John Medhurst - No Less Than Mystic - A History of Lenin and the Russian Revolution for a 21st-Century Left

As part of their project to create a politically literate Russian working class able to assume political leadership, the Mensheviks increasingly prioritised non-party activity such as building trade unions, mutual assistance funds, cooperatives and reading clubs. Hence in 1906 they proposed a “Worker’s Congress”, a gathering of representatives from all socialist and trade union bodies to agree a common approach to building a popular socialist challenge inside Russia. It sought to break down barriers between trade unionists and socialists, Praktiki and intellectuals, the centre and activists. Lenin denounced it as a “chaotic idea” which would reduce working-class political activity, an ingenuous criticism as the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP was not supported by the voluntary contributions of working-class members. It was kept going by money from the armed “expropriations”, such as the infamous Tiflis bank job of 1907, that Lenin kept hidden from party scrutiny. Even after the RSDLP’s 1907 Congress again condemned the expropriations by a large majority (170 to 35), Lenin continued to squirrel away the proceeds from the robberies to fund the secret Bolshevik “Centre”. 30

The differences between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were best expressed in their approach to the Duma. The Duma Electoral Law was not as generous as the October Manifesto had promised. It weighted the franchise towards landowners and peasants, with the working class and urban middle class under-represented. The Duma could draft laws but it could not legislate. The Tsar still appointed Ministers who were responsible to him alone. The Fundamental Laws which created the new constitutional settlement could not be amended by the Duma, only by the Tsar.

Nonetheless, and to the shock of Tsar and Court, even the gerrymandered franchise produced significant gains by all parties who opposed autocracy. Of 478 deputies elected to the first Duma, the Kadets had nearly 50% (the initial absence from the ballot of the SRs and rsdlp increased their vote substantially). The Trudoviks–a group of moderate labour socialists who had split from the SRs over standing in the Duma–held 97. The conservative parties held only 16. When the second round of voting, in which the RSDLP stood candidates, was complete, the “united” RSDLP secured 18 seats and formed a socialist bloc with the Trudoviks.

The Tsar was compelled to enter into negotiations with Kadet leader Miliukov about forming a government based on a majority in the Duma. Faced with this opportunity, Plekhanov urged working-class parties to temporarily shelve their differences with the liberals and work with them to embed democratic freedoms into Russian society. Lenin disagreed, arguing that “the demand to appoint a ministry responsible to the Duma only serves to fortify constitutional illusions and to debauch the revolutionary consciousness of the people”. Calling the Duma an “unsuitable institution” for ensuring the victory of revolution, he claimed,

Only an all-popular Constituent Assembly elected by universal, equal, direct and secret ballot of all citizens without distinction of sex, religion or nationality, and possessed of the full extent of state power–only it is capable of bringing about complete freedom. 31

And yet the Duma quickly became a cauldron of democratic debate, “a rhetorical battering ram against the forces of autocracy”. 32On 8th July, 1906, following Kadet proposals for agrarian reform including confiscation and reallocation of the biggest landed estates, the Tsar dissolved the Duma, with new elections called for February 1907. The Kadets, shocked at the sudden termination of the institution in which they had placed so much hope, responded with an illegal conference in the Finnish town of Vyborg. The Vyborg Manifesto called for revolt against the dissolution of the Duma and for a campaign of mass resistance, including non-payment of taxes. But this was not 1905. There were no strikes and no uprisings. The Kadets had overplayed their hand. Over one hundred of their representatives were arrested for signing the Vyborg Manifesto.

But the second Duma was even more troublesome. The “centre” collapsed from 185 seats to 99, to be replaced by stronger left and right blocs. The Octobrists went from 13 to 44 seats and the proto-fascist Black Hundreds had 10. But the most significant shift was on the left. The Trudoviks secured 104 seats, and together the RSDLP and SRs 122 (of the RSDLP’s 65 seats only 18 were pro-Bolshevik). This not only gave the left a majority but confirmed that the peasant vote, which the right had always assumed was supportive of Church and Tsar, was more likely to go left than right if it could support parties who advocated land redistribution.

On 7th June, 1907 Okhrana agents entered the Tauride Palace and announced to assembled deputies that the Duma was again dissolved, to be re-elected in November. During the interregnum trade uions were suppressed and the franchise severely restricted. The number of deputies was cut from 542 to 442. Non-Russian provinces had their representation reduced or removed. The cities, which tended to return liberal or socialist deputies, were merged with provincial constituencies. As a result, the composition of the third Duma was heavily conservative, with the Kadets reduced to 52 seats and the RSDLP and Trudoviks to only 14 each. The Duma still existed, but its use as a democratic institution was confined solely to that of a propaganda platform.

For Lenin it had never been anything else. During the first and second Dumas, the Mensheviks had harbored hopes that a working alliance between socialists and liberals might provide the grounding for a genuine parliamentary regime. Martov’s biographer Israel Getzler identifies Martov’s preference for this strategy as recognition that “the mere fact of transfer, even temporarily, of executive power from a feudal-bureaucratic clique to bourgeois politicians would be an event of first-rate importance, pregnant with revolutionary changes”. 33Martov’s strategy of creating an RSDLP-Kadet alliance within the Duma to effect fundamental reform of the Russian state received its final death blow when Stolypin dissolved the second Duma and shut down the socialist press.

Between 1907 and 1912, as a result of Stolypin’s repression and disillusionment amongst its activists with the incessant infighting within the party, many RSDLP cells and committees ceased to function. In these years–the nadir of the RSDLP and of hopes for revolution in Russia–Lenin waged unrelenting war on a series of “traitors” and “opportunists” within the party. First and foremost were the Mensheviks, who Lenin accused of wishing to “liquidate” the RSDLP. Right up to the outbreak of war in 1914 he attacked all manner of “Liquidators”–political, cultural and theoretical. But there were also enemies within the Bolshevik organisation itself. The “Otzovists” (Re-Callists) wanted to boycott the Duma and the legal trade unions, and accused Lenin himself of being a closet Menshevik. The “Ultimatists” held off on complete recall of the Bolshevik deputies but demanded they be given ultimata to advocate the full Maximum Programme at all times and to never work with the Kadets.

Although Lenin had to discipline ultra-left Bolsheviks who saw no merit at all in legal agitation, he reserved his fiercest fire for the “Conciliators”, i.e. Bolsheviks who wished to reunite with the Mensheviks. In this period, he revealed the hard core of his personality and his political philosophy, and how negative it ultimately was. As a result, he grew more and more politically isolated. Short of a titanic social convulsion in Russia that created entirely new political opportunities, there seemed little chance he would ever emerge from this isolation.