V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v5;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

ii.
*TO THE ARTICLE “NEW TASKS AND NEW FORCES”*
[March 1905]

The group of seven documents represents successive stages in Vladimir Ilyich’s elaboration of the theme “New Tasks and New Forces”. Step by step, the reader is given an insight into Lenin’s inner laboratory of thought. The main outlines of the theme are already sketched in the first plan:... “unknown channels”... “countless allies”... the transfer of part of the purely educational, “cultural” work from the shoulders of Party members to those of revolutionary fellow-travellers: “the shedding of work”.

Further, these ideas are partly given literary form in the first draft of the article “The Order of the Day”. Lenin is not satisfied with this draft.

Vladimir Ilyich again takes up the “plan”. The two following variants make more precise the idea that the movement, growing in breadth and depth, confronts the party of the working class with the insistent demand to advance new tactical methods of struggle, to display greater flexibility and readiness for creative new organisational forms. Lenin notes the new element brought by the open measurement of forces: “the real relation of our party to the class and to the classes is revealed. The role of the party as the vanguard of the class, as educator and organiser, acquires exceptional importance. Hitherto almost we alone spoke; now hundreds of other voices. So much the better!”

But Lenin does not rest content; he seeks a concentrated expression for the article.

Everyone speaks of the event of January 9, but they also introduce this phenomenon into the channel of judgments of the peaceful pre-revolutionary situation. Lenin, however, emphasises that about insurrection, about military actions, one must now speak in a new way, and think in a new way about the organisational coverage of the masses. At the very beginning of the fifth document, Vladimir Ilyich criticises his first draft of the article and the very title of the theme: “Not ‘The Order of the Day’, but ‘New Tasks’, ‘New Forces’.”

“The article is not thought out, not matured. Therefore there is no clear development of a strictly defined idea. These are newspaper sketches, silhouettes, a conversation, ‘thoughts and notes’, not an article.”

Now the theme is defined. The clarity introduced into the very formulation of the question is also reflected in the new plan of the article:

“To learn differently: in battle”, “A different freeing from work”, “concentration on Social-Democratic functions”.

Finally, in the last concluding plan, to which Vladimir Ilyich already gives the heading: “New Tasks and New Forces”, a final summary of the most important points of the theme is made, a history of the transitions from one period of work to another is given, the impending turning point is analysed, and the inertia and ingrained habits of Party members during the new transition are taken into account.

Vladimir Ilyich’s search for an exact title for the article goes hand in hand with the refinement of the political campaign he is outlining.

As a result we have a finished piece: the article “New Tasks and New Forces”, printed in No. 9 of *Vperyod*, of March 8 (February 25), 1905. (Works, Vol. VII, pp. 442–450.)

When printing, several places in the manuscript of the article “New Tasks and New Forces” were omitted by the editorial board of *Vperyod*, yet they are reflected in almost all the plans. Most likely the omissions were made because the article is of considerable length, and splitting it into two feuilletons was inconvenient due to the very character of the theme.

In reproducing the article here, we restore the original text of the manuscript in full.

THE ORDER OF THE DAY

THE ORDER OF THE DAY.

1. Small result of great events. Beginning of revolution (No. 4)* — insurrection [No. 5]² — appointment of insurrection [No. 6]³.
2. Order of the day = insurrection. Its condition: keeping up the fire. Combustible material?
3. “Extension of the base of the revolution”: agitation among the urban poor and the peasantry (agitational significance of Gapon, as a type of evolution).
4. The importance of organisation grows especially at such moments: letter from a comrade in Russia in the Party Section⁴. Not to retreat from the task of “organising the revolution” and conducting (and appointing) the insurrection, but to emphasise precisely these tasks and prepare for them.
5. ((“The organisational work of Social-Democracy”. Article in No. 63⁵. Fairy-tales. Contra. *What Is To Be Done?* General significance of “the shedding of work”⁶.
6. And now a tremendous expansion of the movement. Unknown channels, countless [innumerable] allies, countless comrades, friends and sympathisers.
7. “Wartime”. Hundreds of circles, a tenfold increase in diverse tasks, they learn from events, they learn in war, exceptional importance of leadership, of the organisation of leaders.

8. 177?

THE ORDER OF THE DAY.

The proletariat, as it were, at once raised the whole revolutionary movement to a new, higher level—we wrote in No. 5 of *Vperyod*. And the further we move away from January 9, the more and more do gigantic tasks confront Social-Democracy, demanding its solution. The beginning of the revolution brings to the forefront the question of insurrection. We noted this in No. 4 of *Vperyod*¹, we tried to develop various practical aspects of this task in No. 5², we pointed out in No. 6³ the complete untenability and enormous harm of the ideas spread by some Social-Democrats about the impossibility of appointing, conducting, and leading an insurrection on the part of the organised vanguard of the working class. We must [now] dwell in more detail on some other aspects of this pressing question of our party, which is now, obviously for all, a pressing question of the whole people.

The revolutionary flame burst forth unexpectedly brightly and unexpectedly quickly. The ruling clique is trying with all its might to represent the matter as if the fire has been extinguished. But no [vile] comedies, like the reception of dummy workers (partly even outright spies) by the tsar, like promises of reforms, will deceive the new vast mass of the proletariat awakened to political life. The fire is not extinguished; the embers are smouldering with incomparably greater force over an incomparably larger area.

Combustible material keeps increasing as news of January 9 spreads to remote localities and backwoods of Russia, as the criminal war continues, as new and new deceptions, evasions, delays, and tricks of tsarist policy are exposed. Judging by conversations in “society”, by reports of correspondents to foreign newspapers, by information from Russian newspapers, discontent, embitterment, and a spirit of passive resistance are penetrating especially quickly into the circles of the propertied classes, embracing both the landlord-Zemstvo men and the commercial-industrial capitalists, manufacturers, merchants, and the intelligentsia in general. It is quite natural that these circles are able and can openly display their mood.

But it would be a tremendous mistake to think that the lower strata of the people remain outside this movement. They are silent, but fermentation is spreading in breadth and depth through a multitude of channels of which we cannot even form an idea. If the Zemstvo addresses, the intelligentsia banquets, and the legal newspaper speeches about freedom awakened (of course, not suddenly) hundreds of thousands of St. Petersburg proletarians, then now the bloody events of January 9 and the gigantic political strike, which embraced probably more than a million workers throughout Russia and has not even ended to this day—these events and this strike will stir up many millions of the urban poor and the peasantry.