The economic basis of the proletarian revolution.

As Marx and Engels showed, the contradiction between the productive forces and capitalist production relations, which social revolution proletariat, there is a contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation. This main contradiction of capitalism gives rise to a number of other contradictions and finds its expression primarily in the growing antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

This contradiction was already inherent in capitalism at its first stage, when it was still on the ascending line of development. The contradictions of capitalism deepened, became extremely acute and were supplemented by new contradictions when it grew into imperialism and began to develop in a downward direction.

The tendency of capitalist accumulation discovered by Marx, leading to an increasing concentration of wealth on one pole of society and poverty on the other, manifests itself with exceptional force under imperialism. Handfuls of magnates of capital hold in their hands the main mass of the means of production in all capitalist countries and destroy the productive forces both in peacetime and in wartime. The working masses feel more and more acutely the oppression of imperialism, the omnipotence of the capitalist trusts and syndicates, the banks and the financial oligarchy.

Under imperialism, not only the relative but also the absolute impoverishment of the working class is intensified. The sharpening of the contradiction between labor and capital leads to an inevitable revolutionary explosion, to the socialist revolution of the proletariat.

“Either surrender to the mercy of capital, vegetate in the old way and sink down, or take up a new weapon - this is how imperialism puts the question before the millions of proletariat masses. Imperialism is leading the working class to revolution” (I.V. Stalin, Soch., vol. 6, p. 72.).

To the contradictions already known to pre-monopoly capitalism, imperialism has added a new, sharper contradiction between the financial groups, the imperialist powers. Imperialism is characterized by the export of capital to sources of raw materials and, consequently, by the struggle for monopoly possession of these sources, for foreign territories. The struggle between various groups of capitalists for monopoly possession of sources of raw materials and spheres of investment of capital, in conditions when the world was already divided among a handful of imperialist powers, made periodic wars for the redivision of the already divided world inevitable. This leads to the mutual weakening of the imperialists, to the weakening of capitalism, and brings closer the necessity of the proletarian revolution.

Imperialism has intensified and carried to extreme limits the contradiction between a handful of ruling "civilized" nations and between hundreds of millions of colonial and dependent peoples. Imperialism means brutal, unbearable oppression over the population of the colonies, even more cruel and inhuman than in the mother countries. “Imperialism is the most impudent exploitation and the most inhuman oppression of hundreds of millions of the population of the vast colonies and dependent countries. Squeezing out superprofits is the goal of this exploitation and this oppression” (Ibid., p. 73). As a result, the revolutionary proletariat in the struggle against imperialism has an ally in the working people of the colonies and dependent countries.

The aggravation of the old contradictions of capitalism and the appearance of new contradictions in the epoch of imperialism means that the contradiction between the productive forces and production relations has been further developed under imperialism. Imperialism is characterized by an extreme aggravation of the antagonism between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation. This antagonism now finds expression in the deepening conflict between the productive forces and the national-imperialist framework for their development. “From the economic point of view,” Comrade Stalin teaches, “the current conflicts and military clashes between capitalist groups, as well as the struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist class, are based on the conflict of the current productive forces with the national-imperialist framework of their development and with capitalist forms of appropriation. The imperialist framework and the capitalist form stifle, do not allow the productive forces to develop” (JV Stalin, Soch., vol. 5, pp. 109-110).

The historical role of the socialist revolution.

The elimination of this conflict is possible only through the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, which is the basis of capitalist appropriation and imperialist robbery. If, consequently, in all previous revolutions it was a question of replacing one form of private property with another: slave-owning with feudal property, and feudal property with capitalist property, then the socialist revolution is called upon to abolish all private ownership of the means of production and establish in its place public, socialist property. . Thus, the socialist revolution is called upon to abolish all exploitation of some people by others. This is the historical meaning of the proletarian, socialist revolution and its fundamental difference from all other revolutions. Therefore, the proletarian revolution is a fundamental turning point in world history.

The Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia fully confirmed the truth of Marxism-Leninism about the significance of the proletarian revolution. It led to the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, to the elimination of the exploiting classes and all types of exploitation and oppression, to the establishment of a socialist mode of production based on public ownership of the means of production.

The proletarian revolution differs from other revolutions in its great creative mission. None of the previous revolutions faced the task of creating a new mode of production. The bourgeois economy took shape and matured spontaneously in the bowels of feudal society because bourgeois property and feudal property fundamentally the same.

Socialist ownership of the means of production cannot spontaneously establish itself in a society based on private ownership of the means of production, on the exploitation and oppression of the working people. In the depths of bourgeois society, only the material basis for the inevitable advance of socialism is being created. This material basis grows in the form of new productive forces and the socialization of labor and creates the possibility and necessity for the transfer of the means of production into the ownership of society. But the transformation of this possibility into reality does not take place spontaneously, but has as its preliminary condition the socialist revolution, the conquest of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the expropriation of the expropriators. If the bourgeois revolution finds ready-made forms of the capitalist economy and its tasks are reduced only to destroying and sweeping away all the fetters of the former society, then “the proletarian revolution begins in the absence, or almost in the absence, of ready-made forms of the socialist way of life” (J. V. Stalin , Soch., vol. 8, p. 21), and its task is to build a new, socialist economy on the basis of the proletarian dictatorship. From this follows the most important difference between the proletarian revolution, formulated by Comrade Stalin in the following words: “The bourgeois revolution usually ends with the seizure of power, while for the proletarian revolution the seizure of power is only its beginning, and power is used as a lever for restructuring the old economy and organizing a new one” (Ibid.) .

