april theses kisne taiyar ki

Vladimir Lenin

The tasks of the proletariat in the present revolution.

Written: April 4, 1917 First Published: Pravda No. 26, April 7, 1917 Transcription: Zodiac HTML Markup: Brian Baggins Online Version: marx.org 1997, marxists.org 1999

This article contains Lenin's famous April Theses read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on April 4, 1917.

[Introduction]

I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.

The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself — and for honest opponents — was to prepare the theses in writing . I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tsereteli . I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks .

I publish these personal theses of mine with only the briefest explanatory notes, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.

1) In our attitude towards the war , which under the new [provisional] government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia's part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to "revolutionary defencism" is permissible.

The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition:

(a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.

The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.

Fraternisation.

2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution — which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie — to its second stage , which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.

This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.

This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.

3) No support for the Provisional Government ; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding "demand" that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.

4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee ( Chkheidze , Tsereteli , etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.

5) Not a parliamentary republic — to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers' Deputies would be a retrograde step — but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.

Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. [*1]

The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.

6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies.

Confiscation of all landed estates.

Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines , according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies and for the public account.

7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies.

8) It is not our immediate task to "introduce" socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

9) Party tasks:

(a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress; (b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly:

(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war, (2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a "commune state" [*2] ; (3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme;

(c) Change of the Party's name. [*3]

10. A new International.

We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the "Centre". [*4]

In order that the reader may understand why I had especially to emphasise as a rare exception the "case" of honest opponents, I invite him to compare the above theses with the following objection by Mr. Goldenberg:

Lenin, he said, "has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy"

(quoted in No. 5 of Mr. Plekhanov 's Yedinstvo )

Isn't it a gem?

I write, announce and elaborately explain: "In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism ... in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them...."

Yet the bourgeois gentlemen who call themselves Social-Democrats, who do not belong either to the broad sections or to the mass believers in defencism, with serene brow present my views thus:

"The banner {!} of civil war" (of which there is not a word in the theses and not a word in my speech!) has been planted(!) "in the midst {!!} of revolutionary democracy...".

What does this mean? In what way does this differ from riot-inciting agitation, from Russkaya Volya ?

I write, announce and elaborately explain: "The Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and therefore our task is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses."

Yet opponents of a certain brand present my views as a call to "civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy"!

I attacked the Provisional Government for not having appointed an early date or any date at all, for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly , and for confining itself to promises. I argued that without the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible.

And the view is attributed to me that I am opposed to the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly!

I would call this "raving", had not decades of political struggle taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.

Mr. Plekhanov in his paper called my speech "raving". Very good, Mr. Plekhanov! But look how awkward, uncouth and slow-witted you are in your polemics. If I delivered a raving speech for two hours, how is it that an audience of hundreds tolerated this "raving"? Further, why does your paper devote a whole column to an account of the "raving"? Inconsistent, highly inconsistent!

It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain, to recall what Marx and Engels said in 1871, 1872 and 1875 about the experience of the Paris Commune and about the kind of state the proletariat needs. [See: The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme ]

Ex-Marxist Mr. Plekhanov evidently does not care to recall Marxism.

I quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg , who on August 4, 1914 , called German Social-Democracy a "stinking corpse". And the Plekhanovs, Goldenbergs and Co. feel "offended". On whose behalf? On behalf of the German chauvinists, because they were called chauvinists!

They have got themselves in a mess, these poor Russian social-chauvinists — socialists in word and chauvinists in deed.

Notes [by Lenin]

[1] i.e. the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.

[2] i.e., a state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype.

[3] Instead of "Social-Democracy", whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the "defencists" and the vacillating "Kautskyites"), we must call ourselves the Communist Party .

[4] The " Centre " in the international Social-Democratic movement is the trend which vacillates between the chauvinists (="defencists") and internationalists, i.e., Kautsky and Co. in Germany, Longuet and Co. in France, Chkheidze and Co. in Russia, Turati and Co. in Italy, MacDonald and Co. in Britain, etc.

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The April Theses

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International Communist Current

Workers of the world, unite, search form, the april theses of 1917: signpost to the proletarian revolution.

Submitted by International Review on 2 April, 1997 - 17:03

Nothing enrages an exploiting class more than an uprising of the exploited. The revolts of the slaves under the Roman Empire , of the peasants under feudalism, were always repressed with the most disgusting cruelty. The rebellion of the working class against capitalism, however, is an even greater affront to the ruling class of thus system, since it clearly and rationally holds aloft the banner of a new, communist, society, a society that actually corresponds to historical possibility and necessity. For the capitalist class, therefore, it is not enough merely to repress the revolutionary attempts of the working class, to drown them in blood - although the capitalist counter-revolution is certainly the bloodiest in history. It is also necessary to ridicule the idea that the working class is the bearer of a new social order, to show the utter futility of the communist project. For this, an arsenal of lies and distortions is required alongside the arsenal of material weapons. Hence, the necessity, for capital, of maintaining for most of the twentieth century, the greatest lie in history: the lie that Stalinism equals communism.

The collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989, and of the USSR two years later, while depriving the bourgeoisie of a living "example" of this lie, in fact greatly reinforced its effects, making it possible to unleash a gigantic campaign about the definite failure of communism, of marxism, and even the obsolescence of the very idea of the class struggle. The profoundly damaging effects of this campaign on the consciousness of the world proletariat have been examined many times in the columns of this Review, and we will not elaborate on this point any further here. What is important to emphasise is that, even though the impact of these campaigns has diminished over the past few years - especially because the bourgeoisie's promises about the new world order of peace and prosperity that was supposed to follow the demise of Stalinism have proved to be no more than hot air - they are so fundamental to the bourgeoisie's apparatus of ideological control that it will not neglect any opportunity to give them new life and influence. We have now entered the year of the 80th anniversary of the Russian revolution, and there is no doubt that we are going to see many new twists to this theme. But one thing that is certain: the bourgeoisie's hatred and contempt for the proletarian revolution that began in Russia in 1917, its efforts to deform and denature its memory, will be focused above all on the political organisation that embodied the spirit of that vast insurrectionary movement: the Bolshevik party. This should not surprise us: from the days of the Communist League and the First International, the bourgeoisie has always been willing to "forgive" the majority of the poor workers duped by the plots and schemes of the revolutionary minorities. But the latter are invariably seen as the very incarnation of evil. And for capital, none have been so evil as the Bolsheviks, who after all managed to "mislead" the simple workers longer and further than any other revolutionary party in history.

