Chapter II: Preface (2)

"_There are no revolutionary people in Russia as yet._" "_The Russian workingman is backward in culture, in self-respect, and (we refer primarily to the workingmen of Petersburg and Moscow) he is not yet prepared for organized social and political struggle._"

Thus Mr. Struve wrote in his _Osvoboshdenie_. He wrote it on January 7th, 1905. Two days later the proletariat of Petersburg arose.

"_There are no revolutionary people in Russia as yet._" These words ought to have been engraved on the forehead of Mr. Struve were it not that Mr. Struve's forehead already resembles a tombstone under which so many plans, slogans, and ideas have been buried,--Socialist, liberal, "patriotic," revolutionary, monarchic, democratic and other ideas, all of them calculated not to run too far ahead and all of them hopelessly dragging behind.

"_There are no revolutionary people in Russia as yet_," so it was declared through the mouth of _Osvoboshdenie_ by Russian liberalism which in the course of three months had succeeded in convincing itself that liberalism was the main figure on the political stage and that its program and tactics would determine the future of Russia. Before this declaration had reached its readers, the wires carried into the remotest corners of the world the great message of the beginning of a National Revolution in Russia.

Yes, the Revolution has begun. We had hoped for it, we had had no doubt about it. For long years, however, it had been to us a mere deduction from our "doctrine," which all nonentities of all political denominations had mocked at. They never believed in the revolutionary role of the proletariat, yet they believed in the power of Zemstvo petitions, in Witte, in "blocs" combining naughts with naughts, in Svyatopolk-Mirski, in a stick of dynamite.... There was no political superstition they did not believe in. Only the belief in the proletariat to them was a superstition.

History, however, does not question political oracles, and the revolutionary people do not need a passport from political eunuchs.

The Revolution has come. One move of hers has lifted the people over scores of steps, up which in times of peace we would have had to drag ourselves with hardships and fatigue. The Revolution has come and destroyed the plans of so many politicians who had dared to make their little political calculations with no regard for the master, the revolutionary people. The Revolution has come and destroyed scores of superstitions, and has manifested the power of the program which is founded on the revolutionary logic of the development of the masses.

The Revolution has come, and the period of our political infancy has passed. Down to the archives went our traditional liberalism whose only resource was the belief in a lucky change of administrative figures. Its period of bloom was the stupid reign of Svyatopolk-Mirski. Its ripest fruit was the Ukase of December 12th. But now, January Ninth has come and effaced the "Spring," and has put military dictatorship in its place, and has promoted to the rank of Governor-General of Petersburg the same Trepov, who just before had been pulled down from the post of Moscow Chief of Police by the same liberal opposition.

That liberalism which did not care to know about the revolution, which hatched plots behind the scenes, which ignored the masses, which counted only on its diplomatic genius, has been swept away. _We are done with it for the entire period of the revolution._

The liberals of the left wing will now follow the people. They will soon attempt to take the people into their own hands. The people are a power. One must _master_ them. But they are, too, a _revolutionary_ power. One, therefore, must _tame_ them. This is, evidently, the future tactics of the _Osvoboshdenie_ group. Our fight for a revolution, our preparatory work for the revolution must also be our merciless fight against liberalism for influence over the masses, for a leading role in the revolution. In this fight we shall be supported by a great power, the very logic of the revolution!

The Revolution has come.

The _forms_ taken by the uprising of January 9th could not have been foreseen. A revolutionary priest, in perplexing manner placed by history at the head of the working masses for several days, lent the events the stamp of his personality, his conceptions, his rank. This form may mislead many an observer as to the real substance of the events. The actual meaning of the events, however, is just that which Social-Democracy foresaw. The central figure is the Proletariat. The workingmen start a strike, they unite, they formulate political demands, they walk out into the streets, they win the enthusiastic sympathy of the entire population, they engage in battles with the army.... The hero, Gapon, has not created the revolutionary energy of the Petersburg workingmen, he only unloosed it. He found thousands of thinking workingmen and tens of thousands of others in a state of political agitation. He formed a plan which united all those masses--for the period of one day. The masses went to speak to the Tzar. They were faced by Ulans, cossacks, guards. Gapon's plan had not prepared the workingmen for that. What was the result? They seized arms wherever they could, they built barricades.... They fought, though, apparently, they went to beg for mercy. This shows that they went _not to beg, but to demand_.

