V. I. Lenin

A Contribution To The History Of

The Question Of The Dictatorship [1]

A Note

The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the
fundamental question of the modern working-class movement in all
capitalist countries without exception. To elucidate this question
fully, a knowledge of its history is required. On an international
scale, the history of the doctrine of revolutionary dictatorship
in general, and of the dictatorship of the proletariat in
particular, coincides with the history of revolutionary socialism,
and especially with the history of Marxism. Moreover—and
this, of course, is the most important thing of all—the
history of all revolutions by the oppressed and exploited classes,
against the exploiters, provides the basic material and source of
our knowledge on the question of dictatorship. Whoever has failed
to understand that dictatorship is essential to the victory of any
revolutionary class has no understanding of the history of
revolutions, or else does not want to know anything in this
field.

With reference to Russia, special importance attaches, as far
as theory is concerned, to the Programme of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party as drafted in 1902-03 by the
editorial board of Zarya and Iskra , or, more exactly, drafted by G. Plekhanov, and edited, amended and endorsed
by that editorial board. In this Programme, the question of the
dictatorship of the proletariat is stated in clear and defnite
terms, and, moreover, is linked up with the struggle against
Bernstein, against opportunism. Most important of all, however, is
of couse the experience of revolution, i.e., in the case of
Russia, the experience of the year 1905.

The last three months of that year—October, November and
December—were a period of a remarkably vigorous and broad
mass revolutionary struggle, a period that saw a combination of
the two most powerful methods of that struggle: the mass political
strike and an armed uprising. (Let us note parenthetically that as
far back as May 1905 the Bolshevik congress, the “Third
Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party”,
declared that “the task of organising the proletariat for
direct struggle against the autocracy by means of the armed
uprising” was “one of the major and most urgent tasks of the Party”, and instructedall Party organisations to
“explain the role of mass political strikes, which may be of
great importance at the beginning and during the progress of the
uprising’’. [2] )

For the first time in world history, the revolutionary struggle
attained such a high stage of development and such an impetus that
an armed uprising was combined with that specifically proletarian
weapon—the mass strike. This experience is clearly of world
significance to all proletarian revolutions. It was studied by the
Bolsheviks with the greatest attention and diligence in both its
political and its economic aspects. I shall mention an analysis of
the month-by-month statistics of economic and political strikes in
1905, of the relations between them, and the level of development
achieved by the strike struggle for the first time in world
history. This analysis was published by me in 1910 and 1911 in the
Prosveshcheniye journal, a summary of it being given in
Bolshevik periodicals brought out abroad at the time. [3]

The mass strikes and the armed uprisings raised, as a matter of
course, the question of the revolutionary power and dictatorship,
for these forms of struggle inevitably led—initially on a
local scale—to the ejection of the old ruling authorities,
to the seizure of power by the proletariat and the other
revolutionary classes, to the expulsion of the landowners,
sometimes to the seizure of factories, and so on and so forth. The
revolutionary mass struggle of the time gave rise to organisations
previously unknown in world history, such as the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies , followed by the Soviets of
Soldiers’ Deputies, Peasants’ Committees, and the like. Thus the fundamental questions (Soviet power and the
dictatorship of the proletariat) that are now engaging the minds
of class-conscious workers all over the world were posed in a
practical form at the end of 1905. While such outstanding
representatives of the revolutionary proletariat and of
unfalsified Marxism as Rosa Luxemburg, immediately realised the
significance of this practical experience and made a critical
analysis of it at meetings and in the press, the vast majority of
the official representatives of the official Social-Democratic and
socialist parties including both the reformists and people of the
type of the future “Kautskyites”, “Longuetists”, the followers of Hillquit in America,
etc.—proved absolutely incapable of grasping the significance of this experience and of performing their duty as
revolutionaries , i.e., of setting to work to study and
propagate the lessons of this experience.

In Russia, immediately after the defeat of the armed uprising
of December 1905, both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks set to
work to sum up this experience. This work was especially expedited
by what was called the Unity Congress of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party, held in Stockholm in April 1906,
where both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were represented, and
formally united. The most energetic preparations for this Congress
were made by both these groups. Early in 1906, prior to the
Congress, both groups published drafts of their resolutions on all
the most important questions. These draft resolutions—reprinted in my pamphlet, Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. ( A Letter to the St. Petersburg Workers ), Moscow, 1906 (110 pages, nearly
half of which are taken up with the draft resolutions of both
groups and with the resolutions finally adopted by the
Congress)—provide the most important material for a study of
the question as it stood at the time.

By that time, the disputes as to the significance of the
Soviets were already linked up with the question of dictatorship. The Bolsheviks had raised the question of the
dictatorship even prior to the revolution of October 1905 (see my
pamphlet Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution , Geneva,
July 1905; reprinted in a volume of collected articles entitled
Twelve Years ). The Mensheviks took a negative stand with
regard to the “dicta- torship” slogan; the Bolsheviks emphasised that the
Soviets of Workers’ Deputies were “ actually an embryo of a new revolutionary power ”, as was
literally said in the draft of the Bolshevik resolution (p. 92
of my Report ). The Mensheviks acknowledged the importance of the Soviets; they were in favour of “helping
to organise” them, etc., but they did not regard them as
embryos of revolutionary power, did not in general say anything
about a “new revolutionary power” of this or some similar type, and flatly rejected the slogan of dictatorship. It
will easily be seen that this attitude to the question already
contained the seeds of all the present disagreements with the
Mensheviks. It will also be easily seen that, in their attitude
to this question, the Mensheviks (both Russian and non-Russian,
such as the Kautskyites, Longuetists and the like) have been
behaving like reformists or opportunists, who recognise the
proletarian revolution in word, but in deed reject what is most essential and fundamental in the concept of
“ revolution ”.

