1905-1914: Years of Reaction

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Isarism scored a temporary lory in 1905, but the shevik Party was able to isform this experience into victorious revolution of ober 1917. As Lenin arked later: "Without the iss rehearsal' of 1905 the югу of the October rolution in 1917 would e been impossible." me of the most significant dopments after 1905 was a Dupment of class forces. The bourgeoisie, and its esentatives like Struve, openly to the camp of the ater-revolution. They held the Ement of the working class in | greater fear than Tsarism. he Mensheviks by adapting to pressures ot the bourgeoisie, stently sought to relegate the king class to a subordinate role -in which the workers would Ly provide the muscle to push leh the cart of the democratic ation and then hand over the • of power to the liberal geoisie.

Men, therefore, the liberal geoisie ended its flirtation with working class during 1905, the shevik faction Social locracy turned on the working i and blamed workers for the It of 1905. They claimed that essive" demands, like the eight i day, had driven the liberal geoisie away from the side of lation into the arms of the lord class and Isarism. ne perspective of Menshevism forerunner of the later Stalinist ry of revolution in rigidly red stages - first the democratic b and only then, in the distant Fe, after a period of capitalist mably led them to bow before uberal bourgeoisie and deny working class a leading role in Evolution. (hen the liberal bourgeoisie doned the perspective of the throw Tsardom. lationary means, so did the theviks. ! the eyes of the Mensheriks, Frer, the revolution had come end. Tsarism had been formed from an autocracy into tonstitutional monarchy and More it was essential for the to water down its amme, become acceptable to tate, dissolve its underground • form of organisation and fist with Tsarism.

BOLSHEVIKS te Bolshevik faction when it • its assessment of 1905 took ipposing point of view. They Tsarism had only won the first i in a fight which could only when the working class leted the bourgeois ocratic revolution as part of the Er leading to the socialist Iation. his revolutionary task had been resolved and the party during period 1907-10 needed to take the measures necessary to ave its political independence | the reign of terror and son under Prime Minister pin.

Tupskaya in her book arise of Tonin Meerrihas the beginnings of Stolypin's period of terror in June 1906:

"The government, feeling that it could not place further reliance on the Duma, opened the offensive. Peaceful demonstrations began to broken up, incendiarism started in buildings used for public meetings, and pogroms commenced against the Jews".

The period of reaction was the outcome of the Tsarist autocracy's failure to stem the revolutionary tide, which continued from 1905-7, by means of granting a state duma (Parliament) which included limited working class and peasant representation.

Although the party of the bourgeoisie, the Cadets, won an overwhelming majority, the revolutionary mood of the peasantry was also reflected in the Duma and, as a result, clashed with the Carist government, who consequently dissolved the Duma.

In following their turn towards non party workers, the Mensheviks were forced to abandon the revolutionary programme of Social Democracy with its demands for a democratic republic and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Liquidationism set out to destroy both the political independence of the party and its programme, subordinating workers to the interests of the bourgeoisie by adapting to bourgeois legality.

ILLEGALITY

The decisive turning point was June 3rd 1907 when the second state Duma was dissolved and the Social Democratic delegates were arrested on charges of conspiracy. A neriod of illegality began. This was a period of crisis for the party when its very survival came under Even before the coup of June 3rd, the Mensheviks had responded to the counter-revolutionary movement by writing in the bourgeois press, where they had initiated a campaign for a non-party Workers Congress.

By contrast the Bolsheviks had begun. preparations to underground; they had also issued the illegal paper Proletarii. What the Mensheviks, however, were doing by calling for a non-party workers' congress, far from protecting the party, was seeking to dissolve or liquidate the party. This trend was for this reason termed liquidationism by the Bolsheviks.

The years 1907-10 were dangerous years for revolutionaries. Those who remained in Russia faced imprisonment and torture if discovered, or even assassination at the hands of the Russian fascists, the "Black Hundreds', as tbey became known. lessimism and demoralisation became a cancerous rot in the party.

As Zinovier writes, it even affected the cultural climate of this period:

"Degeneration could be observed - as is always the case after defeats - in all spheres of culture, both in science and literature, which brought forth a flowering of pornography, mysticism and every kind of religious outlook"

There was a marked trend towards philosophical idealism. Party members, especially petty-bourgeois intellectuals, left in droves. This desertion from Marxism was highlighted in the debate on legal opportunities.

After the June 3rd Coup, the Isarist government altered the franchise so that peasant deputies had to be approved by the big landowners. As a consequence it was clear that the 3rd State Duma would be brazenly reactionary. At first a majority of Bolsheviks supported boycotting it. Lenin, however, resolutely argued for participation in the Duma, notwithstanding its reactionary character.

In 1905 the Bolsheviks had adopted a position of boycotting the so-called 'Bulygin Duma' but that had been a purely consultative body and had been an attempt to divert the revolutionary movement, then stil on the boil, into legal channels.

The conditions in 1907 were entirely different. The State Duma, argued Lenin, afforded very precious opportunity to use a legal opening to direct revolutionary agitation at the masses.

THE BOYCOTTERS The faction which was in favour of boycotting the state Duma became known as the 'Otzovists' (Recallists) because they wanted to recall deputies from the State Duma. Their arguments, though very revolutionary sounding, were a form of desertion - a retreat from the harsh struggle to contact the working class with the Party's agitation by whatever channels were available.

