I

What is the position of the democratic revolution in Russia: is it defeated or are we merely passing through a temporary lull? Was the December uprising the culminating point of the revolution and are we now rolling irresistibly towards a “Shipov-constitutional” regime? Or is the revolutionary movement, on the whole, not receding but continuing to rise, preparing a new outbreak, gathering fresh forces in the lull, promising after the first unsuccessful uprising a second, with incomparably greater chances of success?

Such are the fundamental questions now confronting the Social-Democrats of Russia. Remaining true to Marxism, we cannot and must not evade them by means of general phrases, an analysis of the objective conditions whose assessment in the last analysis definitively decides these questions. And on their solution depends the whole tactics of Social-Democracy; our disputes, for example, over the boycott of the Duma (which, incidentally, are already drawing to a close, since the majority of the organisations of the R.S.D.L.P. have pronounced in favour of the boycott) are only a very, very small part of these big questions.

We have just said that it is unbecoming for a Marxist to dismiss these questions with general phrases. Such general phrases are, for instance, references to the fact that we never understood revolution in the sense of “pitchforks and flails” alone, that we were revolutionaries even when we did not put forward a direct appeal for uprising, that we shall remain revolutionaries even in the parliamentary period, when it comes, and so forth. Such speeches would be pitiful evasions, substituting abstract considerations for a concrete historical question, considerations that explain absolutely nothing and serve only to cover up poverty of thought or political confusion. To confirm our idea by an example, let us refer to Marx’s attitude to the German revolution of 1848. Such a reference may be all the more useful because we are witnessing a number of signs of a similar, and even more sharp, division of the bourgeoisie into a reactionary and a revolutionary one—a division that was absent, for example, in the great French Revolution. In essence, the fundamental questions we have raised above about the position of the Russian revolution can be formulated, in terms of an analogy with Germany (of course, in that conditional and limited sense in which any historical analogy is permissible at all), in the following words: 1847 or 1849? Are we passing through (as Germany was in 1847, when the German State Diet, the so-called United Landtag, was being and was convened) the tail-end of the highest upsurge of the revolution, or are we passing through (as Germany was in 1849) the tail-end of the final exhaustion of the revolution and the beginning of the grey routine of a truncated constitution? It was precisely during 1850 that Marx posed this question, solved it, and finally resolved it, not by evasion but by a direct answer drawn from an analysis of objective conditions. In 1849 the revolution was suppressed, a series of uprisings ended in failure, the freedom actually won by the people was taken away, reaction raged against the “revolutionaries”. Open political action by the “Communist League” (the then Social-Democratic organisation, actually led by Marx) became impossible. “Everywhere there arose the need,” says the address of the Central Committee of the League to its members in June 1850, “for a strong, secret (italics everywhere ours) organisation of the revolutionary party throughout Germany.” The Central Committee sends an emissary from abroad to Germany, who concentrates “all usable forces in the hands of the League”. Marx writes (the “Address” of March 1850) about the likelihood of a new upsurge, a new revolution, advises the workers to organise independently, insists in particular on the arming of the entire proletariat, on the formation of a proletarian guard, on the need to “frustrate by force any attempt at disarmament”. Marx demands the formation of “revolutionary workers’ governments” and discusses the conduct of the proletariat “during and after the approaching uprising”. Marx sets up as a model for German democracy the Jacobin France of 1793 (see “The Cologne Communist Trial”, Russian translation, p. 115 and others).

Half a year passes. The expected upsurge does not materialise. The efforts of the League are not crowned with success. “The upsurge of the revolution,” wrote Engels in 1885, “in the course of 1850 became ever less likely, even impossible.” The industrial crisis of 1847 had passed. Industrial prosperity set in. And so, taking stock of objective conditions, Marx sharply and definitely poses the question. In the autumn of 1850 he declares categorically that now, with such luxuriant development of the productive forces of bourgeois society, “there can be no talk of a real revolution”.

As the reader can see, Marx does not dodge the difficult question. He does not play with the word revolution, does not substitute empty abstractions for a vital political question. He does not forget that revolution in general is, in any case, moving forward, since the development of bourgeois society is proceeding, but speaks directly about the impossibility of a democratic revolution in the direct and narrow sense of the word. Marx decides the difficult question without referring to the “mood” of decline and fatigue in this or that stratum of the proletariat (as Social-Democrats who fall into tailism often do). No, as long as he had no other data except the fact of a lowered mood (in March 1850), he continued to call for arming and uprising, to prepare for it, without lowering the workers’ mood by his own scepticism and confusion. Only when Marx had shown the inevitability of the “exhaustion” of the “real revolution”—only then did he change his view. And, having changed his view, Marx directly and openly demanded a radical change of tactics, a complete cessation of preparation for uprising, because such preparation could then have been only a game. The slogan of uprising was directly removed from the order of the day. It was directly and definitely recognised that “the form of movement had changed”.