Even before the revolution of 1905, I analysed, in the afore-mentioned pamphlet, Two Tactics , the arguments of
the Mensheviks, who accused me of having “imperceptibly
substituted ‘dictatorship’ for
‘revolution’ ( Twelve Years , p. 459). I showed in detail that, by this very accusation, the Mensheviks revealed
their opportunism, their true political nature, as toadies to the
liberal bourgeoisie and conductors of its influence in the ranks
of the proletariat. When the revolution becomes an unquestioned
force, I said, even its opponents begin to “recognise the
revolution"; and I pointed (in the summer of 1905) to the example
of the Russian liberals, who remained constitutional monarchists. At present, in 1920, one might add that in Germany
and Italy the liberal bourgeois—or at least the most educated and adroit of them—are ready to “recognise
the revolution”. But by “recognising” the revolution, and at the same time refusing to recognise the
dictatorship of a definite class (or of definite classes), the Russian liberals and the Mensheviks of that time,
and the present-day German and Italian liberals, Turatists and
Kautskyites, have revealed their reformism , their absolute unfitness to be revolutionaries.

Indeed, when the revolution has already become an unquestioned force, when even the liberals “recognise”
it, and when the ruling classes not only see but also feel the
invincible might of the oppressed masses, then the entire question —both to the theoreticians and the leaders of
practical policy—reduces itself to an exact class definition of the revolution . However, without the concept of
“dictatorship”, this precise class definition cannot be given. One cannot be a revolutionary in fact unless
one prepares for dictatorship. This truth was not understood in
1905 by the Mensheviks, and it is not understood in 1920 by the
Italian, German, French and other socialists, who are afraid of
the severe “conditions” of the Communist
International; this truth is feared by people who are capable of
recognising the dictatorship in word , but are incapable
of preparing for it in deed . It will therefore not be irrelevant to quote at length the explanation of Marx’s
views, which I published in July 1905 in opposition to the Russian
Mensheviks, but is equally applicable to the West-European
Mensheviks of 1920. (Instead of giving titles of newspapers, etc.,
I shall merely indicate whether Mensheviks or Bolsheviks are
referred to.)

“In his notes to Marx’s articles in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung of 1848, Mehring tells us that one of the
reproaches levelled at this newspaper by bourgeois publications
was that it had allegedly demanded ‘the immediate introduction of a dictatorship as the sole means of achieving
democracy’ (Marx, Nachlass , Vol. III, p. 53). From the vulgar bourgeois standpoint the terms of dictatoship and
democracy are mutually exclusive. Failing to understand the theory
of class struggle and accustomed to seeing in the political arena
the petty squabbling of the various bourgeois circles and
coteries, the bourgeois understands by dictatorship the annulment
of all liberties and guarantees of democracy, arbitrariness of
every kind, and every sort of abuse of power, in a dictator’s personal interests. In fact, it is precisely this
vulgar bourgeois view that is to be observed among our Mensheviks,
who attribute the partiality of the Bolsheviks for the slogan of
‘dictatorship’ to Lenin’s passionate desire to try his luck’ ( Iskra No. 103, p. 3, column 2). In
order to explain to the Mensheviks the mean- ing of the term class dictatorship as distinct from a personal
dictatorship, and the tasks of ademocratic dictatorship as
distinct from a socialist dictatorship, it would not be amiss to
dwell on the views of Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung . [4] “’After a revolution,’ Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung wrote on September 14, 1848, ‘every
provisional organisation of the state requires a dictatorship, and
an energetic dictatorship at that. From the very beginning we have
reproached Camphausen [the head of the Ministry after March 18,
1848] for not acting dictatorially, for not having immediately
smashed up and eliminated the remnants of the old institutions. And while Herr Camphausen was lulling himself with
constitutional illusions, the defeated party [i.e., the party of
reaction] strengthened its positions in the bureaucracy and in the
army, and here and there even began to venture upon open
struggle.’ [5] “These words, Mehring justly remarks, sum up in a few
propositions all that was propounded in detail in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung in long articles on the Camphausen
Ministry. What do these words of Marx tell us? That a provisional
revolutionary government must act dictatorially (a proposition
which the Mensheviks were totally unable to grasp since they were
fighting shy of the slogan of dictatorship), and that the task of
such a dictatorship is to destroy the remnants of the old
institutions (which is precisely what was clearly stated in the
resolution of the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party [Bolsheviks] on the struggle against counter-revolution, and was omitted in the Mensheviks’
resolution as shown above). Third, and last, it follows from these
words that Marx castigated the bourgeois democrats for entertainrng ‘constitutional illusions’ in a period of
revolution and open civil war. The meaning of these words becomes
particularly obvious from the article in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung of June 6, 1848.

“’A Constituent National Assembly’, Marx wrote, ‘must first of all be an active, revolutionary active
assembly. The Frankfurt Assembly [6] however, is busying
itself with school exercises in parliamentarianism while allowing
the government to act. Let us assume that this learned assembly
succeeds, after mature consideration, in evolving the best
possible agenda and the best constitution, but what is the use of
the best possible agenda and of thebest possible constitution, if
the German governments have in the meantime placed the bayonet on
the agenda?’ [7] “That is the meaning of the slogan: dictatorship. . . .

“Major questions in the life of nations are settled only
by force. The reactionary classes themselves are usually the first
to resort to violence, to civil war; they are the first to
‘place the bayonet on the agenda’, as the Russian autocracy has systematically and unswervingly been doing
everywhere ever since January 9. [8] And since such a situation has arisen, since the bayonet has really become the main
point on the political agenda, since insurrection has proved
imperative and urgent—the constitutional illusions and school exercises in parliamentarianism become merely a screen for
the bourgeois betrayal of the revolution, a screen to conceal the
fact that the bourgeoisie is ‘recoiling’ from the revolution. It is precisely the slogan of dictatorship that the
genuinely revolutionary class must advance, in that case.”
[9]

That was how the Bolsheviks reasoned on the dictatorship before
the revolution of October 1905.

After the experience of this revolution, I made a detailed
study of the question of dictatorship in the pamphlet, The Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party , St. Petersburg, 1906 (the pamphlet is dated March
28,1906). I shall quote the most important arguments from this
pamphlet, only substituting for a number of proper names a simple
indication as to whether the reference is to the Cadets or to the
Mensheviks. Generally speaking, this pamphlet was directed against
the Cadets, and partly also against the non-party liberals, the
semi-Cadets, and the semi-Mensheviks. But, actually speaking,
everything said therein about dictatorship applies in fact to the
Mensheviks, who were constantly sliding to the Cadets’ position on this question.

