Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - Lenin, The Great Strategist of the Class War - tr. Alexander Bittleman (1924).pdf/19



ENIN conceived of the revolution as of something that was moving right upon us, and not as something lying in the far-off distance. Because of this he never tired of insisting that we must prepare ourselves daily for the revolution, even politically and technically. The political preparations consisted in training the masses for action thru everyday struggle. Lenin used to say: "The most important thing is to bring the masses in motion, thereby enabling them to accumulate experiences within a short period of time." The revolution confronts us directly with the problem of armed insurrection. And to speak of this without proper technical preparations, is merely to mouth empty phrases. He who wants the revolution must systematically prepare for it the broad masses, who will, in the process of preparation, create the necessary organs of the struggle.

The Mensheviks were fond of ridiculing the idea of technical preparations for an armed insurrection. According to their conception the center of gravity would lie in the sphere of propaganda, of arming the minds of the workers. To this Lenin's reply was: "He who refuses technically to prepare for the insurrection ultimately rejects the insurrection itself, and transforms the program of the revolution into an empty phrase."

Although Lenin knew quite well that revolutions are not made to order, that the success of a revolution demands certain deep-going historical changes, nevertheless he insisted that the problem of the revolution is not only political but also the technical organization of the revolutionary class. A party which does not prepare for the revolution must be considered a discussion club rather than the leader of a revolutionary class. No matter how difficult this problem is, yet all the progressive forces of the working class must be organized in order to solve this problem. Thus we see that for Lenin the revolution was always a concrete problem of the day which at times comes close to us and again moves back into the distance, depending upon the situation and the correlation of forces, but always remains the acute problem of the labor movement.