Let's say that Lenin had not been able to return from Switzerland in 1917 and present his famous "April Theses." How much difference would it have made in the short run?
There is a widespread narrative about the Russian Revolution of 1917 which might be called the "Trotskyist" narrative because Leon Trotsky (who IIRC first propounded it in *Lessons of October*) did so much to popularize it in the West, especially with his *History of the Russian Revolution.* (It is a narrative that has gained acceptance with many people who are not in any way Trotskyists, Leninists, or indeed socialists of any kind.) Basically, this narrative runs as follows:
Before the "April Theses" the Bolsheviks were terribly disoriented and were indeed being led by Kamenev and Stalin, as editors of *Pravda*, to the verge of Menshevism--offering "conditional support" for the Provisional Government, taking in effect a defensist position on the war, etc. It took the return of Lenin and the "April Theses" to "rearm the Party" (to use the title of Chapter 16 of Trotsky's *History.* https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch16.htm ) and to get it to accept the concepts of no support for the Provisional Government and of "all power to the soviets." (Trotsky also insisted that Lenin by doing this had embraced Trotsky's own concept of "permanent revolution"; I won't go into this claim here.)
Lars T. Lih, a historian who has written voluminously about Lenin, says this is all wrong, that the Bolsheviks were already "armed" in 1917 before Lenin's arrival. In particular, he claims that Kamenev's views have been misunderstood. I am going to focus on Kamenev here because as a "moderate" Bolshevik he has often been given as the chief example of how confused and conciliatory (to the other socialist parties and even the liberals) leading Bolsheviks had become before Lenin's return. Lih reproduces in its entirety the March 14 *Pravda* editorial (unsigned, but clearly by Kamenev) that has been most subject to criticism (usually by taking a few sentences out of context). (Lih insists on keeping a few words in the original Russian, like *vlast'* ; he has argued elsewhere that the usual "power" is not quite an adequate translation:
https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2...he-soviets-biography-of-a-slogan-by-lars-lih/ )
***
The Provisional government and revolutionary social democracy
Full text of Kamenev’s Pravda editorial of March 14 1917
By Lev Kamenev. The Provisional government, created by the revolution, is much more moderate than the forces that gave it birth. The workers and the peasants dressed in soldier’s greatcoats were the ones who created the revolution. But in formal terms the vlast passed into the hands, not of the representatives of the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry, but of people pushed forward by the liberal movement of the class of property-owners. The proletariat and the peasantry, and the army composed of these classes, will consider the revolution now begun as completed only when it has satisfied their demands entirely and in full -- when all remnants of the former regime, economic as well as political, have been torn up to their very roots. This full satisfaction of their demands is possible only when full and complete vlast [vsia polnota vlasti] is in their own hands. Insofar as the revolution is going to develop and to deepen, it will come to this: to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
In contrast, the Provisional government, in accordance with the social nature of the strata from which it came, would like to hold back the development of the revolution at its first steps. If they have not done so as yet, it is only because they do not have the strength for it. Balking, against their will, they are compelled under the pressure of the revolutionary narod to still go forward. And for us, revolutionary Social Democrats, there is no need even to state that, insofar as [poskolku...postolku] the Provisional government actually struggles against the remnants of the old regime, to that extent it is assured of support from the revolutionary proletariat. Always and everywhere, when the Provisional government, bowing to the will of revolutionary democracy, as represented by the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, clashes with the reaction or the counterrevolution, the revolutionary proletariat must be ready with its support.
But this is support of actions [delo] and not of persons -- support not of the given composition of the Provisional government, but of those objectively revolutionary steps that it is compelled to take and to the extent that it actually undertakes them.
Therefore our support should in no way tie our hands. Just as we will energetically support it in the complete liquidation of the old regime and the monarchy, in the implementation of freedoms, etc, we will just as energetically criticise each failure of the Provisional government to act on its declared intentions [neposledovatelnost], each deviation from decisive struggle, each attempt to tie the hands of the narod or to put out the raging revolutionary fire.
We call upon the revolutionary democracy, headed by the proletariat, to exercise the most unwearying kontrol on all the actions of the vlast, whether in the centre or in the localities. We must realise that the paths of the democracy and of the Provisional government will diverge -- that, when the bourgeoisie comes to its senses, it will inevitably attempt to halt the revolutionary movement and not permit it to develop to the point of satisfying the essential needs of the proletariat and the peasantry.
We must be on the alert and ready to act. Calmly and coolly weighing our forces, we must use all our energy to gather, organise and consolidate the revolutionary proletariat. But there is no reason to force events. They are developing with immense speed by themselves.
