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CHAPTER TWO The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1921 The Russian Revolution was not a simple matter of the conspiratorial seizure of power, but one of the most complex events in all history. As in the English and French revolutions, the unexpected collapse of the monarchy's authority initiated a sequence of political convulsions, as power passed through a succession of leading groups, with growing extremism and violence. Stable rule by the Communists (as the Bolsheviks renamed themselves in 1918) was not consolidated until 1921, by which time they had lost much of their revolutionary utopianism. During the years of the revolution the Communist Party was by no means a single-minded force, though Lenin always exerted commanding influence. At every stage in the revolution dissident groups arose among the Communists to object to Lenin's course of action—some who found it too rash, others who protested its expedient compromises. The revolutionary period reveals the wide range of political and social alternatives which the general standpoint of radical Russian Marxism allowed. The years 1917-1921, during which the Communists seized power, endured factional controversy, and fought their way to victory in a bitter civil war, were the critical, formative period of the Soviet regime and of the Communist movement as a whole. Communism was specifically the child of the Russian Revolution, and its basic character—the exclusive dictatorship of a bureaucratic party in a bureaucratic state—stemmed directly from the way in which the conditions of that era selected among the political alternatives offered by the revolutionary movement. Lenin's Return to Russia When Tsar Nicholas II fell in February, 1971 (March, by the Western Gregorian calendar ), Lenin and the Bolsheviks were taken by surprise. The moderate and hopefully democratic Provisional Government which was established under Prince Lvov seemed to refute Lenin's contention that the Russian middle class could not rule. Most of the Bolsheviks in Russia, including Stalin, were inclined to accept the Provisional Government for the time being, on condition that it work for an end to the war. When Lenin reached Russia in April after his famous "sealed car" trip across Germany, he promptly denounced his Bolshevik colleagues for failing to take a sufficiently revolutionary stand. 1. In our attitude towards the war, which also under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia's part a predatory imperialist war owing FROM: Lenin, "On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution" (the "April Theses," April 7 [20], 1917;* Selected Works, Vol. II, book 2 , pp. 13-17). *Russian dates are old style, with new style in brackets, up to the calendar reform effective February I [20], 1918; all new style thereafter—Ed. The Bolshevik Revolution, ig 17-1921 43 to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to "revolutionary defencism" is permissible. The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poor sections of the peasantry bordering on the proletariat; b) that all annexations be renounced in actual fact and not in word; c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests. In view of the undoubted honesty of the broad strata of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism, who accept the war as a necessity only, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence. The most widespread propaganda of this view in the army on active service must be organized. Fraternization. 2. The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that it represents a transition from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organization of the proletariat, placed the power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to the second stage, which must place the power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry. This transition is characterized, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognized rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the...

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