From Lenin To Leninism

Osvaldo Coggiola
In "The Age of Extremes," Eric Hobsbawm defined Lenin as "the man with the greatest individual
impact on the history of the 20th century." As is known, he was the principal (though not sole)
leader of the October Revolution, whose shadow loomed and continues to loom over the world.
His myth inspired the specter that haunted the century, that of the "world communist revolution,"
used to justify wars and unprecedented massacres in history. In Russia, the birthplace of the
"communist specter" and a "country of unpredictable past," interpretations of Lenin by various
authors have been diametrically opposed. Dimitri Volkogonov, for instance, who for years
sustained the Soviet "official" version, presenting Bolshevism as an "absolute good" born from
Lenin's mind. Conversely, Trotsky was portrayed as the embodiment of evil, an enemy of Lenin
from beginning to end (albeit concealing this for a brief period), and an opponent of socialism due
to imperialism. In a trilogy devoted to the most important characters in the history of the USSR,
Volkogonov completely changed his stance: Bolshevism was now the "absolute evil," born from
Lenin's (demonic) genius. As for Stalin and Trotsky, they were "enemies brothers"; the former a
legitimate son of Lenin. Volkogonov tendentiously interpreted phrases, in which "note by note,
letter by letter, Lenin, the semi-deity venerated for 62 years, even by me, appears not as the
magnanimous guide of legend, but as a cynical tyrant, willing to do anything to seize and retain
power." "Semi-deity venerated": that was Lenin's status in the "official history" of the USSR. A
Western practitioner of potboiler history, in the wake of post-Soviet anti-communist reaction,
titled one of his works "Lenin, the Cause of Evil" (Mourousy, 1992).

"Leninism" was created upon Lenin's death as a supposedly infallible doctrine, capable of ensuring,
through its "application," the victory of the socialist revolution. A century later, on the terrain
cleared and also devastated by victorious and defeated revolutions, by wars and bloody counter-
revolutions, it is worth considering the conditions that shaped the man, and also those that
presided over the doctrine that inspired the so-called "international communist movement."
Bukharin summarized: "Marx mainly provided the algebra of capitalist development and
revolutionary action; Lenin added the algebra of new phenomena of destruction and construction,
as well as its arithmetic. He deciphered the formulas of algebra from a concrete and practical point
of view." (Bukharin, 1976) This in a country where, in Trotsky's summary, "the fall of the monarchy
had long been the indispensable condition for the development of the economy and culture of
Russia. But the forces to carry out this task were lacking. The bourgeoisie trembled before the
revolution. The intellectuals tried to organize the peasantry around them. Unable to generalize
their efforts and objectives, the peasant did not respond to the appeals of the youth. The
intelligentsia armed itself with dynamite. An entire generation was consumed in this struggle." This
included Lenin's older brother, Alexander Ulyanov, a populist, executed by the czarist regime for
conspiring against the monarch, without any assassination attempt being made against him.

A member of the subsequent revolutionary generation, Lenin began his career in the RSDLP
(Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) by combating, within old Russian populism (including its
dynamite-leaning tendency), its alleged specific, "Eastern," path to socialism, based on the survival
of the Russian agrarian community (the mir). It was mistaken to maintain the possibility of realizing
a Russian socialism based on the rural community, as the Narodniks did, since capitalist
development had created social differentiation within rural communities. The village was in the
process of dissolution, giving rise, on the one hand, to capitalist agricultural property and, on the
other, to agricultural wage laborers. His diagnosis of the dissolution of the old rural community
(confirmed by subsequent historical research) (Atkinson, 1983), outlined in various works,
especially in "The Development of Capitalism in Russia," followed in the footsteps of Plekhanov's
political struggle against populism, summarized in "Our Differences." (Haron, 1963)

Lenin added a differentiated evaluation of the peasant movement, which pointed to the nodal
point of the revolutionary strategy, the worker-peasant alliance. In the Agrarian Program of Social
Democracy, he stated: "The mistake of certain Marxists consists in criticizing the theory of the
populists, losing sight of its historically real and legitimate content in the struggle against
feudalism. They criticize, and rightly so, the 'principle of labor' and 'equalitarianism' as backward,
reactionary, petty-bourgeois socialism, and forget that these theories express advanced,
revolutionary petty-bourgeois democratic ideals; these theories serve as the banner of the most
determined struggles against old Russia, feudal Russia. The idea of equality is the most
revolutionary idea in the struggle against the old order of absolutism in general and against the old
feudal and latifundist land ownership regime in particular. The idea of equality is legitimate and
progressive among the petty-bourgeois peasants because it expresses the aspiration for
redistribution."

For Lenin, "the agrarian question constituted the basis of the bourgeois revolution in Russia and
determined the national peculiarity of this revolution." (Gruppi, 1979) The goals he set for the
bourgeois revolution were: democratic republic, constituent assembly, and provisional
revolutionary government under the dictatorship of the workers' and peasants' democracy. The
means to achieve these objectives would be armed popular insurrection. According to Lenin, the
party should promote a revolution of workers and peasants, and this, while carrying out the
democratic revolution, even preparing the ground for the socialist revolution, could not escape, at
least for some time, the fate of a bourgeois revolution. Trotsky, a member of the subsequent
generation, understood that the proletariat would have to seek the support of the peasants, but
could not stop there: in completing the bourgeois revolution, the proletariat would inevitably be
induced to carry out its own revolution, without interruption. The already controversial issue of
the revolution's program was intertwined with that of organization, which gave rise to Bolshevism,
identified with Lenin.

Lenin's political role at the turn of the century was to lay the groundwork for the organization of a
unified workers' party, after the dispersion of the groups participating in the founding congress of
the RSDLP in 1898. A sort of unity existed through reference to exiled socialists, led by Plekhanov.
But "up until then, Plekhanov's group had been mainly concerned with the problem of theoretical
orientation, due to the fact that there was no political party that identified with Marx's theory and
sought to spread this doctrine among the popular masses." (Hill, 1987) In "Our Immediate Task," of
1899, Lenin defined that "the party has not ceased to exist; it has only withdrawn into itself, to
gather strength and face the task of unifying all Russian Social Democrats on firm ground.
Achieving this unification, developing convenient forms, definitively setting aside fragmented
localist work: these are the most immediate and essential tasks of Russian Social Democrats." How
did Bolshevism, Lenin's great political creation, emerge in these conditions?
Against the ahistorical interpretation, it has been pointed out that "there are three organizations
habitually designated as the 'Bolshevik party': 1) the RSDLP, between 1903 and 1911, in which
many factions disputed leadership; 2) the Bolshevik faction within the same party; 3) the RSDLP
(Bolshevik) finally founded in 1912, which received important reinforcements, especially that of
the 'inter-district organization' of Petrograd with Trotsky, before becoming the victorious Bolshevik
party in October." (Broué, 1971) Bolshevism was a current that emerged from ideological and
political disputes, from splits and mergers, but with continuity. It was Lenin who early on
undertook to relativize the political and organizational principles of "What Is to Be Done?" (1902),
considered (wrongly) the founding document of Bolshevism, as being those of a "new type" of
party. The term "Bolshevik" initially meant majority (of the II Congress of the RSDLP, 1903). Writing
in 1907 a preface to the reissue of his works, Lenin criticized the exegetes of "What Is to Be
Done?", who "completely separate this work from its context in a defined historical situation—a
period long surpassed by the development of the party," noting that "no other organization except
the one led by Iskra could, in the circumstances of Russia from 1900 to 1905, have created a social
democratic workers' party such as the one that was created... What Is to Be Done? is a summary of
the tactics and organizational policies of the Iskra group in 1901 and 1902.
That tactic and that policy were not considered original, but rather a version, within the Russian
conditions (severe repression, absence of democratic freedoms and political democracy), of the
principles of the Second International, especially the German SPD, of which the head of the
German police said in 1883, "foreign socialist parties consider it as the example to be imitated in all
its aspects." (Haupt, 1980) Lenin proposed an organization of revolutionaries, conspiratorial and
centralized, which would also be a workers' organization, with ample room for internal debate but
with full unity of action. If the first aspect was emphasized, it was because it clashed with the
supporters of a "loose" party, which the Bolsheviks did not consider adapted to Russian conditions.
For Lenin, the revolutionary "should not idealize the union secretary but the popular tribune, who
knows how to react against any manifestation of arbitrariness and oppression, wherever it occurs,
whatever the class or social layer affected, who knows how to generalize all facts to compose a
complete picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation, who knows how to seize the
slightest opportunity to expose his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, to explain to
everyone the historical significance of the proletariat's emancipatory struggle."

