Pokrovsky writes: "To portray the Moscow Russ of the sixteenth century on a back-ground of general European relations of that time is an extremely alluring enterprise. There is no better way to refute the prejudices prevailing until now even in Marxist circles about the primitiveness" of those economic foundations upon which the Russian autocracy arose," And further: "To present this autocracy in its real historic connections, as one of the aspects of commercial-capitalist Europe . . . that is an undertaking not only of extraordinary inter-est to the historian, but also of extraordinary educational importance for the reading public: there is no more radical way of putting an end to the legend of peculiarities" of the Russian historic process." Pokrovsky as we see, .atly denies the primitiveness and backwardness of our economic development, and therewith relegates the peculiarities of the Russian historic process to the sphere of legend. And the whole trouble is that Pokrovsky is completely hypnotised by the comparatively broad development of trade noticed by him and also by Rozhkov in sixteenth century Russia. It is hard to understand how Pokrovsky could make such a mistake. You might indeed imagine that trade is the basis of economic life and its infallible measuring rod. The German economist Karl Bucher twenty years ago tried to .nd in trade (the path between the producer and the consumer) a criterion of the whole economic development. Strive, of course, hastened to transport this "discovery" into the Russian economic science." At that time the theory of Bucher met a perfectly natural op-position from the Marxists. We .nd the criteria of economic development in productionin technique and the social organisation of labourand the path followed by the product from the producer to the consumer we regard as a secondary phenomenon, whose roots are to be found in that same production.
The large scope, at least in a spatial sense, of Russian trade in the sixteenth centuryhow-ever paradoxical from the standpoint of the Bucher-Struve criterionis explained exactly by the extraordinary primitiveness of Russian economy. The West European city was a craft-guild and trade-league city; our cities were above all administrative, military, consequently consuming, and not producing, centres. The craft-guild culture of the West formed itself on a relatively high level of economic development when all the fundamental processes of the manufacturing industries had been distinguished from agriculture, and had been con-verted into independent crafts, had created their own organisations, their own focusesthe citiesand at .rst a limited (belonging to local districts), but nevertheless stable, market. At the basis of the medieval European city therefore lay a comparatively high differentiation of industry, giving rise to regular interrelations between the city centre and its agricultural periphery. Our economic backwardness, on the other hand, found its expression in the fact that craft, not yet separated from agriculture, preserved the form of home industry. Here we were nearer to India than to Europe, just as our medieval cities were nearer to the Asiatic than the European type, and as our autocracy, standing between the European absolutism and the Asiatic despotism, in many features approached the latter.
With the boundlessness of our s.p.a.ces and the spa.r.s.eness of the population (also a suf-.ciently objective sign, it would seem, of backwardness) the exchange of products pre-supposed a mediating r6le of trade-capital on the broadest scale. This scale was possible exactly because the West stood at a far higher level of development, had its own innu-merable demands, sent out its merchants and its goods, and therewith stimulated our trade turnover with its extremely primitive, and in a certain measure barbarian, economic basis. Not to see this immense peculiarity of our historic development means not to see our whole history.
My Siberian boss (I spent two months entering poods and arshines in his ledger), Jacob Andreievich Chernykhthis was not in the sixteenth century, but at the very beginning of the twentiethenjoyed an almost unlimited rulership within the limits of Kirensky county, thanks to his trade operations. Jacob Andreievich bought up furs from the Tunghuz had bought in the parish contributions in kind from the priests of more remote districts, imported calico from the lrbitsk and Nizhni-Novgorod market, and above all supplied vodka. (In the Irkutsk province at that epoch the monopoly had not yet been introduced.) Jacob Andreievich was illiterate, but a millionaire (according to the value of the decimal in those days, not now). His "dictatorship," as the representative of trade capital, was indubitable. He even always talked of "my little Tuoghuzi." The city of Kirensk, like Verkholensk and Nizhni-llimsk, was a residence of sheriffs and magistrates, kulaks in hierarchical dependence one upon another, all kinds of of.cials, and a few wretched artisans. An organised handicraft as the basis of city economic life I did not .nd there, neither guilds, nor guild holidays, nor trade leagues, although Jacob Andreievich counted himself a member of the "second League." Really this live bit of Siberian reality carries us far deeper into an understanding of the his-toric peculiarities of Russia"s development than what Pokrovsky says on this subject. That is a fact. The trade operations of Jacob Andreievich extended from the midstream of the Lena and its eastern tributaries to Nizhni-Novgorod and even Moscow. Few trades of Con-tinental Europe can mark off such distances on their maps. However, this trade dictatorthis "king of clubs," in the language of the Siberian farmers was the most .nished and con-vincing incarnation of our industrial backwardness, barbarism, primitiveness, spa.r.s.eness of . population, scatteredness of peasant towns and villages, impa.s.sable country roads, creating around the counties, districts and villages in the spring and autumn .oods a two-months" swampy blockade, of our universal illiteracy, etc., etc. And Chernykh had risen to his commercial importance on the basis of the Siberian (mid-Lensky) barbarism, because-the West-"Ra.s.sea," "Moskva"-was exerting pressure, and was taking Siberia in tow, creat-ing a combination of nomad economic primitiveness with alarm clocks from Warsaw.
