A Militant Agreement for the Uprising
Lenin,
A Militant Agreement for the Uprising
February
21, 1905
Collected
Works, Volume 8, pages 158-166.
Revolutsionnaya
Rossiya, No. 58, says:
“May the spirit of fighting unity
now at long last pervade the ranks of the revolutionary socialist groups, which
are torn by fratricidal animosity, and may it revive the consciousness of
socialist solidarity which has been so criminally sapped.... Let us spare the
revolutionary forces as much as we can and increase their effectiveness by
means of a concerted attack!”
We have often had occasion to protest against the tyranny of the phrase among the Socialists-Revolutionaries, and we must do so again. Why these frightful words, gentlemen, about “fratricidal animosity” and so forth? Are they worthy of a revolutionary? Now of all times, when the real fight is on, when blood is flowing—the blood of which Revolutsionnaya Rossiya speaks in such flamboyant terms, these grotesque exaggerations about “fratricidal animosity” ring falser than ever. Spare the forces, say you? But surely this is done by a united, welded organisation which is at one on questions of principle, and not by lumping together heterogeneous elements.
Strength is not spared but wasted by such barren attempts at lumping. To achieve a “fighting unity” in deed and not merely in word, we must know clearly, definitely, and from experience exactly wherein and to what extent we can be united. Without this, all talk of fighting unity will be mere words, words, words; this knowledge, incidentally, comes from the very controversy, struggle, and animosity of which you speak in such “frightful” terms. Would it really be better if we hushed up the differences that divide vast sections of Russian public opinion and Russian socialist thought? Was it only the “cult of discord” that provoked the bitter struggle between Narodism, that nebulous ideology of the democratic bourgeoisie woven of socialistic dreams, and Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat? Nonsense, gentlemen; you only make yourselves ridiculous by saying such things, by continuing to regard as an “insult” the Marxist view that Narodism and your “social-revolutionism” are essentially bourgeois-democratic. We shall inevitably argue, differ, and quarrel also in the future revolutionary committees in Russia, but surely we must learn from history. We must not have unexpected, unintelligible, and muddled disputes at a time when action is called for; we must be prepared to argue on fundamental issues, to know the points of departure of each trend, to anticipate possible unity or possible antagonism. The history of revolutionary epochs provides many, all too many, instances of tremendous harm caused by hasty and half-baked experiments in “fighting unity” that sought to lump together the most heterogeneous elements in the committees of the revolutionary people, but managed thereby to achieve mutual friction and bitter disappointment.We
want to profit by this lesson of history. Marxism, which to you seems a narrow
dogma, is to us the quintessence of this historical lesson and guidance. We see
in the independent, uncompromisingly Marxist party of the revolutionary
proletariat the sole pledge of socialism’s victory and the road to victory that
is most free from vacillations. We shall never, therefore, not even at the most
revolutionary moments, forego the complete independence of the
Social-Democratic Party or the complete intransigence of our ideology.
You
believe this rules out fighting unity? You are mistaken. You can see from the
resolution of our Second Congress that we do not renounce agreements for the
struggle and in the struggle. In Vperyod, No. 4, we stressed the fact that the
beginning of the revolution in Russia undoubtedly brings closer the moment when
such agreements can be practically implemented.[1] A joint struggle of the
revolutionary Social-Democrats and the revolutionary elements of the democratic
movement is inevitable and indispensable in the era of the fall of the
autocracy. We think that we should serve
the cause of future militant agreements better if, instead of indulging
in bitter recriminations, we sanely and coolly weighed the conditions
under which they would become possible and the likely limits of their
“jurisdiction”, if one may use the term. We began this work in Vperyod, No. 3,
in which we undertook a study of the progress of the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party from Narodism to Marxism.[2]
“The masses took to arms
themselves,” Revolutsionnaya Rossiya wrote in connection with the Ninth of
January. “Sooner or later, without doubt, the question of arming the
masses will be decided.” “That is when the fusion between terrorism and the
mass movement, to which we are striving by word and deed in accordance with the
entire spirit of our Party tactics, will be manifested and realised in the most
striking manner.”
(We would remark parenthetically that we would
gladly put a question mark after the word “deed”; but let us proceed with the
quotation.)
“Not so long ago, before our own
eyes, these two factors of the movement were separate, and this separateness
deprived them of their full force.”
What
is true is true! Exactly! Intelligentsia terrorism and the mass movement of
the working class were separate, and this separateness deprived them of
their full force. That is precisely what the revolutionary Social-Democrats
have been saying all along. For this very reason they have always been
opposed to terrorism and to all the vacillations towards terrorism which
members of the intellectualist wing of our Party have often displayed.[3] For
this reason precisely the old Iskra took a position against terrorism when it
wrote in issue No. 48:
“The
terrorist struggle of the old type was the riskiest form of revolutionary
struggle, and
those who engaged in it had the reputation of being resolute, self-sacrificing
people.... Now, however, when demonstrations develop into acts of open
resistance to the government, ... the old terrorism ceases to be an
exceptionally daring method of struggle.... Heroism has now come out into the
open; the true heroes of our time
are now the revolutionaries who lead the popular masses, which are
rising against their oppressors.... The terrorism of the great French
Revolution ... began on July 14, 1789, with the storming of the Bastille. Its
strength was the strength of the revolutionary movement of the people....