In summary, a workers' party and also professional. This idea would be maintained in all phases of
Bolshevism, including changes in program. From it, combined with specific circumstances,
Bolshevism was profiled as a differentiated political current within socialist currents, including
international ones, beyond the intentions of its founders. Lenin changed not once, but several
times his assessment of the nature of the Russian revolution, but never the idea that its central
protagonist would be the industrial proletariat, elaborated in the 1890s in polemics against the
Narodniks (populists): "The working class is the consistent and declared enemy of absolutism, and
only between the working class and absolutism is no compromise possible. The hostility of all
other classes, groups, and strata of the population toward autocracy is not absolute: its democracy
is always looking back."

It is for and with this working class that Bolshevism proposed to build a party. It was because of its
effectiveness in this that Bolshevism was constituted and prevailed. At the outset, Lenin's
comrades probably did not understand the profound meaning of his proposals. However, his
concept of organization and discipline constituted, nevertheless, an effective policy in the task of
unifying clandestine socialist committees, whose number was rapidly increasing in Russia, under
the direction of Iskra, located abroad. Many committees opposed it. The "party question" (and its
fractions) arose from the divergence between Lenin and Martov at the II Congress of the RSDLP
regarding the first article of the statutes. Martov proposed: "Anyone who accepts the program of
the RSDLP and supports the party, materially or through regular cooperation developed under the
direction of one of its bodies is a member of the RSDLP." To which Lenin replied: "Anyone who
accepts the party program and supports the party, materially or through personal participation in
the activity of one of its bodies, is a party member." A seemingly minimal divergence.
At the Social Democratic congress of 1903, the "second," the Bolshevik majority was actually a
minority in the votes immediately before and after the vote on the statutes: "Martov's more elastic
formulation, which, in opposition to Lenin, did not consider 'collaboration' to be a requirement in a
Party organization, was accepted by 28 votes against 23. After the withdrawal of seven delegates,
Lenin formed a majority of 24 against 20, so that he managed to admit his own list of candidates to
the Central Committee... The victory was short-lived, as the result was the division of the Party
leadership into two factions [Bolsheviks and Mensheviks]. The leading positions of Iskra returned
to men who became ideological opponents of Lenin, who soon joined Plekhanov. Lenin prepared
the foundation of his own newspaper; Vperiod (Forward) was launched at the end of 1904."
(Shapiro, 1975) The Bolsheviks constituted their faction and convened their own congress as the III
Congress of the RSDLP (London, 1905). Bolshevism, as seen, emerged from a series of crises and
political upheavals, not from a pre-existing finished project.
A well-known political dictionary, however, considered Leninism as "the theoretical-practical
interpretation of Marxism, in a revolutionary key, elaborated by Lenin in and for an industrially
backward country, such as Russia, where peasants represented the vast majority of the
population," attributing to Lenin's "party theory" "clear populist roots" and simultaneously
situating it as a "left-wing" variant of Bernsteinian revisionism. (Settembrini, 1980) The
organizational controversy in Russian social democracy obscured a divergence over what type of
party (parliamentary or revolutionary) for what type of activity (electoral or revolutionary), for
what type of historical period (peaceful or revolutionary). What initially appeared to be a
difference over methods to build a workers' party in Russia ultimately revealed itself as a
divergence over program and world historical period, which would split the international workers'
movement, with Lenin and Bolshevism as the pivot of the split.
Lenin was the main organizer of the II Congress of the RSDLP, considered the true founding
congress of the party. It was the result of a series of previous political victories: "When the
Congress was held in 1903, three ideological battles had already been fought and resolved, which
formed the basis of the party program unanimously adopted by the Congress. Faced with the
Narodniks, the RSDLP considered the proletariat and not the peasants as the agent of the future
revolution; facing the 'legal Marxists,' it preached revolutionary action and denied any compromise
with the bourgeoisie; facing the 'economists,' it emphasized the essentially political nature of the
party's program." (Carr, 1970) The fight against the economists, summarized by Lenin in What Is to
Be Done?, was a common heritage of the party, including the future opponents of the supposed
ultra-centralism contained in this text.
In What Is to Be Done? Lenin stated that "the spontaneous development of the workers'
movement precisely marches toward its subordination to bourgeois ideology, because the
spontaneous workers' movement is trade-unionist (...) Anything that bows before the spontaneity
of the workers' movement, anything that diminishes the role of the 'conscious element,' the role of
social democracy, means strengthening the influence of bourgeois ideology on the workers." But at
the same time, he defined that "the spontaneous element is nothing more than the embryonic
form of the conscious. And the primitive riots already reflected a certain conscious awakening." Or
else: "The working class spontaneously tends toward socialism, but bourgeois ideology, the most
widespread (and constantly resurrected in various forms), is the one that most spontaneously
imposes itself on the workers." The text and its consequences sparked a controversy that resonates
to this day. It proposed a new foundation (only partially anticipated by Kautsky) for the workers'
political party.
In 1904, Rosa Luxemburg used her pen against Leninist "ultra-centralism" in Organizational
Questions of the Russian Social Democracy: "It is not by starting from the discipline inculcated by
the capitalist State, with the mere transfer of the baton from the hand of the bourgeoisie to that of
a social-democratic central committee, but by the breaking, by the extirpation of this spirit of
servile discipline, that the proletariat can be educated for the new discipline, the voluntary self-
discipline of social democracy." Adding that "the ultra-centralism advocated by Lenin seems to us,
in all its essence, to bear, not a positive and creative spirit, but the sterile spirit of the night
watchman. His concern consists, above all, in controlling party activity and not in fecundating it, in
restricting movement and not in developing it, in annoying it and not in unifying it." In the
Luxemburgist conception, "social democracy is not linked to the organization of the working class:
it is the very movement of the working class." (Luxemburg, 1980) Lenin's response was simple:
Rosa's criticisms were politely answered, one by one, affirming that "what Rosa Luxemburg's
article, published in Die Neue Zeit, makes known to the reader, is not my book, but something else
entirely," and essentially saying that "what I defend throughout the book, from the first page to the
last, are the elementary principles of any party organization that one can imagine; (not) a system
of organization against any other." Lenin, therefore, did not proclaim himself the inventor of some
system called "democratic centralism."
In 1904, Trotsky also published a pamphlet (Our Political Tasks) in which, alongside a notable series
of personal attacks on Lenin (inaugurating a practice unknown to Russian socialists: Trotsky would
later justify himself by referring to his "immaturity" - witnesses of the time, like Angelica
Balabanova, affirmed that there was no personal affinity between the two men) (Balabanova,
1974), he also accused Bolshevism of intending to establish "the dictatorship of the party over the
working class," of the central committee over the party, and of the leader over the central
committee. Alongside polemical tricks, Trotsky also engaged in futurological exercises: "The tasks
of the new regime will be so complex that they can only be resolved through competition between
various methods of economic and political construction, through prolonged 'disputes,' through a
systematic struggle not only between the socialist and capitalist worlds, but also between many
tendencies within socialism, which will inevitably arise as soon as proletarian dictatorship brings
dozens of new problems. No strong and 'dominant' organization will be able to suppress these
controversies. A proletariat capable of exercising its dictatorship over society will not tolerate any