This is not the place to look at all the latest books, articles and documentaries which are currently being devoted to the Russian revolution. Suffice it to say that the most publicised - for example Pipes The Unknown Lenin: from the Soviet Archives, and the work of the former KGB archivist Volkogonov, who claims access to hitherto inaccessible files dating back to 1917 - have had a very precise theme: to show that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were a gang of power hungry fanatics who did all they needed to do to usurp the democratic gains of the February revolution, and plunge Russia and the world into one of the most disastrously failed experiments in history. Naturally, these gentlemen have proved with minute attention to detail how the Stalinist terror was merely the continuation and fulfilment of the Leninist terror. The subtitle of the German edition of Volkogonov's work on Lenin, Utopia and Terror, sums up the bourgeoisie's approach very well: the revolution degenerated into terror precisely because it tried to impose a utopian ideal, communism, which is really antithetical to human nature.

An important element in this anti-Bolshevik inquisition is the idea that Bolshevism, for all its talk of marxism and world revolution, was above all an expression of Russian backwardness. This motif is not new: it was one of the favourite tunes of the "renegade Kautsky" in the aftermath of the October insurrection. But it has subsequently acquired considerable academic respectability. One of the best researched studies of the leaders of the Russian revolution - Bertram Wolfe's Three Who Made a Revolution, written during the 1950s - develops this idea with particular regard to Lenin. In this view, Lenin's view of the proletarian political organisation as a "narrow" body made up of convinced revolutionaries owes more to the conspiratorial and secretive conceptions of the Narodniks and of Bakunin than to Marx. Such historians often contrast this with the more "sophisticated", "European” and "democratic" conceptions of the Mensheviks. And of course, since the form of the revolutionary organisation is closely connected to the form of the revolution itself, the democratic Menshevik organisation could have given us a democratic Russia , while the dictatorial Bolshevik form gave us a dictatorial Russia .

It is not only the official spokesmen of the bourgeoisie who peddle such ideas. They are also sold, in a slightly different wrapping, by anarchists of every stripe, who specialise in the "we told you so" approach to the Russian revolution. We knew all along that Bolshevism was nasty and would end in tears - all that talk about the party, the transitional state and the dictatorship of the proletariat, where else could it lead? But anarchism has a habit of perpetually renewing itself and can be a lot more subtle than that. A good example of this is the kind of stuff being put about by a parasitic breed of anarchism that calls itself (among other things) the London Psychogeographical Society. The LPA have heartily endorsed the ICC's argument that Bakuninism, for all its talk of liberty and equality, its criticisms of marxist "authoritarianism", was in fact based on a profoundly hierarchical and even esoteric vision closely allied to freemasonry. For the LPA, however, this is only the hors d'oeuvres: the main dish is that the Bolshevik conception of organisation is the true continuator of Bakuninism and thus of freemasonry. The circle is complete: the "communists" of the LPA regurgitate the leftovers of cold war professors.

The challenge posed by all these slanders against Bolshevism is considerable, and could not be answered in the context of a single article. For example, to make a critical appraisal of the "Leninist" conception of organisation, to refute the prejudice that the latter was no more than a new version of Narodnikism or Bakuninism, would require a series of articles in itself. Our aim in this article is rather more precise. It is to examine a particular episode in the events of the Russian revolution - the April Theses announced by Lenin on his return to Russia in 1917. Not simply because 80 years ago to the month is a timely moment to do so, but above all because this short, sharp document provides us with an excellent starting point for refuting all the lies about the Bolshevik party, and for reaffirming the most essential thing about it: that this party was not a product of Russian barbarism, of a distorted anarcho-terrorism, or of the unmitigated lust for power of its leaders. Bolshevism was a product first and foremost of the world proletariat. Inseparably bound to the entire marxist tradition, it was not the seed of a new form of exploitation and oppression, but the vanguard of a movement to do away with all exploitation and oppression.

From February to April

Towards the end of February 1917, the workers of Petrograd launched massive strikes against the intolerable living conditions inflicted by the imperialist war. The slogans of the movement rapidly became political, with workers calling for an end to the war and the overthrow of the autocracy. In days the strike had spread to other towns and cities, and as the workers took up arms and fraternised with the soldiers, the mass strike assumed the character of an uprising.

Repeating the experience of 1905, the workers centralised the struggle through soviets of workers' deputies, elected by factory assemblies and revocable at any moment. In contrast to 1905, the soldiers and peasants began to follow this example on a broad scale.

The ruling class, recognising that the days of the autocracy were numbered, rid themselves of the Czar, and called upon the parties of liberalism and the "left", in particular those once-proletarian elements who had recently passed into the bourgeois camp by supporting the war, to form a Provisional Government with the avowed aim of steering Russia towards a system of parliamentary democracy. In reality, a situation of dual power had arisen, since the workers and soldiers only really trusted the soviets, and the bourgeois Provisional Government was not yet in a strong enough position to ignore them, and still less to disband them. But this profound class divide was partially obscured by the fog of democratic euphoria which descended on the country after the February revolt. With the Czar out of the way and people enjoying unheard-of liberty, everyone seemed to be in favour of the "Revolution" - including Russia's democratic allies who hoped that it would enable Russia to participate more effectively in the war effort. Thus the Provisional Government presented itself as the guardian of the revolution; the soviets were politically dominated by the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, who were doing all they could to reduce them to mere ciphers of the newly installed bourgeois regime. In short, the whole impetus of the mass strike and the uprising - which in truth was a manifestation of a more universal revolutionary movement brewing in all the main capitalist countries as a result of the war - was being diverted towards capitalist ends.

Where were the Bolsheviks in this situation, so full of danger and promise? They were in almost complete disarray :

" For Bolshevism the first months of the revolution had been a period of bewilderment and vacillation. In the "manifesto" of the Bolshevik Central Committee, drawn up just after the victory of the insurrection, we read that "the workers of the shops and factories, and likewise the mutinied troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government" (...) They behaved not like representatives of a proletarian party preparing an independent struggle for power, but like the left wing of a democracy, which, having announced its principles, intended for an indefinite time to play the part of loyal opposition " ( Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution , vol 1, chapter 15 ).

When Stalin and Kamenev took the helm of the party in March, they moved it even further to the right. Stalin developed a theory about the complementary roles of the Provisional Government and the Soviets. Worse, the party's official organ, Pravda, openly adopted a "defencist" position on the war: " Our slogan is not the meaningless "down with war". Our slogan is pressure upon the Provisional Government with the aim of compelling it (...) to make an attempt to induce all the warring countries to open immediate negotiations (...) and until then every man remains at his fighting post " (quoted in Trotsky, p 275).

