Brief overview of “An Essay on the Development of Social Democracy in Russia”

Vladimir Makhnovets was one of the moderate figures of the RSDLP, and his work “An Essay on the Development of Social Democracy in Russia” can help us understand what needs to be done in conditions where we need to popularize social democratic ideology virtually from scratch. Of course, a significant part of what he wrote is applicable only to the conditions of that time. But for the most part, this experience is necessary for us today as well. Thus, from his work we learn that an important prologue to the Revolution of 1905 was the student and worker riots in March 1901. He describes the events preceding them as follows:

“The March events” did not arise unexpectedly. They were preceded during the winter by a series of social phenomena that were caused by completely accidental and trifling incidents. The editor of a newspaper that had been disseminating reactionary ideas for a whole quarter of a century was celebrating his anniversary; a publicist who had betrayed his liberal past was staging a play in his theater that incited national enmity; two “white-lined” students committed a dishonest act during their night spree and were expelled from the university for it.

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All this had happened before, but only now did it evoke a response. In Kharkiv, opposite Yuzefovich’s house, a demonstration hostile to him was organized, and he, together with his distinguished guests, had to cut short the celebration. In St. Petersburg, in Suvorin’s theater, the audience did not allow the anti-Semitic play “The Smugglers” to finish and resisted the police who tried to remove the rowdiest protesters. In Kyiv, students gathered a meeting to ascertain the reason for the expulsion of their comrades. Having ascertained it, they found it fully justified, but in the adopted resolution they expressed a sharply hostile attitude toward the political regime that deprives the student environment of the possibility to morally influence its members and, on the contrary, itself generates a negative personality type among students.

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For speaking at this meeting, the government punished several students. Their comrades organized a demonstration in their support, seeing them off at the railway station. For this, 183 students were drafted into the army as private soldiers… The government hoped, and the revolutionaries feared, that this punishment would suppress the spirit of protest, but on the contrary, it inflamed it. An all-Russian student movement began.

From this information, we draw the following conclusions. First, social democrats need to work with the student environment. This is news to no one; it is merely another confirmation of well-known truths. Second, many Russian democrats even today are convinced that a major incident is needed for mass unrest. But even after a not particularly shocking occasion, protests happen. That is, what is far more important is not the occasion itself, but the state of society. If society is ready to riot – an ordinary event can serve as the spark.

But one former student came to St. Petersburg and assassinated the Minister of Public Education. One could have expected that Karpovich’s shot would evoke others, but that it should negatively affect the mass movement, that society would be frightened by the sharp forms the struggle had taken. But these considerations also proved to be mistaken. Decisively everyone reacted to Karpovich’s act with sympathy, and the youth even enthusiastically, and the mass movement did not subside, but, on the contrary, reached its highest point during the “March Days”.

Here we are talking about a member of the RSDLP and PSR, Pyotr Karpovich, who assassinated the Minister of Education Nikolay Bogolepov. In the history of Russia, there were frequent cases when the terrorism of revolutionaries was followed by reaction. However, here, as we can see, we observe the opposite case. This shows us once again that deep analysis must be applied to violent methods of struggle, rather than issuing unequivocal verdicts. However, here Makhnovets’s introduction ends, and he moves on to the very beginning of the social democratic movement in the Russian Empire.

In 1885, a circle with revolutionary goals was founded in Vilna. Although it consisted of young people, it fully adopted the old Narodnaya Volya program. It came down to two main tasks of the struggle: on the one hand, to spread the ideas of socialism among the mass of the population through propaganda and by organizing artels; on the other hand, to wage a direct struggle against absolutism through terror.

If the direct activity of this circle was not successful, it nevertheless educated a whole group of young people who subsequently rendered huge services to the social democracy not only of the Western Krai, but of all Russia. The environment for its propaganda was the local intelligentsia, mainly students of secondary educational institutions, especially the teachers’ institute, and orem-bochers, yeshiva-bochers – young men preparing to become rabbis.

The organization of artels proceeded unsuccessfully. The largest undertaking in this respect was the organization of hosiery makers in the winter of 1885–1886. However, even this artel existed for only 3–4 months.

What can we extract from this account? First: at the initial stages, our circles and organizations may yield a minor effect. However, they educate cadres, which can be of colossal importance for the future. And again, the importance of working with students is noted here. The second conclusion: the social democratic movement of that period failed to create its own enterprises built on an egalitarian principle. Likely, compared to propaganda, this is not the area where effort should be applied.

For the “Emancipation of Labor Group”, the “germs of the future workers’ party” were “workers’ circles”. “These organizations, closely bound together into a single harmonious whole”, “at a convenient moment will not hesitate to transition” “to a decisive attack on the autocracy”, “not stopping even at terrorist acts” (draft program of 1887). From the point of view of the “Emancipation of Labor Group”, “Russian social democracy was born not in Russia itself, but among a small group of emigrants at the very height of reaction, not only governmental, but also social” (Axelrod, “On the Question of Tasks”, November 1897).

And from this account we see that not only did circles play an important role in the formation of social democracy, but so did emigrant groups. Therefore, the connection between emigrant groups of social democrats and their groups in Russia is very important.

At this time, not only was it impossible to think about leading the working class, but it was also necessary to establish connections at least with individual workers… The first task naturally seemed to be finding these points of contact, establishing purely personal connections between individual social democrats and individual workers.

Jewish workers then had a need to study the Russian language; revolutionaries began to offer them their services, taught them literacy and arithmetic. For reading practice, they gave them Zobov’s “Talks on Nature” and incidentally told them about botany and zoology in general; then, having grown closer, they read to their students the novels “Two Brothers”, “No Way Out”, “Chronicle of the Village of Smurino”, “One Man in the Field Is No Warrior”, “Emma”, “What Is to Be Done?”, and Shchedrin’s fairy tales. They also distributed these books for home reading. Finally, when the circle seemed sufficiently prepared, Dikshtein’s “Who Lives by What” appeared. Second in line was Marx’s “Wage Labor and Capital”. It was considered necessary to spend about twenty lessons on it, because endless commentary was required. In place of a concluding word, Lassalle’s “Workers’ Program” was given as a parting gift to the student, who could now become a teacher himself. In addition to Russian books, American publications in jargon began to appear occasionally.

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Personal influence at that time was recognized as the sole means of spreading the ideas of social democracy. To group a few promising individuals into circles and, through systematic studies, convey one’s views to them – such was the plan of activity of the first social democrats. Among the millions and millions of the country’s population, among the many hundreds of thousands of proletarians, the handful of first social democrats was lost like a grain of sand. What else could they make their symbol, if not a tiny spark that glows in the dark and from which a flame catches! Such was the psychology that the period of circle activity created in its best figures.

Here we are dealing with an extremely valuable observation. The first successes in the field of agitation arose when Russian social democrats took on the role of teachers. At that time, it was literacy and arithmetic. Today, social democrats can use similar options to spread their ideas, but now we should teach not such elementary things that are covered in school, but more complex ones: from design to plumbing repair. The student environment is fertile ground for spreading political ideas as well. That is not all: information activity and creating one’s own media are important, but often this is work with an already politicized audience, of which there are few in Russia. For the success of democracy in the country, it is necessary to expand the politicized audience, that is, to reach unpoliticized people (hence the emphasis on the importance of personal connections). That is why teaching is a method without which we will likely fail to politicize a sufficient number of new people.

Also pay attention to the fact that social democratic agitators did not start right away with political propaganda, but began with joint reading of fiction close to the values of the social democratic movement of that time. This indicates that agitation should be gradual. This will also help to know a person better before opening up to them as a political agitator, which reduces the risk of running into a police informant.

This was a preparatory process in the development of the social democratic labor movement in the Western Krai (1885–1892). The working class played a purely passive role during this time: on the one hand, the exceptional living conditions of the worker formed in him the characteristic psychology of a proletarian; on the other hand, intellectual ideologues of the proletariat, revolutionary social democrats, singled out individuals, preparing them to be future agitators. A group of intellectuals, having received their revolutionary baptism from Narodnaya Volya and subsequently adopted social democratic principles, tried to rouse the working class to political life through the propaganda of their ideas in workers’ circles. This means proved ineffective: broad strata of the working class remained inaccessible to propaganda…

The year ’92 can be considered the beginning of the mass labor movement in the Western Krai. The immediate occasion for its manifestation served, as always in such cases, a very minor event.