And, precisely for this reason, it would be a political mistake to pose the question right now of replacing the Provisional government.
The active forces of the great revolution are working for us; they are exposing the inadequacy and the limitations of any attempt to solve the tasks of the revolution by means of compromise.
And only when the Provisional government of the liberals has exhausted itself before the face of the democracy of Russia will the question of the transfer of vlast into its own hands stand before the democracy as a practical question.
The slogan of the moment still remains: organisation of the forces of the proletariat, consolidation of the forces of the proletariat, peasantry and army by means of the Soviets of Deputies, absolute lack of belief [absoliutnoe nedoverie] in any liberal promises, the most constant kontrol on the implementation of our demands, an energetic support of each step that leads to the uprooting of all the remnants of the tsarist-landlord regime.
https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/lars-lih-russia-1917-bolshevism-was-fully-armed/
***
According to Lih, the depiction of Kamenev as "semi-Menshevik" is based on a confusion of two questions: "(1) Should we or should we not strive for a worker-peasant vlast that will replace the Provisional government? and (2) Should we or should we not go out on the streets to replace the Provisional government *today*?" Lih argues that Kamenev is saying "we should" to the first question and "we should not" to the second. At the same time, Kamenev makes it clear that the situation is developing rapidly, and that the PG has to give way to a government based on the soviets--and *not* in a matter of decades or years but months.
True, Kamenev does use the "insofar as" formulation. But, Lih argues:
"We should recall the concrete circumstances when, two weeks after the fall of the tsar, Kamenev wrote this editorial. The great mass of soldiers and workers, newly awakened to political life, still trusted the new Provisional government and its seemingly excellent anti-tsarist credentials. This trust was not just based on a deluded burst of revolutionary good feeling, as we usually describe the situation with more than a little condescension. The fact of the matter is that, in this slice of time, the Provisional government was actually carrying out revolutionary measures: dismantling the tsarist police apparatus, releasing political prisoners, setting up guarantees of basic political freedoms, laying the groundwork for national elections, and so forth.1 When Lenin returned in April, he famously said that Russia was now one of the freest countries in the world. He knew whereof he spoke.
"What was an aggressively leftwing political party to say when asked about its attitude toward a 'bourgeois' Provisional government acting in a progressive way? Deny that policies such as ending censorship were a good thing? Tell the enthusiastic workers and soldiers, 'We don't support *anything* done by this government, even otherwise laudable measures'? Both these approaches seem like dead ends.
"A better approach is to admit the obvious -- the Provisional government is carrying out measures that strengthen the revolution -- but in the most grudging way possible. Yes, yes, the bourgeois government is doing some good things -- but against its will, only at the behest of the workers and peasants and only insofar as the masses keep up the pressure. And no amount of pressure will keep this government from turning actively counterrevolutionary. No amount of pressure will get it to fulfil the full demands of the people. Yes, of course, we support specific actions, but not the politicians forced to carry out these actions. We will 'keep our hands untied', ready to withdraw our support and go on the offensive, because decisive battles loom ahead.."
Lih argues that the differences between Kamenev and Lenin were largely differences in tactics, such as whether certain slogans were *immediately* expedient:
"Nevertheless,[Kamenev] was reluctant to issue a slogan such as 'all power to the Soviets' as a directive from the Bolshevik leadership. Such a directive would be logically equivalent to saying 'down with the Provisional Government', with the strong implication that the time had come to go out on the streets in order to bring this government down. But Kamenev and the other Bolsheviks were convinced that any such effort would be premature and highly disorganizing. Removing the Provisional Government could only be done with much more mass support than existed in spring 1917. It should be noted that Lenin did not disagree with this diagnosis.
"The slogan adopted in April -- all power to the Soviets! -- is much more snappy and decisive than Kamenev’s careful prognostications in March. It conveys the Bolshevik program in three eloquent words. But adopting this slogan did carry the risk that Kamenev foresaw, namely, that eager workers and soldiers would take the slogan so seriously that they would make a premature attempt to remove the Provisional Government. In April, June and most dramatically in July, the Bolsheviks had to deal with the consequences feared by Kamenev in March: undisciplined and premature attempts to overthrow the Provisional Government. This is not to say that issuing the slogan in April was wrong --only that it carried a real cost..."