The guild craft was the basis of the medieval city culture, which radiated also into the village. Medieval science, scholasticism, religious reformation, grew out of a craft-guild soil. We did not have these things. Of course the embryo symptoms, the signs, can be found, but in the West these things were not signs but powerful cultural economic forma-tions with a craft-guild basis. Upon this basis stood the medieval European city, and upon this it grew and entered into the con.ict with the church and the feudal lords, and brought into play against the lords the hand of the monarchy. That same city created the technical premises for standing armies in the shape of .rearms.
Where were our craft-guild cities even in a remote degree similar to the western cities? Where was their struggle with the feudal lords? And was the foundation for the develop-ment of the Russian autocracy laid by a struggle of the industrial-commercial city with the feudal lord? By the very nature of our cities we had no such struggle, just as we had no Reformation. Is this a peculiarity or is not it?
Our handicraft remained at the stage of home industrythat is, did not split off from peasant agriculture. Our Reformation remained at the stage of the peasant sect, because it found no leader ship from the cities. Primitiveness and backwardness here cry to the heavens. . . .
Czarism arose as an independent state organisation (again only relatively independent within the limits of the struggle of living historic forces on an economic foundation), not thanks to a struggle of powerful feudal cities with powerful lords, but in spite of the com-plete industrial feebleness of our cities and thanks to the feeble ness of our feudal lords.
Poland in her social structure stood between Russia and the West, just as Russia stood between Asia and Europe. The Polish cities knew already much more of guild craft than ours did, but they did not succeed in rising high enough to help the kingly power break the barons. The state power remained in the immediate hands of the n.o.bility. The result: complete impotence of the state and its disintegration.
What has been said of czarism relates also to capital and the proletariat. I cannot under-stand why Pokrovsky directs his rage only against my .rst chapter dealing with czarism. Russian capitalism did not develop from handicraft through manufacture to the factory, be-cause European capital, at .rst in the trade form and afterwards in the .nance and industrial form, poured down on us during that period when Russian handicraft had not in the ma.s.s divided itself from agriculture. Hence the appearance among us of the most modern cap-italist industry in an environment of economic primitive. ness: the Belgian or American factory, and round about it settlements, villages of wood and straw, burning up every year, etc. The most primitive beginnings and the latest European endings. Hence the mighty role of West European capital in Russian industry; hence the political weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie; hence the ease with which we settled accounts with the Russian bourgeoisie; hence our further dif.culties when the European bourgeoisie interfered.
And our proletariat? Did it pa.s.s through the school of the medieval apprentice brother-hoods? Has it the ancient tradition of the guilds? Nothing of the kind. It was thrown into the factory cauldron s.n.a.t.c.hed directly from the plough. Hence the absence of conserva-tive tradition, absence of caste in the proletariat itself, revolutionary freshness: hencealong with other causesOctober, the .rst workers" government in the world. But hence also il-literacy, backwardness, absence of organisational habits, absence of system in labour, of cultural and technical education. All these minuses in our cultural economic structure we are feeling at every step.
