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WHAT IS BOLSHEVISMP sisson This is the Preface to the first volume of Comrade Zinoviev’s work, “From the History of Bolshevism.” s. * *& ' A PART from the history of Bol- shevism in its earliest stages— the oldest of Lenin’s works (The Task of Russian Social Democracy) some of Plechanov’s works, the old “Iskra,” and especially the struggle carried on by these against economism—it may be said that Bolshevism as a broad political current was born al- most on the eve of the Revolution of 1905. The 2nd Party Congress, held in the summer of 1903, merged in a mighty storm of revolutionary strike movements, which spread with ever- increasing violence over the whole of Russia. Bolshevism received its firsi baptism of bleod during the first revo- lution in the year 1905. But an ever more decisive trial followed. The Revolution of 1905 was suppressed, the working class thrown back. The tempo of political life slowed down. A stillness as of the graveyard reigned. Faint-heart- edness and apostasy became every- day occurrences, Even the ranks of the workers were infected with the canker of bourgeois ideology. The question as to whether Bol- shevism would stand this trial, if it would withstand the fire of counter- revolution, was approximately decided during the five years between 1906 and 1912. What new centributiog was made by Bolshevism in the sphere of politi- cal ideology? What fresh paths were opened up by Bolshevism for international Socialism? Of what does Comrade Lenin’s discovery con- sist? If we had to furnish an answer to these questions in a few words, we should reply as follows: 1. Bolshevism, for the first time in the history of international class warfare, has taken the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat seri- ously, and has done this by leading inte practice paths that which Marx and Engels had merely established theoretically. 2. It is precisely because Bo!she- vism hag opened up the question of the proletarian dictatorship as a practical question of the day, that, for the first time in the history of International Socialism, it has sought an ally for the proletariat. : 8. And here lies the highest merit of Bolshevism—it found this ally—in | the farmers, 4. In this sense it may be said, that Bolshevism “discovered” the role | of the farmers, for it recognized that i the farmers represent that power, the winning of which alone renders it. jto fight for socialism. By the year | Position.” Russia during the last two decisive secondly, February, 1917, saw the decades. The tactics pursued by joverthrow of that Czarism which Bolshevism in this particular ques-|had been for so many decades; tion ef the reciprocal relations be-|the main obstacle in the way of any tween working class and farmers,|kind of movement for freedom, not constitute a factor especially calcu- | only in Russia, but all over the world. lated to enhance the international|Czarism fell. And the February and universal character of Bolshevist | revolution, closely bound up with the tactics. great war, called upon the scene such The relations of the workers to|mighty forces from among the people the farmers—this is the most vital , (above all from among the farmers, thing in Bolshevism. Those who are |@8 the army was a farmers’ army) desirous of comprehending Bolshe- | that the proletariat of the towns was vism, and those who sincerely wish |enabled to undertake tasks of a far te become adherents of Bolshevism, | Wider extent, must study this side of Bolshevism} In the years 1905 and 1917 Bol- above all others, must grasp the fact |shevism took the farmers as it found that this is the factor determining|them. Neither in 1905 nor in 1917 the essential character of Bolshe-|did Bolshevism ignore the farmers. vism, And precisely here lay the funda- This is by no means asserting tha, |™mental power of Bolshevism, impart- wolshevism has created, all at once, a |ing it an inexhaustible force. Any complete and finished tactical formula ,;°2® who dreamed, in the year 1905, on the relations between the workers |°f setting before the Russian farm- and the farmers. Two decades of |S those tasks which they were profound political significance passed |CaPable of coping with in the year between the issue of the slogan of 1917, after the imperialist world war the “dictatorship of the workers and and after the February revolution, farmers,” formulated for the first | Would have been a Don Quixote, time by Lenin in the year 1904-5, and| 1s it possible, for instance, to draw the issue, ‘of the slogan of the work-|22y comparison between even the ers’ and farmers’ government, re- | French farmers of the pre-war period alized in Russia, and now proclaimed |#"d the French farmers after the for the whole Communist Interna- | WT? Even the French farmer chang- tional by International Communism. |¢@ entirely in many respects during But even at the very beginning of |the war years, 1914 to 1918. Had its political existence, Bolshevism the slogan of the “workers’ and farm- represented a real approach to the |S’ Sovernment,” for instance, been solution of this problem—the prob-|Proclaimed in France in the year lem that dominates all others. The |1910, it would have been nothing but first sign of life in Bolshevism may |#"2 empty phrase. And in the year 1903, commenced in mere disputes over organization matters. In the year. 1908 the tendency to- wards liquidation became very evi- dent. The tendency itself began to be