dictatorship over itself. The working class will have in its ranks some handfuls of political invalids
and much ballast of outdated ideas that it will have to get rid of. In the time of its dictatorship, just
as today, it will have to clear its mind of false theories and bourgeois experiences, and purge its
ranks of political charlatans and revolutionaries who only know how to look backward. But this
intricate task cannot be solved by imposing a handful of chosen people, or a single exercise of
power, over the proletariat.
Trotsky had broken with Lenin at the 1903 Congress. Retrospectively, he presented this rupture as
"subjective" and "moral," linked to an issue that did not involve any political principle. Lenin
proposed reducing the number of editors of Iskra from six to three. These were to be Plekhanov,
Martov, and himself. Axelrod, Zasulich, and Potresov were to be excluded. He wanted the editorial
work of Iskra to be more effective than it had been recently; "to Trotsky, this attempt to eliminate
Axelrod and Zasulich from Iskra, two of its founders, seemed sacrilege. The harshness of Lenin
aroused his repugnance." (Deutscher, 1976) At the Congress, Trotsky spoke against Lenin regarding
two points on the agenda: paragraph 1 of the party statutes and the election of the party's central
bodies. Trotsky did not oppose the theses of the party program prepared by Lenin. On the
contrary, in this item, he defended Lenin. (Pantsov, 1978) In his autobiography, Trotsky did not
refer to his 1904 pamphlet; after the 1903 Congress, he was momentarily linked to the
Mensheviks, with whom he later broke. During the subsequent decade, he was a supporter of the
"reconciliation" of factions (not without some ephemeral successes), which fueled the legend of an
"anti-Bolshevik" Trotsky, although he approached Bolshevism as much as Lenin did, at a time when
the formal division of the party had not yet been consummated.
Party, workers' vanguard, working class, did not identify (as Lenin, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg
did) although they mutually and decisively influenced each other. In 1905, Bolshevism was a party
of the workers' vanguard; its composition was almost 62% workers (and almost 5% peasants)
(Lane, 1977): this was the party of the "professional revolutionaries." Three lustres later, Lenin
ironically remarked about his critics: "To claim that Iskra (from 1901 and 1902!) exaggerated the
idea of an organization of professional revolutionaries is like saying, after the Russo-Japanese War,
that the Japanese had an exaggerated idea of the Russian military forces, and that they worried
too much, before the war, about fighting against these forces." (Lenin, 1971) Many saw in Our
Political Tasks a prophecy about the fate of Bolshevism and the revolution. For Isaac Deutscher,
who criticized the personal attacks of the work, this was also "astonishing" for containing "great
ideas" and "subtle historical insight." (Deutscher, 1976) For E. H. Carr, "the (future) process was
very detailedly predicted by Trotsky, who in a brilliant pamphlet published in 1904 announced a
situation in which 'the party is replaced by the party organization, the organization by the central
committee and finally the central committee by the dictator.'" (Carr, 1969) Pierre Broué criticized
the "pedantry" of Our Political Tasks, its invectives against "Maximilien Lenin," stating that Trotsky
considered, later on, the work as "a terribly annoying document about which he observed the
greatest discretion," and wondered why, in the circumstances of its publication (Trotsky's break
with Menshevism), he "did not renounce its publication." (Broué, 1988) The strongest criticism
referred to the fact that Lenin maintained that the intelligentsia played a special role in the
revolutionary movement, endowing it with the socialist perspective that the workers would not
achieve on their own. Trotsky saw in this opinion a denial of the capabilities of the working class
and the aspiration of the intelligentsia to keep its movement under its tutelage. The Polish socialist
Makhaivski held a similar opinion about "Russian socialism" in general. (Makhaiski, 1979)
Trotsky stated that, at the Congress, "my whole being protested against the ruthless suppression of
the veterans. Out of the indignation I felt came my rupture with Lenin, which took place in a way
on moral grounds. But this was only appearance. Ultimately, our divergences had a political
character that manifested itself in the question of organization." (Trotsky, 1973) Our Political Tasks
was "dedicated to Pavel Axelrod." It now seems clear that "both Trotsky and Luxemburg were
unfair to Lenin when they removed the positions of What Is to Be Done? from their concrete
historical context and attributed to them a universal character." (Mandel, 1995) Trotsky spoke,
much later, about his "cursed" work, without regrets: "In a pamphlet written in 1904, whose
criticisms of Lenin often lacked maturity and fairness, there are, however, pages that provide a very
faithful idea of the thinking of the komitetchiki of that time (...) The battle that Lenin would wage a
year later, at the congress [III Congress, April 1905], against the arrogant komitetchiki fully confirms
this criticism." (Trotsky, 2012) This is the aspect explored by historians who affirm that "(in 1903)
Lenin was already convinced that it was the professional revolutionary, and not the masses, who
held the key to the victory of socialism." (Ulam, 1976)
Lenin's position, which led to the emergence of factions, was not an impulse: it was the continuity
of a political and ideological struggle in which he was the protagonist since the 1890s. The struggle
against populism, What Is to Be Done?, and the delimitation of Menshevism, were its various
phases, not based on a statutory fetish: Lenin accepted, at the Congress of reunification
(Bolsheviks + Mensheviks) of 1906, the Menshevik wording of article 1 of the statutes... This and
other episodes allow us to question the retrospective view of the Bolshevik Zinoviev: "In 1903, we
already had two separate groups, two organizations, and two parties. Bolshevism and
Menshevism, as ideological tendencies, were already formed with their characteristic profile, later
evident in the revolutionary storm." (Zinoviev, 1973) At the London Congress of 1905 (Bolshevik),
Lenin undertook the battle for the recruitment and promotion of workers who were not
"professional revolutionaries," but merely worker militants: an index of a conflict with the
komitetchiki, the "committee men". Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, recounted in her memoirs
the battle between Lenin and Rykov, spokesman for the "clandestine": "The komitetchiki was a
man full of assurance... he did not admit any democracy within the party... he did not like
innovations." According to her, Lenin could hardly contain himself "hearing it said that there were
no workers capable of being part of the committees." He proposed to include a majority of
workers in the committees by obligation. The party apparatus was against it; Lenin's proposition
was defeated, a fact that Pierre Broué related to "the sectarian spirit that kept the Bolsheviks away
from the first soviets, in which many of them feared an opposing organization." The revolution of
1905, already underway, witnessed the formation of workers' councils, elected by workers in their
workplaces. The delegates were at all times revocable by their electors. Unionized or not,
politically organized or disorganized, the workers of Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Tula,
Odessa, and other industrial agglomerations were creating a new form of mass organization, which
appeared as the opposite of the parliamentary assemblies with which the Western bourgeoisie
exercised its class domination. Its transformation into organs of government, however, was not yet
the project of any political current.
The revolutionary tradition of the Russian working class had a decisive weight in the revolution of
1905; the strike of January 1905 was closely linked to the outbreak of another general strike in
1904, in Baku, in the Caucasus. This, in turn, was preceded by other major strikes that occurred
between 1903 and 1904, in southern Russia, which had as their predecessor the great strike of
1902, in Batum. We can identify the beginning of this series of strikes in that undertaken by the
textile workers of St. Petersburg between 1896 and 1897. Since the end of the 19th century, Russia
had become an epicenter of the European revolution: the RSDLP, at its congress in 1903, adopted a
program "where, for the first time in the history of socialist parties, the slogan of the dictatorship
of the proletariat appeared, defined as the conquest of political power by the proletariat." (Broué,
1971) The class struggle in Russia acquired its own, vanguard profile on the international scene;
Russian social democracy was not simply the projection of European socialism in "wild lands."

