This outlook on politics Lenin drew from the inner depths of his personality, in which the lust for domination combined with a patrimonial political culture shaped in the Russia of Alexander III in which he had grown up. But the theoretical justification for these psychological impulses and this cultural legacy he found in Marx’s comments on the Paris Commune. Marx’s writings on this subject made an overwhelming impression on him and became his guide to action. Observing the rise and fall of the Commune, Marx concluded that until then all revolutionaries had committed a cardinal mistake in that they took over existing institutions instead of destroying them. By leaving intact the political, social, and military structures of the class state and merely replacing their personnel, they provided a breeding ground for the counterrevolution. Future revolutionaries would have to proceed differently: “not transfer from one set of hands to another the bureaucratic-military machine, as has been done until now, but
Lenin always viewed revolution in international terms; the Russian Revolution was for him a mere accident, a fortuitous snapping of “imperialism’s” weakest link. He was never interested in reforming Russia, but only in subjugating it so as to have a springboard for a revolution in the industrial countries and their colonies. Even as dictator of Russia he never ceased to view 1917 and its sequel from an international viewpoint: for him it was never the “Russian Revolution,” but the worldwide revolution that happened to have had its start in Russia. In his farewell address to the Swiss socialists, delivered the day before he left for home, he made this point with great emphasis:
It has fallen to the Russian proletariat to have the great honor of
Russia is a peasant country, one of the most backward in Europe. It is
Lenin’s secretiveness about a worldwide socialist revolution was due in part to the desire to keep his opponents in the dark about his intentions and in part to the advantage that secrecy gave him of being able to avoid the stigma of failure if things did not work out as planned: whenever this happened, he always could (and in fact did) deny having had a plan. Even so, from the directives he issued in the spring and early summer of 1917, when he personally led the Bolshevik forces, one can form a general picture of his battle plan.
The experience of February seems to have persuaded Lenin that the Provisional Government could be brought down by massive street demonstrations. To begin with, the soil had to be prepared, as had been done in 1915–16, by a relentless campaign to discredit the government in the eyes of the population. To this end it had to be blamed for everything that went wrong: political disorders, shortages, inflation, military setbacks. It had to be charged with conspiring with the Germans to surrender Petrograd while pretending to defend it and of collaborating with General Kornilov while charging him with treason. The more preposterous the accusations, the more the politically inexperienced workers and soldiers were likely to believe them: why should an incredible reality not have incredible causes?