The Vilna city head, to spite the craft board, ordered a notice posted around the city stating that, under the law of Catherine II, the working day in craft establishments should not last longer than twelve hours. Craftsmen everywhere began talking about reducing the working day to legal limits, discussing how to take advantage of this forgotten law. Downtrodden by an incredibly long working day and hopeless plight — a plight that today has no equal even among Russian workers, which resembles pictures of Russian worker life only from the ’60s and ’70s in the vivid and shocking descriptions of Flerovsky — the unfortunate Jewish pariahs suddenly seemed to rouse themselves, suddenly felt that they all had a common interest, that they could improve their terrible fate by supporting one another in solidarity. The spontaneous movement, like a wind, swept in and stirred those strata of Jewish society that are called the “bottoms”, and which had seemed motionless and incapable of moving, just as incapable as they had seemed of absorbing and being guided by any conscious idea whatsoever. People to whom Jewish society could not and would not apply the term “respectable man” (a balabatischer Yid), suddenly began talking about their rights and even started seeking their protection: workers organized several small detachments, went around the city at 7 o’clock in the evening, demanded that shop owners cease work, and threatened a formal complaint. Meanwhile, revolutionary social democrats were outside this movement; they did not go beyond organizing propaganda circles. They offered no concrete means to improve the workers’ plight and were skeptical of any plans to improve it under the current regime.

If in the first phase of the movement, with respect to the great cultural mission that the Jewish social democrats wanted to fulfill for their people, they could say through the mouth of comrade P. that they were alien to Jewry, then at this moment they were alien to the working class as well, and therefore their passionate desire to lead the Jewish proletariat to its great tasks could not help but remain in vain.

We see again that the occasion does not play a decisive role: people were already internally ready for action, and a small occasion was enough for them. Social democrats, however, turned out to be unprepared for this and failed to lead this movement. This is an error: one needs to be prepared for such moments and actively participate in the popular struggle, preferably in person.

Propagandized workers had the idea to organize mutual aid and strike struggle funds. The propagandists, disposed against any associations, nevertheless did not reject this plan, hoping that even if the funds did not achieve their goal — mutual aid and struggle — then, at least, they would create an environment from which it would be convenient to recruit new members into propaganda circles… when for the purposes of revolutionary propaganda of socialism it became necessary to group workers together, intelligent workers and the revolutionary intelligentsia came by different paths to the thought of the necessity to support workers’ funds.

In ’89 and ’90 these funds grew rapidly, the meetings of their members became ever more lively. The very tasks of the funds began to expand, they began to assume a militant character. Better than others were the funds of jewelers and shoe-upper makers, who managed to unite in Vilna almost all workers of their trade; supporting comrades who suffered for the common cause and threatening owners with a strike, they forced them into concessions.

Mutual aid funds are one of the important and effective methods of struggle of the working class. The idea of organizing such funds should always be ready with Social-Democrats.

A comrade of mine met in Zhytomyr an old secret organization of workers who had managed to achieve a significant improvement in their plight through a long, persistent struggle, the history of which is sacredly preserved in traditions; when socialist propagandists appeared before them, they were met very hostily…

And here a word was spoken that subsequently flew around all of Russia: “we were wrong”.

“Russian Social Democracy has taken a false path”, declared our Jewish comrades in the pamphlet “On Agitation”. It shut itself up in circles. It must listen to the beating pulse of the crowd, catch it, stand one step ahead of the crowd, and lead it…

Intellectual Russian language became unsuitable — the masses needed jargon. Scientific books and thick novels are inaccessible to the masses; they need a short pamphlet… revolutionary social democrats came to the idea that their goal — involving broad strata of the proletariat in the class struggle — could be achieved if they assumed leadership of the everyday, purely economic struggle of the workers. A complex network of primitive fighting organizations was created in the form of workers’ strike funds, guided by an organization of revolutionaries secret to them.

As we can see, by no means everything in agitation went smoothly: in some places, workers met social democrats hostily. Also, social democrats now had to participate in the economic struggle and be able to speak to the masses in a language understandable to them, rather than to the revolutionaries themselves. Other difficulties were observed as well. Above all, there was an embodiment of the rule “A fool is someone who doesn’t know what you yourself learned five minutes ago”:

The circle workers turned out to be less democratic than the revolutionaries from the intelligentsia; they felt superior to the mass and were perturbed by the appearance of an uncultured worker at meetings; therefore, entire trades withdrew from the movement, such as, for example, typesetters, who had previously been in front.

This is a big problem. How can we integrate people infected with imperial propaganda into the movement if their ignorance seems like stupidity or even a criminal provocation to those who have already freed themselves from this propaganda? At the same time, of course, such new people should not determine the direction of the organization, but should learn from more enlightened comrades. But how to achieve this remains an open question.

May 1st 1895 must be recognized as the “turning point” toward the third stage of the Jewish labor movement.

All requirements put forward by the social democrats on this day were purely economic; on the red banner only was written: “we fight for a 10-hour workday, for higher wages, for better treatment!” Of the four speeches, only one was of a “political” nature. But it was precisely this speech that was met unexpectedly enthusiastically. On the very next day, a “speech to agitators” by the same comrade consolidated this new victory.

On May 1st 1896, “political” demands were already put forward: “we fight for freedom of strikes, assembly, speech, and the press”; the speakers’ speeches were adapted to these demands written on the red banner.

On May 1st of the following year, an attempt to organize a demonstration was undertaken in Vilna — for the first time by social democrats in Russia — in order to protest, by the very fact of an open assembly, against the absence of the right of assembly!

And it was precisely the workers who demanded the introduction of a “political” element into social democratic agitation; it was they who insisted on exposing the Russian political system before the workers, explaining the people’s lack of rights, and formulating the interests of the worker-citizen. But the organization of revolutionaries, which led the labor movement with the aim of directing it toward social democratic ideals, feared that it would not be understood by the mass of working people, that it would lose its influence if it put forward its demands for “political” rights right now as demands of the proletariat. Was the working class already politically educated enough to appreciate and realize these interests of its own? The leaders were not sure of this and hesitated {“Let us not put forward such a program as might frighten the struggling mass. Without deviating an iota — let us nevertheless be clever. We want to group all the forces of the proletariat. To achieve this, we must call our party ‘Labor’, not socialist”. Volders. — “The word socialism frightens many workers, so this word is an obstacle”. De Paepe. — (Compte rendu du congrès du Parti ouvrier Belge de 1891 p. 42). Whether these Belgian socialists were right or not, in any case they said this not as trade unionists. — “The socialist movement in America counts its chronology from the appearance of Bellamy’s famous book ‘Looking Backward’. The author called his theory nationalism so as not to frighten Americans with the word ‘socialism’, which was terrible back then”. Muranov. Rab. D. No 10 II p. 1.}.

This excerpt gives us hope that the working class will ultimately arrive at conclusions about the necessity of political struggle on its own, if we join it in the economic struggle. However, one should not expect that everything will proceed in precisely this way — some efforts in political education must still be made.

The basis of the organization was secret funds. The funds were managed by their representatives, who gathered at meetings together with intellectuals. The meetings were of a political nature: general issues were discussed here, books from the secret library were exchanged, circles were assigned for agitators, illegal literature was brought for distribution through the funds.
But the members of these meetings, although considered representatives of the funds, were not elected by the funds, but were brought in “from above” as the “best people”.

Participants in the funds noticed that the movement was led by some central circle unknown to them. This aroused a desire to penetrate there, find out about it, and influence the course of affairs in this higher instance. The mass turned out to be sufficiently prepared to intervene in the decisions of its affairs; on the other hand, the number of affairs themselves became so significant that a group of revolutionaries, kept secret from the mass, could not conduct them.

Therefore, an elected central fund is created; its function is to help with people and money during strike struggles and to lead them, issue proclamations, and communicate with various cities to prevent strike-breaking.

But if for the “mass people” — members of the funds — the organization of agitators had until then been a secret, then for “their own people” — attendees of the meetings — the circle of intellectuals who attended these meetings and were the soul of all revolutionary activity in the Western Krai was also unknown. Already from 1895, social democratic organizations began to spread to many cities, and Vilna became a natural center thanks to the personal connections of the Vilna circle and thanks to the distribution of illegal literature from Vilna, mainly hectographed.

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It is known that when the social democratic movement emerged, its formidable power was not immediately recognized either by its friends, the Russian socialists, or by its enemy — the government.

Further, the movement developed without attracting special attention from the government in the Western Krai. This is because, firstly, it developed there earlier than in Russia proper, and because, secondly, the isolation of the Jewish people and the hostility of the suppressed nationality toward the Russian government little allowed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to keep abreast of the changes that had occurred in the psychology of the proletarian strata of Jewry.

Another useful observation — one should agitate in national communities or other closed communities. If the FSB does not work well enough with them, there is an opportunity to build a strong group before attracting attention.

At the beginning of May 1900, a crowd, outraged by the arrest of several comrades in Novy Gorod near Vilna, rushed to the bailiff’s station where the arrestees were held and tried to free them. Then, after a failure, an ambush was set, and when the prisoners were led out, the crowd, at a signal from the sentries, came out of the ambush and attacked the escort. The police officers used sabers and wounded two workers; in response, shots rang out from the crowd; the arrestees were rescued, and their temporary prison, the bailiff’s house, was ransacked.

