The Russian Revolution полностью

The thrust of Lenin’s ninety-minute speech was that the transition from the “bourgeois-democratic” to the “socialist” revolution had to be accomplished in a matter of months.* This meant that barely four weeks after tsarism had been overthrown, Lenin was publicly sentencing its successor to death. This proposition ran so contrary to the sentiments of the majority of his followers, it seemed so irresponsible and “adventurist,” that the remainder of the night, until the meeting broke up at 4 a.m., was spent in tempestuous debate.

Later that day Lenin read to a group of Bolsheviks and then separately to a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks a paper which, anticipating resistance, he presented as reflecting his personal opinions. Subsequently known as the “April Theses,” it outlined a program of action that must have appeared to his audiences as totally out of touch with reality if not positively mad.³⁶ He proposed no backing for the ongoing war; immediate transition to the “second” phase of the revolution; refusal to support the Provisional Government; transfer of all power to the Soviets; abolition of the army in favor of a popular militia; confiscation of all landlord property and nationalization of all land; the fusion of all banks into a single National Bank under Soviet supervision; Soviet control of production and distribution; creation of a new Socialist International.

Pravda’s editorial board refused to print Lenin’s “Theses” on the pretext of a mechanical breakdown at its printing plant.³⁷ A meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on April 6 passed a negative resolution on them. Kamenev insisted that Lenin’s analogy between the situation in contemporary Russia and the Paris Commune was faulty, while Stalin found the “Theses” “schematic” and short on facts.³⁸ But Lenin and Zinoviev, who had in the meantime joined the editorial board of Pravda, forced the issue, and the “Theses” appeared on April 7. Lenin’s article was accompanied by an editorial comment by Kamenev which disassociated the party’s organ from it. Lenin, Kamenev wrote,

proceeds from the premise that the bourgeois-democratic revolution has been completed and counts on the immediate transformation of that revolution into a socialist one.

But, he went on, the Central Committee thought otherwise and the Bolshevik Party would be guided by its resolutions.* The Petrograd Committee met on April 8 to discuss Lenin’s paper. Its verdict was also overwhelmingly negative, two voting in favor, thirteen against, with one abstention.³⁹ The reaction in the provincial cities was similar: the Bolshevik organizations in Kiev and Saratov, for instance, rejected Lenin’s program, the latter on the grounds that the author was out of touch with the situation in Russia.⁴⁰

Whatever the Bolsheviks’ opinion of their leader’s pronouncements, the Germans were delighted. On April 4/17, their agent in Stockholm cabled to Berlin: “Lenin’s entry into Russia successful. He is working exactly as we wish.”⁴¹

Lenin was a very secretive man: although he spoke and wrote voluminously, enough to fill fifty-five volumes of collected works, his speeches and writings are overwhelmingly propaganda and agitation, meant to persuade potential followers and destroy known opponents rather than reveal his thoughts. He rarely disclosed what was on his mind, even to close associates. As supreme commander in the global war between classes, he kept his plans private. To reconstruct his thinking, it is necessary, therefore, to proceed retroactively, from known deeds to concealed intentions.

On general issues—who the enemy was and what was to be done to him—Lenin was frank enough. The objective—the “program”—broadly defined, he made public; it was the tactics that he kept hidden. And herein lies the difficulty of divining Lenin’s intentions. For as Mussolini, himself no mean expert in the art of the coup d’état, confided to Giovanni Giolitti, “a State has to be defended not against a program of the revolution but against its tactics.”⁴²