The Russian state encountered the military organisation of Western nations standing on a higher political and cultural level. Thus Russian capital in its .rst step ran into the far more developed and powerful capital of the West and fell under its leadership. Thus the Russian working cla.s.s in its .rst steps also found ready weapons worked out by the expe-rience of the West European proletariat; the Marxian theory, the trade union, the political party. Whoever ex plains the character and policy of the autocracy merely by the interests of the Russian possessing cla.s.ses forgets that besides the more backward, poorer and more ignorant exploiters in Russia, there were the richer and more powerful exploiters in Eu-rope. The possessing cla.s.ses of Russia had to encounter the possessing cla.s.ses of Europe, hostile or semi-hostile. This encounter was mediated through a state organisation. Such an organisation was the autocracy. The whole structure and history of the autocracy would have been different if it had not been for the European cities, European gunpowder (for we did not invent it), if it had not been for the European stock markets.
In the last epoch of its existence the autocracy was not only an organ of the possessing cla.s.ses of Russia, but also of the organisation of European stock markets for the exploitation of Russia. This double role again gave it a very considerable independence. A sharp expression of this is the fact that the French Bourse made a loan for the support of the autocracy in 1905 against the will of the party of the Russian bourgeoisie.
Czarism was shattered in the imperialist war. And why? Because it had under it a too low-grade productive foundation ("primitive ness"). In military-technical matters czarism tried to fall in line with more perfected models. It was every way a.s.sisted in this by the more rich and cultured Allies. Thanks to this fact czarism had at its disposal the most .nished weapons of war, but it had not, and could not have, the capacity to reproduce these weapons and transport then (and the human ma.s.ses also) on railroads and waterways with suf.cient speed. In other words, czarism was defending the interests of the ruling cla.s.ses of Russia in the international struggle, while relying upon a more primitive economic basis than her enemies and allies.
Czarism exploited this basis during the war mercilesslydevoured, that is to say, a far greater percentage of the national wealth and the national income than her mighty enemies and allies. This fact .nds its con.rmation on the one hand in the system of war debts, on the other in the complete ruin of Russia. . . .
All these circ.u.mstances, which immediately pre-determined the October revolution, the victory of the proletariat and its future dif.culties, remain totally unexplained by the com-monplaces of Pokrovsky.
APPENDIX II.
(To the Chapter Re-arming the Party): In a New York daily paper, Novy Mit, published for the Russian workers in America, the author of this book attempted an a.n.a.lysis and a prognosis of the development of the revolution on the basis of the scant information supplied by the American press. "The inner history of the developing events," wrote the author on March 6, 1917 (old style), "is known to us only in fragments and hints which have crept into the of.cial despatches." The series of articles devoted to the revolution begins on February 27 and breaks off on March 14 with the departure of the author from New York. We reproduce below a series of excerpts from these articles in chronological order, which will give an idea of the views of the revolution with which the author arrived in Russia on May 4.
FEBRUARY 27:.
"The disorganised, compromised, disintegrated government at the top, the army shaken to the depths, the discontent, uncertainty and fear among the ruling cla.s.ses, deep bitter-ness in the popular ma.s.ses, the numerically developed proletariat tempered in the .re of eventsall this gives us the right to say that we are witnessing the beginning of the second Russian revolution. Let us hope that many of us will be partic.i.p.ants in it."
March 3: "The Rodziankos and Miliukovs have begun talking too soon about law and order; not to-morrow will tranquillity descend on billowing Russia. Stratum after stratum now, the country will ariseall the oppressed, dest.i.tute, robbed by czarism and the ruling cla.s.ses-throughout the whole measureless s.p.a.ce of the whole Russian prison of the people. The Petrograd events are only beginning. At the head of the popular ma.s.ses the Russian revo-lutionary proletariat will ful.l its historic task: it will drive out the monarchical and aris-tocratic reaction from all its refuges, and stretch out its hand to the proletariat of Germany and all Europe. For it is necessary to liquidate not only czarism, but also the war."
"Now the second wave of the revolution wilt roll over the heads of the Rodziankos and Miliukovs, busy with their attempts to restore order and come to terms with monarchy.
336.
From its own depths the revolution will produce its government, a revolutionary organ of the people marching to victory. Both the chief battles and the chief sacri.ces are in the future, and only after them will come complete and genuine victory."
MARCH 4:.