Trotsky recounts how many elements in the party felt deep disquiet and even anger over this opportunist drift in the party, but were not armed programmatically to answer the leadership's position, since it appeared to be based on a perspective that had been developed by Lenin himself and which had been the official view of the party for over a decade: the perspective, that is, of the "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants". The essence of this theory had been that although economically speaking the nature of the revolution developing in Russia was bourgeois, the Russian bourgeoisie itself was too weak to carry out its own revolution, and so the capitalist modernisation of Russia would have to be assumed by the proletariat and poorer sections of the peasantry. This position stood half way between that of the Mensheviks - who claimed to be "orthodox" marxists and thus argued that the task of the proletariat was to give critical support to the bourgeoisie against absolutism until such time as Russia was ripe for socialism - and that of Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution", developed after the events of 1905, had insisted that the working class would be propelled to power in the coming revolution, and would be forced to push beyond the bourgeois stage of the revolution to the socialist stage, but could only do this if the Russian revolution coincided with, or sparked off, a socialist revolution in the industrialised countries.

In truth, Lenin's theory had at best been a product if an ambiguous period, in which it was increasingly obvious that the Russian bourgeoisie was not a revolutionary force, but in which it was not yet clear that the period of international socialist revolution had arrived. Nevertheless, the superiority of Trotsky's thesis was precisely based on the fact that it departed from an international, rather than a purely Russian framework; and Lenin himself, despite his many acute disagreements with Trotsky at that time, had on several occasions after the 1905 events veered towards the notion of permanent revolution.

In practise, the idea of the "democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants" proved to be without substance; the "orthodox Leninists" who went on repeating the formula in 1917 used it as a cover for sliding towards Menshevism pure and simple. Kamenev argued forcefully that since the bourgeois democratic phase of the revolution was not yet completed, it was necessary to give critical support to the Provisional Government: this hardly conformed to Lenin's original conception, which insisted that the bourgeoisie would inevitably compromise with the autocracy. There were even serious moves towards the reunification of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

Thus, the Bolshevik party, disarmed programmatically, was being drawn towards compromise and betrayal. The future of the revolution hung in the balance when Lenin returned from exile.

In his History of the Russian Revolution (Vol. 1, Ch. 15), Trotsky gives us a graphic description of Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station in Petrograd , April 3, 1917 . The Petrograd Soviet, still dominated by the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, organised a huge welcoming party and festooned Lenin with flowers. In the name of the Soviet, Chkeidze greeted Lenin with these words:

" Comrade Lenin (...) we welcome you Russia (...) but we consider that the chief task of the revolutionary democracy at present is to defend our revolution against every kind of attack both from within and from without (...) We hope that you will join us in striving towards this goal ".

Lenin's reply was not addressed to the leaders of the welcoming committee, but to the hundreds of workers and soldiers who had thronged the station:

" Dear comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers. I am happy to greet in you the victorious Russian revolution, to greet you as the advance guard of the international proletarian army.. The hour is not far when, at the summons of our comrade Karl Liebknecht, the people will turn their weapons against their capitalist exploiters (...) The Russian revolution achieved by you has opened a new epoch. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution! " (op cit, p 280-281).

Thus did the spoilsport Lenin pour cold water on the democratic carnival from the very moment of his arrival. That night Lenin elaborated his position in a two hour speech which further dismayed all the good democrats and sentimental socialists who wanted the revolution to go no further than it had done in February, who had applauded the workers' mass strikes when they had chased away the Czar and allowed the Provisional Government to assume power, but dreaded any further class polarisation. The next day, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin expounded what became known as his April Theses, which are short enough to reproduce in full here:

“ 1) In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia's part a predatory imperial war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to "revolutionary defencism" is permissible.

The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and in word; c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.

The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.

2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution - which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie - to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.

This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights ( Russia is now the freest of all belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.

This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedented large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.

3) No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding "demand" that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.

4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee (Chkeidze, Tsereteli, Steklov, etc.), who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in a minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.

5) Not a parliamentary republic - to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers' Deputies would be a retrograde step - but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.

Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.

The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.

6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies.

Confiscation of all landed estates.

Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies and for the public account.

7) The immediate amalgamation of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies

8) It is not our immediate task to "introduce" socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

9) Party tasks:

a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;

b) alteration of the Party programme, mainly

(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war

(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a "commune state";

(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme

c) Change of the Party's name

(10) A new International

We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social chauvinists and against the "Center". "

The struggle to rearm the Party: Demonstrating the marxist method

Zalezhski, a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee at the time, summed up the reaction to Lenin's theses both inside the party and throughout the movement: " Lenin's theses produced the effect of an exploding bomb " (Trotsky, p 295). The initial reaction was disbelief and a rain of anathemas on Lenin's head: Lenin had been too long in exile, had lost touch with Russian reality. His perspectives on the nature of the revolution had fallen into "Trotskyism". As for his idea about the soviets taking power, he had reverted to Blanquism, adventurism, anarchism. A former member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, at that time outside the party, Goldernberg, put it thus: " For many years the place of Bakunin has remained vacant in the Russian revolution, now it is occupied by Lenin ” (Trotsky, p 294). For Kamenev, Lenin's approach would prevent the Bolsheviks from acting as a party of the masses, reducing its role to that of a "group of communist propagandists".

This was not the first time that "old Bolsheviks" had clung on to outworn formulae in the name of Leninism. In 1905, the initial Bolshevik reaction to the appearance of the soviets had been based on a mechanical interpretation of Lenin's criticisms of spontaneism in What is To be Done ; the leadership had thus called on the Petrograd Soviet either to subordinate itself to the party or dissolve. Lenin himself roundly rejected this attitude, being one of the first to grasp the revolutionary significance of the soviet as an organ of proletarian political power, and insisted that the question wasn't "soviet or party" but both the soviets and the party, since their roles were complementary. Now, once again, Lenin had to give these "Leninists" a lesson in the marxist method, to demonstrate that marxism is the very opposite of a dead dogma; it is a living scientific theory which must constantly be verified in the laboratory of social movements. The April Theses were the epitome of marxism's capacity to discard, adapt, modify or enrich previous positions in the light of the experience of the class struggle: " For the present, it is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality , and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity. "Theory, my friend is grey, but green is the eternal tree of life" " (Lenin, Letters on Tactics, April 8-13, 1917 - the quotation is from Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust). And in the same letter Lenin berates " those "old Bolsheviks who more than once already have played a regrettable role in the history of our Party by reiterating formulas senselessly learned by rote instead of studying the specific features of the new and living reality ".