“At the moment when the firing in Moscow was subsiding,
and when the military and police dictatorship was indulging in its
savage orgies, when repressions and mass torture were raging all
over Russia, voices were raised in the Cadet press against the use
of force by the Left, and against the strike committees organised
by the revolutionary parties. The Cadet professors on the
Dubasovs’ payroll, who are peddling their science, went to
the length of translating the word ‘dictatorship’ by the words ‘reinforced security’. These ‘men of
science’ even distorted their high-school Latin in order to
discredit the revolutionary struggle. Please note once and for
all, you Cadet gentlemen, that dictatorship means unlimited power,
based on force, and not on law. In civil war, any victorious power
can only be a dictatorship. The point is, however, that there is
the dictatorship of a minority over the majority, the dictatorship
of a handful of police officials over the people; and there is the
dictatorship of the overwhelming majority of the people over a
handful of tyrants, robbers and usurpers of the people’s
power. By their vulgar distortion of the scientific concept
‘dictatorship’, by their outcries against the violence of the Left at a time when the Right are resorting to the most
lawless and outrageous violence the Cadet gentlemen have given
striking evidence of the position the ‘compromisers’ take in the intense revolutionary struggle. When the struggle
flares up, the ‘compromiser’ cravenly runs for cover. When the revolutionary people are victorious (October 17),
the ‘compromiser’ creeps out of his hiding place, boastfully preens himself, shouting and raving until he is hoarse:
‘That was a “glorious” political strike!’
But when victory goes to the counter-revolution, the
‘compromiser’ begins to heap hypocritical admonitions and edifying counsel on the vanquished. The successful strike was
‘glorious’. The defeated strikes were criminal, mad, senseless, and anarchistic. The defeated insurrection was folly, a
riot of surging elements, barbarity and stupidity. In short, his
political conscience and political wisdom prompt the
‘compromiser’ to cringe before the side that for the moment is the strongest, to get in the way of the combatants,
hindering first one side and then the other, to tone down the
struggleand to blunt the revolutionary consciousness of the people
who are waging a desperate struggle for freedom.’’ [10]

To proceed. It would be highly opportune at this point to
quote the explanations on the question of dictatorship, directed
against Mr. R. Blank. In 1906, this R. Blank, in a newspaper
actually Menshevik though formally non-partisan, [11] set forth the Mensheviks’ views and extolled their efforts
“to direct the Russian Social-Democratic movement along
the path that is being followed by the whole of the international Social-Democratic movement, led by the great
Social-Democratic Party of Germany”.

In other words, like the Cadets, R. Blank contraposed the
Bolsheviks, as unreasonable, non-Marxist, rebel, etc., revolutionaries, to the “reasonable” Mensheviks, and
presented the German Social-Democratic Party as a Menshevik party
as well. This is the usual method of the international trend of
social-liberals, pacifists, etc., who in all countries extol the
reformists and opportunists, the Kautskyites and the Longuetists,
as “reasonable” socialists in contrast with the “madness” of the Bolsheviks.

This is how I answered Mr. R. Blank in the above mentioned
pamphlet of 1906:

“Mr. Blank compares two periods of the Russian revolution. The first period covers approximately October-December
1905. This is the period of the revolutionary whirlwind. The
second is the present period, which, of course, we have a right to
call the period of Cadet victories in the Duma elections, or,
perhaps, if we take the risk of running ahead somewhat, the period
of a Cadet Duma.

“Regarding this period, Mr. Blank says that the turn of
intellect and reason has come again, and it is possible to resume
deliberate, methodical and systematic activities. On the other
hand, Mr. Blank describes the first period as a period in which
theory diverged from practice. All Social-Democratic principles
and ideas vanished; the tactics that had always been advocated by
the founders af Russian Social-Democracy were forgotten, and even
the very pillars of the Social-Democratic world outlook were
uprooted.

“Mr. Blank ‘s main assertion is merely a statement of fact: the whole theory of Marxism diverged from
‘practice’ in the period of the revolutionary whirlwind.

“Is that true? What is the first and main
‘pillar’ of Marxist theory? It is that the only thoroughly revolutionary class in modern society, and therefore,
the advanced class in every revolution, is the proletariat. The
question is then: has the revolutionary whirlwind uprooted this
‘pillar’ of the Social-Democratic world outlook? On the contrary, the whirlwind has vindicated it in the most
brilliant fashion.

It was the proletariat that was the main and, at first, almost
the only fighter in this period. For the first time in history, perhaps, a bourgeois revolution was marked by the
employment of a purely proletarian weapon, i.e., the mass
political strike, on a scale unprecedented even in the most
developed capitalist countries. The proletariat marched into
battle that was definitely revolutionary, at a time when the
Struves and the Blanks were calling for participation in the
Bulygin Duma and when the Cadet professors were exhorting the
students to keep to their studies. With its proletarian weapon,
the proletariat won for Russia the whole of that so-called
‘constitution’, which since then has only been mutilated, chopped about and curtailed. The proletariat in October
1905 employed those tactics of struggle that six months before had been laid down in the resolution of the
Bolshevik Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party, which had strongly emphasised the necessity of
combining the mass political strike with insurrection; and it is
this combination that characterises the whole period of the
‘revolutionary whirl wind’, the whole of the last quarter of 1905. Thus our ideologist of petty bourgeoisie has
distorted reality in the most brazen and glaring manner. He has
not cited a single fact to prove that Marxist theory diverged from
practical experience in the period of the ‘revolutionary
whirlwind’; he has tried to obscure the main feature of this
whirlwind, which most brilliantly confirmed the correctness of
‘all Social-Democratic principles and ideas’, of
‘all the pillars of the Social-Democratic world outlook’.