"The long restrained discontent of the ma.s.ses has broken to the surface so late, on the 32nd month of the war, not because there stood before the ma.s.ses a police bulwark, very much shaken during the war, but because all the liberal inst.i.tutions and organs including their social-patriotic hangers-on, have exercised an enormous political pressure upon the less conscious layers of the workers, suggesting to them the necessity of "patriotic" disci-pline and order."
"Now only (after the victory of the insurrection) came the turn of the Duma. The czar tried at the last moment to disperse it. And it would have submissively dispersed "following the precedent of former years," if it had been able to. But the capitals were already in the control of the revolutionary people, that same people who, against the will of the liberal bourgeoisie, come out into the street to .ght. The army was with the people. And if the bourgeoisie had not made an attempt to organise their power, a revolutionary government would have issued from the midst of the Insurrectionary worker ma.s.ses. That Duma of June 3 would never have ventured to s.n.a.t.c.h the power from the hands of czarism, but it could not help making use of the created interregnum: the monarchy had temporarily disappeared from the face of the earth and a revolutionary power was not yet created."
MARCH 6:.
"An open con.ict between the forces of revolution at whose head stands the city pro-letariat, and the anti-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie temporarily in power, is absolutely inevitable. You can, of course,and the liberal bourgeois and mountain socialist of the philis-tine type are heartily busy about itpile up many pitiful words on the subject of the immense advantages of national unity over cla.s.s split. But n.o.body has yet succeeded with such incantations in removing social contradictions and stopping the natural development of a revolutionary struggle."
"Already at this moment, immediately, the revolutionary proletariat ought to oppose its revolutionary inst.i.tutions, the soviets of workers", soldiers" and peasants" deputies, to the executive inst.i.tutions of the Provisional Government. In this struggle the proletariat, unit-ing around itself the rising popular ma.s.ses, ought to make its direct goal the conquest of power. Only a revolutionary workers" government will have the will and ability, even dur-ing the preparation for a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, to carry out a radical democratic clean-up throughout the country, reconstruct the army from top to bottom, convert it into a revo-lutionary militia and demonstrate in action to the lower ranks of the peas. ants that their salvation lies only in supporting a revolutionary workers" r"egime."
MARCH "7:.
"While the clique of Nicholas II held the power, dynastic and reactionary aristocratic interests had the last word in foreign policy. For just this reason in Berlin and Vienna they were continually hoping for a separate peace with Russia. But now the interests of naked imperialism are inscribed on the governmental banners. "The czar"s government is no more," the Guchkovs and Miliukovs are telling the people, "Now you must pour out your blood for the all-national interests." But by national interests the Russian imperialists mean the getting back of Poland, the con quest of Galicia, Constantinople, Armenia, Persia. In other words, Russia now takes her place in the joint ranks of imperialism with other European states, and .rst of all with her allies, England and France."
"The proletariat of Russia cannot possibly reconcile the transition from a dynastic aris-tocratic imperialism to a purely bourgeois regime with this butchery. The international struggle against the world butchery and imperialism is now our task more than ever be-fore."
"The imperialist boast of Miliukovto crush Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkeynow plays perfectly into the hands of the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs, Miliukov will now play the role of a garden scarecrow in their hands. Before the new imperialistic-liberal government undertakes reforms in the army, it will help the Hohenzollern raise the patriotic spirit and restore the "national unity" of the German people, now cracking in all its seams. If the German proletariat should get the right to think that the whole Russian people, and among them the chief force of the revolutionthe Russian proletariatstands behind its new bourgeois government, that would be a terrible blow to our colleagues, the revolutionary socialists of Germany."
"It is the straight duty of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia to show that behind the evil imperialist will of the liberal bourgeoisie there is no strength, for it has no support in the worker ma.s.ses. The Russian revolution ought to reveal its authentic face before the whole worldthat is, its irreconcilable hostility not only to the dynastic aristocratic reaction, but to liberal imperialism."
MARCH 8:.
"Under the banner Salvation of the Country" the liberal bourgeois is trying to keep the revolutionary leadership of the people in his hands, and with this aim is dragging after him on a tow-line not only the Trudovik Kerensky, but evidently also Cheidze, representative of the opportunist elements of the social democracy.