This example of Marx must always be before our eyes in the present difficult moment. We must treat with the greatest seriousness the question of the possibility of a “real revolution” in the immediate future, of the basic “form of movement”, of uprising and its preparation, but a fighting political party is obliged to decide this question directly and definitely, without evasions, without excuses, without any reservations whatsoever. A party that could not work out a clear answer to such a question would not deserve the name of a party.

II

Well then, what objective data do we have for deciding this question? In favour of the opinion that the directly revolutionary “form of movement” is completely exhausted, that a new uprising is impossible, that Russia has entered the era of a wretched bourgeois quasi-constitutionalism, speaks a whole series of facts lying, so to speak, on the surface and striking the eye of everyone. The turn in the bourgeoisie is beyond doubt. The landowner has drawn away from the Cadets and gone into the Union of October 17. The government has already granted a two-chambered “constitution”. With the aid of martial law, punitive expeditions and arrests, the possibility of convening a sham Duma is being created. The urban uprising has been suppressed, and the spring peasant movement may prove isolated and powerless. The sale of the landed estates is going on, and consequently the stratum of bourgeois, “tranquil” peasantry is growing stronger. A lowering of mood after the suppressed uprising is evident. Finally, one must not forget that predicting the defeat of the revolution is altogether easier and cheaper, so to speak, than predicting its upsurge, for now power is on the side of reaction, and “for the most part” until now revolutions have ended... unended.

What are the data in favour of the opposite opinion? Let us give the floor on this question to K. Kautsky, whose sobriety of view and ability to discuss topical and acute political questions in the most calm, businesslike and thorough manner are known to all Marxists. Kautsky expressed his view shortly after the suppression of the Moscow uprising in an article: “The Chances of the Russian Revolution”. This article appeared in a Russian translation—of course, not without censorship distortions (such as those from which the Russian translation of another excellent work of Kautsky’s, “The Agrarian Question in Russia”, also suffered).

Kautsky does not dodge the difficult question. He does not try to dismiss it with empty phrases about the invincibility of revolution in general, about the perennial and constant revolutionary character of the proletarian class, and so forth. No, he squarely poses the concrete historical question of the chances of the present, contemporary democratic revolution in Russia. He begins his article without preamble by saying that from Russia since the beginning of 1906 almost only sad news has been coming, news that “might give rise to the opinion that this revolution has been finally suppressed and is breathing its last.” Not only do the reactionaries exult over this, but the Russian liberals too, says Kautsky, showering these heroes of the “coupon” with the contemptuous expressions they fully deserve (Kautsky, it seems, has not yet come to believe in Plekhanov’s theory that Russian Social-Democrats must “value the support of non-proletarian opposition parties”).

And so Kautsky analyses in detail this naturally imposing opinion. The external resemblance between the December defeat of the workers in Moscow and the June (1848) defeat of the workers in Paris is beyond doubt. In both cases the armed uprising of the workers was “provoked” by the government at a moment when the working class was still insufficiently organised. In both cases, despite the heroic resistance of the workers, reaction triumphed. What does Kautsky deduce from this? Does he conclude, after the manner of Plekhanov’s pedantic admonitions, that there had been no need to take up arms? No, Kautsky does not hasten to pass on to shortsighted and cheap moralising after the event. He investigates the objective data capable of deciding the question whether the Russian revolution is finally suppressed.

Four fundamental differences does Kautsky discern between the Paris (1848) and the Moscow (1905) defeat of the proletariat. First, the defeat of Paris was the defeat of the whole of France. Nothing of the kind can be said about Moscow. The workers of Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, Warsaw, Lodz are not beaten. They are exhausted by the terribly heavy struggle which has already lasted a whole year, but their courage is not broken. They are gathering strength to start the struggle for freedom again.

Secondly, an even more essential difference is that the peasants in France in 1848 were on the side of reaction, while in Russia in 1905 they are on the side of revolution. Peasant uprisings are going on. Whole armies are engaged in suppressing them. These armies are devastating the country, just as Germany was devastated in the Thirty Years’ War. Military punitive expeditions intimidate the peasants for a time, but they only increase their destitution, increase the hopelessness of their situation. They will inevitably, like the devastations of the Thirty Years’ War, give rise to new and new masses of people who will be compelled to declare war on the existing order, who will not permit peace to be re-established in the country and will join in any uprising.