“But what was the real reason that induced Mr. Blank to
come to the monstrously wrong conclusion that all Marxist
principles and ideas vanished in the period of the
‘whirlwind’? It is very interesting to examine this circumstance; it still further exposes the real nature of
philistinism in politics.

“What is it that mainly distinguished the period of the
‘revolutionary whirlwind’ from the present
‘Cadet’ period, as regards the various forms of political activity and the various methods by which the people
make history? First and mainly it is that during the period of the
‘whirlwind’ certain special method~ of making history were employed which are foreign to other periods of political
life. The following were the most important of these methods: 1)
the ’seizure’ by the people of political liberty —its exercise without any rights and laws, and
without any limitations (freedom of assembly, even if only in the
universities, freedom of the press, freedom of association, the
holding of congresses, etc.); 2) the creation of new organs of
revolutionary authority —Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Railwaymen’s and Peasants’ Deputies,
new rural and urban authorities, and so on, and so forth. These
bodies were set up exclusively by the revolutionary sections of the people, they were formed irrespective of all laws
and regulations, entirely in a revolutionary way , as a product of
the native genius of the people, as a manifestation of the
independent activity of the people which had rid itself, or was
ridding itself, of its old police fetters. Lastly, they were
indeed organs of authority , for all their rudimentary,
spontaneous, amorphous and diffuse character, in composition and
in activity. They acted as a government, when, for example, they
seized printing plants (in St. Petersburg), and arrested police
officials who were preventing the revolutionary people from
exercising their rights (such cases also occurred in
St. Petersburg, where the new organ of authority concerned was
weakest, and where the old government was strongest). They acted
as a government when they appealed to the whole people to withhold
money from the old government. They confiscated the old
government’s funds (the railway strike committees in the
South) and used them for the needs of the new, the people’s
government. Yes, these were undoubtedly the embryos of a new,
people’s, or, if you will, revolutionary government. In
their social and political character, they were the rudiments of
the dictatorship of the revolutionary elements of the people. This
surprises you, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter! You do not see here
the ‘reinforced security’, which for the bourgeois is tantamount to dictatorship? We have already told you that you have
not the faintest notion of the scientific concept
‘dictatorship’. We will explain it to you in a moment; but first we will deal with the third ‘method’ of
activity in the period of the ‘revolutionary whirlwind’: the use by the people of force against those who used force against the people .

“The organs of authority that we have described represented a dictatorship in embryo, for they recognised
no other authority, no law and no standards, no matter by whom
established. Authority—unlimited, outside the law, and based
on force in the most direct sense of the word—is dictatorship. But the force on which this new authority was based,
and sought to base itself, was not the force of bayonets usurped
by a handful of militarists, not the power of the ‘police
force’, not the power of money, nor the power of any previously established institutions. It was nothing of the
kind. The new organs of authority possessed neither arms, nor
money, nor old institutions. Their power—can you imagine it,
Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter?—had nothing in common with
the old instruments of power, nothing in common with
‘reinforced security’, if we do not have in mind the reinforced security established to protect the people from the
tyranny of the police and of the other organs of the old
regime.

“What was the power based on, then? It was based on the
mass of the people. That is the main feature that distinguished this new authority from all preceding organs of the
old regime. The latter were the instruments of the rule of the
minority over the people, over the masses of workers and
peasants. The former was an instrument of the rule of the people,
of the workers and peasants, over the minority, over a handful of
police bullies, over a handful of privileged nobles and government
officials. That is the difference between dictatorship over the people and dictatorship of the revolutionary
people: mark this well, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter! As the
dictatorship of a minority, the old regime was able to maintain itself solely with the aid of police devices, solely by
preventing the masses of the people from taking part in the
government, and from supervising the government. The old authority
persistently distrusted the masses, feared the light, maintained
itself by deception. As the dictatorship of the overwhelming
majority, the new authority maintained itself and could maintain
itself solely because it enjoyed the confidence of the vast
masses, solely because it, in the freest, widest, and most
resolute manner, enlisted all the masses in the task of
government. It concealed nothing, it had no secrets, no
regulations, no formalities. It said, in effect: are you a working
man? Do you want to fight to rid Russia of the gang of police
bullies? You are our comrade. Elect your deputy. Elect him at
once, immediately, whichever way you think best. We will willingly
and gladly accept him as a full member of our Soviet of
Workers’ Deputies, Peasant Committee, Soviet of
Soldiers’ Deputies, and so forth. It was an authority open
to all, it carried out. all its functions before the eyes of the
masses, was accessible to the masses, sprang directly from the
masses; and was a direct and immediate instrument of the popular
masses, of their will. Such was the new authority, or, to be
exact, its embryo, for the victory of the old authority trampled
down the shoots of this young plant very soon.

“Perhaps, Mr. Blank or Mr. Kiesewetter, you will ask: why
‘dictatorship’, why ‘force’? Is it necessary for a vast mass to use force against a handful? Can tens
and hundreds of millions be dictators over a thousand or ten
thousand?

“That question is usually put by people who for the first
time hear the term ‘dictatorship’ used in what to them is a new connotation. People are accustomed to see only a police
authority and only a police dictatorship. The idea that there can
be government without any police, or that dictatorship need not be
a police dictatorship, seems strange to them. You say that
millions need not resort to force against thousands? You are
mistaken; and your mistake arises from the fact that you do not
regard a phenomenon in its process of development. You forget that
the new authority does not drop from the skies, but grows up,
arises parallel with, and in opposition to the old authority, in
struggle against it. Unless force is used against tyrants armed
with the weapons and instruments of power, the people cannot be
liberated from tyrants.

“Here is a very simple analogy, Mr. Blank and
Mr. Kiesewetter, which will help you to grasp this idea, which
seems so remote and ‘fantastic’ to the Cadet mind. Let us suppose that Avramov is injuring and torturing Spiridonova. On
Spiridonova’s side, let us say, are tens and hundreds of
unarmed people. On Avramov’s side there is a handful of
Cossacks. What would the people do if Spiridonova were being
tortured, not in a dungeon but in public? They would resort to
force against Avramov and his body-guard. Perhaps they would
sacrifice a few of their comrades, shot down by Avramov; but in
the long run they would forcibly disarm Avramov and his Cossacks,
and in all probability would kill on the spot some of these brutes
in human form; they would clap the rest into some gaol to prevent
them from committing any more outrages and to bring them to
judgement before the people.