An extremely useful method of struggle in modern conditions. Russian democrats must learn to rescue their comrades from the dogs of the regime. This should be foundational. As soon as comrades are arrested, one should immediately assemble and go to rescue them. It must be remembered that anyone who executes a criminal order and violates the most elementary and necessary rights of everyone, anyone who deprives of freedom those who peacefully express their dissatisfaction — is an enemy, and it is immoral to voluntarily surrender to slavery to them. It is permissible to defend one’s freedom by any means in this situation. Further in the book, the structure of the Bund (the Jewish socialist party) is described, which may be useful for small organizations.

The highest organ of the Bund is congresses, which must be convened, according to established custom, no less than once every two years, but until now have been convened more often, five times in total over six years (1897-1903). A congress is convened by the central committee on its initiative or at the request of 2/3 of the committees. “Customary law” does not provide for cases when a congress would turn out to be illegal due to the non-arrival of a part of the delegates. “This is because, comrades answer my inquiries, it is completely impossible for any significant number of delegates not to arrive at the congress. A conditional signal to assemble will not be given if the preparatory work has not ensured the opportunity for all delegates to attend the congress; only an accidental arrest at the last moment of any of the delegates can delay him”.

The congress elects three members of the central committee by secret ballot, of whom one is openly declared after the election as a representative of the central committee. These three co-opt as many comrades as they deem necessary. The central committee directs the activities of local committees in accordance with the resolutions of congresses; it addresses proclamations in its own name to all Jewish workers, which local committees are obliged to distribute; it publishes the central organ of the Bund, which thus completely loses the significance of a free forum necessary for seeking truth, but instead becomes a powerful tool in the hands of the central committee for implementing its decisions.

Local committees act completely autonomously within the limits of their locality and are guided by the instructions of congresses {One comrade from the central committee of the Bund, having listened to these last lines, remarked to me: “Your mind is inclined to think bureaucratically! Your fundamental error consists in that you want to formulate such phenomena as cannot be placed into any formulas. Of course, what you have written here is as true as the fact that you and I walk on two legs. But your formulation implies a limitation of the central committee’s influence on local committees, and this does not actually exist in the life of the Bund. Living work does not fit into rubrics”.

I, however, did not agree with the comrade’s opinion. It seems to me that there are no phenomena in the world that it would be impossible to formulate more or less accurately, and the difficulty of the matter cannot force one to abandon attempts.

Formulating the general principles of the Bund’s organization is not only possible, but also necessary in order to consciously support the tendencies of its healthy development and consciously eliminate the remnants of the old.}.

Thus, the general character of these two institutions of the Bund — central committees and local committees — and their mutual relations appear in the following form:

I. — The Central Committee of the Bund took the form of an independent organ, armed with all the means developed by world experience for influencing the life of the party it leads.

II. Local committees are autonomous organizations conducting all party work within the bounds of their area of activity completely independently.

III. The mutual relation between the central committee and a local committee is cooperation in which neither of these two organs of the Bund can suppress the other.

And indeed.

I. The Central Committee of the Bund is endowed with enormous rights. According to the charter of the Bund, the central committee has the right to exclude an individual member from a local committee at its own discretion and likewise to appoint a new member there; local committees are obliged to submit regular reports to the central committee on their activities, on their plans; members of the central committee may appear at any time and enter all organizations of a local committee. Under such conditions, the central committee has the actual ability to keep abreast of the local committee’s affairs and to exercise its effective influence there. It indicates the general goals of the Bund, which the local committee must serve and cannot oppose in individual acts of its activity. The central committee’s address with proclamations to the broadest circles of the Bund secures for it a direct influence on the masses, and placing the central organ in its hands creates for it a powerful means of moral influence on local figures. In comparison with various central institutions in international social democracy, the powers of the Central Committee of the Bund are extraordinarily great.

II. — Local committees can issue whatever local publications they like without any special permission for it; all decisions made by a local committee require no approvals; the local committee itself drafts the charter of its organization and the regulations of its activity; in practice, of course, a uniform type of local organization has developed, but it is not mandatory for a local committee; the local committee itself co-opts new members: if a local committee noticed that the central committee was introducing a new member into its composition in order to carry out its tendencies undesirable for the local committee, it has the opportunity to accept into its composition another member with views desirable for itself and thus neutralize the central committee’s effort; the central committee is not authorized to dissolve local committees, and there has never been such a precedent.

III. — If in local affairs a conflict arises between the central committee and one of the local committees, — insofar as acts of local activity are a manifestation of party work — it must be settled through mutual concessions, as is done in parliaments by the upper and lower houses. In general party affairs, however, the central committee acts completely independently in the ways specified in the charter, and then the local committees are simple executants of its will.

During my inquiries with comrades from the Bund, they could not provide me with examples where bickering between the central committee and a local committee led to the subordination of the latter to the former. In Bialystok, for example, during the weavers’ strike, the Bialystok Committee drafted a proclamation that the central committee disliked very much, and it refused to print it in its printing house, but the Bialystok Committee published it anyway. The central committee declared that it would sharply criticize it in “Arbeiterstämme”, but, as far as I know, it did not do this either.

The Lodz Committee handed over one of the issues of “Freisglok” to the central committee for printing. The central committee recognized it as very unsuccessful and recommended revising it, especially the lead article. The Lodz Committee did not agree and sent the issue to be printed abroad. Thus, here too the central committee did not consider it appropriate to force the local committee to concede by its authority. Characteristically, the foreign committee also found the lead article very unsuccessful and revised it, although it had no right to do so; however, the Lodz Committee did not protest against this.

“Generally speaking — a comrade from the central committee of the Bund told me — the central committee ‘recommends’, ‘proposes’ its opinions to a local committee. Legally, it is not given the right to order, but in practice it is listened to. I do not even know if it can be said that the central committee does not interfere in the affairs of a local committee? A case is known to me when the central committee, having discussed the activity of one local committee in its board, made a decision that a series of reforms should be carried out in this city; the central committee pointed them out to the local committee, and all of them were carried out. Local committees have the right to begin publishing their own organ without special consent from the central committee, but they do not undertake such an important matter without the consent of the central committee. At one time, very many local committees set up their own organs. The central committee was against this and found it necessary to reduce their number; it achieved its goal: now there is not a single local organ, but not one of them was shut down by force. Most characteristic of all is precisely that no question of ‘rights’ arises among us in relations between the central committee and local committees. Of course, no order from the central committee would be possible. The central committee has the right to introduce new members into a local committee, but if the local committee were against the candidate of the central committee, then, of course, the central committee would not introduce such a new member into the local committee, because we know that harmonious work in a local committee is possible only with mutual respect of all its members. Our basic principle is conducting business by mutual trust and by virtue of moral influence”.

What was happening in St. Petersburg in the meantime? There, too, they tried to establish specifically personal contacts with workers. Here are specific examples of actions:

What incredible difficulties we had to overcome just to meet with workers, to speak with them as friends, to get close, to tell about our ideals, to draw them along with us into the struggle for a common cause.

Wishing to establish ties with workers, a comrade of mine started going every day to a distant and dirty tavern in a working-class quarter; he would sit there for hours, look closely at the faces of visitors, get acquainted with workers, try to become a regular tavern frequenter for them, and thus enter the circle of their interests, become one of their own for them.

Another comrade went in summer to spend the night in a field outside the city, and there met with the unemployed — hungry and tired people who, of course, did not think that a random companion of their poor night shelter in abandoned brick sheds was a student-agitator.

That was how one had to seek meetings with workers.

In general, roughly the same thing was happening there as in Vilna.

In far-off Kolyma, a revolutionary poet poured out his grief over the fact that nobody was listening to his call, that from nowhere did he hear a response to his song:

In the darkness I sing, amid the sleepless night…
Who hears my voice? Who is alive nearby?
In vain into the darkness I fixed inquisitive eyes!..
I raised high my outstretched hands…
Who sees my form? Answer!..
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
In the darkness I sing!..

So too was there no response for us! And what could be done to evoke it, to make the proletariat answer the call to struggle? From time to time, the government locked agitators in prison: their students stubbornly and fearlessly continued the work, but they were as lonely as their teachers. “Circle-ism” did not achieve its goal. What, then, what word would ignite the soul of the proletariat, stir the elements of the labor movement? We were searching for it.