"The agrarian question will drive a deep wedge into the present aristocratic bourgeois social-patriotic bloc. Kerensky will have to choose between the "liberal," the 3rd of June [Members of the Duma which issued from the state overturn of June 3, 1907.] men, who want to steal the whole revolution for capitalist goals, and the revolutionary proletariat, which will unfold to its full width the programme of agrarian revolutionthat is, con.scation in behalf of the people of the czarist, landlord, appanage, monastery and church lands. What personal choice Kerensky makes will make no difference. . . . It is another matter with the peasant ma.s.ses, the rural lower ranks. To bring them over to the side of the proletariat is the most urgent unpostponable task."
It would be a crime to try to accomplish this task (the bringing over the peasantry) by adapting our policy to the national-patriotic limitedness of the village: the Russian worker would commit suicide if he paid for his union with the peasant at the price of a breaking of his ties with the European proletariat. But there is no political need for this; we have a more powerful weapon In our hands: whereas the present Provisional Government and the ministry of Lvov, Guchkov, Miliukov, Kerensky,[By Provisional Government the American press meant Provisional Committee of the Duma.] are compelledin the name of a preservation of their unityto side-step the agrarian question, we can and must present it in its full stature before the peasant ma.s.ses of Russia.
""Since agrarian reform is impossible, we are for the imperialist war," said the Russian bourgeoisie after the experience of1905-07.
"Torn your back to the imperialist war, opposing to it the agrarian revolution!" we will say to the peasant ma.s.ses, referring to the experience of 191417.
"This same question, the land question, will play an immense role in uniting the pro-letarian cadres of the army with its peasant depths. The land of the landlords, and not Constantinople." the soldier proletarian will say to the soldier peasant, explaining to him whom and what the imperialist war is serving. And upon the success of our agitation and struggle against the warabove all among the workers, and in the second place among the peasant and soldier ma.s.seswill depend the answer to the question how soon the liberal imperialist government can be replaced by a revolutionary workers" government resting directly upon the proletariat, and the rural lower ranks adhering to it."
"The Rodziankos, Guchkovs, Miliukovs will bend all their efforts to get a Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly in their image. The strongest trump in their hand will be the slogan of the com-mon national war against an external enemy. They will now talk, of course, about the necessity of defending the "conquests of the revolution" against destruction by the Hohen-zollerns. And the social patriots will join the song."
"If we had something to defend" we will say. The .rst thing is to insure the revolu-tion against the domestic enemy. We must, without waiting for the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, sweep out the monarchic and feudal rubbish to the last corner. We must teach the Russian peasant not to trust the promises of Rodzianko and the patriotic lies of Miliukov. We must unite the peasant mil lions against the liberal imperialists under the banner of agrarian rev-olution and the republic. Only a revolutionary government relying on the proletariat, which will remove the Guchkovs and Miliukovs from power, can carry out this work to the full. This workers" government will bring into play all the instruments of state power in order to raise to their feet, educate, and unite the most backward and dark depths of the toiling ma.s.ses of the city and village."
""And if the German proletariat does not rise? What shall we do then?""
"That is, you a.s.sume that the Russian revolution can go by without affecting Ger-manyeven in case our revolution puts a workers" government in power? But surely that is utterly improbable."
"Yes, but suppose it happens?"
"If the improbable should happen, if the conservative social-patriotic organisation should prevent the German working cla.s.s from rising against its ruling cla.s.ses in the coming epoch, then of course the Russian working cla.s.s would defend its revolution with arms in its hands. The revolutionary workers" government would wage war against the Hohenzollerns, sum-moning the brother proletariat of Germany to rise against the common enemy. In exactly the same way the German proletariat, if in the coming epoch it came to power, would not only have the "right," but would be obliged, to wage war against Guchkov and Miliukov in order to help the Russian worker settle accounts with his imperialist enemy. In both these situations the war conducted by a proletarian government would be only an armed revolu-tion. It would be a question not of the "defence of the government," but of the defence of the revolution, and its transplantation into other countries."
It is hardly necessary to demonstrate that in the above extended excerpts from popu-lar articles to be read by workers, the same view of the development of the revolution is expounded as that which found its expression in Lenin"s Theses of April 4.