In the revolution of 1905, the problem of the soviets affected all factions of the RSDLP: "Without
paying attention to the cooperation of many Bolshevik workers in the councils, the principled
position of the leading Bolshevik bodies varied between a radical rejection and a somewhat
reluctant acceptance of these 'foreign bodies' to the revolution. The position of the Bolsheviks
regarding the soviets differed according to the locations and was undergoing transformations;
Lenin himself did not come to a definitive judgment about their role and importance, although he
was the only one who, among the Bolsheviks, strove to thoroughly examine this new revolutionary
phenomenon and add it to his revolutionary theory and tactics. During the October strike, the
Bolshevik workers participated in the formation of the Council of Workers' Deputies of Petersburg,
just like the other workers. In the early days of the existence of the soviet, when it acted as a strike
committee and no one really knew what role it would play in the future, the Bolsheviks opposed it
benevolently. But that changed when, at the end of the October strike, the soviet remained
standing and began to evolve towards a political leadership body of the working class. Most
Bolsheviks openly opposed the soviet; they drafted, in the federative committees formed by
representatives of both factions of the RSDLP, a resolution recommending the official acceptance
of the program of social democracy, since independent organizations in the style of the council
could not guide a clear political orientation and would be detrimental." (Anweiler, 1975) The party
that would project itself to the world as the vanguard of the "Soviet power" initially opposed the
directing or governmental function of the soviet. There was no "genius Lenin" to prevent this.

For most Marxist historians, there is a connection between What Is to Be Done? and "Bolshevik
sectarianism." Paul Le Blanc asserts that "the potential sectarianism that (Rosa) Luxemburg had
noticed in Lenin's conceptions was clearly manifested since 1905." (Le Blanc, 1990) For Ernest
Mandel, "it is evident that Lenin underestimated during the course of the 1902-1903 debate the
dangers for the workers' movement that could arise from the formation of a bureaucracy within
it." (Mandel, 1984) The test of the revolution, and its defeat, produced new crises and political
realignments. During the reaction after 1905, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split into three fractions
each: the "liquidators" (Potressov, Zasulich), the center (Martov, Dan), and the "party Mensheviks"
(Plekhanov) among the latter; the "vperiodists" (Bogdanov), the "Leninists," and the "conciliators"
or "party Bolsheviks" (Rykov, Nogin), among the former. If 1903 was not the "magic date" of
Bolshevism, 1906 (reunification congress) was not the great hour of the lost conciliation (Lenin
declared that "until the social revolution, social democracy will inevitably present an opportunist
wing and a revolutionary wing"); the Bolsheviks maintained a "clandestine center" in the unified
party; finally, 1912 (when the Bolsheviks definitively separated from the Mensheviks) was not the
"final party," for before 1912 Lenin reconciled with Plekhanov and formed a bloc in the RSDLP with
the "party Mensheviks" against the "liquidators," with the aim of maintaining a clandestine
apparatus. It is on this position that the RSDLP (Bolshevik) was constituted, with a revolutionary
wing and another "opportunist"...
Between crises and fierce disputes among fractions, the political problems of Russian social
democracy were situated at a higher level than those of the other sections of the Second
International, impregnated by reformism and electoralism. Its particularity has nothing to do with
a supposed theory about the "Party, with a capital P, (which) constitutes the great and ambiguous
Russian contribution to contemporary history," also called "the Party: a meta-political entity totally
different from everything that had been seen until then in the varied scene of European socialist
movements," considered as the birth of a new anthropological variant: the homo bolchevicus!
(Betizza, 1984) It is easy to point the finger at the confusion of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks about
the role of the soviets; the leaders of these were confused themselves about it: "Even when the
second congress (of the soviets) took place, on October 28, no member of this assembly knew very
well its function, whether they constituted a central strike committee or a new type of
organization, similar to a revolutionary self-administration organism."