“In the summer of ’94, comrade Ch. told me, I was traveling as a trainee technologist on a locomotive as an assistant driver. I became closely acquainted with several railway workers who seemed to me like nice and very intelligent people; I spoke with them at length and was only waiting for a convenient pretext to turn the conversation to a political topic. Soon an opportunity presented itself that seemed most suitable to me. For some reason, the Governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Baranov, announced that he would flog anyone who spread alarming rumors (about cholera, it seems) among the people. It seemed to me that Baranov could fulfill his threat, and this deeply touched in me the sense of helplessness of a Russian citizen against possible violence against his person. I shared my thoughts with my acquaintances. While I spoke about the disenfranchisement of the Russian citizen, about the violence of the authorities, everyone agreed with me. But when, for illustration, I told them about the threat, they burst out laughing. This struck me, and I asked what they were laughing at.

“Why, of course! Say something in a tavern, and they’ll lay you out and give you a whipping!.. Plain and simple!.. and give you a whipping! What can you do about them? The bosses!”

“I came one day — another comrade, Yu., told me — to a silk-stocking knitter. She was still a young girl, but exhausted, sick, with inflamed eyes. I began asking her about her life. The main portion of her earnings she received from Princess San Donato, for whom she knitted delicate, ball stockings. The stockings were very expensive, each pair had to be knitted for a long time, often they were needed in a hurry, the stocking-maker sat up nights over the tiny loops of silk thread and ruined her eyes. The princess, however, wore each pair only once and then gave it away as rag-wear to her maid. The contrast between poverty and wastefulness was striking, and I began speaking with fervor about the injustice of social relations. But the unfortunate stocking-maker suddenly became inspired and spoke with enthusiasm: ‘oh, if you only knew what a beauty she is! How rich, how graceful, what manners she has! And us, what about us? We, of course, just keep knitting stockings, don’t we? When I put my stocking on her, I can’t take my eyes off her foot…’

As I have already said, at this time conscious social democrats had to deal not with the mass of working people, but only with individual workers. Social democrats attempted to evoke a response by pointing out to the workers the striking injustice of the existing system. But the facts, even seemingly the most glaring, did not evoke protest among the workers.

Propagandists were brought to despair by this attitude of the “middle worker”, the unpropagandized worker, toward the world around him. And the propagandized workers treated him with outright contempt.

One of the workers, who delivered a fine speech on May 1st 1891, said later, already in exile, to a friend of mine:

“Leaflets are a useless notion. Well, what can you explain in a single leaflet? A book should be given to a worker, not a leaflet; he needs to be taught. Put him in a circle!”

But those workers who continued revolutionary work after ’94 were dissatisfied with circle-ism as well.

“In the winter of ’94 — writes comrade Peterburzhets — work on organizing workers’ circles and cultivating individual personalities continued. But in it a certain disappointment was already noticeable. Something is lacking” (p. 12). “Among some conscious and developed workers who called themselves social democrats, a protest against circle-ism began to sound”. “No, they said, the success of the cause lies in the labor movement; and in order to create a conscious labor movement, activists specially prepared for this purpose are necessary. A worker propagandist and organizer must intimately know all the surrounding conditions of his working life” (p. 6).

Meanwhile, among the working masses a quiet ferment was underway, an as yet ungrasped discontent was growing, which manifested itself here and there in separate outbursts, unorganized, scattered protests — at Semyannikov’s, in the Port, at Voronin’s disorders arose. Under such conditions, the manuscript of the pamphlet “On Agitation” reached St. Petersburg from Vilna.

“He is no social democrat, — it was stated there — who by his activity does not contribute to the growth of class consciousness and the revolutionary demands of the proletariat. Meanwhile, one can contribute to one or the other only by taking up directly the arousal of a movement in the mass on economic grounds, and every step in this direction will facilitate further movement, will remove one after another those obstacles that now seem insurmountable, that hinder even circle, cultural work, in essence, and that for the latter are indeed insurmountable. In view of all this, we deem it necessary for social democratic circles to transition… (p. 23) to constant agitation among factory workers on the basis of existing minor needs and demands. The struggle caused by such agitation will accustom the workers to defend their interests, will raise their courage, will give them confidence in their strength, a consciousness of the necessity of unity, and in the end will place before them more important questions. Class struggle in this more conscious form will create the ground for political agitation, the goal of which will be the change of existing political conditions in favor of the working class. The further program of social democracy is clear in itself (p. 16). Excitement, perpetual dissatisfaction, perpetual striving to improve one’s position and the struggle for this improvement, at the same time a broad understanding of victories already achieved — to this the agitator must lead the mass” (p. 22).

The motto was found. The period of economic agitation began in St. Petersburg. And agitators who had received no response when they exposed the existing political and social system saw that not only the workers with whom they had dealt, but also broad strata of the working class to which there had been no direct access, responded unitedly and boldly to their call to economic struggle. Thus here was repeated the very same thing that had previously happened in Vilna as well.

However, agitation was, of course, conducted not only among workers. It was conducted among students, as was mentioned above, and among the military. True, this was the most dangerous part of the work, but at that time there were heroes who took such a risk.

The “Rabochy” group conducted propaganda among cadets and soldiers, attempted to establish relations with peasants, recognized terror, saw in workers merely the most revolutionary material for activity, and therefore willingly exchanged its workers’ circles with Narodnaya Volya propagandists.

<…>

The “Rabochy” group was arrested on Jan. 27th 86. V. Kharitonov, a university student who died of consumption in exile, Butkov, Tesyolkin, Prince Kugushev, the Katayev brothers, and chemical engineer Artaumov were taken. Their printing house on Ropschenskaya Street was also taken {Koltsov, in the appendix to Thun, reports the following about St. Petersburg: “In ’84 it was already possible to organize a social democratic group, which began to work. From ’85 this group, having worked out its program, proceeded to practical activity, i. e. to propaganda of our social democratic views among workers and intellectuals, predominantly in student circles and even in ‘society’. The group then consisted of 15-16 male and female students, one architect engineer, one journalist, and two old, illegal Black Repartition members”.}.

Meanwhile, the agitational work of the social democrats began to be recognized as successful by other leftist currents as well.

Members of Narodnaya Volya complained that they had to teach physics and natural history courses in workers’ circles. “Of course, — one of them, F., said to me — it is much more interesting for workers to listen to stories about flowers than to engage in revolutionary work! Nothing can be done: the social democrats started this fashion, and we have to reckon with this so as not to lose influence among workers”.

The working class itself at that time used violence in order to express protest.

Almost at the same time, disorders occurred at the Laferme tobacco factory. Here, too, the patience of female workers was tested for a long time by employing the most fraudulent methods to snatch a few kopecks from their hungry pay… Patience came to an end, and the female workers gave the Laferme partnership a real scare, ransacking the whole factory and beating up the hated clerk.

Social democrats, however, not only conducted agitation among workers, but also actively took an interest in their situation — they not only taught them, but also learned from them themselves. We see this in the example of the “League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class”.

And what did this League of Struggle do at first? It wrote down to the dictation of the workers all details of abuses on the part of owners, all kinds of malicious tricks and deceptions regarding piece rates, deductions, rejection of goods, endless stretching of the workday, — printed all this in its leaflets and distributed them among the workers, inviting them to defend themselves from such factory orders that the State Council itself could not fail to recognize as bad.

Approximately the same thing can be done by social democrats today — finding out the problems of the working class and publishing them in their media, that is, on websites, in social media accounts, and so on.

The group proposed immediately convening a congress of social democratic organizations in Russia.

Here we see again an example of how a social democratic party is created after such demands. It appears destructive and authoritarian to us when representatives of one of the existing social democratic organizations react negatively to the creation of new ones at a moment when a large party has not yet been created and all available ones are, in essence, small organizations. A large party will be created not through the absorption of many small organizations by one party. It will be created through the union of many small organizations. Those who oppose the creation of many new organizations before one big one is created from them — oppose such an avenue of development, that is, retard the development of social democracy in the country. But a similar attitude was observed in that period as well:

“Down with organizational anarchy and long live the cohesion of all forces of social democracy into one strictly centralized organization”! became the common key of the majority of members of our party.

Black-and-white thinking is reflected here. If not anarchy — then authoritarianism. A similar inability to find balance has always had a catastrophic effect on Russia and its inhabitants.

Workers gathered at the plant, but an hour or two later quit work; stormy explanations with the management took place, the workers themselves blew the whistle, poured in a huge crowd into the street, and headed for the New Admiralty in order to cause a strike there as well.

We have already seen above that during political demonstrations, one of the primary tasks is the liberation of political prisoners. During strikes, however, the working class must go to other large enterprises and urge their workers to join the strike. Today this tradition in Russia is almost forgotten, but it is effective, and it needs to be revived.