For Lenin, the "democratic dictatorship" had already been realised in the soviets of workers' and peasants' deputies and as such it had already become an antiquated formula. The essential task for the Bolsheviks was now to push forward the proletarian dynamic within this broader social movement, which was oriented towards the formation of a Commune-state in Russia as the first outpost of the world socialist revolution. One might take issue with Lenin's effort to save the honour of the old formula, but the essential element in his approach is that he was able to see the future of the movement, and thus the need to break the mould of outworn theories.

The marxist method is not only dialectical and dynamic; it is also global, ie it places every particular question within an international and historical framework. And this is what above all enabled Lenin to grasp the real direction of events. From 1914 onwards, the Bolsheviks, with Lenin to the fore, had defended the most consistent internationalist position against the imperialist war, seeing it as the proof of the decay of world capitalism and thus of the opening of the epoch of world proletarian revolution. This was the foundation-stone of the slogan "turn the imperialist war into a civil war", which Lenin had defended against all varieties of chauvinism and pacifism. Holding fast to this analysis, Lenin was not for a moment taken in by the idea that the accession to power of the Provisional Government changed the imperialist character of the war, and he spared no barbs on the Bolsheviks who had fallen into this error: " Pravda demands of the government that it renounces annexations. To demand from the government of capitalists that it renounces anexations is nonsense, flagrant mockery " (cited by Trotsky, p 290).

The intransigent reaffirmation of the internationalist position on the war was in the first place a necessity if the opportunist slide in the party was to be halted. But it was also the starting point for theoretically liquidating the formula of democratic dictatorship and all the Menshevik apologies for supporting the bourgeoisie. To the argument that backward Russia was not yet ripe for socialism, Lenin argued as a true internationalist, acknowledging in Thesis 8 that "it is not our immediate task to "introduce" socialism". Russia , in itself, was not ripe for socialism but the imperialist war had demonstrated that world capitalism as a whole was indeed overripe. Hence Lenin's greeting to the workers at the Finland station: the Russian workers, by taking power, would be acting as the advance guard of the international proletarian army. Hence also the call for a new International at the end of the theses. And for Lenin, as for all the authentic internationalists of the day, the world revolution was not a pious hope but a concrete perspective growing out of the international proletarian revolt against the war - strikes in Britain and Germany, political demonstrations, mutinies and fraternisation in the armed forces of several countries, and of course the mounting revolutionary tide in Russia itself. This perspective, embryonic at that moment, was to be fully confirmed after the October insurrection by the extension of the revolutionary wave to Italy , Hungary , Austria and above all Germany .

Lenin's "anarchism"

The defenders of marxist "orthodoxy" accused Lenin of Blanquism and Bakuninism on the question of the seizure of power and on the nature of the post-revolutionary state. Blanquism because he was supposedly in favour of a coup d'Etat by a minority - either by the Bolsheviks acting alone, or even by the industrial working class as whole, acting without regard to the peasant majority. Bakuninism because the theses' rejection of a parliamentary republic was a concession to the anti-political prejudices of the anarchists and syndicalists.

In his Letters on Tactics , Lenin defended his theses from the first accusation as follows: " In my theses, I absolutely ensured myself against skipping over the peasant movement, which has not outlived itself, or the petty-bourgeois movement in general, against any playing at "seizure of power" by a workers' government, against any kind of Blanquist adventurism; for I pointedly referred to the experience of the Paris Commune. And this experience, as we know, and as Marx proved at length in 1871 and Engels in 1891, absolutely excludes Blanquism, absolutely ensures the direct, immediate and unquestionable rule of the majority and the activity of the masses only to the extent that the majority itself acts consciously .

In the theses, I very definitely reduced the question to one of a struggle for influence within the Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies. To leave no shadow of doubt on this score, I twice emphasised in the theses the need for patient and persistent "explanatory" work "adapted to the practical needs of the masses". "

As for reverting to an anarchist position on the state, Lenin pointed out in April, as he was to do in greater depth in his State and Revolution , that the "orthodox" marxists, with figures like Kautsky and Plekhanov at their head, had buried the real teachings of Marx and Engels on the state under a dung-heap of parliamentarism. The experience of the Commune had shown that the task of the proletariat in the revolution was not to take over the old state but to demolish it from top to bottom; that the new instrument of proletarian rule, the Commune-state, would be based not on the principle of parliamentary representation, which in the end was only a facade hiding the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but on direct delegation and revocability from below, on the armed and self-organised masses. By throwing up the soviets, the experience of 1905, and of the newly emerging revolution of 1917, not only confirmed this perspective, but took it a stage further. Whereas the Commune had been a "popular" body in which all the oppressed classes of society were equally represented, the soviets were a higher form, because they made it possible for the proletariat to organise autonomously within the movement of the masses in general. The soviets, taken as a whole, would thus constitute a new state: one qualitatively different from the old bourgeois state but a state all the same - and here Lenin carefully distinguishes himself from the anarchists:

" Anarchism denies the need for a state and state power in the period of transition from the rule of the bourgeoisie to the rule of the proletariat, whereas I, with a precision that precludes any possibility of misinterpretation, advocate the need for a state in this period, although in accordance with Marx, and the lessons of the Paris Commune, I advocate not the usual parliamentary bourgeois state, but a state without a standing army, without police opposed to the people, without any officialdom placed above the people.

“When Mr Plekhanov, in his newspaper Yedinstvo, shouts with all his might that this is anarchism, he is merely giving further proof of his break with marxism " (Lenin, Letters on Tactics )

The role of the party in the revolution

The charge that Lenin was planning a Blanquist coup is inseparable from the idea that he was seeking power for his party alone. This was to become a central theme of all subsequent bourgeois propaganda about the October revolution: that it was no more than a coup d'Etat carried out by the Bolsheviks. We cannot deal here with all the varieties and nuances of this thesis here. Trotsky provides one of the best answers in his History of the Russian Revolution, when he shows that it was not the party, but the soviets which took the power in October (see also our articles on the Russian revolution in IRs 71 and 72). But one of the guiding threads of this notion is the argument that Lenin's view of the party as a tightly-knit and highly centralised organisation led inexorably to this minority putsch in 1917 and, by extension, to the Red Terror and finally to Stalinism.

Again, this is a story that goes back to the original split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and this isn't the place to go over this key episode in any detail. Suffice it to say that ever since that time, Lenin's conception of the revolutionary organisation has been described as Jacobin, elitist, militaristic, even terroristic. Marxist authorities as respected as Luxemburg and Trotsky have been cited in support of this view. For our part, we don't deny that Lenin's views on the organisation question, both in that period and in subsequent ones, contain much that is erroneous (for example his adoption in 1902 of Kautsky's thesis about class consciousness coming from the outside, although he later repudiated this; certain of his conceptions about the internal regime of the party, about the relationship between the party and the state, etc). But unlike the Mensheviks of that time, and their numerous anarchist, social democrat, and councilist successors, we don't take these errors as our starting point, any more than we begin an analysis of the Paris Commune or the Russian revolution by insisting on the mistakes - even the fatal ones - that they made. The real starting point is that Lenin's lifelong struggle to construct a revolutionary organisation is a historic acquisition of the workers' movement, and has left revolutionaries today with an indispensable basis for understanding both how a revolutionary organisation should function internally, and what its role within the class as a whole must be.