felt in Petrograd as early as the beginning of 1908, if not at the end of 1907. But the expression, “liqui- dation”—as we clearly remember— first arose in the middie of 1908. A serious struggle arose within the Bolshevist faction itself. The epoch of counter-revolution gave rise to “Otsovism,” and to such excres- ences as the notorious “God’s image” idea. Hatred of the opportunist tac- ties pursued by the minority of the Duma faction at first induced even a number of revolutionary Bolshevist workers to support Otsovism. There- fore, the first artic.es which we is- sued against Otsovism were of an ex- ceedingly cautious didactic character. It was not until later on, when A. Bogdanov and Co, atempted to util- ize the trend of feeling among the Bolshevist workers for the purpose of forming an Otsovist faction that we adopted a sharper tone. The vic- tory of Otsovism would have signi- fied in reality the destruction of Bol- shevism. The cherished hope of the Mensheviki—that Bolshevism would degenerate into a mere sect, and cease to be a mass party—would have been best fulfilled by the Otsovist “tactics,” It was not until Bolshe- vism had carried thru an additional campaign against the attempta at liquidation from the “left,” that is, from Otsovism, rightly termed by us he cid to have been expressed by | 1923 it is an earnest revolutionary ““Menshevism reversed,” that Bolshe- this fact. Bolshevism has developed in the|¥mdergone by the French farmers in| And yet the transformation ; Vism was finally steeled and strengthened, and could demonstrate highest organic manner in regard to|'be Period between 1914 and 1918 its right to existence. the question of the estimate of the |C@mnot be compared in the slightest part played by the farmers. In the degree with that undergone by the year 1905, Bolshevism regarded the | Russian farmers during the same farmers solely as possible “tempo-|time, for the simple reason that rary allies for the proletariat in the France’s agrarian revolution had al- bourgeois democratic revolution. The |Teady taken place several generations farmers were anvious to aid the pro- before, and the agrarian question letariat in making a clean sweep of |¢°U/d not play such an important role Czarist despotism, and in solving the |?" France, during the period from agrarian question in a “plebeian |1914 to 1918, as it did in Russia. fashion.” They were anxious to re- |, The farmer question has also been lease the productive forces of Russia |the main bone of contention between from their restraining. fetters, and | Bolshevism and the tendencies hostile | tive character. Why did we devote so much atten- tion, at that time, to fighting against the “conciliation” tendency? Why did we deal our heaviest blows against the “center’? All these ten- dencies were represented by numeri- vaily insignificant groups, incapable of exercising serious influence on the labor movement. Where we di:Fered in opinion :rom the “center,” these differences of opinion were naturally of a produc- We were divided to lead the country thru free class} to it. This question has been the |from the Menshevist camp by differ- struggle to a democratic repub ic, |C@US¢ of the profoundest differences |ences of opinion in matters of prin- which was agaip to serve 9s the |f opinion. Menshevism adopted the arena in which the working class was , ine of the so-calied “all-national op- Menshevism considered 1917, Bolshevism was already accord- that the low grad@ of culture F cat ing a much more important role to | seabed by the farmers rendered them the farmers, a role corresponding to incapable of any historical act what- the fact that social development as |¢Ver. The Menshevist estimate of a whole had in the intertm attained the farmers has in actual fact been a much higher stage, and that the ‘highly counter gpvoiutionary and main class—the proletariat—was al- | domineering. ; ready at work on the immediate so-| The fights of 1905 suppressed the cialist revolution. working class for a long period. The But if this be the case—many of |farmers continued their uninterrupt- eigen for the proletariat to play |our readers may retort—were not the |¢d slumbers.- The conclusion arrived great part of emancipator in the world revolution. Anyone who has followed the most important moments in the his- tory of Bolshevism—trom the first important actual political platform of Bolshevism in the year 1904-5 (Comrade Lenin’s pamphlet on “Two Kinds of Tactics” dealing lucidly with the question of the “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the pro- letariat and the peasantry”), to the idea of the “Smytschka,” the alliance between workers and farmers, an idea which plays such a leading role at the present time—anyone who has followed all this will have arrived at the conviction that Bolshevism has svoken its decisive word precisely in this sphere. With regard to the question of the reciprocal relations between the pro- letariat and the farmers, the contri- butions of Marx and Engels have only been of the most general nature, and they were not in a position to give more. It has been the t'wk of Pyl- sheviem to impart living flesh and bleod to these general formulas fur- nished by Marx and Engels. The development of the political tactics of the proletariat in such a way as to create the possibility—along with the highest possib!e formal measures of “equal rights” between proletariat| Bolshevism was wrong in 1905. and farmers—of rendering the farm- ers in actuality the