The proletariat of Petersburg manifested a degree of political alertness and revolutionary energy far exceeding the limits of the plan laid out by a casual leader. Gapon's plan contained many elements of revolutionary romanticism. On January 9th, the plan collapsed. Yet the revolutionary proletariat of Petersburg is no romanticism, it is a living reality. So is the proletariat of other cities. An enormous wave is rolling over Russia. It has not yet quieted down. One shock, and the proletarian crater will begin to erupt torrents of revolutionary lava.

The proletariat has arisen. It has chosen an incidental pretext and a casual leader--a self-sacrificing priest. That seemed enough to start with. It was not enough to _win_.

_Victory_ demands not a romantic method based on an illusory plan, but revolutionary tactics. _A simultaneous action of the proletariat of all Russia must be prepared._ This is the first condition. No local demonstration has a serious political significance any longer. After the Petersburg uprising, only an all-Russian uprising should take place. Scattered outbursts would only consume the precious revolutionary energy with no results. Wherever spontaneous outbursts occur, as a late echo of the Petersburg uprising, _they must be made use of to revolutionize and to solidify the masses, to popularize among them the idea of an all-Russian uprising_ as a task of the approaching months, perhaps only weeks.

This is not the place to discuss the technique of a popular uprising. The questions of revolutionary technique can be solved only in a practical way, under the live pressure of struggle and under constant communication with the active members of the Party. There is no doubt, however, that the technical problems of organizing a popular uprising assume at present tremendous importance. Those problems demand the collective attention of the Party.

[Trotzky then proceeds to discuss the question of armament,
arsenals, clashes with army units, barricades, etc. Then he
continues:]

As stated before, these questions ought to be solved by local organizations. Of course, this is only a minor task as compared with the political leadership of the masses. Yet, this task is most essential for the political leadership itself. The organization of the revolution becomes at present the axis of the political leadership of revolting masses.

What are the requirements for this leadership? A few very simple things: freedom from routine in matters of organization; freedom from miserable traditions of underground conspiracy; a broad view; courageous initiative; ability to gauge situations; courageous initiative once more.

The events of January 9th have given us a revolutionary beginning. We must never fall below this. We must make this our starting point in moving the revolution forward. We must imbue our work of propaganda and organization with the political ideas and revolutionary aspirations of the uprising of the Petersburg workers.

The Russian revolution has approached its climax--a national uprising. The organization of this uprising, which would determine the fate of the entire revolution, becomes the day's task for our Party.

No one can accomplish it, but we. Priest Gapon could appear only once. He cherished extraordinary illusions, that is why he could do what he has done. Yet he could remain at the head of the masses for a brief period only. The memory of George Gapon will always be dear to the revolutionary proletariat. Yet his memory will be that of a hero who opened the sluices of the revolutionary torrent. Should a new figure step to the front now, equal to Gapon in energy, revolutionary enthusiasm and power of political illusions, his arrival would be too late. What was great in George Gapon may now look ridiculous. There is no room for a second George Gapon, as the thing now needed is not an illusion, but clear revolutionary thinking, a decisive plan of action, a flexible revolutionary organization which would be able to give the masses a slogan, to lead them into the field of battle, to launch an attack all along the line and bring the revolution to a victorious conclusion.

Such an organization can be the work of Social-Democracy only. No other party is able to create it. No other party can give the masses a revolutionary slogan, as no one outside our Party has freed himself from all considerations not pertaining to the interests of the revolution. No other party, but Social-Democracy, is able to organize the action of the masses, as no one but our Party is closely connected with the masses.

Our Party has committed many errors, blunders, almost crimes. It wavered, evaded, hesitated, it showed inertia and lack of pluck. At times it hampered the revolutionary movement.

_However, there is no revolutionary party but the Social-Democratic Party!_

Our organizations are imperfect. Our connections with the masses are insufficient. Our technique is primitive.

_Yet, there is no party connected with the masses but the Social-Democratic Party!_

At the head of the Revolution is the Proletariat. At the head of the Proletariat is Social-Democracy!

Let us exert all our power, comrades! Let us put all our energy and all our passion into this. Let us not forget for a moment the great responsibility vested in our Party: a responsibility before the Russian Revolution and in the sight of International Socialism.

The proletariat of the entire world looks to us with expectation. Broad vistas are being opened for humanity by a victorious Russian revolution. Comrades, let us do our duty!

Let us close our ranks, comrades! Let us unite, and unite the masses! Let us prepare, and prepare the masses for the day of decisive actions! Let us overlook nothing. Let us leave no power unused for the Cause.

Brave, honest, harmoniously united, we shall march forward, linked by unbreakable bonds, brothers in the Revolution!