With regard to the latter point, and against many superficial analyses, the "narrow" Bolshevik conception of organisation, which Lenin counter-posed to the "broader" Menshevik conception, was not simply the reflection of the conditions imposed by Czarist repression. Just as the mass strikes and revolutionary uprisings of 1905 were not the last echoes of the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century, but showed the near future of the international class struggle in the dawning epoch of capitalist decadence, so the Bolshevik conception of a party of committed revolutionaries, crystal clear in its programme and functioning on a centralised basis, was an anticipation of the role and structure required for the party by the conditions of capitalist decadence, of the epoch of proletarian revolution. It may be the case, as many anti-Bolsheviks have claimed, that the Mensheviks were looking to the west for their model of organisation, but they were also looking backwards, back to the old social democratic model of a mass party which embodies the class, organises the class, and represents the class, particularly through the electoral process. And against all the claims that it was the Bolsheviks who were stuck in archaic Russian conditions, harking back to the model of the conspiratorial society, they in reality were the ones who were looking forward, forward to a period of massive revolutionary turbulence which could not be organised, planned or encapsulated by the party but which nevertheless made the party's role more vital than ever. " If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative mass strikes artificially brought about by order of the parties and trade unions, and turn to the living picture of a peoples" movement arising with elemental energy (...) .it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but first and foremost in the political leadership of the whole movement "

Thus wrote Rosa Luxemburg in her masterly analysis of the mass strike and the new conditions of the international class struggle ( The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions ). And thus did Luxemburg, who had been one of Lenin's fiercest critics at the time of the 1903 split, converge with the most fundamental elements in the Bolshevik conception of the revolutionary party.

These elements are set out with the utmost clarity in the April Theses, which as we have already seen reject any notion of "imposing" the revolution from above: " As long as we are in a minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers' Deputies so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience ". This work of " patient, systematic and persistent explanation " was precisely what was meant by giving political leadership in a revolutionary period. There could be no question of passing to the phase of insurrection until the revolutionary positions of the Bolsheviks had won over the soviets - and indeed, before that could happen, the revolutionary positions of Lenin had to win over the Bolshevik party, and this required a hard and uncompromising struggle from the moment Lenin arrived in Russia .

" We are not charlatans. We must base ourselves only on the consciousness of the masses " (Lenin's second speech on his arrival in Petrograd, cited in Trotsky, p 293). In the initial phase of the revolution, the working class was surrendering power to the bourgeoisie, a fact which should not surprise any marxist " for we have always known and repeatedly pointed out that the bourgeoisie maintains itself in power not only by force but also by virtue of the lack of class consciousness and organisation, the routinism and downtrodden state of the masses " (Letters on Tactics). Thus the foremost task of the Bolsheviks was to push forward the class consciousness and organisation of the working masses.

This role did not satisfy the "old Bolsheviks", who had more "practical" plans. They wanted to take part in the existing "bourgeois revolution" and they wanted the Bolshevik party to have massive influence in the movement as it then was. In Kamenev's words, they were horrified at the thought of the party standing on the sidelines with its "pure" positions, reduced to the role of a "group of communist propagandists".

Lenin had no difficulty exposing this trick - had not the chauvinists thrown the same arguments at the internationalists at the start of the war, that they were staying in touch with the consciousness of the masses, while the Bolsheviks and Spartacists were no more than marginal sects? It must have been particularly galling to hear the same arguments from a Bolshevik comrade. But this did not blunt the sharpness of Lenin's reply:

" Comrade Kamenev counter poses to a "party of the masses" a "group of propagandists". But the "masses" have now succumbed to the craze of "revolutionary" defencism. Is it not more becoming for internationalists at this moment to show that they can resist "mass" intoxication rather than "wish to remain" with the masses, i.e. to succumb to the general epidemic? Have we not seen how in all the belligerent countries of Europe the chauvinists tried to justify themselves on the grounds that they wished to "remain with the masses"? Must we not be able to remain for a time in a minority against the "mass" intoxication? Is it not the work of the propagandists at the present moment that forms the key point for disentangling the proletarian line from the defencist and petty bourgeois "mass" intoxication? It was this fusion of the masses, proletarian and non-proletarian, regardless of class difference, that formed one of the conditions for the defencist epidemic. To speak contemptuously of a "group of propagandists" advocating a proletarian line does not seem to be very becoming " (Letters on Tactics).

This approach, this willingness to go against the tide and be in a minority defending clear and definite class principles, had nothing to do with purism or sectarianism. On the contrary it was based on an understanding of the real movement going on in the class there and then, on a capacity to give voice and direction to the most radical elements within the proletariat.

Trotsky shows how, both in winning the party round to his positions, and then in fighting for the "proletarian line" within the class as a whole, Lenin looked for support from these elements: " against the old Bolsheviks Lenin found support in another layer of the party, already tempered, but more fresh and more closely united with the masses. In the February revolution, as we know, the worker-Bolsheviks played the decisive role. They thought it self-evident that the class which had won the victory should seize the power. These same workers protested stormily against the course of Kamenev and Stalin, and the Vyborg district even threatened the "leaders" with expulsion from the party. The same thing was to be observed in the provinces. Almost everywhere there were left Bolsheviks accused of maximalism, even anarchism. These worker-Bolsheviks only lacked the theoretical resources to defend their position. But they were ready to respond to the first clear call. It was on this stratum of workers, decisively risen to their feet during the upward years of 1912-14, that Lenin was now banking " (op cit, Chapter XVI, p 306).

This too was an expression of Lenin's grasp of the marxist method, which by looking beyond surface appearances is able to discern the real dynamic of a social movement. A contrario, in the early twenties, when Lenin himself reverted to the argument about "remaining with the masses" in order to justify the United Front and organisational fusion with centrist parties, it was a sign that the party was losing its grip on the marxist method and sliding into opportunism. But this in turn was a result of the isolation of the revolution and the Bolsheviks' fusion with the Soviet state. In the high tide of the revolution in Russia, the Lenin of the April Theses was neither an isolated prophet nor a demiurge standing above the vulgar masses, but the clearest voice of the most revolutionary trend within the proletariat; a voice which was, with unerring accuracy, indicating the path that led to the October insurrection.