The agitational tactics of the period of “so-called Economism” are brilliantly justified twice by history: first by the fact that they allowed social democrats to become leaders of the proletarian masses in their class struggle and — by the admission even of opponents of these tactics — “revolutionized the mood and consciousness of the proletariat” (Axelrod), and then by the complete collapse of the opposite tactics, Iskrism, which weakened the ties between the proletariat and social democracy {Comrade Axelrod states that “during the period of so-called Economism, our movement acquired deep roots in the proletariat, revolutionized the mood and even the consciousness of significant circles of it, raised their revolutionary activity” — (Iskra No. 55); he states further in the same feuilleton: “Thus, the triumph of bureaucratic centralism in party organization — such is the result of the party struggle of revolutionary Social Democracy (Iskra) with amateurishness; in a word, the ideological shell is revolutionary-social democratic, while the real content, in essence, in a principled sense, hardly goes beyond the bounds of bourgeois revolutionism”. Stating all this, comrade Axelrod, having become convinced during the fourth period that Iskra’s paper tolerates everything, makes the following conclusion: “large facts thus vividly and clearly justified the critique of the theory and practice of so-called Economism, which began back in the publications of the Emancipation of Labor Group and was continued by Iskra”. To this I can only add that comrade Axelrod does not cite these “large” facts or any facts at all, and contents himself with arguments about what “could” happen. But opponents of “so-called Economism” assert that these ties were created at the price of belittling social democracy to the level of the mass, at the price of renouncing the principles of revolutionary social democracy. This is profoundly incorrect; while by agitation the League of Struggle awakened “the mood and consciousness of the proletariat”, by its propaganda it carried the knowledge of the science of socialism into the proletariat. And in this respect, in 1898-99, a step forward was unconditionally made.

The oldest St. Petersburg program for systematic propaganda that I managed to see dates back to ’96. It is titled as follows: “Program for studies in St. Petersburg workers’ circles”. It contains 17 lectures, of which the last is the concluding one, and the penultimate one is dedicated to the history of the socialist movement in Western Europe.

We learn from this that, firstly, the role of those social democrats who advocated “economic struggle” of workers and its support was recognized by “political” social democrats as well, and, accordingly, this line of work is of high importance in the early stages of struggle. Secondly, we see that the social democrats of that time had programs for systematized propaganda, and today we need the same. An attempt to create such a program was already made by “Logic of Progress” in this article. Nevertheless, such a program should be shortened. It had other problems as well:

In order to improve the organization of propaganda work, the Union proceeded in the autumn of ’98 to elaborate a “Program of Self-Education” which, like the “Questions” in agitation, would systematize and unite all propaganda work. The experience of previous years showed that the longer and more detailed the courses of study and lectures were compiled, the less they achieved their purpose. The lecture format in general did not satisfy the workers: police conditions in St. Petersburg permit only small groups to gather periodically, whose composition, moreover, changes; the activity of a revolutionary is too brief, with the fall of a propagandist his experience disappears, and the continuity of propaganda is broken. In compiling the “Program of Self-Education”, the Union sought to make propaganda a collective affair, gathering accumulated individual experience into a program and developing it. Furthermore, taking into account the growth of the movement, which constantly outpaced the influx of intellectual forces, and the very limited sphere of influence of a propagandist in small circles, the Union wanted to transfer the work of propaganda into the hands of the workers themselves, into their self-activity. The Union hoped with the help of the program to assist workers in engaging in self-education without forcing them to await the resolution of every question from a propagandist, thereby enabling more intelligent workers to systematically influence the less developed ones. This, in turn, was meant to free the energies of propagandists for another urgent task — the arrangement of non-systematic lectures and talks on topical issues and on individual questions of propaganda and tactics. Only several years later did the St. Petersburg comrades succeed in implementing this last task: in 1901, the “Workers’ Organization”, publishing a series of propaganda leaflets, “Questions of Russian Life” and “Letters About Our Order”, made the first attempt to conduct printed propaganda systematically.

The character of the program was primarily and mainly determined by the need to prepare conscious Social-Democrats. It was decided not to wander far from contemporary life, not to begin with questions of the universe, Darwin’s theory, or primitive culture, as had been the custom before, but to start directly with a general, vivid characterization of the classes and social groups of modern society and its basic contradictions. The question was posed immediately: “Who lives by what?” The answer was given at first in the most general terms, in descriptions of the modern exploitation of working people and an indication of the ideal of socialism. Next, the following questions were posed: the origin of the capitalist system, the economic evolution and social differentiation of Europe, the change of political forms since the Great Revolution, socio-political movements in Europe, the economic condition of Russia and its political structure, the revolutionary movement in Russia, international Social-Democracy, and the Social-Democratic program. A detailed study of the Erfurt Program with the help of Kautsky’s booklet was indicated as the outcome of this brief course of self-education.

The text of the program was compiled in the form of an outline. For each question, footnotes indicated literature, both legal and illegal, arranged in order from simple to complex in terms of presentation and divided into three parts; thus, by taking the first part, we get a small library and an explanatory, guiding text for the less educated strata of workers, the second for the middle level, and the third for the more conscious ones. These small libraries, together with the program of self-education, made it possible to approach all strata of workers with propaganda covering the entire Social-Democratic program, altering only the degree of popularity and accessibility of the presentation.

Since the available legal and illegal literature was too scarce, it was planned to publish a series of small booklets on various questions of propaganda. In compiling the booklets and further developing the program, the Union tried to involve comrades in exile and abroad, as well as legal writers for publishing legal booklets. The plans were broad. They were, perhaps, too broad, and in any case, how far they were from that denial of the importance of theory so shamelessly forced upon “so-called Economism” by Social-Democrats who do not remember their kinship.

To work on the program, a special group was formed, and several persons who did not belong to the Union, but who could assist the cause with their literary talents and experience, were brought in. The Union appealed to several committees for assistance… A wave of the student movement and the spring mass arrests broke off this work. It remains unfulfilled to this day.

So, here are the practical goals that the young Union set for itself in the period of 98–99: 1) the unification of all Social-Democratic groups and forces of St. Petersburg into a single organization, “Union of Struggle — Party Committee”, on the basis of a division of functions and the democratic principle of organization. 2) The intensification and systematization of agitation: “Questions” and a series of leaflets. 3) The intensification and systematization of propaganda: “Program of Self-Education” and a series of booklets. 4) An organ for broad strata of workers — Rabochaya Mysl. 5) An organ for advanced workers — Rabocheye Znamya. 6) A general strike in St. Petersburg on May First.

We see how programs, material bases, and so on were created. “Logic of Progress” also has its own library, but at present it is organized by topic. As we can see from the experience of our pre-revolutionary predecessors, they divided materials into three groups: for the less educated strata of the working class, for the middle level, and for the intellectually advanced. We should create a similar division as well. Furthermore, in practice regarding systematic education, the delivery of “non-systematic lectures and talks on topical issues and on individual questions of propaganda and tactics” came to predominate. Moreover, the newspaper Rabochaya Mysl wrote mostly what the workers themselves said:

An original and characteristic feature of the “Rabochaya Mysl” group was its conscious desire to make its newspaper merely a reflection of the thoughts of the St. Petersburg workers. “Rabochaya Mysl will reflect the life of workers in its true light, will contribute to awakening their interest in their surroundings, expressing their needs and branding our oprichnina with words of contempt and derision”.

We should also adopt this practice. Such content will be interesting to read for the working class itself and for Social-Democrats, and spending energy on creating content requires less effort — the main thing here is to listen.

It was with a heavy heart that the comrades departed for St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1900. Everything was smashed to pieces; everything had to be started afresh.

This testimony shows that the Social-Democratic movement was crushed almost to zero, and we should not despair because of the insufficient strength of our movement today. If the Social-Democrats had given up in 1900, when everything was smashed and needed to be started from scratch, would there have been a revolution in 1905?

The principle of organization and the tactics of the Iskra group were simplified, conspiratorial; they suited an average intellectual Social-Democratic group in Russia, but could not meet the demands of the developed movement of Russian workers in such advanced centers as St. Petersburg or Yekaterinoslav… If I were to find myself now in Turkey, where there is no Social-Democratic movement, I would not join the “Young Turks” who are carrying on a political struggle. I would begin arranging “circles” of workers. And when I had educated even a few dozen Turkish comrades in the circles, I would begin convincing them to move on to mass agitation on the basis of the economic interests of the working class… After that, the “Young Turks” would manifest such energy as the Russian zemstvos do at present, and together we would settle accounts with Abdul Hamid.

It is revealing that our pre-revolutionary predecessors realized that Social-Democratic organizations need different forms at different stages of development. In the initial stages, conspiratorial, almost sectarian forms were more justified. Their transformation into more open forms is justified at later stages in order to prevent the ideology of the dominant imperial state from diluting the cause.

As early as the autumn of ’96, negotiations began on the merger of these groups. The first meeting was in the woods. There were 5 intellectuals and about 10 workers present.