That terrorism was due, not to disappointment in the strength of the mass
movement, but, on the contrary, to ’unshakable faith in its strength....
The history of that terrorism is exceedingly instructive for the Russian
revolutionary.”[4]
Yes,
a thousand times yes! The history of that terrorism is instructive in the
extreme. Instructive, too, are the quoted passages from Iskra, which refer to
an epoch of eighteen months ago. These quotations show us, in their full
stature, the ideas which even the Socialists-Revolutionaries, under the
influence of the revolutionary lessons, would like to arrive at. They remind us
of the importance of faith in the mass movement; they remind us of
revolutionary tenacity, which comes only from high principles and which alone
can safeguard us against the “disappointments” induced by a prolonged apparent
standstill of the movement. Now, after the Ninth of January, there can be no
question, on the face of it, of any “disappointments” in the mass movement. But
only on the face of it. We should distinguish between the momentary
“attraction” evoked by a striking display of mass heroism and the steadfast,
reasoned convictions that link inseparably the entire activity of the Party with
the movement of the masses, owing to the paramount importance which is
attached to the principle of the class struggle. We should bear in mind that
the revolutionary movement, however high its level since the Ninth of January,
still has many stages to pass through before our socialist and democratic
parties will be reconstructed on a new basis in a free Russia. And through all
these stages, through all the vicissitudes of the struggle, we must maintain
the ties between Social-Democracy and the class struggle of the
proletariat unbroken, and we must see
to it that they are continuously strengthened and made more secure.
It
seems to us, therefore, a gross exaggeration for Revolutsionnaya Rossiya
to assert that “the pioneers of the armed struggle were swallowed up in the
ranks of the roused masses....” This is the desirable future rather than
the reality of the moment. The assassination of Sergei in Moscow on February 17
(4),[5] which has been reported by telegraph this very day, is obviously an
act of terrorism of the old type. The pioneers of the armed struggle have
not yet been swallowed up in the ranks of the roused masses. Pioneers with
bombs evidently lay in wait for Sergei in Moscow while the masses (in St.
Petersburg), without pioneers, without arms, without revolutionary officers,
and without a revolutionary staff “flung themselves in implacable fury upon
bristling bayonets”, as this same Revolutsionnaya Rossiya expresses it. The
separateness of which we spoke above still exists, and the individual
intellectualist terror shows all the more strikingly its inadequacy in face
of the growing realisation that “the masses have risen to the stature of
individual heroes, that mass heroism has been awakened in them”
(Revolutsionnaya Rossiya, No. 58). The pioneers should submerge among the
masses in actual fact, that is, exert their selfless energies in real
inseparable connection with the insurgent masses, and proceed with them in the
literal, not figurative, symbolical, sense of the word. That this is essential
can hardly be open to doubt now. That it is possible has been proved by the
Ninth of January and by the deep unrest which is still smouldering among the
working-class masses. The fact that this is a new, higher, and more difficult
task in comparison with the preceding ones cannot and should not stop us from
meeting it at once in a practical way.
Fighting
unity between
the Social-Democratic Party and the revolutionary-democratic party—the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party, might be one way of facilitating the solution
of this problem. Such unity will be all the more practicable, the sooner
the pioneers of the armed struggle are “swallowed up” in the ranks of the
insurgent masses, the more firmly the Socialists-Revolutionaries follow the
path which they themselves have charted in the words, “May these beginnings of fusion between
revolutionary terrorism and the mass movement grow and strengthen, may the
masses act as quickly as possible, armed cap-à-pie with terrorist methods of
struggle!” With a view to bringing about speedily such a fighting unity, we
take pleasure in publishing the following letter which we have received from
Georgi Gapon:
“An Open Letter to the Socialist
Parties of Russia.
“The bloody January days in St.
Petersburg and the rest of Russia have brought the oppressed working class face
to face with the autocratic regime, headed by the blood-thirsty tsar. The great
Russian revolution has begun. All to whom the people’s freedom is really dear
must either win or die. Realising the importance of the present historic
moment, considering the present state of affairs, and being above all a
revolutionary and a man of action, I call upon all the socialist parties of
Russia to enter immediately into an agreement among themselves and to proceed
to the armed uprising against tsarism. All the forces of every party should be
mobilised. All should have a single technical plan of action. Bombs and
dynamite, individual and mass terror—everything that can help the popular
uprising. The immediate aim is the over throw of the autocracy, a provisional
revolutionary government which will at once amnesty all fighters for political
and religious liberties, at once arm the people, and at once convoke a
Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, equal, and direct suffrage by
secret ballot. To the task, comrades! Onward to the fight! Let us repeat the
slogan of the St. Petersburg workers on the Ninth of January—Freedom or Death!