Lenin's evolution was ironically described by Moshe Lewin: "Since his work written in Siberian
exile, Lenin tended to see capitalism behind every Russian cart. The revolution of 1905 led him to
nuance his ideas: capitalism was still weakly developed, liberal forces were embryonic and timid."
(Lewin, 1996) Nevertheless, for Lenin, the revolution continued to be "bourgeois in the sense of its
socio-economic content. What this means: the tasks of the revolution taking place in Russia do not
go beyond the scope of bourgeois society. Not even the fullest victory of the current revolution,
that is, the conquest of the most democratic republic and the confiscation of all land from the
owners by the peasants, will shake the foundations of bourgeois social order." But, from this thesis,
Lenin did not derive the conclusion that the main engine of the revolution would be the
bourgeoisie, as the Mensheviks wanted, because the revolution was occurring at the moment
when "the proletariat had already begun to become conscious of itself as a particular class and to
unite in an autonomous class organization."
In September 1905, during the "first Russian revolution," Lenin stated that "from the democratic
revolution we will soon begin to pass, to the extent of our forces, the forces of the conscious and
organized proletariat, to the socialist revolution. We are for uninterrupted revolution. We will not
stop halfway." Lenin, however, limited the immediate scope of the revolution to the bourgeois-
democratic horizon. According to Trotsky, he "wanted to imply that, to maintain unity with the
peasantry, the proletariat would be obliged to forgo the immediate placement of socialist tasks
during the next revolution. But that meant for the proletariat to renounce its own dictatorship.
Consequently, the dictatorship was, in essence, of the peasantry, even if the workers participated
in it." Let us quote Lenin's confirming words, spoken at the Stockholm Congress of the RSDLP
(1906) in reply to Plekhanov: "What program are we talking about? An agrarian program. Who is
supposed to take power with this program? The revolutionary peasants." Did Lenin confuse the
government of the proletariat with the government of the peasants? "No," he said, referring to
himself, "Lenin clearly differentiated the socialist government of the proletariat from the
bourgeois-democratic government of the peasants."
Trotsky already defended the theory of permanent revolution, whose perspective was that "the
complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is only conceivable in the form of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, supported by the peasants. The dictatorship of the proletariat,
which would inevitably bring to the table not only democratic tasks but also socialist ones, would
at the same time give a vigorous impetus to the international socialist revolution. Only the victory
of the proletariat in the West could protect Russia from bourgeois restoration, giving it security to
complete the implementation of socialism." It was a strategic divergence: "Bolshevism was not
contaminated by belief in the power and strength of a revolutionary bourgeois democracy in
Russia. From the beginning, it recognized the decisive significance of the working class struggle in
the upcoming revolution, but its program was limited, in the early days, to the interests of the
large peasant masses, without which - and against which - the revolution could not have been
carried out by the proletariat. Hence the provisional recognition of the democratic-bourgeois
character of the revolution and its prospects. Therefore, the author [Trotsky] did not belong,
during that period, to either of the two main currents of the Russian workers' movement." For
him, "the proletariat, once in power, should not confine itself to the framework of bourgeois
democracy but should employ the tactic of permanent revolution, that is, to blur the boundaries
between the minimum and maximum program of social democracy, moving towards increasingly
profound social reforms and seeking direct and immediate support from the revolution in Western
Europe."
As positions evolved, a convergence emerged since the Fifth Congress (of London) of the RSDLP:
"The most notable fact of the congress was the isolation of the Mensheviks in the face of the
convergence of positions of Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and Trotsky. It was an objective convergence,
without any agreement, and not without considerable discrepancies, between Lenin and the
Bolsheviks, on the one hand, and Rosa and Trotsky, on the other." Post-Gorbachev Soviet
historiography tended to downplay the pre-revolution disagreements between Lenin and Trotsky
(just as Stalinism, earlier, had exaggerated them to outright lies): "These disagreements do not
have much significance when considered from a historical perspective. This includes the question
of permanent revolution, which was always taken to exaggerated proportions after Lenin's death.
In fact, after 1916, Lenin never emphasized this issue again." The same author highlights that
"Trotsky's articles were published in magazines directed by Lenin."
Strategic divergences continued. They sharpened after the "August Bloc" (a bloc "for the unity of
the RSDLP", led by Trotsky, with Menshevik participation) of 1912, when the Bolsheviks engaged in
the path of building an independent party. For 15 years, Lenin and Trotsky exchanged various
insults in writing ("mediocre," "second-rate lawyer," Trotsky said about Lenin; "cheap slanderer,"
"balalaika player," "phony," "ambitious," Lenin retorted), which Trotsky, retrospectively, attributed
to immaturity and the "heat" of factional struggle. In the midst of the reactionary period, Trotsky
clarified the scope of the divergences: "If the Mensheviks, starting from the following conception:
'our revolution is bourgeois,' come to the idea of adapting all the proletarian tactics to the conduct
of liberal bourgeoisie until the latter seizes power, the Bolsheviks, starting from a no less abstract
conception, 'the democratic, but not socialist dictatorship,' come to the idea of a self-limitation of
the proletariat, holding power, to a bourgeois democracy regime. It is true that there is an essential
difference between Menshevism and Bolshevism: while the anti-revolutionary aspects of
Menshevism manifest themselves from the present moment, in all their breadth, what is anti-
revolutionary in Bolshevism does not threaten us - but the threat is no less serious - except in the
case of a revolutionary victory." This admits a double interpretation: 1) Trotsky places Bolshevism
on a historical and political plane superior to Menshevism; 2) he also didn't refrain from stating
that there were anti-revolutionary aspects in Bolshevism, which was not a small matter.
We focus here on the Lenin-Trotsky controversy for the role of both leaders in the October
Revolution and subsequent history. Before that, for more than a quarter of a century, Lenin
participated in polemics with numerous currents of Russian and international socialism (even the
Argentine socialist Juan B. Justo criticized Lenin's theory of imperialism), and was undoubtedly the
pivot of political debates in the workers' movement of his country. The programmatic differences
between Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and "Trotskyists" became evident with the revolution. According
to Rudi Dutschke, "only the understanding of the bourgeois revolution of 1905 allows us to
approach, through Lenin's economic conceptions, the roots of democratic centralism as a type of
party." As initially all factions agreed on the bourgeois nature of the Russian revolution, differences
did not appear clearly. Initially, the 1905 revolution and its repression by the tsarist regime brought
the Bolsheviks closer to the Mensheviks: both believed in the need for a "bourgeois democratic"
stage prior to the socialist revolution. However, it was revealed, between 1907 and 1908, that
while the Mensheviks believed that the bourgeoisie could lead and conclude this stage, the
Bolsheviks argued that only the proletariat and the peasants could fulfill the task of the bourgeois
democratic stage.
The differences were overcome, not entirely, in practice (the October Revolution was identified
with the names of Lenin and Trotsky) and by the political assimilation of this practice. Thinking of
political differences as abnormality, and homogeneity as an ideal to be achieved, means denying
thought itself and its engine (contradiction). Without the revolution, it is likely that some of these
controversies would have continued ad infinitum. In his autobiography, Trotsky was quite terse
about it: "I came to Lenin later than others, but in my own way, having gone through and reflected
on the experience of revolution, counter-revolution, and imperialist war. Thanks to this, I came to
him more firmly and seriously than his 'disciples' (note the quotation marks)." To which the
Stalinist historian Léo Figuères replied, "It is worth asking whether Trotsky could have joined
Bolshevism in 1917 if all his disciples (sic, without quotation marks) had followed his path,
abandoned and fought Lenin after the II Congress." If that had happened, Bolshevism would not
have existed. Figuères, as a good Stalinist, considered Bolshevism as a current of "disciples" of
Lenin, that is, in religious terms.
Internationally, nothing is more contrary to the truth than the legend coined by Stalin in
"Foundations of Leninism": that the Bolsheviks had been working since 1903 in favor of a split with
the reformists in the Socialist International. It was with great struggle that Lenin managed to be
recognized as the representative of the RSDLP (along with Plekhanov) since 1905, in the
International Socialist Bureau (ISB), a position he held until World War I. This framework led to the
"Congress of Unity" of Russia in 1906. In 1907, at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart,
the motion on the attitude and duty of socialists in case of war ("to use the crisis provoked by war
to precipitate the fall of the bourgeoisie") was presented jointly by Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, and the
Menshevik Martov. When in January 1912 the (Bolshevik) conference in Prague consummated the
split with the Mensheviks, Lenin did not present it to the ISB as a rupture between reformists and
revolutionaries, but as the defenders of the "true workers' party" against the "liquidators"
(advocates of a party only "legal"), and advocating "the only existing party, the illegal party"
(Kamenev's report, Lenin's representative, at the ISB in November 1913).

