Our Revolution Part 3

Comrades, let us do our duty!

Let us close our ranks, comrades! Let us unite, and unite the ma.s.ses!

Let us prepare, and prepare the ma.s.ses for the day of decisive actions!

Let us overlook nothing. Let us leave no power unused for the Cause.

Brave, honest, harmoniously united, we shall march forward, linked by unbreakable bonds, brothers in the Revolution!

EXPLANATORY NOTES

_Osvoboshdenie_ (_Emanc.i.p.ation_) was the name of a liberal magazine published in Stuttgart, Germany, and smuggled into Russia to be distributed among the Zemstvo-liberals and other progressive elements grouped about the Zemstvo-organization. The _Osvoboshdenie_ advocated a const.i.tutional monarchy; it was, however, opposed to revolutionary methods.

_Peter Struve_, first a Socialist, then a Liberal, was the editor of the _Osvoboshdenie_. Struve is an economist and one of the leading liberal journalists in Russia.

_Zemstvo-pet.i.tions_, accepted in form of resolutions at the meetings of the liberal Zemstvo bodies and forwarded to the central government, were one of the means the liberals used in their struggle for a Const.i.tution. The pet.i.tions, worded in a very moderate language, demanded the abolition of "lawlessness" on the part of the administration and the introduction of a "legal order,"

i.e., a Const.i.tution.

_Sergius Witte_, Minister of Finance in the closing years of the 19th Century and up to the revolution of 1905, was known as a bureaucrat of a liberal brand.

_The Ukase of December 12th, 1905_, was an answer of the government to the persistent political demands of the "Spring" time. The Ukase promised a number of insignificant bureaucratic reforms, not even mentioning a popular representation and threatening increased punishments for "disturbances of peace and order."

_Trepov_ was one of the most hated bureaucrats, a devoted pupil of Von Plehve's in the work of drowning revolutionary movements in blood.

_George Gapon_ was the priest who organized the march of January 9th. Trotzky's admiration for the heroism of Gapon was originally shared by many revolutionists. Later it became known that Gapon played a dubious role as a friend of labor, and an agent of the government.

_The_ "_Political illusions_" of George Gapon, referred to in this essay, was his a.s.sumption that the Tzar was a loving father to his people. Gapon hoped to reach the Emperor of all the Russias and to make him "receive the workingmen's pet.i.tion from hand to hand."

PROSPECTS OF A LABOR DICTATORs.h.i.+P

This is, perhaps, the most remarkable piece of political writing the Revolution has produced. Written early in 1906, after the great upheavals of the fall of 1905, at a time when the Russian revolution was obviously going down hill, and autocracy, after a moment of relaxation, was increasing its deadly grip over the country, the essays under the name _Sum Total and Prospectives_ (which we have here changed into a more comprehensible name, _Prospects of Labor Dictators.h.i.+p_) aroused more amazement than admiration. They seemed so entirely out of place. They ignored the liberal parties as quite negligible quant.i.ties. They ignored the creation of the Duma to which the Const.i.tutional Democrats attached so much importance as a place where democracy would fight the battles of the people and win. They ignored the very fact that the vanguard of the revolution, the industrial proletariat, was beaten, disorganized, downhearted, tired out.

The essays met with opposition on the part of leading Social-Democratic thinkers of both the Bolsheviki and Mensheviki factions. The essays seemed to be more an expression of Trotzky's revolutionary ardor, of his unshakable faith in the future of the Russian revolution, than a reflection of political realities. It was known that he wrote them within prison walls. Should not the very fact of his imprisonment have convinced him that in drawing a picture of labor dictators.h.i.+p he was only dreaming?

History has shown that it was not a dream. Whatever our att.i.tude towards the course of events in the 1917 revolution may be, we must admit that, in the main, this course has taken the direction predicted in Trotzky's essays. There is a labor dictators.h.i.+p now in Russia. It is a _labor_ dictators.h.i.+p, not a "dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat and the peasants." The liberal and radical parties have lost influence. The labor government has put collective owners.h.i.+p and collective management of industries on the order of the day.

The labor government has not hesitated in declaring Russia to be ready for a Socialist revolution. It was compelled to do so under the pressure of revolutionary proletarian ma.s.ses. The Russian army has been dissolved in the armed people. The Russian revolution has called the workingmen of the world to make a social revolution.