Delay and disorder now are a crime against the people, whose interests you are
defending. Having given all of myself to the service of the people, from whom I
myself am sprung (the son of a peasant), and having thrown in my lot irrevocably
with the struggle against the oppressors and exploiters of the working class, I
shall naturally be heart and soul with those who will undertake the real
business of actually liberating the proletariat and all the toiling masses from
the capitalist yoke and political slavery.
“Georgi Gapon.”
On
our part, we consider it necessary to state our view of this letter as
clearly and as definitely as possible. We consider that the “agreement”
it proposes is possible, useful, and essential. We welcome the fact that
Gapon speaks explicitly of an “agreement”, since only through the preservation of
complete independence by each separate party on points of principle and
organisation can the efforts at a fighting unity of these parties rest on hope.
We must be very careful, in making these endeavours, not to spoil things by
vainly trying to lump together heterogeneous elements. We shall inevitably have to march separately,
but we can strike together more than once and particularly now. It would be
desirable, from our point of view, to have this agreement embrace the
revolutionary as well as the socialist parties, for there is nothing
socialistic in the immediate aim of the struggle, and we must not confound
or allow anyone ever to confound the immediate democratic aims with our
ultimate aims of socialist revolution. It would be desirable, and from our
point of view essential, for the agreement that, instead of a general call for
“individual and mass terror”, it should be stated openly and definitely that
this joint action pursues the aim of a direct and actual fusion between
terrorism and the uprising of the masses. True, by adding the words “everything
that can help the popular uprising”, Gapon clearly indicates his desire to
make even individual terror subservient to this aim; but this desire, which
suggests the idea that we noted in Revolutsionnaya Rossiya, No. 58, should
be expressed more definitely and embodied in absolutely unequivocal
practical decisions. We should like, finally, to point out, regardless of
the realisability of the proposed agreement, that Gapon’s extra-party stand
seems to us to be another negative factor. Obviously, with so rapid a
conversion from faith in the tsar and petitioning of the tsar to revolutionary
aims, Gapon was not able to evolve for himself immediately a clear
revolutionary outlook. This is inevitable, and the faster and broader the
revolution develops, the more often will this kind of thing occur.
Nevertheless, complete clarity and definiteness in the relations between
parties, trends, and shades are absolutely necessary if a temporary agreement
among them is to be in any way successful. Clarity and definiteness will be
needed at every practical step; they will be the pre-condition for definiteness
and the absence of vacillation in the real, practical work. The beginning of
the revolution in Russia will probably lead to the emergence upon the political
arena of many people and perhaps trends representing the view that the slogan
“revolution” is, for “men of action”, a quite adequate definition of their aims
and their methods of operation. Nothing could be more fallacious than this
opinion. The extra-party position, which seems higher, or more convenient, or more “diplomatic”, is in actual fact more
vague, more obscure, and inevitably fraught with inconsistencies and
vacillations in practical activity. In the interests of the revolution our
ideal should by no means be that all parties, all trends, and shades of opinion
fuse in a revolutionary chaos. On the contrary, the growth and spread of the
revolutionary movement, its constantly deeper penetration among the various
classes and strata of the people, will inevitably give rise (all to the
good) to constantly newer trends and shades. Only full clarity and definiteness
in their mutual relations and in their attitude towards the position of the
revolutionary proletariat can guarantee maximum success for the revolutionary
movement. Only full clarity in mutual relations can guarantee the success of an
agreement to achieve a common immediate aim.
This
immediate aim is outlined quite correctly, in our opinion, in Gapon’s letter,
namely: (1) the overthrow of the autocracy; (2) a provisional
revolutionary government; (3) the immediate amnesty to all fighters for
political and religious liberties, including, of course, the right to strike,
etc.; (4) the immediate arming of the people; and (5) the immediate convocation
of an All-Russian Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, equal, and
direct suffrage by secret ballot. The immediate translation into life by the
revolutionary government of complete equality for all citizens and complete
political freedom during elections is, of course, taken for granted by Gapon;
but this might have been stated explicitly. It would be advisable also to
include in the general policy of the provisional government the establishment
everywhere of revolutionary peasant committees for the purpose of supporting
the democratic revolution and putting into effect its various measures. The
success of the revolution depends largely on the revolutionary activity of the
peasantry itself, and the various socialist and revolutionary-democratic
parties would probably agree on a slogan such as we have suggested.
It
is to be hoped that Gapon, whose evolution from views shared by a politically
unconscious people to revolutionary views proceeds from such profound personal
experiences, will achieve the clear revolutionary outlook that is essential for
a man of politics. It is to be hoped that
his appeal for a militant agreement for the uprising will meet with
success, and that the revolutionary proletariat, side by side with the
revolutionary democrats, will strike at the autocracy and overthrow it all the
more quickly and surely, and with the least sacrifices.
Notes
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