In 1912, the Bolsheviks fought to assert themselves as representatives of the RSDLP at the
International Socialist Congress in Basel. Already in 1914 (before the war), due to the international
isolation of the Bolsheviks (including in relation to the left-wing of the Socialist International,
whose leader Rosa Luxemburg had allied with the Mensheviks and the "August Bloc" led by
Trotsky), the Bolsheviks admitted a new and fruitless "unification conference." Lenin was already
aware of the international projection of the "Russian split" and, after the capitulation of the main
parties of the Socialist International to the outbreak of war in August 1914, proclaimed from the
end of that year the struggle for a new International, the Third. Three years later, in 1917, in
Russia, Bolshevism was the point of confluence of the revolutionaries.
Lenin, in the midst of imperialist war (end of 1915), accused Trotsky, despite both belonging to the
so-called "left of Zimmerwald," the ultra-minoritarian internationalist faction of international
socialism: "Trotsky's original theory borrows from the Bolsheviks the appeal for decisive
revolutionary struggle and the conquest of political power by the proletariat and, from the
Mensheviks, the denial of the role of the peasantry. It seems that the latter is divided,
differentiated, and would be increasingly less capable of playing a revolutionary role. In Russia, a
'national' revolution would be impossible, 'we live in the age of imperialism,' and 'imperialism does
not oppose the bourgeois nation to the old regime, but the proletariat to the bourgeois nation.'
Here is a funny example of the jokes that can be made with the word 'imperialism.' If, in Russia, the
proletariat already opposes the 'bourgeois nation,' then it is on the eve of a socialist revolution. In
this case, the 'confiscation of the estates' (as put forward by Trotsky in 1915) is false, and it is not a
matter of speaking of a 'revolutionary proletariat,' but of a 'socialist workers' government.' The
degree of Trotsky's confusion is seen in his statement that the proletariat will lead the non-
proletarian masses! Trotsky does not even think that if the proletariat can lead the non-proletarian
masses to confiscate the estates and overthrow the monarchy, this will be the realization of the
'bourgeois national revolution,' the democratic-revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and
the peasantry."

And Lenin concluded that "Trotsky actually helps liberal workers' politicians, who, by denying the
role of the peasantry, refuse to lead the peasants to the revolution." In light of Trotsky's work, it
can be said that Lenin's accusation was false, although it relied on still weak elements of the
formulation of "permanent revolution," which Trotsky would later clarify in subsequent works (not
to mention that, in fact, Russia was "on the eve of a socialist revolution"). The war itself gave rise
to other disagreements: on "revolutionary defeatism" (which Trotsky, along with several
Bolsheviks, did not accept), on the "United States of Europe"... But the common internationalist
work, in the left of Zimmerwald, did not fail to create the elements of future political unity. The
convergence that occurred in 1917 was, first and foremost, political, the struggle to build the
instrument of revolution, the party. Even at the moment of unification, however, Trotsky drafted a
document, which included a "phrase that pointed out, in organizational matters, the 'narrow circle
spirit' of the Bolsheviks.... The inter-district workers retained great mistrust towards the Petrograd
committee (of Bolshevism). I wrote then that 'the circle spirit still exists, a legacy of the past, but
for it to decrease, the inter-district workers must cease to carry out isolated activity'."
Years later, he wrote that "without belonging to either faction during the emigration, the author
underestimated the fundamental fact that in the differences of opinion between the Bolsheviks
and the Mensheviks, there were, in fact, a group of uncompromising revolutionaries on one side
and, on the other, a grouping of increasingly fragmented elements due to opportunism and lack of
principles. When the revolution broke out in 1917, the Bolshevik Party represented a strong
centralized organization, which had absorbed the best elements among progressive workers and
revolutionary intelligentsia." On the eve of the Russian revolution, Lenin, in a lecture given in
Switzerland, on the anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" of 1905, stated that perhaps only future
generations would witness the revolutionary victory, the same one that brought Bolshevism to
power less than a year later... Trotsky reaffirmed that "the most important disagreement between
Lenin and me during these years was my hope that unification with the Mensheviks would drive
the majority of them onto the revolutionary path. Lenin was right about this fundamental issue.
However, it must be said that in 1917, the tendencies toward 'unification' were very strong among
the Bolsheviks."
The October Revolution of 1917 was preceded by the February Revolution, which was not the
result of the conspiracy of any political party. 1917 was called by French President Poincaré the
"terrible year," the third of the World War, after a harsh European winter. For millions of men, it
was the end of the patriotic illusions of 1914, transformed into massacres of fighters in
"offensives" that cost hundreds of thousands of lives; supply difficulties, with significant price
increases, affecting the working class of all countries; the "civil peace," defended by trade unions
and workers' parties in belligerent countries, resulted in the questioning of all workers'
achievements (production rates, schedules, working conditions, rights). The wear and tear of
materials, machinery, and the economic apparatus had caused a crisis in all countries. Russia was
the country that, by far, had suffered the worst consequences of the war, making its historical
contradictions more acute and unbearable. The February Revolution caused the fall of Tsarism and
opened a period of political crises that concluded with the "coup d'état" of October, which brought
the Bolsheviks to power, by then already the majority in the soviets of workers, soldiers, and
peasants. Lenin, as extensively exposed in all historiography, was at the center of these events,
which were the culmination of his political career and altered the fate of the world, justifying the
initial assertion by Hobsbawm.