Their arguments would have led the Party away from the trade unions also, as these were reactionary. This was sectarianism, which sought to cut the party ofi from contact with the working class. If successful, it would have transformed the Bolsheviks into a sect which turned in on itself.

Opportunism in these years of reaction thus took two apparently opposite but related forms liquidationism on the one side, and sectarianism on the other. The logic of both was to destroy the independence and effectiveness of the Marxist party of the working class.

A particular danger arising from liquidationism was that in seeking to dissolve the Party into the working class and transform it from a vanguard into a rearguard party, prey to the influence of the bourgeoisie, it encouraged an undisciplined attitude to the party, provided the ideal soil in which spies and 'agent provocatuers' could flourish.

After the 1905 revolution, the Tsarist government attempted to infiltrate the Party with spies.

The mood of disillusionment and despair which bore down heavily on Party members created ripe conditions for the autocracy to recruit unstable Party elements as spies.

In this way, Malinovsky, a talented though unstable revolutionary, was able to occupy a leading position within the Party whilst being in the pay of the Okhrana, the Russian secret police.

PLEKHANOV

Not all Mensheviks succumbed to liquidationism. A group of Mensheviks, around Plekhanov, although supporting the Mensheviks on. other questions, roundly condemned the liquidators.

Lenin therefore formed an alliance with this small section of the Mensheviks in defence of the Party against liquidationism both in the ranks of the Mensheviks and against what he termed "liquidationism from the left" - the 'Otzovists' or boycotters. In 1909, the boycotters were expelled from the Bolshevik tendency.

PHILOSOPHY

A number of boycotters, headed by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, also came out openly against Marx's materialist philosophy. In its place they adopted the idealist views of Ernst Mach, called 'Empirio Criticism'. In his book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism Lenin defended materialism against idealist philosophy. Again he was joined by Plekhanov.

This dispute was not academic, although it was fought out at a high theoretical level. Lenin grasped that philosophical questions were intimately bound up with practical issues: it was no coincidence that the empirio critics were sectarians in their practice.

Their most blatant revision of Marxism was a pernicious attempt to reconcile Marxism and religion, the latter being a weapon in the ideological armoury of the ruling class. While they did not believe in outward trappings the organised church, they believed in a kind of "Marxist version" of god.

Gorki, the famous Russian writer, was also involved in the Lenin 'God-builders' faction, as it was known. His efforts to organise a Party school on the island of Capri propagandise these. views to worker members, came to naught when a number of the workers present, as soon as they were treated to lecture OD God-building, upped and went to join Lenin in exile outside Paris.

Lenin, almost alonrerase with need break with liquidationism, whether of the left or right variety. Many, including leading Bolsheviks, preached the need for unity. Lenin, too, argued for party unity but he did not include liquidationism 'Otzovism', trends which were intent upon destroying the party.

A leading advocate of unity was Trotsky, who stood outside both the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions and attempted wrongly to reconcile Bolsheviks, pro-party Mensheviks. liquidators and Once the working class began to stir again, it became necessary to break frey the liquidationer is the party were to gather its scattered forces and resist the efforts of the bourgeoisie and its agents within the working class to undermine it.

The period, beginning in late 1910, up to the start of the war in August 1914 was marked by a revolutionary revival.

"Every month," wrote Krupskaya, "saw an increase in the strength of the labour movement. But this movement was now growing under conditions entirely different from those in which the labour movement grew before 1905. It was developing on the basis of the experiences of the 1905 revolution... The proletariat had gone through a great deal - a wave of strikes, a number of armed uprisings, a tremendous mass movement; and it had experienced years of defeat."

UPSURGE

The revolutionary upsurge began with the mass strikes in response to the shooting of 270 strikers from the Lena goldmines in Siberia. Immediately, the Bolsheviks founded Lvezda, an agitational newspaper, in order to contact the resurgent workers' movement.

Although they collaborated with the pro-Party Mensheviks, it gradually became a solely Bolshevik organ. Like the pre-1905 paper Iskra it became a weapon in the struggle against opportunism within the working class movement, especially the liquidators.

The break with the liquidators was confirmed at the Prague Conference of 1912. Here, as Zinoviev puts it:

"A handful of delegates (some 20 to 25 in number) led by Comrade Lenin ... took upon itselt the presumption to proclaim itselt the Party... This conference deposed the Old Central Committee which had half rotted away and said to itself: it is we who are the Party; whoever is not with us is against us; we will conduct a sharp struggle against everyone who refuses for his part to struggle against liquidationism"

One of the most important decisions of this historic conference was to establish a daily paper, Prayda.

Pravda gradually won leadership of the working class. This was reflected amongst other things, by the kopecks which literally flooded in from the pockets of workers to help finance the paper. Also in the elections to the State Duma, six Bolshevik deputies out of a possible six were elected from the workers' districts.

The split with the Menshevik liquidators was historically justified. It was the struggle by the Bolsheviks to safeguard the leading tole of the working class in the revolution that enabled the Party to sustain the enormous pressures which the bourgeoisie exert on the workets movement.

These pressures which came to the fore most clearly with the outbreak of the First World War, were to produce the greatest. divisions within the movement internationally. Only Bolshevism withstood them.

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SOCIALI I PR ESS, Wednesday 11th F Fighting on alone the WSL took the issue up at factory and regional level in the TGWU: While the they were emotionally tipe for rushing into a hasty marriage to Workers Fight, an organisation