“So you see, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter, when Avramov
and his Cossacks torture Spiridonova, that is military and police
dictatorship over the people. When a revolutionary people (that is
to say, a people capable of fighting the tyrants, and not only of
exhorting, admonishing, regretting, condemning, whining and
whimpering; not a philistine narrow-minded, but a revolutionary
people) resorts to force against Avramov and the Avramovs, that is
a dictatorship of the revolutionary people. It is a dictatorship , because it is the authority of the people
over Avramov, an authority unrestricted by any laws (the
philistines, perhaps, would be opposed to rescuing Spiridonova
from Avramov by force, thinking it to be against the
‘law’. They would no doubt ask: Is there a
‘law’ that permits the killing of Avramov? Have not some philistine ideologists built up the ‘resist not
evil’ theory?). The scientific term
‘dictatorship’ means nothing more nor less than authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any
rules whatever, and based directly on force. The term
‘dictatorship’ has no other meaning but this —mark this well, Cadet gentlemen. Again, in the
analogy we have drawn, we see the dictatorship of the people , because the people, the mass of the population,
unorganised, ‘casually’ assembled at the given spot, itself appears on the scene, exercises justice and metes out
punishment, exercises power and creates a new, revolutionary
law. Lastly, it is the dictatorship of the revolutionary
people . Why only of the revolutionary, and not of the whole people? Because among the whole people, constantly
suffering, and most cruelly, from the brutalities of the Avramovs,
there are some who are physically cowed and terrified; there are
some who are morally degraded by the ‘resist not evil’ theory, for example, or simply degraded not by theory, but by
prejudice, habit, routine; and there are indifferent people, whom
we call philistines, petty-bourgeois people who are more inclined
to hold aloof from intense struggle, to pass by or even to hide
themselves (for fear of getting mixed up in the fight and getting
hurt). That is why the dictatorship is exercised, not by the whole
people, but by the revolutionary people who, however, do not shun
the whole people, who explain to all the people the motives of
their actions in all their details, and who willingly enlist the
whole people not only in ‘administering’ the state, but in governing it too, and indeed in organising the
state.

“Thus our simple analogy contains all the elements of the scientific concept ‘dictatorship of the
revolutionary people’, and also of the concept
‘military and police dictatorship’. We can now pass from this simple analogy, which even a learned Cadet professor can
grasp, to the more complex developments of social life.

“Revolution, in the strict and direct sense of the word,
is a period in the life of a people when the anger accumulated
during centuries of Avramov brutalities breaks forth into
actions , not merely into words; and into the actions of
millions of the people , not merely of individuals. The
people awaken and rise up to rid themselves of the Avramovs. The
people rescue the countless numbers of Spiridonovas in Russian
life from the Avramovs, use force against the Avramovs, and
establish their authority over the Avramovs. Of course, this does
not take place so easily, and not ‘all at once’, as it did in our analogy, simplified for Professor Kiesewetter. This
struggle of the people against the Avramovs, a struggle in the
strict and direct sense of the word, this act of the people in
throwing the Avramovs off their backs, stretches over months and
years of ‘revolutionary whirlwind’. This act of the people in throwing the Avramovs off their backs is the real
content of what is called the great Russian revolution. This act,
regarded from the standpoint of the methods of making history,
takes place in the forms we have just described in discussing the
revolutionary whirlwind, namely: the people seize political
freedom, that is, the freedom which the Avramovs had prevented
them from exercising; the people create a new, revolutionary
authority, authority over the Avrarmovs, over the tyrants of the
old police regime; the people use force against the Avramovs in
order to remove, disarm and make harmless these wild dogs, all the
Avramovs, Durnovos, Dubasovs, Mins, etc., etc.

“Is it good that the people should apply such unlawful,
irregular, unmethodical and unsystematic methods of struggle as
seizing their liberty and creating a new, formally unrecognised
and revolutionary authority, that it should use force against the
oppressors of the people? Yes, it is very good. It is the supreme
manifestation of the people’s struggle for liberty. It marks
that great period when the dreams of liberty cherished by the best
men and women of Russia come true , when liberty becomes
the cause of the masses of the people, and not merely of
individual heroes. It is as good as the rescue by the crowd (in
our analogy) of Spiridonova from Avramov, and the forcible
disarming of Avramov and making him harmless.

“But this brings us to the very pivot of the
Cadets’ hidden thoughts and apprehensions. A Cadet is the
ideologist of the philistines precisely because he looks at
politics, at the liberation of the whole people, at revolution,
through the spectacles of that same philistine who, in our analogy
of the torture of Spiridonova by Avramov, would try to restrain
the crowd, advise it not to break the law, not to hasten to rescue
the victim from the hands of the torturer, since he is acting in
the name of the law. In our analogy, of course, that philistine
would be morally a monster; but in social life as a whole, we
repeat, the philistine monster is not an individual, but a social
phenomenon, conditioned, perhaps, by the deep-rooted prejudices of
the bourgeois philistine theory of law.

“Why does Mr. Blank hold it as self-evident that all
Marxist principles were forgotten during the period of
‘whirlwind’? Because he distorts Marxism into
Brentanoism, [12] and thinks that such ‘principles’ as the seizure of
liberty, the establishment of revolutionary authority and the
use of force by the people are not Marxist. This idea runs
through the whole of Mr. Blank’s article; and not only
Mr. Blank’s, but the articles of all the Cadets, and of
all the writers in the liberal and radical camp who, today, are
praising Plekhanov for his love of the Cadets; all of them, right up to the Bernsteinians of Bez Zaglaviya , [13]
the Prokopoviches, Kuskovas and tutti quanti .

“Let us see how this opinion arose and why it was bound
to arise.