The Bolshevik party that took power in October 1917 was the continuation of the party born in
1912 and the faction after 1903. It was, however, also diverse. In the months of acute political
crisis, it recruited widely among the young generations of workers, peasants, and soldiers: the
clandestine organization that counted 25,000 members in January had nearly 80,000 by the April
conference and 200,000 at the Sixth Bolshevik Congress in August: the old Bolsheviks and
komitetchiki were a minority of 10%. The adhesions included worker groups not defined in relation
to the previous fractions and quarrels before the war: the Interdistrict Organization, which had no
more than 4,000 members, had three of its members elected to the Central Committee. The
August 1917 congress noted the convergence of various organizations or groups; its solid
foundation was Lenin's RSDLP (Bolshevik), into which the "revolutionary streams" referred to by
Radek flowed. Two years after the October Revolution, Lenin wrote: "At the time of the conquest
of power, when the Republic of Soviets was established, Bolshevism attracted everything that was
best in the trends of socialist thought closest to it."
Lenin converged with Trotsky's theory based on his own theory. In the April Theses, the historical
program of the "turn," Lenin started from the "conclusion of the bourgeois phase of the
revolution." If what prevented the proletariat from taking power in February 1917 was only its
insufficient consciousness and organization, this means that there was no separate "national
revolution" by a historical stage from the proletarian revolution. Bolshevism was, thanks to this,
the political instrument of the "second stage" of the revolution. It was Trotsky, in "Lessons of
October" (1924), who made the critical necrological balance of Lenin's formula of "democratic
dictatorship": "Completely revolutionary and profoundly dynamic, Lenin's posing of the problem
was radically opposed to the Menshevik system, according to which Russia could only repeat the
history of advanced peoples, with the bourgeoisie in power and social democracy in opposition.
However, in Lenin's formula, certain circles of our party did not stress the word 'dictatorship' but
the word 'democratic,' in opposition to the word 'socialist.' This would mean that in Russia, a
backward country, only the democratic revolution was conceivable. The socialist revolution should
begin in the West, and we could only join the socialist current by following England, France, and
Germany."
The programmatic shift of Bolshevism became clear in Lenin's own assessment, a few years after
the October 1917 victory: "To consolidate for the peoples of Russia the achievements of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution, we had to go further, and so we did. We solved the problems of
the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the course of the process, as a 'by-product' of our
fundamental and genuinely proletarian, revolutionary socialist activities. We always said that
democratic reforms - we said and demonstrated with facts - are a by-product of the proletarian
revolution, that is, socialist. This is the relationship between the bourgeois-democratic revolution
and the socialist proletarian revolution: the former turns into the latter. The latter solves the
problems of the former along the way. The latter consolidates the work of the former. The struggle,
and only the struggle, determines to what extent the latter manages to impose itself on the
former" (Lenin, 1968). The "new Bolshevism" dominated the Congress (August 1917), which
materialized the fusion and had the honorary presidency of Lenin and Trotsky (absent due to the
repression of July), the latter being elected to the CC with 131 out of 134 possible votes.
The entry of Trotsky and his supporters, as well as other groups, was decisive for the realization of
the "historical turn" of Bolshevism, which assumed its definitive name of Communist Party.
Political convergence occurred at times when, according to the Menshevik memoirist Sukhanov,
"the masses lived and breathed with the Bolsheviks, were entirely in the hands of Lenin and
Trotsky" (Sukhanov, 1984). Reflecting retrospectively, Trotsky recalled that: "There were violent
clashes between Lenin and me because in cases where I disagreed with him on a serious issue, I
fought to the end. These cases, naturally, were engraved in everyone's memory, and later epigones
wrote and spoke about them a lot. But a hundred times more numerous were the cases in which
we understood each other with half-words, and our solidarity ensured the passage of the issue in
the Politburo without debate. Lenin greatly appreciated this solidarity".
Victorious, the revolution, Bolshevism, before precise circumstances (a bloody civil war, sustained
by the intervention of 14 foreign powers, and the international isolation of the country), was not
the "sole party of the revolution." During the October Revolution, four anarchists were members
of the Revolutionary Military Committee. An anarchist sailor from Kronstadt led the delegation that
dissolved the Constituent Assembly. At the same time, however, Bolshevik hegemony was clear.
Factory committees sprang up everywhere, quickly becoming strong and dominated by the
Bolsheviks. From October 30 to November 4, the first Russian Conference of Factory Committees
was held in Petrograd, where 96 out of 167 delegates were Bolsheviks. (Gorodetsky, 1976)
Nevertheless, "during the first week of December 1917, there were some demonstrations in favor
of the Constituent Assembly, that is, against the power of the soviets. Irresponsible Red Guards
then shot at one of the processions and killed some people. The reaction to this stupid violence
was immediate: within twelve hours, the constitution of the Petrograd Soviet was modified; more
than a dozen Bolshevik deputies were dismissed and replaced by Mensheviks... Despite this, it took
three weeks to calm public resentment and allow the calling and reinstatement of the Bolsheviks"
(Reed, 2010).
Trotsky was explicit in acknowledging Lenin's superior role in the revolution: "If I had not been in
Petersburg in 1917, the October Revolution would have happened in the same way - conditioned
by the presence and direction of Lenin. If neither Lenin nor I had been in Petersburg, there would
have been no October Revolution: the leadership of the Bolshevik party would have prevented it
from happening... If Lenin had not been in Petersburg, there would have been no chance for me to
convince the top Bolshevik echelons to resist. The struggle against 'Trotskyism' (that is, against
proletarian revolution) would have been open from May 1917, and the outcome of the revolution
would have been a question mark. But, I repeat, with Lenin present, the October Revolution would
have reached victory in any case. The same can be said, in short, of the civil war" (Trotsky, 1980).
Regarding the party, Trotsky referred to old organizational issues in terms that almost point by
point echoed the terms Lenin had used to criticize him three decades earlier: "The leadership is
not a simple 'reflection' of a class, or the product of its free creation. Leadership is forged in the
process of clashes between the different layers of a particular class. Once it has assumed its role,
the leadership rises above its class, being exposed to the pressure and influence of other classes...
An extremely important factor in the maturity of the Russian proletariat in 1917 was Lenin, who
did not fall from the sky. He personified the revolutionary tradition of the working class. In order
for his principles to make headway among the masses, there had to be cadres, albeit limited; there
had to be the confidence of the cadres in his leadership, a confidence based on all past
experience" (Trotsky, 1940).
Bolshevism was not only the product of a set of individuals, their political and ideological struggles,
but also of the history of the workers' movement and the revolution, through a gigantic
confrontation of ideas, programs, tactics, organizations, and men. In the early years of the
revolution, Bolshevism had no problem admitting its turn of 1917, as demonstrated by an article
by Molotov (later a Stalinist bureaucrat in the highest state positions) from 1924: "It must be said
openly: the party did not have the clarity of vision or the spirit of decision required by the
revolutionary moment. It did not have them because it did not possess a clear orientation towards
the socialist revolution. In general, the agitation and all the practice of the revolutionary party
lacked a solid foundation, since thought had not yet advanced to the bold conclusion of the need
for an immediate struggle for socialism and the socialist revolution" (Mandel, 1978).
The victory of the Soviet revolution meant the shipwreck of all the parties that had bet, against
absolutism, on bourgeois regimes, from a constitutional monarchy (the constitutional party, KDT)
to a parliamentary democracy (almost all socialist parties, except Bolshevism). It was Lenin, above
all, who made efforts to preserve, in these conditions, a multi-party political framework. In an
unstable framework, an olive branch was extended to the socialist parties excluded from power.
The Mensheviks convened a five-day conference in Moscow at the end of October 1918. The
outbreak of the civil war and the threat to the Soviet regime led them down the path of
compromise. The conference approved a series of theses and resolutions recognizing the October
Revolution as "historically necessary" and as "a gigantic ferment that had set the whole world in
motion," renouncing "any political cooperation with classes hostile to democracy." Attempts at
collaboration with the anarchists (whom Lenin even defined as "our best allies," even having
friendly meetings with their famous Ukrainian leader Nestor Makhno) foundered amidst the
vicissitudes of the civil war, which witnessed violent clashes between the Red Army and the "Black
Army" of Ukraine.
The policy of conciliation did not withstand the test of events, in a context of internal counter-
revolution and external intervention, both violent. The civil war transformed the Bolsheviks first
into the "sole governing party," with the SR (Left Socialist Revolutionaries) assassination attempt
against Lenin, who were part of the Soviet government, and the murders of Uritsky and
Volodarsky, Bolshevik leaders: "The events of the summer of 1918 left the Bolsheviks without rivals
or accomplices as the dominant party in the state; and they possessed in the Cheka an organ of
absolute power. However, there was still a strong reluctance to use this power without restrictions.
The final extinction of the excluded parties had not yet arrived. Terror was, at this point, a
capricious instrument and it was normal to find parties, against which the most violent anathemas
had been pronounced and the most drastic measures taken, continued to survive and enjoy
tolerance. One of the first decrees of the new regime had authorized the Sovnarkom to close all
newspapers that preached 'open resistance or disobedience to the Workers' and Peasants'
Government' and the bourgeois press ceased to exist. The Menshevik newspaper in Petrograd,
Novyi Luch, was suppressed, in February 1918, for its opposition campaign to the Brest-Litovsk
treaty. Nevertheless, it reappeared, in April, in Moscow, under the name Vpered, and continued its
career for some time without interference. Anarchist newspapers were published in Moscow long
after the Cheka's action against the anarchists, in April 1918" (Carr, 1977). The civil war swept away
all compromises between Bolshevism and its political opposition.
Lenin opposed considering this situation as ideal, evolving in his appreciation of the nature of the
Soviet power established in Russia. In 1918, he wrote: "The struggle against the bureaucratic
deformation of the Soviet organization is guaranteed by the solidity of the links between the
soviets and the people, by the flexibility and elasticity of these links. The poor never consider
bourgeois parliaments as their institutions, even in the most democratic capitalist republic in the
world. The soviets, on the contrary, are their institutions, not alien to the masses of workers and
peasants" (Lenin, 1918). Already in 1921, during the controversy over the unions, Lenin referred to
the Soviet state as "a workers' state with the peculiarity that in the country the working population
does not predominate, but the peasant population does, and, secondly, a workers' state with a
bureaucratic deformation" (Lenin, 1983). The transition from deformation to bureaucratic
degeneration was a political and social process, summarized by Christian Rakovsky: "The situation
of a class struggling for power and that of a class holding power is different [... when a class takes
power, part of it becomes an agent of that power. In a socialist state, where capitalist accumulation
is prohibited, this difference begins as functional and then becomes social" (Rokovsky, 1928).