All this had been outlined by Trotzky twelve years ago. When one reads this series of essays, one has the feeling that they were written not in the course of the first Russian upheaval (the essays appeared in 1906 as part of a book by Trotzky, ent.i.tled _Our Revolution_, Petersburg, N. Glagoleff, publisher) but as if they were discussing problems of the present situation. This, more than anything else, shows the _continuity_ of the revolution. The great overthrow of 1917 was completed by the same political and social forces that had met and learned to know each other in the storms of 1905 and 1906. The ideology of the various groups and parties had hardly changed. Even the leaders of the major parties were, in the main, the same persons. Of course, the international situation was different. But even the possibility of a European war and its consequences had been foreseen by Trotzky in his essays.

Twelve years ago those essays seemed to picture an imaginary world.

To-day they seem to tell the history of the Russian revolution. We may agree or disagree with Trotzky, the leader, n.o.body can deny the power and clarity of his political vision.

In the _first_ chapter, ent.i.tled "Peculiarities of Our Historic Development," the author gives a broad outline of the growth of absolutism in Russia. Development of social forms in Russia, he says, was slow and primitive. Our social life was constructed on an archaic and meager economic foundation. Yet, Russia did not lead an isolated life. Russia was under constant pressure of higher politico-economical organisms,--the neighboring Western states. The Russian state, in its struggle for existence, outgrew its economic basis. Historic development in Russia, therefore, was taking place under a terrific straining of national economic forces. The state absorbed the major part of the national economic surplus and also part of the product necessary for the maintenance of the people.

The state thus undermined its own foundation. On the other hand, to secure the means indispensable for its growth, the state forced economic development by bureaucratic measures. Ever since the end of the seventeenth century, the state was most anxious to develop industries in Russia. "New trades, machines, factories, production on a large scale, capital, appear from a certain angle to be an artificial graft on the original economic trunk of the people.

Similarly, Russian science may appear from the same angle to be an artificial graft on the natural trunk of national ignorance." This, however, is a wrong conception. The Russian state could not have created something out of nothing. State action only accelerated the processes of natural evolution of economic life. State measures that were in contradiction to those processes were doomed to failure. Still, the role of the state in economic life was enormous. When social development reached the stage where the bourgeoisie cla.s.ses began to experience a desire for political inst.i.tutions of a Western type, Russian autocracy was fully equipped with all the material power of a modern European state. It had at its command a centralized bureaucratic machinery, incapable of regulating modern relations, yet strong enough to do the work of oppression. It was in a position to overcome distance by means of the telegraph and railroads,--a thing unknown to the pre-revolutionary autocracies in Europe. It had a colossal army, incompetent in wars with foreign enemies, yet strong enough to maintain the authority of the state in internal affairs.

Based on its military and fiscal apparatus, absorbing the major part of the country's resources, the government increased its annual budget to an enormous amount of two billions of rubles, it made the stock-exchange of Europe its treasury and the Russian tax-payer a slave to European high finance. Gradually, the Russian state became an end in itself. It evolved into a power independent of society. It left unsatisfied the most elementary wants of the people. It was unable even to defend the safety of the country against foreign foes. Yet, it seemed strong, powerful, invincible.

It inspired awe.

It became evident that the Russian state would never grant reforms of its own free will. As years pa.s.sed, the conflict between absolutism and the requirements of economic and cultural progress became ever more acute. There was only one way to solve the problem: "to acc.u.mulate enough steam inside the iron kettle of absolutism to burst the kettle." This was the way outlined by the Marxists long ago. Marxism was the only doctrine that had correctly predicted the course of development in Russia.

In the _second_ chapter, "City and Capital," Trotzky attempts a theoretical explanation to the weakness of the middle-cla.s.s in Russia. Russia of the eighteenth, and even of the major part of the nineteenth, century, he writes, was marked by an absence of cities as industrial centers. Our big cities were administrative rather than industrial centers. Our primitive industries were scattered in the villages, auxiliary occupations of the peasant farmers. Even the population of our so called "cities," in former generations maintained itself largely by agriculture. Russian cities never contained a prosperous, efficient and self-a.s.sured cla.s.s of artisans--that real foundation of the European middle cla.s.s which in the course of revolutions against absolutism identified itself with the "people." When modern capitalism, aided by absolutism, appeared on the scene of Russia and turned large villages into modern industrial centers almost over night, it had no middle-cla.s.s to build on. In Russian cities, therefore, the influence of the bourgeoisie is far less than in western Europe. Russian cities practically contain great numbers of workingmen and small groups of capitalists. Moreover, the specific political weight of the Russian proletariat is larger than that of the capital employed in Russia, because the latter is to a great extent _imported_ capital. Thus, while a large proportion of the capital operating in Russia exerts its political influence in the parliaments of Belgium or France, the working cla.s.s employed by the same capital exert their entire influence in the political life of Russia. As a result of these peculiar historic developments, the Russian proletariat, recruited from the pauperized peasant and ruined rural artisans, has acc.u.mulated in the new cities in very great numbers, "and nothing stood between the workingmen and absolutism but a small cla.s.s of capitalists, separated from the 'people' (i.e., the middle-cla.s.s in the European sense of the word), half foreign in its derivation, devoid of historic traditions, animated solely by a hunger for profits."

