall be joined by many
who are inconsistent (from the Marxist standpoint), perhaps we shall be
joined even by some Christian elements, and even by some mystics. We have
sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those
inconsistent elements. Freedom of thought and freedom of criticism within
the Party will never make us forget about the freedom of organising
people into those voluntary associations known as parties.

Secondly,we must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about
absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective
“freedom” in a society based on the power of money, in a society in
which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live
like parasites. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher,
Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide
it with pornography in frames [1] and paintings, and prostitution as a
“supplement” to “sacred” scenic art? This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook,
anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society
and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or
actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the
money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.

Andwe socialists expose this hypocrisy and rip off the false labels, not in
order to arrive at a non-class literature and art (that will be possible only
in a socialist extra-class society), but to contrast this hypocritically free
literature, which is in reality linked to the bourgeoisie, with a really free
one that will be openly linked to the pro let an at.

Itwill be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with
the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to
its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some
satiated heroine, not the bored “upper ten thousand” suffering from
fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people—the flower of the country, its strength and its
future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the
revolutionary thought of man kind with the experience and living work of the
socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the
experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development
of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the
present (the present struggle of the worker comrades).

Towork, then, comrades! We are faced with a new and difficult task. But it is a
noble and grateful one—to organise a broad, multiform and varied
literature inseparably linked with the Social-Democratic working-class
movement. All Social-Democratic literature must become Party literature. Every
newspaper, journal, publishing house, etc., must immediately set about
reorganising its work, leading up to a situation in which it will, in one form
or another, be integrated into one Party organisation or another. Only then will
“Social-Democratic” literature really become worthy of that name,
only then will it be able to fulfil its duty and, even within the framework of
bourgeois society, break out of bourgeois slavery and merge with the movement
of the really advanced and thoroughly revolutionary class.

---
Notes:
[1]
There must be a misprint in the source, which says ramkakh
(frames), while the context suggests romanakh (novels).— Ed .

[2]
Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov (Bulletin of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies )—an official newspaper of the
St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. It appeared from October
17(30)to December 14(27), 1905. Being in effect an information
bulletin, it had no permanent staff and was printed by the workers themselves in
the printing-works of various bourgeois papers. Altogether ten issues were
brought out. Issue No. 11 was seized by the police while
being printed.

[3]
Guchkov, A. I. (1862-1936)—a monarchist representative of the
big commercial and industrial bourgeoisie.

[4]
Proletary ( The Proletarian )—an Illegal
Bolshevik weekly, Central
Organ of the R.S.D.L.P., founded by decision of the Third Party
Congress. On April 27 (May 10), 1905, a plenary meeting of the
Central Committee of the Party appointed Lenin editor-in-chief
of Proletary . The weekly appeared in Geneva from May 14 (27)

to November 12(25), 1905. Twenty-six issues were published In all. The weekly
continued the line of the old, Leninist Iskra , and of the Bolshevik
paper Vperyod .

Lenincontributed about 90 articles and short items to Proletary. His
articles determined the political line of the weekly, its ideological content
and Bolshevik course. Lenin did a tremendous amount of work as the leader and
editor of the weekly. He edited the material to be published, lending it the
utmost fidelity to principle, a Party spirit, and precision and clarity in
discussing important theoretical problems and elucidating questions of the
revolutionary movement.

Theeditorial board was constantly assisted by V. V. Vorovsky, A. V. Lunacharsky
and M. S. Olminsky. N. K. Krupskaya V M Velichkina and V. A. Karpinsky had a big
share in the editorial work. The weekly was closely linked with the
working-class movement in Russia. It carried articles and other items by
workers directly engaged in the revolutionary movement. V. D. Bonch Bruyevich,
S. I. Gusev and A. I. Ulyanova-Yelizarova arranged for the collection of
articles in Russia and their dispatch to Geneva. N. K. Krupskaya and
L. A. Fotieva were in charge of the weekly’s correspondence with Party
organisations and readers in Russia.

Proletary was prompt to react to all major events in the Russian and
international working-class movement. It fought relentlessly against the
Mensheviks and other opportunist, revisionist elements.

Theweekly did much to propagate the decisions of the Third Party Congress an d
played a prominent role in the organisational and ideological unification of the
Bolsheviks. It was the only Russian Social-Democratic paper that consistently
upheld revolutionary Marxism and dealt with all the principal issues of the
revolution developing in Russia. By giving full information on the events of
1905, it roused the broad masses of the working people to fight for the victory
of the revolution.

Proletary had great influence over the Social-Democratic organisations
in Russia, where some of Lenin’s articles were reprinted from it by Bolshevik
papers and circulated in leaflet form.

Proletary ceased to a p pear shortly after Lenin had left for Russia
early in November 1905. Its last two issues (Nos. 25 and 26) were published
under the editorship of V. V. Vorovsky. The several articles Lenin had written
for those issues appeared when he had left Geneva.

[5]
Oblomov —a landlord, the chief character in a novel of the same name by the Russian writer I. A. Goncharov. Oblomov was
the personification of routine, stagnation, and incapacity for action.