Amos, Spring 1997.

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“ It’s a delusion, it’s the delirium of a madman!” –  (A. Bogdanov, Menshevik, referring to Lenin’s April Theses) By Francesco Ricci.   It is April 3, 1917 (April 16 of our calendar) when the so-called ‘sealed train’ that houses Lenin, Zinoviev, Krupskaya, Inessa Armand, Radek and others arrives at the Finland Station. To welcome him, there is a delegation from the Petrograd Soviet, led by the Menshevik Cheidze, who gives a welcoming address. Lenin turns his back on him and heads for the crowd. Trotsky writes: “ T he speech which Lenin delivered at the Finland railway station on the socialist character of the Russian revolution was a bombshell to many [Bolshevik, the editor] leaders of the party. “ [1] Lenin, once again, explains his position to 200 militants who, on the evening of April 3, hear him in Petrograd. Among them is Nicolaj Soukhanov (Menshevik Internationalist), who in his Memoirs recounts the effect that this discourse caused: “(…) it seemed that all the elements had come out of their refuges and that the spirit of universal destruction, that did not respect limits nor doubts… hover in the room… “. When Lenin finishes speaking, applauses are heard, but the Bolshevik leaders looked puzzled. Lenin pointed at the same time to a change of strategy and the necessity, to implement the new line, of destroying the overwhelming influence of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in the Soviets (the Bolsheviks were a small minority at that time). Coincidentally, and just the next day, a meeting had been organized to move towards the reunification of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks… Soukhanov, who watches, writes: “ At this meeting, Lenin seemed to be the living the incarnation of splitting and the whole meaning of his discourse consisted chiefly in burying the idea of unification. “ [2] Learning with the Paris Commune Let us just take a step back. Shortly after learning of the outbreak of the February revolution, Lenin begins, from his exile in Switzerland, a battle to change radically the Party’s strategy. First, on March 6 he sent a telegram to the party: “ Our tactics: no trust in and no support of the new government; Kerensky is especially suspect; arming of the proletariat is the only guarantee; … no rapprochement with other parties. ” [3] In March, he writes the Letters From Afar (Pravda will publish only an edited one). At the heart of these later letters and fundamental texts, among which the April Theses stand out, of which we shall deal next, there is the example of the Paris Commune, which Lenin had studied again in those months while he was writing the so-called Blue Notebook (Marxism and the State), a collection of commented quotations of all the concepts expressed by Marx and Engels on the theme of the State, the work that will be the basis to write The State and the Revolution . [4] The revolution that is developing in Russia, says Lenin, is a socialist revolution. Therefore, the aim of the revolution is to “break the bourgeois state,” as the Parisian workers did, and to replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is, it is not a question of changing the ruler of the old state machine, but of destroying it and substituting an entirely new one for it. But to achieve this goal, it is necessary to affirm the complete independence of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie and the provisional government, which is a bourgeois government, although it is currently supported by the Soviets (where the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks have the majority). When Lenin Became a… “Trotskyist” It is not possible to appreciate in depth the changes proposed by Lenin without reminding the previous position sustained by the Bolsheviks for years. From the beginning of the century on, there were three different conceptions of the future Russian revolution [5] . The Mensheviks, in the name of a supposed “Marxist orthodoxy” (in fact, misrepresenting Marx and attributing to him a non-dialectical evolutionist conception of history), believed that Russia should go through a stage of capitalistic industrial development before the socialist revolution – after a considerable period – could succeed. Therefore, there should be a democratic revolution led by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a subordinate ally, which would free the country from Tsarism, where social-democracy would be the left wing of the “democratic front” led by Liberals. After centuries of capitalist development, the time for socialist revolution would come. Trotsky’s position was at the opposite pole: he believed that the national bourgeoisie was incapable of achieving democratic goals and therefore foresaw a socialist revolution, led by the proletariat that would hegemonize the poor peasants, to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and assume, continually, the democratic and (on an international scale of an expanding revolution) the socialist tasks (expropriation of big industry, etc.). This would be possible because of the “uneven and combined development” of society and the international revolution that would allow Russia (like other underdeveloped countries) to “leap” a few steps, breaking an “evolutionary” stages scheme, that would be replaced by the “permanent revolution”. Lenin’s and the Bolsheviks’ position laid between both: the bourgeois revolution “directed to the end,” but (given the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie, tied by a thousand ties to foreign capital) led by the proletariat and the peasantry (In an “algebraic” alliance, according to Trotsky’s critique), to establish a “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants.” It is not the dictatorship of the proletariat, but a republic within the limits of bourgeois democracy, as a prelude to a rapid development towards the socialist revolution (its pace being dictated by the European revolution). Lenin believed, therefore, as the Mensheviks did, in a bourgeois revolution, although, unlike the Mensheviks, he managed another leadership, of workers and peasants, independent of the bourgeoisie. His program was different, too, stressing the confiscation of the land of the nobles and the Church; and a different perspective from that anticipated by the Mensheviks – there would be no centuries separating this first revolution from the successive socialist revolution. The February revolution was the confirmation (at least for those who wanted to think) that the only correct and viable conception was Trotsky’s. To guarantee the achievement of the democratic objectives (agrarian revolution, reduction of the working day, peace, the Constituent Assembly), it was necessary first to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat (supported by the poor peasants) based on the Soviets. Therefore, it was necessary to destroy the bourgeois rule, which represented an obstacle on the path to the full power of the Soviets. Lenin did not hesitate to abandon the old theory and, to great scandal of many, he began to defend, indeed, the theory that Trotsky had elaborated over ten years ago. That is why Trotsky comments: “ It is not strange that Lenin’s April Theses were condemned as Trotskyist.” [6] The Rediscovery of Dialectic in Marxism It was rightly observed by several scholars [7] that the change advocated by Lenin at the Finland station was based, from a theoretical point of view, on the study of Hegel’s Science of Logic, which Lenin began in 1914. A study he felt necessary to explain the betrayal of the Second International in World War I and to understand the complete capitulation of his masters of the past: Plekhanov and Kautsky (the latter, along with the bureaucratic deviation of the SPD, was progressively abandoning Marxism, of which he had been the “red pope” in the II International). In those months, closed in the library of Bern, Lenin discovers another Marx, decontaminated of the Feuerbachian prejudices. A dialectical Marxism (that of the Theses on Feuerbach, written by Marx in 1845), born out of the rupture with the “old materialism.” A Marxism based on the understanding of the subject-object dialectic, devoid of any causal conception, which contrasts with that mechanical determinism, which had also partially influenced him during a period (let us think about his Materialism and Empiriocriticism of 1909). It is the discovery of the true Marx, who had been distorted by his disciples and deformed by the opportunism of the Second International: the Marx who affirms “the educator must be educated” (the third Theses on Feuerbach), that is, circumstances may be altered by human action, by the class struggle, by revolutionary praxis. Lenin rediscovers Marx who claims that man makes history, even in circumstances he has not determined. In this Marx, there is no “law of historical development,” which prescribes to every people a linear evolution, no determinism. It is the rupture with the ossified Marxism of Plekhanov that, not by chance, before the October Revolution, will exclaim: “ It is the violation of all the laws of history .” It is in this crucial passage, condensed in his Philosophical Notebooks [8] that Lenin, contemplating Hegel’s books, grabs the dialectic that Marx had absorbed from Hegel and to which he had conferred a revolutionary character. Lenin should not start from scratch: he is always the only one who, since 1902, branding his vanguard party theory that brings socialism “out” of the day-to-day clash between classes, had implicitly rejected socialism understood as a mere product of the impulse of “economic laws”. In Bern, so to speak, he begins to solve a contradiction that remained in his thinking: the contradiction between the conception of the party and its program. Lenin’s Struggle to “Rearm” the Party Most of the Bolshevik leadership do not immediately understand the need for Lenin’s change. Kamenev and Stalin, the main leaders before Lenin’s arrival in Russia, remain anchored in the previous position (which they, furthermore, deformed it to the right) and believe that the Bolsheviks should provide support to the provisional government “to the extent that” it would implement certain policies; that is, it is about “pushing” the government forward. For them, the revolution lives its first stage: the “bourgeois-democratic revolution”, while the socialist one could only develop in an afterward stage. Thus, the Bolsheviks, before Lenin’s arrival, approached the Mensheviks’ positions: for example, on the question of war, the Pravda under Stalin and Kamenev repudiates the revolutionary defeatism that