EXPLANATORY NOTES

_Osvoboshdenie_ (_Emancipation_) was the name of a liberal magazine
published in Stuttgart, Germany, and smuggled into Russia to be
distributed among the Zemstvo-liberals and other progressive
elements grouped about the Zemstvo-organization. The
_Osvoboshdenie_ advocated a constitutional monarchy; it was,
however, opposed to revolutionary methods.

_Peter Struve_, first a Socialist, then a Liberal, was the editor
of the _Osvoboshdenie_. Struve is an economist and one of the
leading liberal journalists in Russia.

_Zemstvo-petitions_, accepted in form of resolutions at the
meetings of the liberal Zemstvo bodies and forwarded to the central
government, were one of the means the liberals used in their
struggle for a Constitution. The petitions, worded in a very
moderate language, demanded the abolition of "lawlessness" on the
part of the administration and the introduction of a "legal order,"
i.e., a Constitution.

_Sergius Witte_, Minister of Finance in the closing years of the
19th Century and up to the revolution of 1905, was known as a
bureaucrat of a liberal brand.

_The Ukase of December 12th, 1905_, was an answer of the government
to the persistent political demands of the "Spring" time. The Ukase
promised a number of insignificant bureaucratic reforms, not even
mentioning a popular representation and threatening increased
punishments for "disturbances of peace and order."

_Trepov_ was one of the most hated bureaucrats, a devoted pupil of
Von Plehve's in the work of drowning revolutionary movements in
blood.

_George Gapon_ was the priest who organized the march of January
9th. Trotzky's admiration for the heroism of Gapon was originally
shared by many revolutionists. Later it became known that Gapon
played a dubious role as a friend of labor, and an agent of the
government.

_The_ "_Political illusions_" of George Gapon, referred to in this
essay, was his assumption that the Tzar was a loving father to his
people. Gapon hoped to reach the Emperor of all the Russias and to
make him "receive the workingmen's petition from hand to hand."

PROSPECTS OF A LABOR DICTATORSHIP

This is, perhaps, the most remarkable piece of political writing
the Revolution has produced. Written early in 1906, after the great
upheavals of the fall of 1905, at a time when the Russian
revolution was obviously going down hill, and autocracy, after a
moment of relaxation, was increasing its deadly grip over the
country, the essays under the name _Sum Total and Prospectives_
(which we have here changed into a more comprehensible name,
_Prospects of Labor Dictatorship_) aroused more amazement than
admiration. They seemed so entirely out of place. They ignored the
liberal parties as quite negligible quantities. They ignored the
creation of the Duma to which the Constitutional Democrats attached
so much importance as a place where democracy would fight the
battles of the people and win. They ignored the very fact that the
vanguard of the revolution, the industrial proletariat, was beaten,
disorganized, downhearted, tired out.

The essays met with opposition on the part of leading
Social-Democratic thinkers of both the Bolsheviki and Mensheviki
factions. The essays seemed to be more an expression of Trotzky's
revolutionary ardor, of his unshakable faith in the future of the
Russian revolution, than a reflection of political realities. It
was known that he wrote them within prison walls. Should not the
very fact of his imprisonment have convinced him that in drawing a
picture of labor dictatorship he was only dreaming?

History has shown that it was not a dream. Whatever our attitude
towards the course of events in the 1917 revolution may be, we must
admit that, in the main, this course has taken the direction
predicted in Trotzky's essays. There is a labor dictatorship now in
Russia. It is a _labor_ dictatorship, not a "dictatorship of the
proletariat and the peasants." The liberal and radical parties have
lost influence. The labor government has put collective ownership
and collective management of industries on the order of the day.
The labor government has not hesitated in declaring Russia to be
ready for a Socialist revolution. It was compelled to do so under
the pressure of revolutionary proletarian masses. The Russian army
has been dissolved in the armed people. The Russian revolution has
called the workingmen of the world to make a social revolution.

All this had been outlined by Trotzky twelve years ago. When one
reads this series of essays, one has the feeling that they were
written not in the course of the first Russian upheaval (the essays
appeared in 1906 as part of a book by Trotzky, entitled _Our
Revolution_, Petersburg, N. Glagoleff, publisher) but as if they
were discussing problems of the present situation. This, more than
anything else, shows the _continuity_ of the revolution. The great
overthrow of 1917 was completed by the same political and social
forces that had met and learned to know each other in the storms of
1905 and 1906. The ideology of the various groups and parties had
hardly changed. Even the leaders of the major parties were, in the
main, the same persons. Of course, the international situation was
different. But even the possibility of a European war and its
consequences had been foreseen by Trotzky in his essays.