In connection with the crisis which the Bolshevik Party went through in the .rst two months of the February revolution, it is not super.uous to adduce here a quotation from an article written by the author of this book in 1909 for the Polish journal of Rosa Luxemburg: "If the Mensheviks, starting from the abstraction "Our revolution is a bourgeois revo-lution," arrive at the idea of adapting the whole tactic of the proletariat to the conduct of the liberal bourgeoisie, even to the point of a conquest by it of the state power, then the Bolsheviks, starting from an equally bare abstraction "a democratic and not a socialist dic-tatorship," will arrive at the idea of a bourgeois democratic self-limitation of the proletariat in whose hands the governmental power will be found. To be sure, the difference between them on this question is very considerable: while the anti-revolutionary sides of Menshevism are expressed in their full strength even now, the anti-revolutionary traits of Bolshevism threaten a great danger only in the case of a revolutionary victory."
After 1923 those words were widely used by the epigones in their struggle against "Trot-skyism." As a matter of fact they giveeight years before the eventa perfectly accurate char-acterisation of the conduct of the present epigones in the case of a revolutionary victory.
The party issued from the April crisis with honour, having settled accounts with the "anti-revolutionary traits" of its right .ank. For this reason the author in 1922 supplemented the pa.s.sage quoted above with the following remark: "This, as is well known, did not happen, because under the leadership of Lenin. Bol-shevism carried out (not without inner struggle) its intellectual re-armament upon this all-important question in the spring of 1917that is, before the conquest of power."
Lenin, in April 1917, in his struggle with the opportunist tendencies of the dominant layer of the Bolsheviks, wrote: "The Bolshevik slogans and ideas in general are completely con.rmed, but concretely things have shaped themselves other wise than anybody (no matter who) could have ex-pectedmore originally, uniquely, variously. To ignore, to forget this fact would mean to be like those "old Bolsheviks" who have more than once already played a pitiful role in the history of our party, meaninglessly repeating a formula learned by rote instead of studying the unique living reality. Whoever talks now only of a revolutionary-democratic dictator-ship of the proletariat and peasantry" is lagging behind Life. He has by that very fact gone over actually to the bourgeoisie against the proletarian cla.s.s struggle. Him we must put away in the archives of "Bolshevik" pre-revolutionary curiosities (you might call them the archives of the "old Bolsheviks")."
APPENDIX 3.
(To the Chapter The Soviet Congress and the June Demonstration ): To Professor A. Kaun, The University of California.
You ask me how correctly Sukhanov describes my meeting in May 1917 with the edi-tors of Novy Zhizn, a newspaper nominally directed by Maxim Gorky. In order that what follows may be under stood, I must say a few words as to the general character of the seven-volume Notes of the Revolution by Sukhanov. With all the faults of that work (wordiness, impressionism, political short-sightedness) which make the reading of it at times unbear-able, it is impossible not to recognise the conscientiousness of the author which renders his Notes a valuable source for the historian. Jurists know, however, that the conscientiousness of a witness by no means guarantees the reliability of his testimony. It is necessary to take into consideration his level of development, his vision, hearing, memory, his mood at the moment of the event, etc. Sukhanov is an impressionist of the intellectual type, and like the majority of such people lacks the ability to understand the political psychology of men of a different mould. Notwithstanding the fact that he himself in 1917 stood in the left wing of the Compromise camp, and so in close neighbourhood to the Bolsheviks, he was and remained, with his Hamlet temperament, the very opposite of a Bolshevik. There lives al-ways in him a feeling of hostile revolution from integrated people, people who know .rmly what they want and where they are going. All of this brings it about that Sukhanov in his Notes quite conscientiously piles up mistake after mistake so soon as he tries to understand the springs of action of the Bolsheviks, or reveal their motivation behind the scenes. At times it seems as though he consciously confuses simple and clear questions. In reality he is organically incapable, at least in politics, of .nding the shortest distance between two points.
Sukhanov wastes no little strength in the effort to contrast my line with Lenin"s. Being very sensitive to the moods of the couloir and the gossip of intellectual circlesin which, by the way, lies one of the merits of the Notes, which contain much material for characterising the psychology of the liberal, radical, and socialistic upper circlesSukhanov naturally nour-ished a hope that disagreements would arise between Lenin and Trotskythe more so that 342.
this must lighten somewhat the unenviable fate of Novy Zhizn, standing between the Social Patriots and the Bolsheviks. In his Notes Sukhanov is still living in the atmosphere of those unrealised hopes under the form of political recollections and ex post facto guesses.