CHAPTER III

1789-1848-1905

History does not repeat itself. You are free to compare the Russian revolution with the Great French Revolution, yet this would not make the former resemble the latter. The nineteenth century pa.s.sed not in vain.

Already the year of 1848 is widely different from 1789. As compared with the Great Revolution, the revolutions in Prussia or Austria appear amazingly small. From one viewpoint, the revolutions of 1848 came too early; from another, too late. That gigantic exertion of power which is necessary for the bourgeois society to get completely square with the masters of the past, can be achieved either through powerful _unity_ of an entire nation arousing against feudal despotism, or through a powerful development of _cla.s.s struggle_ within a nation striving for freedom. In the first case--of which a cla.s.sic example are the years 1789-1793,--the national energy, compressed by the terrific resistance of the old regime, was spent entirely in the struggle against reaction.

In the second case--which has never appeared in history as yet, and which is treated here as hypothetical--the actual energy necessary for a victory over the black forces of history is being developed within the bourgeois nation through "civil war" between cla.s.ses. Fierce internal friction characterizes the latter case. It absorbs enormous quant.i.ties of energy, prevents the bourgeoisie from playing a leading role, pushes its antagonist, the proletariat, to the front, gives the workingman decades' experience in a month, makes them the central figures in political struggles, and puts very tight reins into their hands. Strong, determined, knowing no doubts, the proletariat gives events a powerful twist.

Thus, it is either--or. Either a nation gathered into one compact whole, as a lion ready to leap; or a nation completely divided in the process of internal struggles, a nation that has released her best part for a task which the whole was unable to complete. Such are the two polar types, whose purest forms, however, can be found only in logical contraposition.

Here, as in many other cases, the middle road is the worst. This was the case in 1848.

In the French Revolution we see an active, enlightened bourgeoisie, not yet aware of the contradictions of its situation; entrusted by history with the task of leaders.h.i.+p in the struggle for a new order; fighting not only against the archaic inst.i.tutions of France, but also against the forces of reaction throughout Europe. The bourgeoisie consciously, in the person of its various factions, a.s.sumes the leaders.h.i.+p of the nation, it lures the ma.s.ses into struggle, it coins slogans, it dictates revolutionary tactics. Democracy unites the nation in one political ideology. The people--small artisans, petty merchants, peasants, and workingmen--elect bourgeois as their representatives; the mandates of the communities are framed in the language of the bourgeoisie which becomes aware of its Messianic role. Antagonisms do not fail to reveal themselves in the course of the revolution, yet the powerful momentum of the revolution removes one by one the most unresponsive elements of the bourgeoisie. Each stratum is torn off, but not before it has given over all its energy to the following one. The nation as a whole continues to fight with ever increasing persistence and determination. When the upper stratum of the bourgeoisie tears itself away from the main body of the nation to form an alliance with Louis XVI, the democratic demands of the nation turn _against_ this part of the bourgeoisie, leading to universal suffrage and a republican government as logically consequent forms of democracy.

The Great French Revolution is a true national revolution. It is more than that. It is a cla.s.sic manifestation, on a national scale, of the world-wide struggle of the bourgeois order for supremacy, for power, for unmitigated triumph. In 1848, the bourgeoisie was no more capable of a similar role. It did not want, it did not dare take the responsibility for a revolutionary liquidation of a political order that stood in its way. The reason is clear. The task of the bourgeoisie--of which it was fully aware--was not to secure its _own_ political supremacy, but to secure for itself _a share_ in the political power of the old regime.

The bourgeoisie of 1848, n.i.g.g.ardly wise with the experience of the French bourgeoisie, was vitiated by its treachery, frightened by its failures. It did not lead the ma.s.ses to storm the citadels of the absolutist order. On the contrary, with its back against the absolutist order, it resisted the onslaught of the ma.s.ses that were pus.h.i.+ng it forward.

The French bourgeoisie made its revolution great. Its consciousness was the consciousness of the people, and no idea found its expression in inst.i.tutions without having gone through its consciousness as an end, as a task of political construction. It often resorted to theatrical poses to conceal from itself the limitations of its bourgeois world,--yet it marched forward.

The German bourgeoisie, on the contrary, was not doing the revolutionary work; it was "doing away" with the revolution from the very start. Its consciousness revolted against the objective conditions of its supremacy. The revolution could be completed not by the bourgeoisie, but against it. Democratic inst.i.tutions seemed to the mind of the German bourgeois not an aim for his struggle, but a menace to his security.