Twelve years ago those essays seemed to picture an imaginary world.
To-day they seem to tell the history of the Russian revolution. We
may agree or disagree with Trotzky, the leader, nobody can deny the
power and clarity of his political vision.

* * * * *

In the _first_ chapter, entitled "Peculiarities of Our Historic
Development," the author gives a broad outline of the growth of
absolutism in Russia. Development of social forms in Russia, he
says, was slow and primitive. Our social life was constructed on an
archaic and meager economic foundation. Yet, Russia did not lead an
isolated life. Russia was under constant pressure of higher
politico-economical organisms,--the neighboring Western states. The
Russian state, in its struggle for existence, outgrew its economic
basis. Historic development in Russia, therefore, was taking place
under a terrific straining of national economic forces. The state
absorbed the major part of the national economic surplus and also
part of the product necessary for the maintenance of the people.
The state thus undermined its own foundation. On the other hand, to
secure the means indispensable for its growth, the state forced
economic development by bureaucratic measures. Ever since the end
of the seventeenth century, the state was most anxious to develop
industries in Russia. "New trades, machines, factories, production
on a large scale, capital, appear from a certain angle to be an
artificial graft on the original economic trunk of the people.
Similarly, Russian science may appear from the same angle to be an
artificial graft on the natural trunk of national ignorance." This,
however, is a wrong conception. The Russian state could not have
created something out of nothing. State action only accelerated the
processes of natural evolution of economic life. State measures
that were in contradiction to those processes were doomed to
failure. Still, the role of the state in economic life was
enormous. When social development reached the stage where the
bourgeoisie classes began to experience a desire for political
institutions of a Western type, Russian autocracy was fully
equipped with all the material power of a modern European state. It
had at its command a centralized bureaucratic machinery, incapable
of regulating modern relations, yet strong enough to do the work of
oppression. It was in a position to overcome distance by means of
the telegraph and railroads,--a thing unknown to the
pre-revolutionary autocracies in Europe. It had a colossal army,
incompetent in wars with foreign enemies, yet strong enough to
maintain the authority of the state in internal affairs.

Based on its military and fiscal apparatus, absorbing the major
part of the country's resources, the government increased its
annual budget to an enormous amount of two billions of rubles, it
made the stock-exchange of Europe its treasury and the Russian
tax-payer a slave to European high finance. Gradually, the Russian
state became an end in itself. It evolved into a power independent
of society. It left unsatisfied the most elementary wants of the
people. It was unable even to defend the safety of the country
against foreign foes. Yet, it seemed strong, powerful, invincible.
It inspired awe.

It became evident that the Russian state would never grant reforms
of its own free will. As years passed, the conflict between
absolutism and the requirements of economic and cultural progress
became ever more acute. There was only one way to solve the
problem: "to accumulate enough steam inside the iron kettle of
absolutism to burst the kettle." This was the way outlined by the
Marxists long ago. Marxism was the only doctrine that had correctly
predicted the course of development in Russia.

* * * * *

In the _second_ chapter, "City and Capital," Trotzky attempts a
theoretical explanation to the weakness of the middle-class in
Russia. Russia of the eighteenth, and even of the major part of the
nineteenth, century, he writes, was marked by an absence of cities
as industrial centers. Our big cities were administrative rather
than industrial centers. Our primitive industries were scattered in
the villages, auxiliary occupations of the peasant farmers. Even
the population of our so called "cities," in former generations
maintained itself largely by agriculture. Russian cities never
contained a prosperous, efficient and self-assured class of
artisans--that real foundation of the European middle class which
in the course of revolutions against absolutism identified itself
with the "people." When modern capitalism, aided by absolutism,
appeared on the scene of Russia and turned large villages into
modern industrial centers almost over night, it had no middle-class
to build on. In Russian cities, therefore, the influence of the
bourgeoisie is far less than in western Europe. Russian cities
practically contain great numbers of workingmen and small groups of
capitalists. Moreover, the specific political weight of the Russian
proletariat is larger than that of the capital employed in Russia,
because the latter is to a great extent _imported_ capital. Thus,
while a large proportion of the capital operating in Russia exerts
its political influence in the parliaments of Belgium or France,
the working class employed by the same capital exert their entire
influence in the political life of Russia. As a result of these
peculiar historic developments, the Russian proletariat, recruited
from the pauperized peasant and ruined rural artisans, has
accumulated in the new cities in very great numbers, "and nothing
stood between the workingmen and absolutism but a small class of
capitalists, separated from the 'people' (i.e., the middle-class in
the European sense of the word), half foreign in its derivation,
devoid of historic traditions, animated solely by a hunger for
profits."