had characterized Bolshevism and pleases the resolution of the Social-Patriots on the war, approved by the Soviets of the Moscow region with the support of the Bolsheviks. At the party’s National Conference, which begins in Petrograd on March 27, Stalin presents the report on the government. In his report, he argues that the interim government is consolidating the revolutionary achievements and therefore the task of the soviets is to “control” and push it forward. As a logical consequence, Stalin presents a motion for merging with the Mensheviks, which is passed by 14 votes to 13. It is understandable why, once the bureaucracy consolidates its power, Stalin will censure the minutes of this Conference (published only in the 1960s). The April Theses The April Theses are undoubtedly the most important text written in the frenetic months of the Russian revolution. It is a short text: 10 theses written on five or six pages, published in the Pravda on April 7 (20, according to our calendar). Let us reread it together. Thesis 1: Rejection of the “revolutionary defensism” line of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, which supports the continuity of the war. Thesis 2: The bourgeoisie robbed the power of the proletariat, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organization of the latter; it is necessary to reverse the situation by returning power to the proletariat supported by the poor peasants. It is not a task for an indeterminate future: it is “the duty of the present moment”. Thesis 3: No (even though critical) support for the Provisional Government. On the contrary, relentless exposure of its bourgeois nature. By reversing the policy hitherto pursued by Kamenev and Stalin, it should be pointed out that the government should not be supported under conditions, it should not be “critically stimulated” because it would only mean “sowing illusions” about the (impossible) fact that a bourgeois government could reconcile the interests of the two mortal class enemies, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This fundamental thesis deserves an observation: for Lenin, it is not a matter of obeying abstract criteria, a dogma. The fact is that supporting a bourgeois government in any way means creating obstacles to gain the proletariat’s consciousness of the need to “break” the bourgeois state machine, an inevitable step in forming a “workers’ government for the workers.” Thesis 4: Since the Bolsheviks are in “a small minority” in the soviets, as against the “opportunist elements”, it is necessary to patiently explain to the masses why they are following a wrong policy and why it is necessary to transfer “the entire state power to the Soviets.” Thesis 5: The objective is not a bourgeois parliamentary republic, but a republic of the Soviets, that is to say, the dissolution of the repressive forces, the replacement of the permanent army with the armament of the proletariat, the eligibility and revocability of all officials at any time. Thesis 6: Confiscation of all landed estates and nationalization of all lands under the control of the Soviets. Thesis 7: Union of all banks into a single national bank under the control of the Soviets. Thesis 8: To bring social production and distribution under the control of the Soviets. Thesis 9: Consistently with all this, it is necessary to immediately summon a congress and change the program and the party’s name to Communist Party . Thesis 10: The immediate creation of a new revolutionary International against the reformists and against the “Center” (Kautsky, Chkheidze, etc.). [9] Lenin dismisses the old program, summed up as the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry,” as “a formula that is already antiquated” and the person who speaks only of it “should be consigned to the archive of ‘Bolshevik’ pre-revolutionary antiques.” However, Stalin will revive it in the course of the Soviets bureaucratic degeneration in the coming decades, but this is another story. [10] Trotsky’s Arrival: “The Best Bolshevik” On April 12, the Pravda publishes an article by Kamenev that criticizes the April Theses stressing that they are Lenin’s personal position, not the party’s. Kamenev adds that Lenin’s line is unacceptable since he proposes the immediate transformation of the revolution into a socialist one, something that for Kamenev (and not only for him) reminds much of Trotsky’s position that the Bolsheviks had fought. In the following days, Lenin began a hard fractional battle and managed to gain the support of an important part of the working class, that, on the other hand (as the Vyborg workers, the party’s backbone), had already expressed strong criticism of the Pravda ’s policy. However, that takes time: he is not immediately successful. In his first attempt, in a Petrograd Committee session, on April 12, the Theses were voted down by 13 votes to 2 and 1 abstention. A week later, at a conference in the Petrograd region, Lenin beats Kamenev by 20 votes to 6, and 9 abstentions. Finally, at the party’s 7 th Pan-Russian Conference (Petrograd, April 24-29), Lenin’s Theses won the majority. Nonetheless, a specific resolution on the theme of the socialist “character” of the revolution secures only 71 votes out of 118 [11] : The old “complete the democratic revolution first” thought still attaches a sector of the party. Consequently, this wing of the party (most notably Kamenev, Rykov, Nogin, while Stalin in the meantime aligns with the majority) thinks that the role of the Soviets is simply to “control” the power that should remain in the hands of the provisional government. On the question of the change of the party’s name, which he proposed to set the party more clearly from the Mensheviks, Lenin gets only his own vote. It is not a simple victory, therefore, and the fact that the provisional government was approaching a first deep crisis, facing street demonstrations, certainly helped him. Above all, as Trotsky observes, [12] Lenin’s victory over the party’s right wing recalls the fact that, in addition to the wrong programmatic formula of a “democratic dictatorship,” the Bolshevik party had been preparing for fifteen years to be at the head of the proletariat in the struggle for power. In those decisive months, its membership acted unconsciously looking for another perspective and, in practice, overcoming its own leadership. Lenin would illuminate them with the April Theses. Meanwhile, on May 4 (17 in the new calendar), Trotsky also arrives in Petrograd. He had spent the first few months of the year in New York after being expelled from Spain and France. A campaign by the Petrograd Soviet releases him from prison in the Amhrest military camp, Canada, where he stayed for one month, and prompts him to come back. In the first weeks after the outbreak of the revolution, he had written a great deal of articles (mostly published in the Russian-language journal Novy Mir ) where he resumed his theory of “permanent revolution” and developed it in concrete terms: Irreconcilable opposition to the provisional government as an indispensable premise to transfer all power to the Soviets and thus to develop the socialist revolution. Trotsky begins the collaboration with Lenin, just after his arrival. It will result in the merger of the Interdistrict group [13] with the Bolsheviks. While Lenin overcomes his “centrist” program of “democratic dictatorship,” Trotsky overcomes his “centrist” critiques of the Bolshevik-type party and abandons his unitary point of view. In fact, since 1914 he has been gradually shifting his position to conclude that “ it was necessary not only an ideological struggle against Menshevism (…) but also an organizational uncompromising rupture “. [14] Thus, the “permanent revolution” ceases to be considered (at least until the beginning of the Stalinization process, in 1924) Trotsky’s only idea but turns to be the practice and patrimony of Bolshevism and the successive Communist International (1919). Trotsky, in Lenin’s assertion, is “the best Bolshevik”. An Essential Lesson for Today What position would the world left have assumed, in the hundredth anniversary of the October revolution, if they had witnessed it? For us, the answer is quite simple: the major left would have supported the Provisional Government, delivering ministers to its cabinet; another part (which we have defined as “centrist”, i.e. semi-reformist) would have given “critical” support, breeding illusions on the possibility of pushing the government to the left by means of street actions. While only a small part of the world left (certainly the IWL-FI, and who else?) would act according to Lenin’s line in that telegram: no support for the government, no rapprochement with other left parties that support the government. Are we wrong? No, and the confirmation of this comes from the mere observation of what the whole left has done in the last decades but us. It is enough to observe the policy of the Italian Communist Refoundation party in this quarter of a century: support for the two-term imperialist Prodi governments with its own minister, or the support given by the entire reformist and semi-reformist left in recent years for the Greek “left-wing” bourgeois government of Tsipras as a model to be followed. The same as the PT’s administrations in Brazil, cited as an example of the ability to govern capitalism differently, reconciling the interests of the opposite classes. Are these not the proof that all this left, if they were present in the 1917 revolution, would have been on the opposite side of Lenin? In making this observation, we should add that when we speak of the Prodi, Lula-Dilma, and Tsipras governments, we are not talking about governments born out of a revolution and supported by the soviets, like those to whom – in any case – the Bolsheviks opposed in 1917! Therefore, we must conclude that present-day reformism stands on an even lower step than that Menshevik reformism which, according to Trotsky’s famous definition, had earned the right to end up in the trash bin of history. Thus, the April Theses continue, a century later, being a scandalous text for the reformists, while they celebrate October as a glorious event of the past, emptied of its teachings. These teachings, on the contrary, we must recover, so that the working class can move, with the struggles and the revolution, toward a new October. *** Translation: Marcos Margarido. ** Notes: [1] Trotsky, The Lessons of October , www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lessons/ch4.htm [2] N. Soukhanov, Le Discours de Lénine du 3 Avril 1917 , published by Cahiers du Mouvement Ouvrier , n. 27, 2005, Editor J.J. Marie. Our translation.

