The Russian Revolution полностью

Knowledge of the intellectual environment in which Lenin grew up sheds light on the evolution of his ideology. In 1887–91, Lenin was not and could not have been a Marxist in the Social-Democratic sense, because this variant of Marxism was still unknown in Russia. The evidence suggests that from 1887 until approximately 1891 he was a typical follower of the People’s Will. He maintained close association with members of this organization, first in Kazan and then in Samara. He actively sought out its veterans, many of whom settled in the Volga region after being released from prison and exile, to learn the history of that movement and especially its organizational practices. This knowledge he deeply assimilated: even after becoming a leading figure in the Russian Social-Democratic Party, Lenin stood apart from his colleagues by virtue of his belief in a tightly disciplined, conspiratorial, and professional revolutionary party and his impatience with programs calling for a lengthy interlude of capitalism. Like the Narodnaia Volia he scorned capitalism and the “bourgeoisie,” in which he saw not allies of socialism but its sworn enemies. It is noteworthy that in the late 1880s he failed to join the circles active in his region which were beginning to approach Marx and Engels in a “German”—that is, Social-Democratic—spirit.¹²

In June 1890, the authorities at long last relented and allowed Lenin to take the examinations for the bar as an external student. He passed them in November 1891, following which he devoted himself, not to the practice of law, but to the study of economic literature, especially statistical surveys of agriculture issued by the zemstva. His purpose, in the words of his sister Anna, was to determine the “feasibility of Social-Democracy in Russia.”¹³

The time was propitious. In Germany, the Social-Democratic Party, legalized in 1890, won stunning successes at the polls. Its superb organization and ability to combine appeals to workers with a broad liberal program won it more parliamentary seats in each successive election. It suddenly appeared conceivable that socialism could triumph in the most industrialized country in Europe through democratic procedures rather than violence. Engels was so impressed by these developments that in 1895, shortly before his death, he conceded that the revolutionary upheavals which he and Marx had predicted in 1848 might never occur and that socialism could well triumph at the ballot box rather than the barricade.¹⁴ The example of the German Social-Democratic Party exerted a strong influence on Russian socialists, discrediting the older theories of “separate path” and the revolutionary coup d’état.

Concurrently with the spread of these ideas, Russia experienced a dramatic spurt of industrial development which in the decade 1890–1900 doubled the number of industrial workers and gave Russia a rate of economic growth unmatched by any other country. The indications, therefore, were that Russia had missed the opportunity to bypass capitalism, which even Marx had conceded to be possible, and was destined to repeat the Western experience.

In this changed atmosphere, the theories of Social-Democracy gained a following in Russia. As formulated in Geneva by George Plekhanov and Paul Akselrod and in St. Petersburg by Peter Struve, Russia was to reach socialism in two stages. First she had to go through full-blown capitalism, which would vastly expand the ranks of the proletariat and, at the same time, bring the benefits of “bourgeois” freedoms, including a parliamentary system under which Russian socialists, like the Germans, could gain political influence. Once the “bourgeoisie” had swept autocracy and its “feudal” economic foundations out the way, the stage would be set for the next phase of historic development, the advance to socialism. In the mid-189os these ideas captured the imagination of much of the intelligentsia and all but submerged the older ideology of “separate path,” for which Struve now coined the derogatory term “Populism.”¹⁵

Lenin was slow to make this transition, in part because, living in the provinces, he had no access to Social-Democratic literature and in part because its pro-capitalist, pro-bourgeois philosophy clashed with what Struve called “the principal Einstellung” or attitude of his mind. In 1892–93, having read Plekhanov, he seems to have arrived at a halfway position between the ideology of the People’s Will and that of Social-Democracy, not unlike that which his brother had reached five years earlier. He abandoned the notion of a “separate path” and acknowledged the reality which stared everyone in the eye: Russia was destined to tread the path charted in Das Kapital, which he had read in 1889. But he was unwilling to concede that before being ready for revolution Russia had to undergo, for an indeterminate period, a stage of capitalist development during which the “bourgeoisie” lorded it over the country.