Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/336

318

conspiring proletarians and the struggling peasantry. As the programme of the Social Revolutionaries aimed at union between the classes in common opposition to the Government, it laid chief stress on political rights, democratic organization and the raising of the status and consciousness of the individual. Their methods of terrorism and insurrection were themselves the out- come of the heightened sense of personality and of the impor- tance attached to energetic action and self-sacrifice.

The ways of the Social Democrats were different; they adopted Marx's teaching as a gospel and tried to develop and to apply it in every direction. Their chief exponent was for a time G. Plekhanov, a philosopher and economist who had taken up his residence abroad, in Switzerland and in Italy. He held strictly to the evolutionary construction laid down by Marx, according to which Capitalism appears as a necessary stage in the develop- ment of production and gives way to Collectivism only when the majority of the workers have been turned into wage-earning proletarians. Marx's principal disciple, Engels, had added that it would be the greatest misfortune for the working-class if it seized power before it had fully reached the stage of complete consciousness and Western organization. As a consequence of this, Plekhanov and his followers did not consider the Russian people ready for class war against the bourgeoisie, and insisted, on the contrary, on combined action with the social groups possessed of better education and greater political experience. Some Marxians went even further in the direction of compromise with the middle class and with the Government. For a time an " economic " orientation was very much the fashion; it dis- carded political action as untimely and hopeless, and insisted on " business " efforts for the improvement of the standard of living, increase in wages, industrial organization, better pro- tection for the working-class, etc. The " Revisionist " move- ment, initiated in Germany by Brentano and Bernstein, found a wide field for application (Struve, Bulgakov, Prokopovich). Struve declared the formula of a class war to be a " myth," although he conceded it a certain value inasmuch as it helped to rouse the self-consciousness of the proletarians. Bulgakov analyzed the situation in regard to the distribution and culti- vation of land, and came to the conclusion that the process of economic evolution consisted substantially in the gradual dis- appearance of brutal exploitation of human beings by fellow men; in industry this was effected by the concentration of pro- duction and increasing control, in agriculture by the breaking up of large estates and the strengthening of a class of prosperous husbandmen. Both movements converge in swelling the current of rising democracy.

The realities of Russian life did not prove favourable to a growth of these tendencies towards social peace. The burden of increasing taxation, the disastrous conduct of the Japanese war, the reactionary stupidity of the Government, all contrib- uted to revive the revolutionary spirit in the ranks of the Social Democratic party. The history of this revival may be traced from the appearance in Dec. 1900 of the Iskra (The Spark), a newspaper conducted by Lenin and Martov, supplemented by a monthly review Zaria (The Dawn) for more detailed exposition and argument. Lenin's pamphlets, What is to be done? (1902) and Letter to a Comrade (1903), express one of the leading ideas of his later activity. He pleads in them for centralized direction and decentralized responsibility, that is, for an oligarchy of leaders and strict discipline as re- gards the execution of their decisions by subordinate units. Democratic watchwords are set aside and efficiency of organization is demanded at all costs. This led to the dis- ruption of the party. At the London Congress of 1903 the fateful division between " Bolsheviks " and " Mensheviks " was inaugurated, as a consequence of disagreement concerning the problem of leadership and discipline. The Bolshevik (mean- ing " Majority ") group carried its proposals by a very narrow majority, and captured the Central Council of the party, from which they excluded entirely their opponents. The latter, who had a majority on the staff of the Iskra, proclaimed a boycott against Lenin and his adherents. The insignificance of the

immediate cause of the split was only apparent: in truth the division arose from fundamental opposition between the dem- ocratic orientation of Plekhanov and the oligarchical spirit represented by Lenin. The struggle was not suggested by a deep cleavage of principle among the rank and file of the party, but by disputes among its intellectual leaders.

Questions of principle arose, however, in the course of the Japanese war and the first revolution. While Plekhanov and the Mensheviks were for cooperation with the Liberals in the fight for political freedom and for a gradual introduction of social reforms, Lenin set his hopes on the hatred of the peasantry for the landlords, and preached a ruthless Jacquerie. In his pamphlet, The Agrarian Programmes of Social Democracy, he contended that orthodox Marxians had failed to grasp the peculiarities of the Russian situation inasmuch as they were still talking about a coalition of the bourgeoisie of the towns, while in Russia the moving power was to be sought in the rising of the peasant bourgeoisie against the squires. He contrasted the abstract views of the town proletariat with the intense revolutionary temper of the peasants who were " ready to fly at the throat of the landlords and to strangle them." In his view the proletariat had to supply leaders and instructors when the revolution had been set going, but he looked to the exasper- ated peasantry for bringing down the existing order.

It is hardly needful to point out the close connection between these literary disputes and the Zimmerwald agitation 1 of 1915-16, as well as with the eventual overthrow of the old regime in 1917. Let us note that the Congress of the Social Democratic party in 1917 sided definitely with Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

The Revolution. The situation in the beginning of 1917 was extremely tense and abnormal. The Emperor had left the capital and taken up his residence at the army headquarters in order to see as little as possible of the ministries, the Duma, or the Court, and to lead a " simple life " among the selected retainers of the Stavka; the Empress continued to look for hypnotizing inspiration to monks and priests and interfered constantly in affairs of State in favour of reaction. Even the staunchest conservatives, like Trepov, found it impossible to re- main in office under such conditions, and the field was left clear for half-insane subjects like Protopopov and bigoted courtiers like Prince N. Galitsin. The army at the front held on sullenly to its positions, but was war-weary and distrustful of its leaders;

1 The Zimmerwald Manifesto of 1915 is full of momentous declara- tions. The following are some of them :

" The war that has produced this chaos is the outcome of Im- perialism, of the endeavours of capitalist classes of every nation to satisfy their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labour and the treasures of Nature. . ..

" To raise welfare to a high level was the aim announced at the beginning of the war: misery and privation, unemployment and death, underfeeding and disease are the real outcome. For decades and decades to come the cost of the war will devour the strength of the peoples, imperil the achievements of social reform, and hamper every step on the path of progress. Intellectual and moral desola- tion, economic disaster, political reaction such are the blessings of this horrible struggle of nations. . ..

" In this intolerable situation we have met together, we representa- tives of Socialist parties, of trade unions, or of minorities of them, we Germans, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Letts, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch and Swiss, we who are standing on the ground, not of national solidarity, with the exploiting class, but of the international solidarity of the workers and the class struggle. . ..

" The struggle is also the struggle for liberty, for brotherhood of nations, for Socialism. The task is to take up this fight for peace-^- for peace without annexations or war indemnities. Such peace is only possible when every thought of violating the rights and liberties of the nations is condemned. There must be no violent incorporation, either of wholly or partly occupied countries. No annexations, either open or masked, likewise no forced economic union, that is made still more intolerable by the suppression of political rights. The right of nations to dispose of themselves must be the immovable fundamental principle of international relations.

" Since the outbreak of the war you have put your energies, your courage, your steadfastness at the service of the ruling classes. Now, the task is to enter the lists for your own cause, for the sacred aims of Socialism, for the salvation of the oppressed nations and _ the en- slaved classes, by means of the irreconcilable class struggle."