Many despair upon seeing that the modern Social-Democratic movement is not so numerous, but the meeting of the first St. Petersburg Social-Democratic groups, which would later grow into a mass movement, consisted of only about 15 people.

Proclamations, which began to be issued at the end of ’96, now appeared systematically. In ’97, 67 thousand of them were distributed across 25 factories and plants.

And here is a justified reason to despair. Despite their small numbers, the Social-Democrats of that time distributed 67 thousand proclamations in a year. What we lack today is not numbers. What we lack is work on distributing our materials. Many are lazy, do nothing, do not engage in distribution, and think that someone else will do it for them. Few work with the unpolitized. That is where the problem lies, not in our small numbers. And soon enough, an organization of Social-Democrats will be created:

The charter of the new organization was drafted, highly typical for this stage of the movement’s development.

Members of both groups were considered members of the organization, but they gathered separately due to conspiratorial conditions. They communicated their decisions to each other. Above them stood an administration consisting of five members: 4 were elected by the groups, two from each; how the fifth was elected is unknown to me, but in all likelihood by co-optation. Alongside the committee, but completely separate from it, stood the “Workers’ Committee”. It was organized democratically, i. e. it consisted of elected representatives from workers’ circles. It invited to its meetings both a representative of the Social-Democratic committee and a representative of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but the latter for some reason declined to appear. Thus, the “Workers’ Committee” and the “League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class” were completely independent organizations. Proclamations were issued under the signature of the “Workers’ Committee”, and it jealous guard over this right of its own; the League, however, stamped them with its seal, or else it was indicated that the proclamations were published by the League.

The merger had the most favorable results, and the activity of the Kiev comrades in the summer of ’97 became especially lively. A whole series of lectures was arranged on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia and abroad. The lectures were read in the forest; about 60-80 people gathered; they made a great impression on the participants, and the memory of them lives on to this day. The demand for literature increased greatly; requests for it came from other cities as well — Yekaterinoslav, Nikolayev, Rostov. The League set apart from itself a literary group, which wrote proclamations and in July proceeded to publish “Rabochaya Gazeta”.

The work, of course, was very painstaking, requiring great effort and great patience.

How shortsighted are those who now, when the agitation of the Economists has turned out to be completely expedient, mock the painstaking and therefore “boring” work of the first steps! But the workers of the revolutionary cause of that time patiently realized this painstaking nature. “So, little by little and bit by bit, the Kiev workers are learning to fight their oppressors”…. it is said in one proclamation in November ’96 regarding a strike of eleven workers in their struggle for a thirteen-hour workday! And how from these words there blows a melancholy consciousness of the slowness of the work and downright heroic patience. “…Even if this will be a small victory, the proclamation continues, at the beginning of our struggle we value small victories as well. The first step is always difficult”. These comrades, of course, did not foresee that in a few years Narcissus Tuporylov would come and begin mocking these words of theirs.

The Kiev Committee of the RSDLP by that time had already issued its “Profession de foi”, in which it assigned a significant role to the economic struggle. Makhnovets cites the most important part of this document from his point of view.

“Recognizing as the immediate general task of the labor movement in Russia the struggle for the political rights of the proletariat, the Kiev Committee does not, however, consider it possible at the present moment to address the mass of workers with a call to political actions, in other words, to conduct political agitation, since the Russian worker in the mass has not yet matured for political struggle. Therefore, agitational influence on the mass can be expressed only:

I. In assisting the economic struggle of the proletariat; therefore, the Committee takes advantage of every occasion of a clash between workers and owners, every more or less major fact of abuse on the part of owners to address the workers with appeals or leaflets, explaining to the workers their position, calling them to protest, taking a leading role during strikes, formulating their demands, indicating the best ways to achieve them, developing by all this self-consciousness in the working class.

II. In the political education of the masses on the basis of everyday economic struggle. Taking advantage of every manifestation of the economic struggle of the workers, the committee, insofar as there is occasion for this in each individual case, sets itself the task of politically illuminating the position of the working class, gradually instilling in the mass the idea of political freedom, awakening a consciousness of the necessity of struggle for political rights… In the matter of political education of the working mass, the committee attaches great importance to publishing a local workers’ newspaper, trying to make it accessible to as broad strata of workers as possible and to involve them in participation in it by sending in correspondence, thereby accustoming the workers to look upon the newspaper as their own. Reserving the main place in its activity for economic agitation and the political education of broad masses of workers, the committee does not consider it possible to abandon circle studies with workers, looking upon them as a means of creating a certain contingent of conscious worker-agitators, expanding its connections with the working environment, and as a path for distributing literature. The committee, not considering it possible at the present time to call the broad masses of Kiev workers to political actions, recognizes as desirable the arrangement of partial demonstrations for a purely agitational purpose (and not with a view to influencing the government) on occasions accessible to the understanding of the broad masses”.

This document aroused the dissatisfaction of a person who, as Makhnovets believes, was Vladimir Lenin.

This profession de foi was published only a year and a half later, and not by its authors, but by its opponent, and not in order to distribute it, but in order to criticize it {By all appearances, this critique belongs to the pen of com. Lenin}.

Profession de foi, as a program statement, indeed needed critique in many respects, but the publisher understood it completely incorrectly, and this, as it seems to me, because he did not take into account the circumstances of time and place in which this document appeared, because he criticized it not as a historian, but as a polemicist.

“Already the very first sentence of the profession de foi, writes its critic, arouses the most serious perplexity… it remains to ask oneself: can those who wrote this really be Social-Democrats? ‘The Russian worker in the mass has not matured for political struggle’. If this is true, it is equivalent to a death sentence over all Social-Democracy, for it means that the Russian worker in the mass has not yet matured for Social-Democracy. Indeed, nowhere in the world was there or is there such a Social-Democracy as would not be inseparably and inextricably bound up with political struggle. A Social-Democratic party without political struggle is a river without water, it is some kind of glaring contradiction, it is some kind of return to the utopian socialism of our great-grandfathers who neglected ‘politics’, or to anarchism, or to trade-unionism”.

To explain the “first sentence” in this way means not to understand it. The authors not only did not neglect “politics”, but they directly and from the very first sentence declared “that ‘politics’ they recognize as the immediate general task of the labor movement in Russia”. Whether correctly or incorrectly they resolved this task is another question, but the fact that they posed it and, moreover, did recognize it as immediate, sharply distinguishes them both from the great-grandfathers of socialism, and from anarchists, and from trade-unionists.

“If this is true, it means that the Russian worker in the mass has not yet matured for Social-Democracy”. Completely correct. That is how it was then; the mass labor movement back then was not yet Social-Democratic. But the critic is completely wrong in assuming that “this is equivalent to a death sentence over all Social-Democracy”. On the contrary! The mass movement had not yet become Social-Democratic, but Social-Democrats were already numerous, and the mass movement had already passed the first phases of its development, passed under the leadership of Social-Democracy, and was just about to “mature for Social-Democracy”, and this process of maturing and ripening consisted precisely in that those who were already Social-Democrats tried to influence the mass movement, to “educate the mass”. It was this task that the Kiev comrades of that time took upon themselves.

Did they choose a successful path for its resolution? The critic finds that no, that in doing so they arrived at “glaring contradictions”.

“Indeed, how can one speak of ‘political education’ of workers if one does not recognize the possibility of conducting political agitation and political struggle? Is it really necessary to prove among Social-Democrats that there can be no political education outside of political struggle and political actions? Is it really possible to think that any studies or books can politically educate working masses apart from political activity and political struggle?”

Again, here too the critic argues outside of time and space. Of course, in the end, for the political education of the masses, their political activity, political struggle, is necessary. But the pioneers of Social-Democracy could and had to be content for a long time with “studies or books” in order to propagate their ideas. This is firstly; and secondly, the authors in their time and in their locality did not find it necessary at all to limit their activity to “studies and books”. As a means of political education of the masses, they also considered “partial” demonstrations. But the views of the authors on this score were not understood by their critic either.

“In an extremely strange, writes he, and at the same time extremely characteristic manner for the entire profession de foi, the committee, not considering it possible at the present moment to call the broad masses of workers to political actions, recognizes as desirable the arrangement of partial demonstrations for a purely agitational purpose, and not with a view to influencing the government, on occasions accessible to the understanding of the broad masses. Socialists call upon workers not to exert influence on the government! There is nowhere further to go”.

This is a direct distortion of the authors’ thought. Profession de foi, assuming that the working mass has not yet matured for political struggle, which, however, is the immediate task of the labor movement, tries to find those means with the help of which the vanguard of the proletariat — Social-Democracy — could educate the mass for political struggle. As this means, it considers calls to the working mass for demonstrations with demands for individual (partial) political rights: freedom of speech, press, assembly, organization, etc. The authors at the same time declare that they do not think that the result of these demands could be the winning of these rights under the existing political system (“influencing the government”), but assume that the proletariat, fighting for these rights, realizes that a necessary condition for winning them is the overthrow of the autocracy.