Another cla.s.s was required in 1848, a cla.s.s capable of conducting the revolution beside the bourgeoisie and in spite of it, a cla.s.s not only ready and able to push the bourgeoisie forward, but also to step over its political corpse, should events so demand. None of the other cla.s.ses, however, was ready for the job.

_The petty middle cla.s.s_ were hostile not only to the past, but also to the future. They were still entangled in the meshes of medieval relations, and they were unable to withstand the oncoming "free"

industry; they were still giving the cities their stamp, and they were already giving way to the influences of big capital. Steeped in prejudices, stunned by the clatter of events, exploiting and being exploited, greedy and helpless in their greed, they could not become leaders in matters of world-wide importance. Still less were the _peasants_ capable of political initiative. Scattered over the country, far from the nervous centers of politics and culture, limited in their views, the peasants could have no great part in the struggles for a new order. The _democratic intellectuals_ possessed no social weight; they either dragged along behind their elder sister, the liberal bourgeoisie, as its political tail, or they separated themselves from the bourgeoisie in critical moments only to show their weakness.

_The industrial workingmen_ were too weak, unorganized, devoid of experience and knowledge. The capitalist development had gone far enough to make the abolition of old feudal relations imperative, yet it had not gone far enough to make the working cla.s.s, the product of new economic relations, a decisive political factor. Antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, even within the national boundaries of Germany, was sharp enough to prevent the bourgeoisie from stepping to the front to a.s.sume national hegemony in the revolution, yet it was not sharp enough to allow the proletariat to become a national leader. True, the internal frictions of the revolution had prepared the workingmen for political independence, yet they weakened the energy and the unity of the revolution and they caused a great waste of power. The result was that, after the first successes, the revolution began to plod about in painful uncertainty, and under the first blows of the reaction it started backwards. Austria gave the clearest and most tragic example of unfinished and unsettled relations in a revolutionary period. It was this situation that gave La.s.salle occasion to a.s.sert that henceforward revolutions could find their support only in the cla.s.s struggle of the proletariat. In a letter to Marx, dated October 24, 1849 he writes: "The experiences of Austria, Hungary and Germany in 1848 and 1849 have led me to the firm conclusion that no struggle in Europe can be successful unless it is proclaimed from the very beginning as purely Socialistic.

No struggle can succeed in which social problems appear as nebulous elements kept in the background, while on the surface the fight is being conducted under the slogan of national revival of bourgeois republicanism."

We shall not attempt to criticize this bold conclusion. One thing is evident, namely that already at the middle of the nineteenth century the national task of political emanc.i.p.ation could not be completed by a unanimous concerted onslaught of the entire nation. Only the independent tactics of the proletariat deriving its strength from no other source but its cla.s.s position, could have secured a victory of the revolution.

The Russian working cla.s.s of 1906 differs entirely from the Vienna working cla.s.s of 1848. The best proof of it is the all-Russian practice of the Councils of Workmen's Deputies (Soviets). Those are no organizations of conspirators prepared beforehand to step forward in times of unrest and to seize command over the working cla.s.s. They are organs consciously created by the ma.s.ses themselves to coordinate their revolutionary struggle. The Soviets, elected by and responsible to the ma.s.ses, are thoroughly democratic inst.i.tutions following the most determined cla.s.s policy in the spirit of revolutionary Socialism.

The differences in the social composition of the Russian revolution are clearly shown in the question of arming the people.

_Militia_ (national guard) was the first slogan and the first achievement of the revolutions of 1789 and 1848 in Paris, in all the Italian states and in Vienna and Berlin. In 1846, the demand for a national guard (i.e., the armament of the propertied cla.s.ses and the "intellectuals") was put forth by the entire bourgeois opposition, including the most moderate factions. In Russia, the demand for a national guard finds no favor with the bourgeois parties. This is not because the liberals do not understand the importance of arming the people: absolutism has given them in this respect more than one object lesson. The reason why liberals do not like the idea of a national guard is because they fully realize the impossibility of creating in Russia an armed revolutionary force outside of the proletariat and against the proletariat. They are ready to give up this demand, as they give up many others, just as the French bourgeoisie headed by Thiers preferred to give up Paris and France to Bismarck rather than to arm the working cla.s.s.

The problem of an armed revolution in Russia becomes essentially a problem of the proletariat. National militia, this cla.s.sic demand of the bourgeoisie of 1848, appears in Russia from the very beginning as a demand for arming the people, primarily the working cla.s.s. Herein the fate of the Russian revolution manifests itself most clearly.