Peculiarities of personality, temperament, style, he tries to interpret as a political line.
In connection with the abandoned Bolshevik manifestation of June 10, and more espe-cially the armed demonstration of the July days, Sukhanov tries throughout many pages to demonstrate that Lenin was directly striving in those days for a seizure of power by way of conspiracy and insurrection, while Trotsky by contrast was striving for the real power of the soviets in the person of the, then dominant parties, that is, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. There is not a shadow of foundation for all this.
At the .rst congress of the soviets on June 4, Tseretelli during his speech remarked in pa.s.sing: "In Russia at the present moment there is not one political party which would say, Give us the power in our hands." At that moment a voice was heard from the benches: "There is!" Lenin did not like to interrupt orators, and did not like to be interrupted. Only serious considerations could have impelled him to abandon on that occasion his cus-tomary restraint. According to Tseretelli"s logic, when the nation gets into a tangle of enormous dif.culty, the .rst thing to do is to try to slip the power to others. In this lay the cleverness of the Russian Compromisers who after the February uprising slipped the power to the liberals. To a not very attractive fear of responsibility, Tseretelli was giving the colour of political disinterestedness and extraordinary farsightedness. To a revolutionist who believes in the mission of his party such cowardly sw.a.n.king is absolutely intolerable. A revolutionary party which is capable in dif.cult conditions of turning away from the power, deserves only contempt.
In a speech at that same session Lenin explained his reply from the benches: "The Citizen Minister of Posts and Telegraph (Tseretelli) said that there is no political party in Russia which would express its readiness to take upon itself the whole power. I answer there is. No party can decline to do that, and our party does not decline. It is ready at any minute to take the whole power. (Applause and laughter,) You may laugh all you want to, but if the Citizen Minister puts this question to us he will get the proper answer." It would seem as though Lenin"s thought is transparent through and through.
At the same congress of the soviets, speaking after the Minister of Agriculture, Peshekhonov, I expressed myself as follows: "I do not belong to the same party with him (Peshekhonov) but if they told me that a ministry was to be formed out of twelve Peshekhonovs, I should say that this was an immense step forward."
I do not think that at that time, amid those events, my words about a ministry of Peshekhonovs could be understood as an anti thesis to Lenin"s readiness to take power: Sukhanov appears as an ex post facto theoretician of this pretended ant.i.thesis. Interpreting the Bolshevik preparation of the demonstration of June 10 in favour of the power of the soviets as a preparation for the seizure of power, Sukhanov writes: "Lenin two or three days before the manifestation" publicly stated that he was ready to take the power in his hands. But Trotsky said at the same time that he would like to see twelve Peshekhonovs is power. That is the difference. But nevertheless I a.s.sume that Trotsky was drawn into the affair of June 10. . . . Lenin was not then inclined to enter a decisive engagement without the dubious "Mezhdurayonets." For Trotsky was to him a kind of monumental partner in a monumental game, and in his own party after Lenin himself there was nothingfor a long, long, long distance."
This whole pa.s.sage is full of contradictions. According to Sukhanov, Lenin would seem to have been really intending what Tseretelli accused him of: "An immediate seizure of power by the proletarian minority." A proof of such Blanquism Sukhanov sees, if you can believe it. in those words of Lenin about the readiness of the Bolsheviks to take the power in spite of all dif.culties. But if Lenin had really intended on June 10 to seize the power by way of a conspiracy, he would hardly have forewarned his enemies of this at a plenary session of the soviets on June 4. It should hardly be necessary to recall that from the .rst day of his arrival in Petrograd, Lenin had been telling the party that the Bolsheviks could a.s.sume the task of overthrowing the Provisional Government only after winning a majority in the soviets. In the April days Lenin decisively opposed those Bolsheviks who advanced the slogan "Down with the Provisional Government" as the task of the day. Lenin"s reply of June 4 had only one meaning: We, the Bolsheviks, are ready to take the power even to-day if the workers and soldiers give us their con.dence: in this we are distinguished from the Compromisers who, possessing the con.dence of the workers and soldiers, dare not take the power.