https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2...he-soviets-biography-of-a-slogan-by-lars-lih/
Or take the issue of making "demands" on the Provisional Government. Lenin ridiculed the idea of demanding that an "imperialist" government like the PG should renounce annexations. But as Lih notes these "demands" were really just an agitational device:
"Similarly, when socialists like Kamenev talk about making 'demands', they intended to use them as a means of exposure. As Kamenev asserted in his April debates with Lenin,
"'Should we, as a political party, take on ourselves to demand the publication of the secret treaties -- announce that this is our political demand? People will say to me, excuse me, you're demanding something impossible. But the demands I make are not founded on the expectation that Miliukov will respond to me and publish the treaties. The policy of making demands that I am advocating is an agitational device for the development of the masses, a method of exposure of the fact that Guchkov and Miliukov cannot do this, that they do not want the publication of the secret treaties, that they are against the policy of peace. It is a device for showing the masses that if they really want to create a revolutionary policy on an international level, then the vlast must be transferred into the hands of the soviet."
Elsewhere, I have noted that "even the 'moderate' Bolsheviks did not expect the Provisional Government to last for long. Stalin, for example, warned against a premature attempt to seize power, but added 'we must bide our time' until the Provisional Government discredits itself, and when that time comes 'The only organ capable of taking power is the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on an all-Russian scale.' Quoted in Robert M. Slusser, *Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution* (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press 1987), p. 44. Moreover, after the Mensheviks had retracted their support for a Bolshevik-inspired motion on foreign policy, Kamenev warned that 'Our task is to show that the only organ deserving our support is the Soviet of workers' deputies.' Robert Service, *Lenin: A Political Life, Volume 2: Worlds in Collision* (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1991) pp. 163-4."
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Y76mYk_HwOM/gyyWIvyeh5MJ
I am not saying that if Lenin had not returned, and if people like Kamenev and Zinoviev had led the Bolsheviks, there would have been nothing different in 1917. Kamenev and Zinoviev did think that a peaceful transfer of power to the soviets was possible, and opposed the October insurrection. But they were just as insistent as Lenin that the PG must go. (The point isn't just that the increasing impatience of the Petrograd soldiers would impel the Bolshevik leaders to oppose the PG--the point is that already in March Kamenev *anticipated* that the PG would lose its popularity and would have to be replaced by a "dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.") And I am not even sure that too much significance should be read into their favoring a coalition government of all the parties in the soviet instead of a purely Bolshevik one. After all, one can argue that eventually Kamenev and Zinoviev would have been led to one-party rule as well, if only because no other party would go along with the Bolsheviks on Brest-Litovsk...
There is a widespread narrative about the Russian Revolution of 1917 which might be called the "Trotskyist" narrative because Leon Trotsky (who IIRC first propounded it in *Lessons of October*) did so much to popularize it in the West, especially with his *History of the Russian Revolution.* (It is a narrative that has gained acceptance with many people who are not in any way Trotskyists, Leninists, or indeed socialists of any kind.) Basically, this narrative runs as follows:
Before the "April Theses" the Bolsheviks were terribly disoriented and were indeed being led by Kamenev and Stalin, as editors of *Pravda*, to the verge of Menshevism--offering "conditional support" for the Provisional Government, taking in effect a defensist position on the war, etc. It took the return of Lenin and the "April Theses" to "rearm the Party" (to use the title of Chapter 16 of Trotsky's *History.* https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch16.htm ) and to get it to accept the concepts of no support for the Provisional Government and of "all power to the soviets." (Trotsky also insisted that Lenin by doing this had embraced Trotsky's own concept of "permanent revolution"; I won't go into this claim here.)
Lars T. Lih, a historian who has written voluminously about Lenin, says this is all wrong, that the Bolsheviks were already "armed" in 1917 before Lenin's arrival. In particular, he claims that Kamenev's views have been misunderstood. I am going to focus on Kamenev here because as a "moderate" Bolshevik he has often been given as the chief example of how confused and conciliatory (to the other socialist parties and even the liberals) leading Bolsheviks had become before Lenin's return. Lih reproduces in its entirety the March 14 *Pravda* editorial (unsigned, but clearly by Kamenev) that has been most subject to criticism (usually by taking a few sentences out of context). (Lih insists on keeping a few words in the original Russian, like *vlast'* ; he has argued elsewhere that the usual "power" is not quite an adequate translation:
https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2...he-soviets-biography-of-a-slogan-by-lars-lih/ )
***
The Provisional government and revolutionary social democracy
Full text of Kamenev’s Pravda editorial of March 14 1917
By Lev Kamenev. The Provisional government, created by the revolution, is much more moderate than the forces that gave it birth. The workers and the peasants dressed in soldier’s greatcoats were the ones who created the revolution. But in formal terms the vlast passed into the hands, not of the representatives of the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry, but of people pushed forward by the liberal movement of the class of property-owners. The proletariat and the peasantry, and the army composed of these classes, will consider the revolution now begun as completed only when it has satisfied their demands entirely and in full -- when all remnants of the former regime, economic as well as political, have been torn up to their very roots. This full satisfaction of their demands is possible only when full and complete vlast [vsia polnota vlasti] is in their own hands. Insofar as the revolution is going to develop and to deepen, it will come to this: to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
In contrast, the Provisional government, in accordance with the social nature of the strata from which it came, would like to hold back the development of the revolution at its first steps. If they have not done so as yet, it is only because they do not have the strength for it. Balking, against their will, they are compelled under the pressure of the revolutionary narod to still go forward. And for us, revolutionary Social Democrats, there is no need even to state that, insofar as [poskolku...postolku] the Provisional government actually struggles against the remnants of the old regime, to that extent it is assured of support from the revolutionary proletariat. Always and everywhere, when the Provisional government, bowing to the will of revolutionary democracy, as represented by the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies, clashes with the reaction or the counterrevolution, the revolutionary proletariat must be ready with its support.