[3] Lenin, Telegram to the Bolsheviks Leaving for Russia , www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/mar/06.htm .

[4] To learn more of the Letters From Afar and the Paris Commune, read our recent article published on the IWL-FI website: 1871-1917: Por que os bolcheviques estudaram a Comuna de Paris para fazer a Revolução de Outubro [5] We presented this debate in a more detailed fashion in What is the theory of permanent revolution?, published in Trotskismo Oggi, n. 1, September 2011. [6] Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. I, p. 347. [7] There are a number of studies, as by Michael Löwy, including “From Hegel’s Great Logic to Petrograd’s Finland Station” in Dialectique et Révolution (Anthropos, 1973), or the more recent and interesting one (although we do not share some of its conclusions) by Kevin Anderson, Lenin, Hegel & Western Marxism: A Critical Study (University of Illinois Press, 1995). [8] V. I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, in Collected Works, Volume 38. [9] V. I. Lenin, April Theses, in Collected Works, Volume 24 – www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm [10] The expressions in quotation marks in this sentence are from Lenin, Letters on Tactics (Collected Works, Volume 24). [11] For a detailed analysis of the vote at the April Conference, see Marcel Liebman, La révolution russe (Marabout Université, 1967) or Jean Jacques Marie, Lenin (Balland, 2004). [12] Read Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, especially the chapters: “The Bolsheviks and Lenin” and “The rearming of the party,” for an overview of the question of the April Theses and the struggle in the party. [13] The Interdistrict Group or Mezhraionka, an organization of about 4,000-5,000 militants, was more like a coordination of ex-Mensheviks and ex-Bolsheviks. Ioffe, Lunacharsky, Antonov-Ovseenko, Urickij were members. To read more, see Ian D. Thatcher, The St. Petersburg / Petrograd Mezhraionka, 1913-1917: The Rise and Fall of a Movement for Social-Democratic Unity in Slavonic & East European Review, 87, 2009. [14] On this, see Leon Trotsky, “The Rearming of the Party,” in History of the Russian Revolution.

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Theses and dissertations

You can find theses via several of the resources under the heading "General/search engines" above, and also in some databases, such as CINAHL. There are also a number of good resources to search in if you want to find theses:

• SwePub : In SwePub you will find different kinds of academic publications , including conference publications, from Swedish universities . Filter your search by dissertations.
• Dissertations and Theses (The Sciences and Engineering Collection) : A database that provides access to an extensive collection of interdisciplinary dissertations from around the world . Includes full text for the majority of dissertations from 1997 onwards. The database is produced by ProQuest and is not freely available, only accessed via KI. 
• DART-Europe : Search engine for European doctoral theses from 570 universities in 28 countries. Operated in a collaboration between European universities.
• WorldCat : WorldCat is a global library catalog where you can search for publications cataloged in libraries around the world. In the advanced search form, in the drop-down menu under "Format", you can limit your search to "thesis/dissertation" .