CHAPTER ONE

Background to 1917

  THE PARTY which gained power in October 1917 was the Russian Communist Party – known as the Bolsheviks, from a word meaning majority, because their wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party had received the support of a majority of the delegates at a conference held in London in 1903. The party had been formed in 1898 and had inherited traditions from various movements against the Tsarist autocracy active earlier in the nineteenth century.

Russia was a predominantly agricultural country, freed from serfdom only in 1861 and with the mass of peasants brutally oppressed and desperately poor. Capitalism was growing but was still limited in extent and the immature capitalist class were so weak politically that it was commonly accepted that the full development of capitalism could only be achieved through a peasant and working class uprising to overthrow Tsarism. Some groups, however, believed it possible to introduce
Socialism without going through capitalism and most of them, including many claiming to be Marxist, rejected the possibility of the workers and peasants being capable of grasping the meaning of Socialism. Lacking the franchise and parliamentary institutions, and without the legal right to form political and trade union organisations, some groups turned in despair to political assassination.

  I n 1917, along with the Bolsheviks, the principal political parties were the other wing of the RSDLP, the Mensheviks (from a word meaning minority) who believed that Russia must pass through the normal stages of capitalist development and a
democratically elected parliament, and the Socialist Revolutionaries, a largely peasant party which stood primarily for the abolition of private property in land and which made use of political assassination as a weapon of struggle.
The organisational principles of the Bolsheviks were elaborated by their leader Lenin in a work ‘What is to be done?’ published in 1902. In it he argued that in all countries socialist ideas have to be brought to the working class from outside, by the “revolutionary socialist intelligentsia”. According to Lenin, “the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness...”.(Lenin, ‘Selected works’, Vol. 2. Lawrence and Wishart, London 1936, page 53.) 

 In keeping with this conception the political organisation to lead the would consist “chiefly of persons engaged in revolutionary activities as a profession” (page 139.) And because ‘democratic control’ was held to be incompatible with the need for
secrecy the party would have to be controlled from the centre (page 155). The Bolsheviks’ immediate aim was not to introduce socialism, but “to overthrow the tsarist autocracy and to supplant it by a republic on the basis of a democratic
constitution”. For this purpose they sought support in any and every discontented group, hoping that by so doing the minority of professional revolutionaries would lead the working class and draw the peasants along with them. At the same time they
declared that the ultimate aim of social revolution would require a “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

 In 1905, following the defeat of the Russian forces in the Russo-Japanese war, demonstrations and disorders occurred all over the country but without any unified aim. Liberals were demanding a democratically elected legislature, factory workers
higher pay and shorter hours, peasants the land, soldiers and sailors better treatment and the ‘professional revolutionaries’ a social revolution. At the peak there were strikes, uprisings, land seizures and mutinies in the navy but when the Tsarist
authorities promised an elected Duma with legislative powers the movements lost  their drive. The government then resorted to counter measures and within two years Social Democratic deputies in the Duma were arrested and the autocracy was in full
control again. Lenin later described the events of 1905 as the “dress rehearsal” of 1917.
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