But this is support of actions [delo] and not of persons -- support not of the given composition of the Provisional government, but of those objectively revolutionary steps that it is compelled to take and to the extent that it actually undertakes them.
Therefore our support should in no way tie our hands. Just as we will energetically support it in the complete liquidation of the old regime and the monarchy, in the implementation of freedoms, etc, we will just as energetically criticise each failure of the Provisional government to act on its declared intentions [neposledovatelnost], each deviation from decisive struggle, each attempt to tie the hands of the narod or to put out the raging revolutionary fire.
We call upon the revolutionary democracy, headed by the proletariat, to exercise the most unwearying kontrol on all the actions of the vlast, whether in the centre or in the localities. We must realise that the paths of the democracy and of the Provisional government will diverge -- that, when the bourgeoisie comes to its senses, it will inevitably attempt to halt the revolutionary movement and not permit it to develop to the point of satisfying the essential needs of the proletariat and the peasantry.
We must be on the alert and ready to act. Calmly and coolly weighing our forces, we must use all our energy to gather, organise and consolidate the revolutionary proletariat. But there is no reason to force events. They are developing with immense speed by themselves.
And, precisely for this reason, it would be a political mistake to pose the question right now of replacing the Provisional government.
The active forces of the great revolution are working for us; they are exposing the inadequacy and the limitations of any attempt to solve the tasks of the revolution by means of compromise.
And only when the Provisional government of the liberals has exhausted itself before the face of the democracy of Russia will the question of the transfer of vlast into its own hands stand before the democracy as a practical question.
The slogan of the moment still remains: organisation of the forces of the proletariat, consolidation of the forces of the proletariat, peasantry and army by means of the Soviets of Deputies, absolute lack of belief [absoliutnoe nedoverie] in any liberal promises, the most constant kontrol on the implementation of our demands, an energetic support of each step that leads to the uprooting of all the remnants of the tsarist-landlord regime.
https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/lars-lih-russia-1917-bolshevism-was-fully-armed/
***
According to Lih, the depiction of Kamenev as "semi-Menshevik" is based on a confusion of two questions: "(1) Should we or should we not strive for a worker-peasant vlast that will replace the Provisional government? and (2) Should we or should we not go out on the streets to replace the Provisional government *today*?" Lih argues that Kamenev is saying "we should" to the first question and "we should not" to the second. At the same time, Kamenev makes it clear that the situation is developing rapidly, and that the PG has to give way to a government based on the soviets--and *not* in a matter of decades or years but months.
True, Kamenev does use the "insofar as" formulation. But, Lih argues:
"We should recall the concrete circumstances when, two weeks after the fall of the tsar, Kamenev wrote this editorial. The great mass of soldiers and workers, newly awakened to political life, still trusted the new Provisional government and its seemingly excellent anti-tsarist credentials. This trust was not just based on a deluded burst of revolutionary good feeling, as we usually describe the situation with more than a little condescension. The fact of the matter is that, in this slice of time, the Provisional government was actually carrying out revolutionary measures: dismantling the tsarist police apparatus, releasing political prisoners, setting up guarantees of basic political freedoms, laying the groundwork for national elections, and so forth.1 When Lenin returned in April, he famously said that Russia was now one of the freest countries in the world. He knew whereof he spoke.
"What was an aggressively leftwing political party to say when asked about its attitude toward a 'bourgeois' Provisional government acting in a progressive way? Deny that policies such as ending censorship were a good thing? Tell the enthusiastic workers and soldiers, 'We don't support *anything* done by this government, even otherwise laudable measures'? Both these approaches seem like dead ends.