Thirdly, an extremely important difference is the following. The revolution of 1848 was prepared by the crisis and famine of 1847. Reaction relied on the ending of the crisis and the prosperity of industry. “The present regime of terror in Russia, on the contrary, must inevitably lead to an aggravation of the economic crisis which has been weighing on the whole country for years.” The famine of 1905 will yet make itself felt in all its consequences in the coming months. The suppression of the revolution is the greatest civil war, a war against the whole people. This war costs no less than an external war, and it ruins not a foreign but its own country. A financial crash is approaching. Besides, the new commercial treaties threaten special upheavals for Russia and may even provoke a world economic crisis. Thus, the longer the reactionary terror holds out, the more desperate will be the economic condition of the country, the more powerful will be the indignation against the hated regime. “Such a situation,” says Kautsky, “makes any strong movement against tsarism invincible. And there will be no lack of such a movement. The Russian proletariat, which has already given so many great proofs of its heroism and self-sacrifice, will see to that.” The fourth difference indicated by Kautsky is of particular interest to Russian Marxists. Unfortunately, there is now very widely current among us a kind of toothless, essentially Cadet, sniggering about “brownings” and “fighting squads”. No one has the courage or the directness, of which Marx gave an example, to say that an uprising is impossible and there is no longer any need to prepare it. But we are very fond of sniggering at the military actions of the revolutionaries. We call ourselves Marxists, but from analysing the military side of an uprising (to which Marx and Engels always attached serious importance) we prefer to wriggle out, declaring with incomparably pompous doctrinairism: “there was no need to take up arms....” Kautsky acts otherwise. However few data he had about the uprising, he nevertheless tries to go deep into the military side of the question as well. He tries to assess the movement as a new form of struggle worked out by the masses, and not as our revolutionary Kuropatkins assess battles: if they beat you, then you flee; if you were beaten, then there was no need to take up arms!

“Both the Paris June battle,” says Kautsky, “and the Moscow December battle were barricade battles. But the first was a catastrophe, was the end of the old barricade tactics. The second was the beginning of new barricade tactics. And to that extent we must revise the view which Engels set forth in his preface to Marx’s “Class Struggles”, namely the view that the era of barricade battles has definitively passed. What has indeed passed is only the era of the old barricade tactics. This is what the Moscow battle proved, when a handful of insurgents succeeded in holding out for two weeks against superior fighting forces equipped with all the weapons of modern artillery.”

So says Kautsky. He does not sing the funeral dirge of the uprising on account of the failure of the first attempt. He does not grumble over the failure, but investigates the birth and growth of a new, higher form of struggle, examines the significance of disorganisation and discontent in the army, of assistance to the workers from the urban population, of the combination of the mass strike with the uprising. He investigates how the proletariat is learning to rise. He revises obsolete military theories, thereby calling for the re-elaboration and assimilation by the whole party of the experience of Moscow. He looks upon the whole movement as a transition from the strike to the uprising, trying to understand in what way the workers must combine the one with the other to achieve success.

Kautsky ends his article with the words: “Such are the lessons of Moscow. To what extent they will influence the forms of the future struggle cannot be foreseen from here (i.e., from Germany) at the present time. Indeed, so far we have seen in all the previous manifestations of the Russian revolution spontaneous outbursts of unorganised masses; none of these manifestations was planned and prepared beforehand. Probably, for a certain time, this will continue to be the case.

But if it is not yet possible definitely to predict the coming forms of struggle, all the signs testify that we must necessarily expect further battles, that the present eerie calm is only a lull before the storm. The October movement showed the masses in the towns and villages what a power they are capable of unfolding. The January reaction then pushed them into an abyss full of torments. In this abyss everything rouses them, drives them to indignation, and there is no price they would consider too dear for deliverance from this abyss. Soon the masses will rise again, soon they will come out still more mighty! Let counter-revolution celebrate its triumph over the corpses of the heroes of the struggle for freedom: the end of this triumph is already near, the red dawn is rising, the proletarian revolution is coming.”

III

The question we have outlined is the fundamental question of all Social-Democratic tactics. The forthcoming party congress must, first and foremost, settle this question in the most clear and unambiguous manner, and all party members, all class-conscious workers, must immediately strain every effort to gather comprehensive material for solving the question, to discuss it and to send to the congress delegates who are thoroughly prepared for their serious and responsible task.

The elections to the congress must take place on the basis of a full clarification of tactical platforms. And, in essence, one or another consistent and integral answer to the question that has been posed predetermines all the details of the Social-Democratic tactical platform.

Either—or.