These views indeed characterize the activity of our Kiev comrades of that time and that whole stage of the movement’s development. Involuntarily, again, the characterization of this stage made by the St. Petersburg comrade comes to mind: “it was a consciously chosen method of political education of the masses”.

Our comrades looked keenly at the environment in which they had to work, listened sensitively to the mood of the mass, and saw to it that at the first opportunity they could take the next step. Opportunity was not long in coming. Toward the end of ’99 and especially at the beginning of 1900, a tense, excited state was felt among the workers, which spilled over in April into a strike of a thousand bakers, supported by another thousand workers. By the committee, as the report says, “already in February and March in passing the question of revising tactics was touched upon; in April this question was officially raised… The committee by a majority of all votes against one recognized it as necessary to transition to broad political agitation. As one of the best means of awakening the masses, it recognized demonstrations organized on the occasion of the sharpest manifestations of autocracy. In the same meeting it was decided that profession de foi is changed”. Therefore, when the critique of it appeared, it “had already only historical significance”; in other words, it was belated; above I tried to show that it, moreover, was deeply erroneous and superficial.

Today Russian democrats complain about the disunity of the Russian opposition. However, both in 1906, during the First Russian Revolution, and later, before other revolutionary events, similar complaints were observed. At the same time, disunity, as it turned out, did not prevent work. And there were results. But at that time it was clearly overestimated (as, probably, now):

Profoundly sorrowful events are taking place at present in our party. People who consider themselves servants of the great idea of scientific socialism, preachers of a doctrine that by its breadth and depth ought to be the successor to the world theories of Plato, Saint Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Rousseau, these people, without respecting or understanding each other, without understanding themselves, in a petty, bickering dispute reduce their great cause to the level of group dissensions.

And this takes place at that historic moment when our fatherland is experiencing the gravest trial, when all the spiritual forces of society are strained to the utmost, when all citizens — and revolutionaries, socialists above all — are called by the very course of events firmly and steadfastly to fulfill their duty to the motherland and humanity.

And for many there arises already a question painful for a Social-Democrat: if even at a moment of the rise of social forces Russian Social-Democracy is so little capable of understanding and answering the problems of our time, then is it at all capable of appearing as a progressive bearer of world and age-old ideas.

Makhnovets gave his explanation for the disagreements among Social-Democrats, and it, most likely, was one of the factors behind the emergence of these disagreements.

Comrade Lenin explained “our disagreements” by the division of our party into intelligentsia and proletarian elements; com. Galerka — by the division into the foreign organization and the organization in Russia; com. Martov — by reference to the psychology of circle spirit, which cannot immediately adapt to the newly created conditions of party activity. But after all this one has to agree with the opinion: “disagreements are not clarified — here is the central fact of the present disorder, a fact unbelievable, but undeniable” (com. Galerka).

And indeed. All the explanations cited by me are accepted by both sides, but only each of them claims to be proletarian, to reflect the demands of activity in Russia, to realize the interests of party centralization, and accuses its factional opponents of intelligentsia, foreign, circle prejudices. Every attempt to clarify disagreements is a hypothesis, and that hypothesis which explains the position of both sides on each of the disputed points will receive the right to recognition and will indicate a way out of that unfortunate situation in which our party now finds itself. A series of articles and pamphlets published over the past year had this goal — of Lenin, Martov, Panin, Trotsky, Galerka, Axelrod, Plekhanov, Ryadovoy, Ryazanov. For my part, I defend my view on this question. It boils down to the following.

“As the spontaneously arisen movement among the workers led the advanced strata of the Russian proletariat to consciousness of their ever broader interests — all methods of struggle and forms of organization of Russian Social-Democrats changed”. Here is the main thought of this book, expressed in its preface and, I hope, substantiated in the preceding chapters. But the Social-Democratic movement grew not only in depth, but also in breadth, and encompassed ever newer and newer strata of the proletariat; while the advanced stratum of the proletariat was becoming capable of higher forms of struggle, at this very time the strata of the working class newly involved in the struggle were still going through stages already passed by the advanced strata. Therefore, the labor movement as a whole appears as a complex phenomenon, and this complex class struggle of the proletariat simultaneously needs very diverse methods of activity and forms of organization. Meanwhile, each of these strata puts forward its leaders and theorists, and therefore in the party different tactical directions and organizational trends are created. The leaders of each trend subjectively recognize themselves as true expressers of the interests of the entire proletariat, defenders of the true interests of all Social-Democracy, and wage a struggle with all other trends for the dominance of their tactics. By this, in my view, are explained the disagreements prevailing now in our party.

But many in the party did not understand the essence of what was happening in it. As we see, some of them were confident that the cause of the disagreements was misunderstanding:

Axelrod does not indicate the difference in views on the tasks of our party between the majority and the minority. It is not surprising, therefore, if he says: “our disagreements with the adherents of Lenin (in Russia, but not abroad) to a significant extent rest on misunderstandings” (68, 2, 1 {The first figure means No. of “Iskra”, the second — page, the third — column.}). “In that precisely consists the monstrosity of our position, that on the ground of trifles in the party a bureaucratic-Bonapartist regime could arise and gain dominance” (68, 2, 3).

Makhnovets (Akimov) also shows how hounding unfolded around him in the party. This was done by pinning on the label “opportunist”. In today’s Social-Democratic movement, one should be cautious with labels. Every pinning of a label must be substantiated and proved, otherwise the lover of pinning them must suffer some punishment.

I shall allow myself here to say a few words about me personally, in view of the fact that I am now a target for condemnation in my person of that trend to which I belong. Both “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks” repeated too many times — never, however, proving this — that I represented an opportunist trend of Social-Democracy.

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And so a comrade unknown to me, Rostovets, in passing declares in his letter to “Iskra”: “Opportunism did not find for itself a defender in any of the delegates. It is customary to consider Akimov as such a defender among us. It seems to us, however, that when the smoke from the cannonade that arose at the congress clears, everyone will agree that Akimov too played at the congress the role rather of a ghost of opportunism than of its actual representative”. To these lines the editorial board of “Iskra” made the following note: “With this opinion one cannot agree. On the program views of com. Akimov lies an obvious stamp of opportunism” (Appendix to No. 73-74).

My program views were expressed at the congress in that I submitted to only one, the principle part of the program, twenty-two amendments. But this circumstance can prove one of two things: either I am an opportunist and do not agree with the Social-Democratic program, or, on the contrary, the program drafted by “Iskra” and adopted by the congress departs in very many respects from the program of international Social-Democracy.

All twenty-two amendments which I submit to the program adopted by the second congress are taken by me entirely and exclusively from the following sources: from the Vienna Program of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party, from the Erfurt Program of our German comrades, from the program of the Guesdist French Workers’ Party, and from the Rules of the International. How then could opportunist views manifest themselves in these amendments of mine? To prove this would be too difficult, and therefore “Iskra” preferred a unsubstantiated phrase. Meanwhile, little by little it itself is forced to accept amendments to the program that I submitted. Thus, for example, my most important amendment, which on behalf of the whole League was defended at the congress also by com. Martynov, was accepted entirely by the new “Iskra”.

Further Makhnovets criticizes Lenin for what later will pour out into the authoritarian policy of the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks, as we know, will turn trade unions into “transmission belts” of the party, but the Bolshevik Party itself by that moment was already built in such a way that each of its local committees was a “transmission belt”. That is, the “trick” with trade unions did not come out of nowhere.

“This is approximately how the matter presents itself from my point of view, he says: 1) organization of revolutionaries, 2) organizations of workers as broad and diverse as possible… These two categories constitute the party”. (“One Step Forward”, p. 46).

Between this party and the working class, which lives an unconscious, spontaneous life and “only in time of war, in an era of civil war, must act under the leadership of the workers’ party” (ib. p. 41), intermediate elements are located: “1st, organizations affiliated with the party; 2nd, organizations of workers not affiliated with the party, but actually subject to its control and leadership; 3rd, unorganized elements of the working class, which… partly submit to the leadership of Social-Democracy” p. 46.

“We are the party of a class, and therefore the whole class must act under the leadership of our party”, says Lenin. (“Step”, p. 41). In order for such a closed organization to lead the actions of an entire class, Lenin proposed to build it on a conspiratorial principle so that each of its members, each of its cell-organizations acted at the “baton” of the party leaders.