"A better approach is to admit the obvious -- the Provisional government is carrying out measures that strengthen the revolution -- but in the most grudging way possible. Yes, yes, the bourgeois government is doing some good things -- but against its will, only at the behest of the workers and peasants and only insofar as the masses keep up the pressure. And no amount of pressure will keep this government from turning actively counterrevolutionary. No amount of pressure will get it to fulfil the full demands of the people. Yes, of course, we support specific actions, but not the politicians forced to carry out these actions. We will 'keep our hands untied', ready to withdraw our support and go on the offensive, because decisive battles loom ahead.."
Lih argues that the differences between Kamenev and Lenin were largely differences in tactics, such as whether certain slogans were *immediately* expedient:
"Nevertheless,[Kamenev] was reluctant to issue a slogan such as 'all power to the Soviets' as a directive from the Bolshevik leadership. Such a directive would be logically equivalent to saying 'down with the Provisional Government', with the strong implication that the time had come to go out on the streets in order to bring this government down. But Kamenev and the other Bolsheviks were convinced that any such effort would be premature and highly disorganizing. Removing the Provisional Government could only be done with much more mass support than existed in spring 1917. It should be noted that Lenin did not disagree with this diagnosis.
"The slogan adopted in April -- all power to the Soviets! -- is much more snappy and decisive than Kamenev’s careful prognostications in March. It conveys the Bolshevik program in three eloquent words. But adopting this slogan did carry the risk that Kamenev foresaw, namely, that eager workers and soldiers would take the slogan so seriously that they would make a premature attempt to remove the Provisional Government. In April, June and most dramatically in July, the Bolsheviks had to deal with the consequences feared by Kamenev in March: undisciplined and premature attempts to overthrow the Provisional Government. This is not to say that issuing the slogan in April was wrong --only that it carried a real cost..."
https://johnriddell.wordpress.com/2...he-soviets-biography-of-a-slogan-by-lars-lih/
Or take the issue of making "demands" on the Provisional Government. Lenin ridiculed the idea of demanding that an "imperialist" government like the PG should renounce annexations. But as Lih notes these "demands" were really just an agitational device:
"Similarly, when socialists like Kamenev talk about making 'demands', they intended to use them as a means of exposure. As Kamenev asserted in his April debates with Lenin,
"'Should we, as a political party, take on ourselves to demand the publication of the secret treaties -- announce that this is our political demand? People will say to me, excuse me, you're demanding something impossible. But the demands I make are not founded on the expectation that Miliukov will respond to me and publish the treaties. The policy of making demands that I am advocating is an agitational device for the development of the masses, a method of exposure of the fact that Guchkov and Miliukov cannot do this, that they do not want the publication of the secret treaties, that they are against the policy of peace. It is a device for showing the masses that if they really want to create a revolutionary policy on an international level, then the vlast must be transferred into the hands of the soviet."
Elsewhere, I have noted that "even the 'moderate' Bolsheviks did not expect the Provisional Government to last for long. Stalin, for example, warned against a premature attempt to seize power, but added 'we must bide our time' until the Provisional Government discredits itself, and when that time comes 'The only organ capable of taking power is the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on an all-Russian scale.' Quoted in Robert M. Slusser, *Stalin in October: The Man Who Missed the Revolution* (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press 1987), p. 44. Moreover, after the Mensheviks had retracted their support for a Bolshevik-inspired motion on foreign policy, Kamenev warned that 'Our task is to show that the only organ deserving our support is the Soviet of workers' deputies.' Robert Service, *Lenin: A Political Life, Volume 2: Worlds in Collision* (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press 1991) pp. 163-4."
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/Y76mYk_HwOM/gyyWIvyeh5MJ
I am not saying that if Lenin had not returned, and if people like Kamenev and Zinoviev had led the Bolsheviks, there would have been nothing different in 1917. Kamenev and Zinoviev did think that a peaceful transfer of power to the soviets was possible, and opposed the October insurrection. But they were just as insistent as Lenin that the PG must go. (The point isn't just that the increasing impatience of the Petrograd soldiers would impel the Bolshevik leaders to oppose the PG--the point is that already in March Kamenev *anticipated* that the PG would lose its popularity and would have to be replaced by a "dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.") And I am not even sure that too much significance should be read into their favoring a coalition government of all the parties in the soviet instead of a purely Bolshevik one. After all, one can argue that eventually Kamenev and Zinoviev would have been led to one-party rule as well, if only because no other party would go along with the Bolsheviks on Brest-Litovsk...
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