Either we recognise that at the present time “there can be no talk of a real revolution”. Then we must directly and in the most resolute manner declare this publicly, in order not to mislead either ourselves, the proletariat, or the people. Then we must unconditionally reject, as the immediate task of the proletariat, the carrying through of the democratic revolution to its conclusion. Then we are obliged to remove the question of uprising from the order of the day completely, to cease all work on arming and organising fighting squads, because to play at uprising is unworthy of a workers’ party. Then we must recognise that the forces of revolutionary democracy are exhausted and set as our immediate task the support of one or another section of liberal democracy as a real opposition force under a constitutional regime. Then we must regard the State Duma as a parliament, even though a bad one, and participate not only in the elections but in the Duma itself. Then we must push into the foreground the legalisation of the party, a corresponding alteration of the party programme, the adaptation of all work to “legal” limits or, at any rate, the assignment to illegal work of a minimal and subordinate place. Then we may recognise the task of organising trade unions as a party task just as primary as armed uprising was in the preceding historical period. Then we must also remove from the order of the day the revolutionary slogans of the peasant movement (such as the confiscation of the landlords’ land), because such slogans are in practice slogans of uprising, and to call to uprising without preparing for it seriously in a military way, without believing in it, would be an unworthy playing at uprising. Then we must throw overboard all talk not only about a provisional revolutionary government, but also about so-called “revolutionary self-government”, because experience has shown that institutions correctly or incorrectly designated by this term are in fact, by force of circumstances, turned into organs of uprising, into embryos of a revolutionary government.

Or we recognise that at the present time there can and must be talk of a real revolution. We recognise new and higher forms of directly revolutionary struggle as inevitable or, at least, most probable. Then the main political task of the proletariat, the nerve of all its work, the soul of all its organisational class activity must be the carrying through of the democratic revolution to its conclusion. Any excuses for evading this task would then only be a debasement of the concept of class struggle to Brentano’s interpretation of it, would be a transformation of the proletariat into a tail of the liberal monarchist bourgeoisie. Then the most pressing and central political task of the party is to prepare forces and organise the proletariat for armed uprising as the highest form of struggle attained by the movement. Then it is obligatory to study critically, with the most immediate practical aims, the whole experience of the December uprising. Then we must intensify tenfold our efforts to organise fighting squads and to arm them. Then we must prepare for uprising also by means of partisan fighting actions, because it would be ridiculous to “prepare” only by means of enrolment and registration. Then we must consider the civil war as declared and continuing, and the whole activity of the party must be subordinated to the principle: “if it’s war, then let it be in a soldierly way.” Then the training of cadres of the proletariat for offensive military actions is unconditionally necessary. Then the throwing of revolutionary slogans into the peasant mass is logical and consistent. The task of fighting agreements with revolutionary and only revolutionary democracy is pushed into the foreground: the very basis of the division of bourgeois democracy is precisely the question of uprising. Those who are for uprising, with them the proletariat “strikes together”, even though it “marches separately”; those who are against uprising, against them we struggle mercilessly, or we push them away from us as despicable hypocrites and Jesuits (the Cadets). Then in all agitation we put in the first place the criticism and exposure of constitutional illusions from the standpoint of open civil war, we put forward the circumstances and conditions that are inexorably preparing spontaneous revolutionary outbreaks. The Duma we then recognise not as a parliament, but as a police chancellery, and we reject any participation in farcical elections as corrupting and disorganising the proletariat. As the basis of the organisation of the workers’ party we then put (as Marx did in 1849) “a strong secret organisation”, which must have a special apparatus of “open actions”, must thrust special tentacles into all legal societies and institutions, beginning with the workers’ trade unions and ending with the legal press. In short: either we must recognise the democratic revolution as finished, remove the question of uprising from the order of the day and take the “constitutional” path. Or we recognise the democratic revolution as continuing, put the task of completing it in the first place, develop and apply in practice the slogan of uprising, proclaim civil war and mercilessly brand all constitutional illusions.

We hardly need to tell the readers that we decidedly pronounce for the latter solution of the question confronting our party. The appended tactical platform is to summarise and systematically set forth our views, which we shall advocate at the congress and during all the work of preparing for the congress. This platform is to be regarded not as something finished, but as a synopsis for clarifying tactical questions and as a first sketch of the resolutions and decisions which we shall defend at the party congress. This platform was discussed at private meetings of like-minded people from among the former “Bolsheviks” (among them the editors and contributors of “Proletary”) and is the fruit of collective work.

“Partiinye Izvestia” No. 2, March 20, 1906. Signed: Bolshevik

Printed from the text of the newspaper “Partiinye Izvestia”