V. I.

Lenin

A students’ strike has been called at St. Petersburg University. A number of
other higher education establishments have joined in. The movement has already
spread to Moscow and Kharkov. Judging from all the reports in the foreign and
Russian newspapers and in private letters from Russia, we are faced with a
fairly broad academic movement.

Back to the old days! Back to pre-revolutionary Russia! That is what these
events signify above all. As before, official reaction is tightening the screw
in the universities. The eternal struggle in autocratic Russia against the
student organisations has taken the form of a crusade by the Black-Hundred
Minister Schwartz—acting in full agreement with “Premier”
Stolypin—against the autonomy which was promised the students in the
autumn of 1905 (what did not the autocracy, faced with the onset of the
revolutionary working class, “promise” Russian citizens at that
time!); against an autonomy which the students enjoyed so long as the autocracy
had “other things to think of than students”, and which the
autocracy, if it was to remain such, could not but begin to take away.

As before, the liberal press laments and groans, this time together with some
Octobrists—the professors lament and snivel too, imploring the government
not to take the road of reaction and to make use of an excellent opportunity
“to ensure peace and order with the help of reforms” in “a
country exhausted by convulsions"—imploring the students not to resort to
unlawful courses which can only play into the hands of reaction, etc., etc.,
etc. How ancient and antiquated, how hackneyed are all these tunes, and how vividly they resurrect before our eyes
what took place twenty years ago or so, at the end of the eighties of last
century! The similarity between that time and this is all the more striking
when we take the present moment by itself, apart from the three years of
revolution we have gone through. For the Duma (at first sight) with only the
tiniest difference expresses that same pre-revolutionary relation of
forces—the supremacy of the wild landlord, who prefers using Court
connections and the influence of his friend the official to any kind of representation; the support of that same official by the merchants (the Octobrists)
who do not dare to differ from their benevolent patrons; the
“opposition” of the bourgeois intellectuals who are concerned most
of all to prove their loyalty, and who describe appeals to those in power as the
political activity of liberalism. And the workers’ deputies in the Duma recall
feebly, far too feebly, the part which the proletariat was recently playing by
its open mass struggle.

It may be asked, can we in such conditions attribute any importance to the old
forms of primitive academic struggle of the students? If the liberals have sunk
to the level of the “politics” of the eighties (one can of course
only in irony speak of politics in this connection), will it not be a debasement of the aims of Social-Democracy if it decides that it is necessary to
support the academic struggle in some way or other?

Here and there, apparently, Social-Democratic students are putting this
question. At any rate, our editorial board has received a letter from a group of
Social-Democratic students which says, among other things:

“ On September 13 a meeting of the students of St. Petersburg
University resolved to call upon students for an all-Russian student
strike, tile reason given for this appeal being the aggressive tactics
pursued by Schwartz. The platform of the strike is an academic one, and
tile meeting even welcomes tile ‘first steps’ of the Moscow and
St. Petersburg Professorial Councils in the struggle for autonomy. We are
puzzled by the academic platform put forward at tile St. Peters burg
meeting, and consider it objectionable in present conditions, because it
cannot unite the students for an active struggle on a broad front. We
envisage student action only as one co-ordinated with general political
action, and in no case apart from it. The elements capable of uniting the students are lacking. In view of this we are against
academic action."

The mistake which the authors of the letter are making is of much greater
political importance than may appear at first sight, because their argument,
strictly speaking, touches upon a theme which is incomparably more broad and
important than the question of taking part in this particular strike.

“ We envisage student action only as one co-ordinated with general
political action. In view of this we are against academic action."

Such an argument is radically wrong. The revolutionary slogan—to work
towards co-ordinated political action of the students and the proletariat,
etc.—here ceases to be a live guidance for many-sided militant agitation
on a broadening basis and becomes a lifeless dogma, mechanically applied to
different stages of different forms of the movement. It is not sufficient merely
to proclaim political co-ordinated action, repeating the “last word”
in lessons of the revolution. One must be able to agitate for
political action, making use of all possibilities, all conditions and,
first and foremost, all mass conflicts between advanced elements, whatever they
are, and the autocracy. It is not of course a question of us dividing every
student movement beforehand into compulsory “stages”, and making
sure that each stage is properly gone through, out of fear of switching over to
“untimely” political actions, etc. Such a view would be the most
harmful pedantry, and would lead only to an opportunist policy. But just as
harmful is the opposite mistake, when people refuse to reckon with the actual
situation that has arisen and the actual conditions of the particular mass
movement, because of a slogan misinterpreted as unchangeable. Such an
application of a slogan inevitably degenerates into revolutionary
phrase-mongering.

Conditions are possible when an academic movement lowers the level of a
political movement, or divides it, or distracts from it—and in that case
Social-Democratic students’ groups would of course be bound to concentrate their
agitation against such a movement. But anyone can see that the objective
political conditions at the present time are different. The academic movement
is expressing the beginning of a movement among the new “generation” of students, who have more
or less become accustomed to a narrow measure of autonomy; and this movement is
beginning when other forms of mass struggle are lacking at the present time,
when a lull has set in,. and the broad mass of the people, still silently,
concentratedly and slowly are continuing to digest the experience of
the three years of revolution.

