21c: Lenin and the Bolsheviks

The Bolshevik Party begain in 1903 in London, England, of all places. Since Russian political parties were still officially illegal, the Russian Social Democratic Party's convention had to be held far from the Russian secret police. As devout Marxists, the Social Democrats believed in Karl Marx's forecast of a world revolution. They agreed with Marx that the Russian working class (and not the sluggish peasants) would be at the forefront of the Russian revolution. They disagreed with each other on nearly everything else. Strongly. At the 1903 London Congress, Russia's Socialists split into two factions. One was the "Menshevik" (or "minority") faction, which stood for business as usual: discussing theory and tactics, waiting for the working class to emerge, and signing up anyone who wanted to join them. The "Bolshevik" ("majority") faction, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, wanted a smaller party of hardcore revolutionaries committed to kickstarting the revolution in Russia by whatever means Lenin said.

Although the Bolsheviks had a majority in London, in Russia there were actually far more Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks' fanaticism cut them off from the Socialists' usual sources of funding, and made them resort to "expropriations" - that is, on outright bank robbery or robbery of money in transit. One of the most talented expropriators was the young Georgian Iosif Dzhugashvili, better known to history as Iosif Stalin. In fact, the Bolsheviks were so weak that they were nearly invisible throughout the Revolution of 1905. Lev Trotsky, who played an extremely important role in 1905, was a Menshevik at the time and only joined the Bolsheviks in 1917.

Why were the Bolsheviks so weak in the beginning?  Sure, the Tsarist secret police were watching them carefully. But they were watching the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries, and the other parties no less carefully. The Mensheviks were more open to other people and other ideas. The Socialist Revolutionaries, who were not Marxists, were far better organized. They also had a clear program: an 8 hour day for the workers, a constituent assembly, and giving all the farmland to the peasants. But the Bolsheviks' greatest weakness was also its greatest strength - the intellect, determination, and driving personality of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin believed the revolution had to be led by an educated and disciplined elite, not a mass of backward factory workers and peasants. Although Lenin was quite at home in the convoluted world of Marxist theory, he was totally pragmatic. He might change his position, or form alliances or break them, but the bottom line was always the success of the revolution. For Lenin, the end always justified the means of achieving it.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born May 4, 1870, in Simbirsk to a noble family. His older brother Alexander was hung in 1886 for his part in a plot to kill Tsar Alexander III. Although it's hard to see Lenin as becoming anything but a revolutionary, his brother's execution certainly didn't help matters. In 1891 he finished law school, but his job prospects in Tsarist Russia were lousy. Instead, he became a full-time Socialist activist under the name of Lenin. In December 1897 he was arrested and exiled to Siberia with his fiancee Nadezhda Krupskaya, whom he married in 1898. Returning from exile in 1900, Lenin lived almost exclusively in Europe for the next 17 years, returning only to watch the 1905 Revolution from the sidelines. He ran the Bolsheviks from various European cities via letters and couriers. The February 1917 Revolution caught him by total surprise. When it started, he and Krupskaya were living in a Geneva hovel so close to a sausage factory that they could bear to open their one window only in the evenings. Lenin was a very old forty-six and was very close to packing it in.

Germany saw Lenin as a great opportunity to maim the Russian war effort. Unlike most Russian socialists, Lenin made no bones about wanting Russia to lose the war, in order to speed up Marx's world revolution. In April 1917 the Germans sent Lenin back to Russia in a specially sealed train (they didn't want Lenin spreading Bolshevism in their country) complete with a huge sum of money. The Bolsheviks had been clueless in Lenin's absence. They had actually been cooperating with the Provisional Government and the Mensheviks. They were even making noises about continuing the war. On returning to St. Petersburg, Lenin whipped them into shape with the help of his new best friend Lev Trotsky, hero of the 1905 Revolution. Lenin didn't want to wait for the Provisional Government to create socialism. Neither did Trotsky. They believed that the time for revolution had come.

Lenin and Trotsky established Bolshevik control over the local Soviets as quickly as possible. For the masses Lenin kept his message simple: the Bolsheviks would give the Russian people peace, food, and land. All the people had to do was give all power to the Soviets (that is, to the Bolsheviks). In July, Lenin tried to stir up a revolt with street demonstrations. The Provisional Government set up some machine guns, some demonstrators got shot, and Lenin hid out in Finland disguised as a clean-shaven workman with a ridiculous toupee. While in hiding that summer, Lenin wrote State and Revolution, which claimed that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" - that is, government through the Soviets - would be necessary before Russia could become truly socialist. But before Lenin could install the dictatorship of the proletariat, he had to get out of the haystack he was hiding in (literally) and get back to St. Petersburg.