Five years after the October Revolution, the isolation of the revolution, economic hardship, the
exhaustion of the popular masses, and the emptying of the soviets were inevitably accompanied
by the differentiation of a privileged bureaucratic layer of the party, by then the sole party of the
State. The struggle against the bureaucratization of the State and the party was also "the last [and
failed] battle of Lenin" (Lewin, 1980). In the crisis caused by the Georgian national question
(against the chauvinistic Great Russian policy of the nascent bureaucracy, and of Stalin in
particular, himself Georgian) and in Lenin's political testament (which proposed Stalin's dismissal
from the post of party general secretary) the main lines of this struggle were revealed. Trotsky
agreed to form a political bloc with Lenin against bureaucratization, which did not mean that this
bloc had its victory guaranteed in advance, by the weight of the prestige of both leaders (Juravlev;
Nenakorov, 1990).
Trotsky wrote in his autobiography: "The idea of forming a 'bloc' Lenin-Trotsky against the
bureaucracy, only Lenin and I knew it. The other members of the Political Bureau had only vague
suspicions. No one knew anything about Lenin's letters on the national question or the Testament.
If I had started to act, they could say that I was starting the personal struggle to occupy Lenin's
place. I couldn't think about it without shuddering. I thought that, even if I emerged victorious, the
final result would be such demoralization for me that it would cost me dearly. In all calculations,
there was an element of uncertainty: Lenin himself and his state of health. Will he be able to
express his opinion? Will he have time for that? Will the party understand that Lenin and Trotsky
are fighting for the future of the revolution, and not that Trotsky is fighting for the post of sick
Lenin? The provisional situation continued. But the procrastination favored the usurpers, for Stalin,
as general secretary, naturally directed the entire state machine during the interregnum period"
(Trotsky, 1959).
Lenin tried to make his rupture with Stalin public in the last days of 1922, shortly before being
sidelined from politics by illness. As Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin had imposed a government
submissive to Georgia by force, invading it in February 1921 and ousting the Menshevik
government headed by Noah Jordania, not only against the will of the majority of the population
but also of the Georgian Bolsheviks. Lenin expressed himself in a "Letter to the Congress": "I think
that, in this episode, Stalin's impatience and his taste for administrative coercion, as well as his
hatred for the famous 'social chauvinism,' had a fatal influence. The influence of hatred in politics
in general is extremely disastrous. Our case, that of our relations with the State of Georgia, is a
typical example of the need for us to use the utmost prudence and to show a conciliatory and
tolerant spirit if we want to solve the problem in an authentically proletarian way". And, referring
directly to Stalin: "The Georgian who is contemptuous of this aspect of the problem, who blatantly
makes accusations of social-nationalism (when he is an authentic social-nationalist and also a
vulgar Great Russian executioner), this Georgian, violates the interests of proletarian class
solidarity. Stalin and [Felix] Dzerzhinsky [founder and head of the Cheka] must be politically
identified as responsible for this campaign". The Georgian question signaled the transformation of
the USSR, created in 1922, from a project of a free federation of socialist republics (with na explicit
right to secession) into a "prison of peoples," which would explode 70 years later.
Lenin died in January 1924, after a year of increasing health complications - partly derived from the
assassination attempt against him in 1919 - and almost total withdrawal from active politics. In the
last months of his life, his concerns, recorded in his "Testament," caused embarrassment when
read to the Central Committee; the meeting on the eve of the XIII Congress that resolved not to
remove Stalin also decided to disclose the document only to some delegates. A series of
provocations and insults against Trotsky followed, tending to polarize the political scene: the goal
was to propose an incompatibility between "Leninism" and "Trotskyism". With Lenin's death, Stalin
quickly presented himself as the legitimate heir of this "Leninism," defined as a set of doctrines,
vaguely defined but infallible, that would distinguish the party's "official line" from the "heresies"
of its critics. The open and changing thought of a revolutionary method was transformed into the
closed and immutable system of a conservative and counter-revolutionary interest.
The adjective ("Leninist theory of...") was replaced by the noun (Leninism) used initially against
Trotsky and the Left Opposition (created in late 1923) and then as the official doctrine of the USSR
and the Communist International. In a few years, the high priest of the new unique system of
"thought" and, above all, of political coercion, naturally added "Stalinism" to the doctrinal canon of
the new Sacred Scriptures. The enemy of all schemes and definitive ideas, Lenin, was distorted and
presented as the founding father of the Great Definitive Scheme, while his body was obscenely
embalmed, as a religious relic, for public display, a fact that survives to the present. Communist
parties were "Bolshevized," bureaucratically disciplined, to be transformed into an apparatus for
integrating the new bureaucracy into the world order, which precipitated the world, again, into a
scenario dominated by inter-imperialist contradictions, which led to the greatest catastrophe in
human history.
Deified in the "socialist world," the figure of Lenin was labeled, after the end of that "world," as
the greatest villain in human history by publicists recruited from the ranks of former deifiers,
recycled as representatives of hysterical anti-communism by the ideologues of self-assured and
wild capitalism. As this self-assurance melts away in the light of the crisis of capital, Lenin's
trajectory reemerges, a hundred years later, in its true dimension: not as the creation of an "ism"
for the consumption of sects and the justification of bureaucracies (without the name of a
profaned "democratic centralism") and conservative policies, but as an unavoidable moment of
critical-dialectical thought, the only basis for revolutionary action, against a world where the ever-
increasing unfolding of barbarism, neoliberal, fundamentalist, eco-destructive, and neo-fascist,
leaves socialism as the only viable alternative for the survival of humanity. In our historical context,
it is necessary to unembalmed Lenin's thought and action as an exemplary moment, hitherto
unsurpassed, of the transformation of revolutionary ideas into material force.

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