followers of the proletariat, and at the same time “in- ducing” the farmers to play the part of “reserve” for the proletariat en- gaged in fulfilling its great historical mission—this has been the great, question which Bolshevism has been able to answer successfully. And to- rag is perfectly, clear in all essen- tials that the most important prob- lems of the proletarian revolution on an international scale tend to follow the same lines—with certain varia- tions—as those which confronted adherents of the “permanent revolu-|@t by the Mensheviki from these tion” theory right with regard to | facts led them to a profoundly pressi- the Bolsheviki in the year 1905? mistic view as to the possibility of By no means. any renewed revolution whatever; The theory of “permanent revolu- | @nd having thus renounced all revolu- tion” ignored the farmers. It fail-|tionary prospects, Menshevism re- ed to observe the enornious signifi- |@rded it as its leading task to adapt eance—in many respects the decisive |itself to the limitations of Stolli- significance—of the farmers in a|Pin’s legality, and to create a real country like Russia, and not only in |“European” Social Democratic Party. Russia. This counter-revolutionary estimate Yes, in the year 1905 the view held ;of the role of the farmers gave rise by Bolshevism was that the impend- |to all that followed. ing revolution would only be a bour-| If the working class had been vic- geois democratic revolution. Even |torious in the year 1905, the Men- as late as 1916 Bolshevism still held ,Sheviki would have been able to join to this viewpoint to a great extent ; forces with it for atime. The prole- (see the well known theses issued |tariat was defeated. And it is not by the central organ of our party,|agreeable to unite one’s fate with vublished in the collection “Against |the defeated, So thought and felt the Stream,”) and in the year 1917,|™any Menshevist social democratic after the February revolution, Bol- |Super-party and non-party groups of shevism took an abrupt turn towards | the intelligenzia. the idea of immediate socialist revo-| In the year 1905, at the moment lution. The difficutties of the tran- | when the success of the revolutionary ition were exceedingly great. These | proletariat -had reached its highest difficulties caused the committal of | point, all of these intellectuals—from many errors, and especially of er- | Minski to Toff, from the Kuskova to rors made by the author of these |the rich engineers of the “Union of lines in the autumn of 1917, But it | Unions” attached themselves to the is only phrasemongers and super-' proletariat. But in a trice all these ficial rs who can maintain intelligenzia and would-be revolu- that this change took place “sudden- | tionists forsook the proletarian eman- ly,” and that it suppues a proof that | cipation movement, The ini began to desert revolutionary telligenzia Those who so judge forget one thing: |the party and the That 1905 and 1917 are divided by | movement wholesale, to boast of non- an epochmaking decade of decisive | partisanship. It became the right significance for the whole politics of |thing to find fault with the party. the international proletariat—and |The idea of a non-partisan “workers’ congress,” played off against an il- events took place yg these | legal revolutionary party, was_ ob- twelve years, first, the first imperial- | jectively counter-revolutionary in ist world war, which lasted four |c ¥ years, shook not only Russia, but| Disputes began on the fundamen- the whole ef Europe, to its founda-|tals of the program and tactics, tho a diye Wha crn ge. 10 | at first AE ee ae h uman lives, rushed the world | agreements on questions of organiza- Seare sie into historical downfall|tion. The first contest between Bol- with the rapidity of an express train, ‘shevism and Menshevism, in the year ciple. But the advocates of “concil- iation,” in supporting liquidatory Menshevism, in repeating its argu- ments, and even lending it cover by granting it an externa: uppearance of a.legiance to the party, were even more dangerous for a time than the liquidators themselves. I recollect that Rosa Luxembourg, when asked why she and her friends devoted so much attention to the fight against the German social democratic “cen- ter,” instead of simply routing the revisionists, she replied: “If it is still worth while to rout the revisionists at all, it is only if the centrists are combatted at the same time.” In Russia the state of affairs was simi- lar. The openly expressed ideas of the adherents of liquidation, smacked so much of betrayal, that they at once aroused the antagonism of the revolutionary workers, But the treacherously veiled ideas of liquida- tion, improved by the idea of “unity,” and associated with “party alleg- iance,” were much more able to lead the workers astray. The years 1909 to 1911 witnessea a rapprochement between the main core of the Bolsheviki and G. M. Plechanovy. The old revolutionist re- | awakened in Plechanov during these years. He could not reconcile him- self to the idea of liquidation. “Martov proposes that we drop the designation of ‘Party’”—thus wrote Plechanov to us—“and Martoy ought to be hanged for making this pro- posal.” At the same time the orthodox Bol- sheviki approached ne4rer to Ple- chanov in the course of their struggle against the philosophical revisionism of Bogdanov and Co. Our first at- legal Marxist press in Russia (the periodical Mis] in Moscow, the eee paper Sviesda in P.