On the question of what the organization of the party should be, Lenin spoke many times. The first time, it seems, in his pamphlet “The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats” in 1897. Now, post factum, already in this pamphlet it is easy to see the rudiments of that purely conspiratorial view on organization which Lenin defended subsequently. But when this pamphlet came out, persistently recommending Social-Democracy to create a strong revolutionary organization, it was met with general sympathy. Axelrod in the preface to it expressed his full solidarity with it, on the other hand, the editorial board of “Soyuz Russkikh Sotsial-Demokratov” already in a review in No. 1 of “Rabocheye Delo” “with pleasure noted that the essence of the pamphlet fully coincides with the editorial program of ‘Rabocheye Delo'” {This review served as the occasion for the start of that factional polemic which until now, unfortunately, goes on, ever flaring up, in our party press. “The pamphlet is especially valuable in that, wrote the editorial board of Rabocheye Delo, it acquaints us at first hand with the actual state of our movement, with its living program. In this respect we cannot agree with com. Axelrod, who in his preface inclines to the thought that in general our movement is only striving toward that stage of development to which the tactical point of view of the author fully corresponds”. However, Axelrod bases his opinion solely on “the statement of younger comrades who comparatively recently got abroad”. We do not know what “younger” comrades Axelrod speaks about; for our part, we have reason to assert that the younger Russian Social-Democracy, which has grown and operates on the soil of the mass movement, in general already in deed accepts the point of view of the author”. (Rabocheye Delo No. 1, p. 142).

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Lenin in concise, but extraordinarily characteristic and vivid expressions formulates his view on local committees, precisely as transmission levers which the “Center” can and must at its own whim insert and rearrange or throw out: “so that the center could not only advise, convince, argue (as was done until now), but actually conduct the orchestra, for this it is necessary that it be known in detail who, where, and which violin leads, and who, how, and where needs to be transferred to correct a dissonance” (p. 22).

Lenin’s material “What Is to Be Done?” is also quoted, and the author comes forward with a critique of it:

“I assert that the more we confine the membership of our organization to such persons only as are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity… the broader will be the number of persons, both from the working class and from other classes (italics mine, cf. I.) of society, who will have the opportunity to participate in the movement and actively work in it” (p. 94). “We have raised our voices and will always, of course, raise our voices against narrowing down the political struggle to a conspiracy, but this, of course, did not mean at all a denial of the necessity of a strong revolutionary organization (p. 103).

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From all the quotations from the book “What Is to Be Done?” cited by me here, as it seems to me, two tactical principles of Lenin are determined: 1) By its functions, a Social-Democratic organization is a denial of conspiratorial methods of struggle and is calculated to evoke “responses”, “support” of the masses; 2) By its form, this organization must be conspiratorial. In this contradiction of the functional and formal sides of a Social-Democratic organization was expressed the main contradiction in Lenin’s views, reflected his position of an intermediate system between the party of socialist conspiracy, “Narodnaya Volya”, and the party of proletarian socialism, Social-Democracy.

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The book “What Is to Be Done?” appeared in March 1902 and, unfortunately for the cause, did not find a rebuff for itself. Some did not understand how superficial, erroneous this book was, serving only polemical purposes; others, realizing this, nevertheless retreated in the struggle, lacked the strength to accept this new challenge of the “Iskra” group; third — like Plekhanov, by his admission — were silent for diplomatic reasons. Lenin considered himself the victor and in September, in “Letter to a Comrade”, dotted the i’s in his organizational plans. This letter served as the starting point for criticism of Lenin’s plans already on the part of his former like-minded associates, though not at the moment of its appearance, but much later, a year later, after the split at the congress.

Makhnovets very accurately notes that silence for diplomatic reasons and the lack of strength to answer the challenge lead to the triumph of a force that no one opposes. He, however, hardly realized how serious Lenin’s organization was and what threat it posed. But by that moment he had already understood what methods of intra-party struggle Lenin used:

{The methods of ideological struggle with an opponent remained the same for Iskra: no “polemical beauties” were considered inadmissible if they discredited the “critic”. An example of this can serve Lenin’s argumentation on the question under discussion now, in his “Steps” (p. 47 and note): “Akimov with frankness explained that ‘their very goal’ (Plekhanov’s, Martov’s, and mine — the creation of a leading organization of revolutionaries) he considers unfeasible and harmful; he defends, as does com. Martynov, the idea of the Economists about the uselessness of an organization of revolutionaries. Com. Martynov wants to make the listeners forget that those with whom I fought saw no need for an organization of revolutionaries, as com. Akimov does not see it now either”. I demand here publicly from com. Lenin to answer me what right he had to say and print these words! Was it not known to him that not only never and nowhere did I declare either verbally or in print that I see no need for an organization of revolutionaries, but, on the contrary, was myself for ten years a member of various organizations of revolutionaries. Is it not known to com. Lenin that I have been for ten years — in his terminology — a professional revolutionary and as such was always in an organization of revolutionaries like myself? (Note to the second edition. Com. Lenin did not consider it his duty to answer me. I do not know what means com. Lenin recognizes for protecting the individual in our midst from slander, if a public call to answer is insufficient for him).}

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Lenin’s supporters, with such unassailable conviction proving that no newspaper should be tolerated except Iskra, and no organization abroad except the League — set up their own organization and their own newspaper as soon as “Iskra” and “League” ceased to be an instrument in their hands.

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Regarding the fifth point of his correspondent’s draft, Lenin remarks laconically: “I am against not only discussions, but against a representative meeting” (p. 10).

From the last quotation logically follows the following conclusion:

Lenin believes that in the sphere of discussions too, i. e. reasonings, a division of labor is needed: let some reason, while others execute without reasoning…

This was indeed so. And indeed Lenin was right in this — a division of labor is necessary both in the economy and in political organization. For Social-Democrats, something else is rather more important — in what manner those who reason are defined. Whether they are elected from below or selected by decrees from above. Lenin’s principle of transforming the party into an instrument of the “conductor” implied also the absence of discussion:

“It is necessary that all participants in the work, all and any circles have the right (liberally! V. A.) to bring their decisions, desires, inquiries to the notice of both the committee and the Central Organ and the Central Committee. If we ensure this, then the fullness of consultations of all party workers will be achieved (!!, V. A.) without creating such cumbersome and non-conspiratorial institutions as discussion”.

The problem was that a small organization can establish feedback under such a setup. In a large one, however, most likely both conspiratorial nature and feedback will disappear. That is, Lenin’s model was good for a conspiratorial, Blanquist organization. For such an organization, the principle of admitting new members by unanimous consent could be useful. Which, as the organization grew, was reformed by pre-revolutionary Social-Democrats in a rather complex but interesting way:

“The ‘young’ comrades who joined the League in 1898 soon turned out to be all without exception in opposition to the ‘Emancipation of Labor Group’. This was the third opposition. At the same time, in constant practical clashes between ‘young’ and ‘old’ members of the League, differences in their views on the character of the mass labor movement and immediate tasks of the Russian Social-Democracy began to be clarified. The ‘Emancipation of Labor Group’ decisively refused any participation in the editorial board and administration of the League, leaving this to the ‘young’. The ‘young’ were forced to take upon themselves the responsible and heavy duty of all affairs of the League of Russian Social-Democrats. This decision took place at the congress in the autumn of 1898, when new members were admitted, a new charter was drafted along with a program of literary activity of the League, reorganized on democratic principles” (pp. 75-79).

The most hated paragraph of the old charter for the “young” was that which required a unanimous decision for the admission of a new member into the League. It actually gave the “Emancipation of Labor Group” the veto right, and the “Emancipation of Labor Group”, wishing to preserve the purity of views by closing itself off from the influx of new elements, widely used this right, refusing to admit new members on the sole ground that it did not have sufficient information about them. The new charter allowed joining the League on the recommendation of two of its old members, by a vote with a simple majority and in the absence of a vote against the admission of this member. If one-third of the members spoke against him, he was considered not admitted. If there were fewer than one-third of the votes against him, they had to be reasoned; then a re-balloting took place and the matter was decided by a simple majority.

Upon reading the above, probably many Social-Democrats will recognize the problems they face in organizational activity today as well. Because they are in principle inherent in Social-Democratic, if not political in general, organizations:

“When you tell us about your struggle for a democratic organization, the St. Petersburg comrades said to the delegate of the League, it seems to us that you are talking about St. Petersburg events: here with us the very same thing was repeated!”. The comrades had in mind here their struggle with the “old men”, members of the old “League of Struggle”, which was idealized by Lenin and presented as a model both in “Tasks” and in “What Is to Be Done?”.

The study of past experience of Social-Democrats allows us to understand the variety of forms and methods that were applied earlier, as well as the fact that different methods are good in certain conditions and at certain stages, but destructive or useless at other stages and in other conditions. The only question is how to understand this. Perhaps, to identify the most effective forms, we need many organizations, but most importantly — initiative and activity are needed.“`