In such conditions Social-Democrats would make a big mistake if they declared
“against academic action”. No, the groups of students belonging to
our Party must use every effort to support, utilise and extend the
movement. Like every other support of primitive forms of movement by Social-Democracy, the present support, too, should consist most of all in
ideological and organisational influence on wider sections who have been roused
by the conflict, and to whom this form of conflict, as a general rule, is their
first experience of political conflicts. The student youth who have
entered the universities during the last two years have lived a life almost
completely detached from politics, and have been educated in a spirit of narrow
academic autonomism, educated not only by the professors of the Establishment
and the government press but also by the liberal professors and the whole Cadet
Party. For this youth a strike on a large scale (if that youth is able to
organise a large- scale strike: we must do everything to help it in this under
taking, but of course it is not for us socialists to guarantee the success of
any bourgeois movement) is the beginning of a political conflict, whether those
engaged in the fight realise it or not. Our job is to explain to the mass of
“academic” protesters the objective meaning of the conflict, to try
and make it consciously political, to multiply tenfold the agitation
carried on by the Social-Democratic groups of students, and to direct all this activity in such a way that revolutionary conclusions will
be drawn from the history of the last three years, that the inevitability of a
new revolutionary struggle is understood, and that our old—and still
quite timely—slogans calling for the overthrow of the autocracy and the
convocation of a constituent assembly should once again become a subject of
discussion and the touchstone of political concentration for fresh generations
of democrats.

Social-Democratic students have no right to shirk such work under any
conditions. And however difficult this work may be at the present time, whatever
reverses particular agitators may experience in this or that university,
students’ association, meeting, etc., we shall say: knock, and it will be opened
unto you! The work of political agitation is never wasted. Its success is
measured not only by whether we have succeeded here and now in winning a
majority, or obtaining consent for co-ordinated political action. It is possible
that we shall not achieve this all at once. But that is why we are an organised
proletarian party—not to lose heart over temporary failures, but
stubbornly, unswervingly and consistently to carry on our work , even
in the most difficult conditions.

The appeal we print below from the St. Petersburg Joint Student Council shows
that even the most active elements of the students obstinately cling to pure
academic aims, and still sing the Cadet-Octobrist tune. And this at a time when
the Cadet-Octobrist press is behaving in the most disgusting fashion towards the
strike, trying to prove at the very height of the struggle that it is harmful,
criminal, etc. We cannot but welcome the rejoinder which the St. Petersburg
Commit tee of our Party found it necessary to give the Joint Council (see
“From the Party” [2] )

Evidently the whips of Schwartz are not enough as yet to change the present-day
students from “academics” into “politicians”; they need
the scorpions of more and more Black-Hundred sergeant-majors to give a full
revolutionary training to new cadres. These cadres, trained by all Stolypin’s policy, trained by every step of the counter-revolution, require the
constant attention of ourselves, the Social-Democrats, who clearly see the
objective inevitability of further bourgeois-democratic conflicts on a national
scale with the autocracy, which has joined forces with the Black-Hundred
Octobrist Duma.

Yes, on a national scale, for the Black-Hundred counter revolution, which is
turning Russia backward, is not only tempering new fighters in the ranks of the
revolutionary proletariat, but will inevitably arouse a new movement of the
non-proletarian, i.e., bourgeois democrats (thereby implying, of course, not
that all the opposition will take part in the struggle, but that there will be a wide participation of truly democratic
elements of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, i.e., those capable of
struggle). The beginning of a mass student struggle in the Russia of 1908 is a
political symptom, a symptom of the whole present situation brought about by the
counter-revolution. Thousands and millions of threads tie the student youth with
the middle and lower bourgeoisie, the petty officials, certain groups of the
peasantry, the clergy, etc. If in the spring of 1908 attempts
were being made to resurrect the “ Osvobozhdeniye

League”, [1] slightly to the left of the old Cadet semi-landlord union represented by Pyotr
Struve; if in the autumn the mass of youth which is closest of all to the
democratic bourgeoisie in Russia is beginning to be disturbed; if the hireling
hacks, with malice tenfold, have started howling once more against revolution in
the schools; if base liberal professors and Cadet leaders are groaning and
wailing at the untimely, dangerous, disastrous strikes which displease those
dear Octobrists, which are capable of “repelling” the Octobrists
who hold power—that means new powder has begun to accumulate in the
powder-flask, it means that not only among students is the reaction
against reaction beginning!

And however weak and embryonic this beginning may be, the party of the working
class must make use of it and will do so. We were able to work years and decades
before the revolution, carrying our revolutionary slogans first into the study
circles, then among the masses of the workers, then on to the streets, then on
to the barricades. We must be capable, now too , of organising first and
foremost that which constitutes the task of the hour, and without which all talk
about co-ordinated political action will be empty words, namely, the task of
building a strong proletarian organisation, everywhere carrying on political agitation among the masses for its revolutionary watchwords. It is this
task of organisation in their own student midst, this agitation based on the
concrete movement, that our university groups, too, should tackle.

The proletariat will not be behindhand. It often yields the palm to the
bourgeois democrats in speeches at banquets, in legal unions, within the walls of universities, from the rostrum of
representative institutions. It never yields the palm, and will not do so, in
the serious and great revolutionary struggle of the masses. All the conditions
for bringing this struggle to a head are not ripening as quickly and easily as
some of us would hope—but those conditions are ripening and gathering head
unswervingly. And the little beginning of little academic conflicts is a great
beginning, for after it— if not today then tomorrow, if not tomorrow then
the day after—will follow big continuations.

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 63–67 of this volume— Ed .

[2]
This refers to the decision of the St. Petersburg Committee of the
R.S.D.L.P. published in “From the Party” column of the news paper
Proletary , No. 36, October 3 (16), 1908. The St. Petersburg
Committee called upon the Social-Democratic students’ groups to dissociate
themselves from the appeal of the Joint Students’ Council and subordinate
the student movement to the aims of Social-Democracy in the nation-wide
struggle against tsarism.