Sukhanov contrasts Trotsky with Lenin as a realist with a Blanquist. "Without accepting Lenin, one could fully agree to Trotsky"s presentation of the question." At the same time Sukhanov announces that: "Trotsky was drawn into the affair of June l0"that is, to the conspiracy for the seizure of power. Having discovered two lines where there were not two, .Sukhanov cannot deny himself the plea sure of afterward uniting these two lines in one in order to be able to convict me of adventurism. This is a unique and somewhat platonic revenge for the disappointed hope of the left intelligentsia for a split between Lenin and Trotsky.
On the placards which had been prepared by the Bolsheviks for the cancelled demonstra-tion of June 10, and which were afterward carried by the demonstrators of June 18, a central place was occupied by the slogan "Down with the Ten Minister-Capitalists" Sukhanov, in the quality of sthete, admires the simple expressiveness of this slogan, but in his quality of statesman he reveals an incomprehension of its meaning. In the government besides the "ten Minister-Capitalists" there were also six Minister-Compromisers. The Bolshevik placards had nothing to say of them. On the contrary, according to the sense of the slogan, the Minister-Capitalists were to be replaced by Minister-Socialists, representatives of the Soviet majority. It was exactly this sense of the Bolshevik placards that I expressed before the Soviet Congress: Break your bloc with the liberals, remove the bourgeois ministers and replace them with your Peshekhonovs. In proposing to the Soviet majority to take the power, the Bolsheviks did not, of course, bind themselves in the least as to their att.i.tude to these Peshekhonovs; on the contrary, they made no secret of the fact that within the frame of the Soviet democracy they would wage an implacable strugglefor a majority in the soviets and for the power.
But all this is after all mere A-B-C. Only the above-mentioned traits of Sukhanovnot so much as a person but as a typecan explain how this partic.i.p.ant and observer of events could get so hopelessly mixed up upon so serious and at the same time so simple a question.
In the light of this a.n.a.lysis of a political episode it is easy to understand the false light which Sukhanov throws upon my meeting which interests you with the editors of Navy Zhizn. The moral of my encounter with the circle of Maxim Gorky is expressed by Stakhanov in the concluding phrase which he puts in my mouth: "Now I see that nothing remains for me but to found a paper together with Lenin." The inference is that only my inability to reach an agreement with Gorky and Sukhanovthat is, with people whom I never regarded as either men of politics or revolutionists compelled me to .nd my way to Lenin. It is only necessary to formulate this idea in order to demonstrate its absurdity.
Incidentally, how characteristic of Sukhanov is the phrase, "found a paper together with Lenin"as though the tasks of a revolutionary policy reduced themselves to the founding of a newspaper. For anybody with a minimum of creative imagination, it ought to be clear that I could not so think or so de.ne my tasks.
In order to explain my visit to the newspaper circle of Gorky, it is necessary to remember that I arrived in Petrograd at the beginning of May. something over two months after the revolution, a month after the arrival of Lenin. During this time many things had adjusted and de.ned themselves. I had to have a direct, and so to say empirical orientation, not only in the fundamental forces of the revolution, in the moods of the workers and soldiers, but also in all the groupings and political shades of "educated" society. The visit to the editors of Navy Zhizn was for me a small political reconnoitre executed with a view to .nding out the forces of attraction and repulsion possessed by this "left" group, the chances of splitting off certain elements, etc. A short conversation convinced me of the complete hopelessness of this circle of literary wiseacres, for whom revolution reduced itself to the problem of the leading editorial. And, besides that, since they were accusing the Bolsheviks of self-isolation, laying the blame for this upon Lenin and his April Theses, I undoubtedly must have told them that with all their speeches they had only once more demonstrated to me that Lenin was completely right in isolating the party from them, or rather isolating them from the party. This conclusion, which I had to emphasise with special energy for the sake of its effect upon Riazanov and Lunacharsky, who partic.i.p.ated in the conversation, and who were opposed to a union with Lenin, evidently supplied the occasion for Sukhanov"s version.
It goes without saying that you are completely right in a.s.suming that I would in no case have agreed in the autumn of 1917 to speak about a Gorky jubilee from the tribune of the Petrograd Soviet. Sukhanov did well that time at least in renouncing one of his fantastic ideas: to indict me on the eve of the October insurrection to take part in a celebration of Gorky, who stood on the other side of the barricades.