“It arose directly out of the Bernsteinian or, to put it
more broadly, the opportunist concepts of the West-European
Social-Democrats. The fallacies of these concepts, which the
‘orthodox’ Marxists in Western Europe have been systematically exposing all along the line, are now being smuggled
into Russia ‘on the sly’, in a different dressing and on a different occasion. The Bernsteinians accepted and accept
Marxism minus its directly revolutionary aspect. They do
not regard the parliamentary struggle as one of the weapons
particularly suitable for definite historical periods, but as the
main and almost the sole form of struggle making
‘force’, ‘seizure’, ‘dictatorship’ unnecessary. It is this vulgar
philistine distortion of Marxism that the Blanks and other liberal
eulogisers of Plekhanov are now smuggling into Russia. They have
become so accustomed to this distortion that they do not even
think it necessary to prove that Marxist principles and ideas were
forgotten in the period of the revolutionary whirlwind.

“Why was such an opinion bound to arise? Because it accords very well with the class standing and interests of the
petty bourgeoisie. The ideologists of ‘purified’ bourgeois society agree with all the methods used by the Social
Democrats in their struggle except those to which the revolutionary people resort in the period of a ‘whirlwind’ , and which revolutionary
Social-Democrats approve of and help in using. The interests of
the bourgeoisie demand that the proletariat should take part in
the struggle against the autocracy, but only in a way that does
not lead to the supremacy of the proletariat and the peasantry,
and does not completely eliminate the old, feudal-autocratic and
police organs of state power. The bourgeoisie wants to preserve
these organs, only establishing its direct control over them. It
needs them against the proletariat , whose struggle would
be too greatly facilitated if they were completely abolished. That
is why the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class require both a
monarchy and an Upper Chamber, and the prevention of the
dictatorship of the revolutionary people.

Fight the autocracy, the bourgeoisie says to the proletariat,
but do not touch the old organs of state power, for I need
them. Fight in a ‘parliamentary’ way, that is, within the limits that we will prescribe by agreement with the
monarchy. Fight with the aid of organisations, only not
organisations like general strike committees, Soviets of
Workers’, Soldiers ‘ Deputies, etc., but organisations that are recognised, restricted and made safe for capital by a law
that we shall pass by agreement with the monarchy.

“It is clear, therefore, why the bourgeoisie speaks with
disdain, contempt, anger and hatred about the period of the
‘whirlwind’, and with rapture, ecstasy and boundless philistine infatuation for . . . reaction, about the period of
constitutionalism as protected by Dubasov. It is once again that
constant, invariable quality of the Cadets: seeking to lean on the
people and at the same time dreading their revolutionary
initiative.

“It is also clear why the bourgeoisie is in such mortal
fear of a repetition of the ‘whirlwind’, why it ignores and obscures the elements of the new revolutionary crisis,
why it fosters constitutional illusions and spreads them among the
people.

“Now we have fully explained why Mr. Blank and his like
declare that in the period of the ‘whirlwind’ all
Marxist principles and ideas were forgotten. Like all philistines,
Mr. Blank accepts Marxism minus its revolutionary aspect;
he accepts Social-Democratic methods of struggle minus the most revolutionary and directly revolutionary methods.

“Mr. Blank’s attitude towards the period of
‘whirlwind’ is extremely characteristic as an illustration of bourgeois failure to understand proletarian
movements, bourgeois horror of acute and resolute struggle,
bourgeois hatred for every manifestation of a radical and directly
revolutionary method of solving social historical problems, a
method that breaks up old institutions. Mr. Blank has betrayed
himself and all his bourgeois narrow-mindedness. Somewhere he
heard and read that during the period of whirlwind the
Social-Democrats made ‘mistakes’—and he had hastened to conclude, and to declare with self-assurance, in tones
that brook no contradiction and require no proof, that all the
‘principles’ of Marxism (of which he has not the least notion!) were forgotten. As for these ‘mistakes’, we
will remark: Has there been a period in the development of the
working-class movement, in the development of Social- Democracy,
when no mistakes were made, when there was no deviation to the
right or the left? Is not the history of the parliamentary period
of the struggle waged by the German Social-Democratic
Party—the period which all narrow-minded bourgeois all over
the world regard as the utmost limit—filled with such mistakes? If Mr. Blank were not an utter ignoramus on problems of
socialism,he would easily call to mind Mulberger, Dühring, the
Dampfersubvention [14] question, the
‘Youth’, [15] and Bernsteiniad and many, many more. But Mr. Blank is not interested in studying the actual
course of development of the Social-Democratic movement; all he
wants is to minimise the scope of the proletarian struggle in
order to exalt the bourgeois paltriness of his Cadet Party.

“Indeed, if we examine the question in the light of the
deviations that the Social-Democratic movement has made from its
ordinary, ‘normal’ course, we shall see that even in this respect there was more and not less solidarity and
ideological integrity among the Social-Democrats in the period of
‘revolutionary whirlwind’ than there was before it. The tactics adopted in the period of ‘whirlwind’
did not further estrange the two wings of the Social-Democratic
Party, but brought them closer together. Former disagreements gave
way to unity of opinion on the question of armed uprising. Social-Democrats of both factions were active in the
Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, these peculiar instruments of
embryonic revolutionary authority; they drew the soldiers and
peasants into these Soviets, they issued revolutionary manifestos
jointly with the petty-bourgeois revolutionary parties. Old
controversies of the pre-revolutionary period gave way to
unanimity on practical questions. The upsurge of the revolutionary
tide pushed aside disagreements, compelling Social-Democrats to
adopt militant tactics; it swept the question of the Duma into the
background and put the question of insurrection on the order of
the day; and it brought closer together the Social-Democrats and
revolutionary bourgeois democrats in carrying out immediate
tasks. In Severny Golos , [16] the Mensheviks, jointly with the Bolsheviks, called for a general strike and
insurrection; and they called upon the workers to continue this
struggle until they had captured power. The revolutionary
situation itself suggested practical slogans. There were arguments
only over matters of detail in theappraisal of events: for
example, Nachalo [17] regarded the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies as organs of
revolutionary local self-government, while Novaya Zhizn [18] regarded them as embryonic organs
of revolutionary state power that united the proletariat with
the revolutionary democrats. Nachalo inclined towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. Novaya Zhizn
advocated the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the
peasantry. But have not disagreements of this kind been observed
at every stage of development of every socialist party in
Europe?

“Mr. Blank’s misrepresentation of the facts and his gross distortion of recent history are nothing more nor less than
a sample of the smug bourgeois banality, for which periods of
revolutionary whirlwind seem folly (’all principles are
forgotten’, ‘even intellect and reason almost vanish’), while periods of suppression of revolution and
philistine ‘progress’ (protected by the Dubasovs) seem to be periods of reasonable, deliberate and methodical
activity. This comparative appraisal of two periods (the period of
‘whirlwind’ and the Cadet period) runs through the whole of Mr. Blank’s article. When human history rushes
forward with the speed of a locomotive, he calls it a
‘whirlwind’, a ‘torrent’, the
‘vanishing’ of all ‘principles and ideas’. When history plods along at dray-horse pace, it
becomes the very symbol of reason and method. When the masses of
the people themselves, with all their virgin primitiveness and
simple, rough determination begin to make history, begin to put
‘principles and theories’ immediately and directly into practice, the bourgeois is terrified and howls that
‘intellect is retreating into the background’ (is not the contrary the case, heroes of philistinism? Is it not the
intellect of the masses, and not of individuals, that invades the
sphere of history at such moments? Does not mass intellect at such
a time become a verile, effective, and not an armchair force?). When the direct movement of the masses has been crushed
by shootings, repressive measures, floggings, unemployment and
starvation, when all the parasites of professorial science
financed by Dubasov come crawling out of their crevices and begin
to administer affairs on behalf of the people, in the name of the masses , selling and betraying their interests to
a privileged few—then the knights of philistinism think that
an era of calm and peaceful progress has set in and that
‘the turn of intellect and reason has come’.The bourgeois always and everywhere remains true to himself: whether
you take Polyarnaya Zvezda or Nasha Zhizn , [19] whether you read Struve or Blank, you will always find this same
narrow-minded, professorially pedantic and bureaucratically
lifeless appraisal of periods of revolution and periods of
reform. The former are periods of madness, tolle Jahre ,
the disappearance of intellect and reason. The latter are
periods of ‘deliberate and systematic’ activities.

“Do not misinterpret what I am saying. I am not arguing
that the Blanks prefer some periods to others. It is not a matter
of preference; our subjective preferences do not determine the
changes in historical periods. The thing is that in analysing the characteristics of this or that period (quite apart from
our preferences or sympathies), the Blanks shamelessly distort the truth . The thing is that it is just the revolutionary
periods which are distinguished by wider, richer, more deliberate,
more methodical, more systematic, more courageous and more vivid
making of history than periods of philistine, Cadet, reformist
progress. But the Blanks turn the truth inside out! They palm off
paltriness as magnificent making of history. They regard the
inactivity of the oppressed or downtrodden masses as the triumph
of ‘system’ in the work of bureaucrats and bourgeois. They shout about the disappearance of intellect and
reason when, instead of the picking of draft laws to pieces by
petty bureaucrats and liberal penny-a-liner [In the original these words are in English. —Editor .] journalists, there begins
a period of direct political activity of the ‘common people’, who simply set to work without more ado to smash
all the instruments for oppressing the people, seize power and
take what was regarded as belonging to all kinds of robbers of the
people—in short, when the intellect and reason of millions
of downtrodden people awaken not only to read books, but for
action, vital human action, to make history.” [20]

Such was the controversy that was waged in Russia in the
years 1905 and 1906 on the question of the dictatorship.

Actually, the Dittmanns, Kautskys, Crispiens, and Hilferdings
in Germany, Longuet and Co. in France, Turati and his friends in
Italy, the MacDonalds and Snowdens in Britain, etc., argue about
the dictatorship exactly as Mr. R. Blank and the Cadets did in
Russia in 1905. They do not understand what dictatorship means, do
not know how to prepare for it, and are incapable of understanding
it and implementing it.

20.10.1920

Endnotes

[1]
Lenin sent the manuscript of this article to the editors of the
journal The Communist International in Petrograd. On the
next day he informed the editors that he had sent the article, and
requested them to register, check up and set the material
(everything to be returned to me)” (Central Party Archives
at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.C. C.P.S.U.). He
himself read and made a number of corrections in the proofs, which
he had received from Petrograd.
A large part of the article was taken by Lenin from his pamphlet
The Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party which he wrote in 1906 (see present edition, Vol. 10,
pp. 199-276). He used Chapter V of the pamphlet entitled “A
Sample of Cadet Smugness”.

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 373-74.

[3] See present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 374-92 and
393-421.

[4]
Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung was a daily published in
Cologne under the editorship of Marx, from June 1, 1848 to May 19,
1849. The editorial board consisted of Frederick Engels, Wilhelm
Wolff, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand Wolff, Ernst Dronke, Ferdinand
Freiligrath and Heinrich Burgers. This militant organ of the
proletarian wing of democracy did much to educate the masses and
rouse them for struggle against the counter-revolution. Most of
the leading articles defining the newspaper’s stand on the
key problems of the German and European revolution were written by
Marx and Engels.

Despite police persecution, the newspaper boldly championed the interests of revolutionary democracy and the
proletariat. Publication of the newspaper was discontinued
following Marx’s deportation from Prussia in May 1849 and
reprisals against other editors.

[5]
Karl Marx, “Die Krisis und die Konterrevolution” (see
Marx/Engels, Werke , Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1959, Bd. 5,
S. 402).

[6]
This refers to the All-Germany National Agsembly convened after
the March 1848 revolution in Germany in Frankfort-on-the-Main in
May of the same year. The Assembly faced the task of putting an
end to the political fragmentation of Germany and of drawing up a
constitution for all Germany. Due to the cowardice and the
vacillation of its Liberal majority, and the irresoluteness and
inconsistency of the petty-bourgeois Left wing, the Assembly did
not dare to assume supreme power in the country and failed to take
a resolute stand on the major questions of the German revolution
of 1848-49. It did nothing to alleviate the position of the
workers and peasants and did not support the national liberation
movement in Poland and Bohemia, but approved the policy of
oppression of subject peoples pursued by Austria and Prussia. The
deputies did not have the courage to mobilise the people for the
defeat of the counter-revolutionary offensive and the defence of
the Imperial Constitution which they had framed in March
1849.

Shortly afterwards the Austrian and then the
Prussian governments recalled their deputies, and the Liberal
deputies of other German states followed suit. The remaining
deputies,who belonged to the petty-bourgeois Left wing, had the
Assembly moved to Stuttgart. In June 1849 the Assembly was
disbanded by the troops of the Württemberg Government.

[7]
See Marx/Engels, Werke , Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1959, Bd. 5, S 40.

[8] On
January 9, 1905, over 140,000 St. Petersburg workers carrying
gonfalons and icons, marched to the Winter Palace to submit a
petition to the tsar. The march was staged by the priest Gapon, an
agent of the secret police, at a time when the strike of the
Putilov workers, which began on January 3 (16), had already spread
to the other factories in the city. The Bolsheviks exposed
Gapon’s venture, warning the workers that the tsar might
unieash a massacre. The Bolsheviks were right. On orders from the
tsar, the troops met the demonstrating workers, their wives and
children with rifle shots, sabres and Cossack whips. More than a
thousand workers were killed and five thousand wounded. January 9,
or Bloody Sunday as it came to be known, sparked off the 1905
Revolution.

[9]
See present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 131-32.

[10]
See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 216-17.

[11]
Lenin is referring to the daily newspaper Nasha Zhizn ( Our Life ) which was published at intervals in
St. Petersburg, from November 6 (19), 1904 to July 11 (24),
1906.

[12]
Brentanoism —a political trend originated by the
German bourgeois economist Lujo Brentano (1844-1931), who preached
“class peace” in capitalist society and maintained that it was possible to eliminate social contradictions without
the class struggle and that the labour question could be settled
and the interests of the workers and the capitalists reconciled
through the establishment of reformist trade unions, and factory
legislation.

[13]
Bez Zaglaviya ( Without a Title )—political weekly published in St. Petersburg from January 24 (February 6) to
May 14 (27), 1906. It was edited by Prokopovich, who worked in
close co-operation with Kuskova, Bogucharsky, Khizhnyakov and
others. Bez Zaglaviya supporters formed a semi-Cadet, semi-Menshevik group of Russian bourgeois intellectuals who, under
the guise of non-partisanship, propagated the ideas of bourgeois
liberalism and opportunism, and supported revisionists in tho
Russian and international Social-Democratic movement.

[14] Lenin is referring to the disagreements in the
Social-Democrat group of the German Reichstag over the shipping
subsidies ( Dampfersubvention ). Late in 1884 Bismarck, in
pursuance of the expansionist colonial policy, demanded from the
Reichstag that it approve subsidies to shipping companies for
establishing regular shipping routes to East Asia, Australia and
Africa. The Left wing of the Social-Democratic group led by Bebel
and Liebknecht rejected the subsidies, but the Right wing, under
Auer, Dietz and others, which constituted the majority, declared
themselves in favour of granting subsidies, even before the
official debate on the question. During the Reichstag debate in
March 1885, the Social-Democratic Right wing voted for subsidies
for shipping lines to East Asia and Australia, making a number of
reservations, in particular that the ships for the new lines
should be built at German shipyards. Only after the Reichstag
declined this demand did the whole group unanimously come out
against the government bill. The behaviour of the majority of the
group came in for criticism from the newspaper Sozialdemokrat and Social-Democratic organisations. At one time the
disagreements within the group were so acute that they threatened
to lead to a split in the Party. Engels sharply criticised the
opportunist stand taken by the group’s Right wing (see
Marx/Engels, Werke , Dietz Verlag, Berlin, Bd. 36).

[15]
The "Youth ” group in the German Social-Democratic
Party, a petty-bourgeois, semi-anarchist opposition which took
shape in 1890. The nucleus of the opposition was made up of young
writers and students, who posed as Party theoreticians and
leaders. Blind to the changes brought about by the abrogation of
the Anti-Socialist Law in 1878, they denied the need for the Party
to make use of legal forms of struggle, opposed the participation
of Social-Democrats in parliament, and accused the Party of
opportunism and defending the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. Engels wrote that the theoretical views and tactics
of the opposition were “’Marxism’ distorted beyond recognition”. Their unrealistic and adventurist
tactics, he said, might “ruin even the strongest party numbering millions of members” (see Marx/Engels,
Werke , Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1963, Bd. 22, S. 69). Some
leaders of the “Left” opposition were expelled from the Party at the Erfurt Congress in October 1891.

[16]
Severny Golos ( Voice of the North )—a legal daily newspaper, organ of the R.S.D.L.P., which appeared in
St. Petersburg from December 6 (19), 1905 and was edited jointly
by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. It was closed down after its
third issue had appeared, on December 8 (21), 1905.

[17]
Nachalo ( The Beginning )—a legal daily
Menshevik newspaper, published in St. Petersburg from November to
December 1905.

[18]
Novaya Zhizn ( New Life )—the first legal
Bolshevik newspaper published daily in St. Petersburg from October
27 (November 9) to December 3 (16), 1905. From the beginning of
November, after Lenin’s return to St. Petersburg from abroad, it was published under his direct guidance. The paper was
actually the Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P.

[19]
Polyarnaya Zvezda ( The Pole Star )—a weekly journal, mouthpiece of the Right wing of the
Constitutional-Democratic Party. It was edited by P. B. Struve and
appeared in St. Petersburg in 1905-06.

Nasha Zhizn ( Our Life )—a daily newspaper that was close to the Left wing of
the Constitutional-Democratic Party; appeared in St. Petersburg at
intervals, from 1904 to 1906.

[20]
See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 241-54.