Unlike the bourgeois revolution, whose mission is completely exhausted by the destruction of the old, the proletarian revolution is not limited to the destruction of the old, it faces great creative tasks, it is called upon to organize the lives of millions of people in a new way, on the principles of socialism.

The bourgeoisie and its reformist henchmen stubbornly repeat that the working class, while destroying the old system, is allegedly incapable of creating anything new, that the people cannot do without the landowners and capitalists. This slander of modern slave owners and their hirelings - right-wing socialists, laborists, trade union bureaucrats - is shattered by the great vital fact of the existence of socialism, built by the Soviet people under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, according to the plans of the great scientific and organizational genius of Lenin in Stalin. Comrade Stalin, assessing the world-historical significance of building socialism in the USSR, noted that the main result of this victory is that the working class of our country “has shown in practice that it is fully capable of not only destroying the old system, but also building a new, better one.” , a socialist system, and, moreover, such a system that knows neither crises nor unemployment ”(JV Stalin, Questions of Leninism, ed. 11, p. 610).

The great socialist revolution in Russia in October 1917 marked the beginning of the world proletarian revolution. It was directed against the bourgeoisie of town and country. Its main, main goal was the overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the rule of the working class - the dictatorship of the proletariat, the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war.

The working class, in alliance with the poorest peasantry, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, overthrew the power of the bourgeoisie and established its own dictatorship. It destroyed, broke down the entire state apparatus of the old, bourgeois power, destroyed private capitalist property and deprived the bourgeoisie of the economic foundations of its rule.

Factory enterprises, banks and railways passed into the ownership of the proletarian state. At first, only workers' control over production was introduced in factories and plants. But then industrial enterprises, primarily the largest ones, were nationalized and became the property of the proletarian state. All mines, oil sources, forests also became the property of the state.

One of the first decrees of the Soviet government was the Decree on Land. Under this decree, landlord ownership of land was abolished. The workers' state transferred the land to the use of the working peasantry. In total, the peasants received over 100 million rubles. ha land (landlord, royal, church, monastery, etc.).

All loans made by the tsar and the bourgeois government of Kerensky inside Russia and abroad were declared null and void. The working people of the Soviet country were exempted from the annual payment to the capitalists of hundreds of millions of rubles of interest alone on loans.

The proletarian revolution took place during the world imperialist war. In 1914, the capitalists and landowners dragged Russia into a war with Germany and its allies in order to acquire new possessions at the expense of Turkey (Constantinople and the straits from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean) and Austria-Hungary.

The workers and peasants - the poor and the middle peasants - did not need the war. Against their will they went to the front, under duress they fought for their interests. class enemies- landowners and capitalists, bearing the brunt of a long and unprecedented massacre in terms of the number of victims.

The soldiers at the front, the working masses in the rear yearned for peace, but they did not know how to end the war. The only way out of the war - a revolutionary way out - was indicated to them by the Bolshevik Party.

From the very first days of the war, under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, under extremely difficult conditions, the Party launched a struggle for a revolutionary way out of the imperialist war, for its transformation into a civil war.

How was the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war understood by Lenin, by the party? Already in the September (1914) “theses on the war”, which guided the Bolsheviks both in Russia and abroad, Lenin put the following content into this slogan: “Comprehensive propaganda of the socialist revolution and the need to direct weapons not against their brothers, wage-slaves of other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois governments and parties of all countries" ( Lenin, Works, vol. XVIII, p. 46, ed. 3rd. (According to this edition, all quotations from Lenin's works are given in the book.)). But it was easier to achieve this transformation of a predatory war into a civil war against one's own bourgeoisie when "one's own" government was defeated. The defeat of the tsarist government in the war weakened it and made the road to revolution easier. The Bolsheviks in Russia showed examples of defeatist activity both in the army and in the rear. They created illegal party organizations, issued leaflets, appeals, held strikes, demonstrations, organized fraternization of soldiers at the front, organized and supported all revolutionary actions of the masses, which weakened tsarism and brought the day of revolution closer.

And when, as a result of the tireless work of the Bolsheviks, the St. Petersburg proletariat, dragging along the soldiers of the garrison (peasants in soldiers' overcoats), overthrew the autocracy in February 1917, Lenin assessed this as the first step, as the beginning of the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil one.

In the subsequent period - from February to October 1917 - the party, headed by Lenin, continued to implement this slogan. By rallying the working masses, the soldiers, and the poorest peasantry to fight the bourgeoisie, creating their own armed forces, organizing an armed rebuff to the Kornilov bands (at the end of August 1917), preparing an armed uprising, the Bolsheviks gradually put fully into practice the great battle slogan of Lenin.

The armed uprising in the October days of 1917 was already a civil war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship.

Lenin in Smolny. From a painting by the artist Khvostenko.

“... The transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war,” said Vladimir Ilyich, “on November 7 (October 25), 1917, became a fact for one of the largest and most backward countries participating in the war. In this civil war, the overwhelming majority of the population turned out to be on our side, and as a result, victory was given to us unusually easily. (Lenin, vol. XXII, p. 314).

Having overthrown the rule of the bourgeoisie and established Soviet power, the working class develops a struggle for peace, for an end to the imperialist war. One of the first October decrees of the Soviet government was the decree on peace. This decree, addressed to all warring peoples and their governments, proposed to start immediate negotiations on a just peace, and to establish a truce before the conclusion of peace. Following the decree on peace, the Soviet government published secret treaties concluded between the imperialist governments of Russia and the Entente (the Entente is France and England, in alliance with which Russia participated in the imperialist war. Conventionally, the Entente is called the entire group of imperialist states - in addition to France and England, the United states of America, Japan, Italy, etc. - who fought together against Germany and its allies - Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, and after the October Revolution participated in the intervention against Soviet Russia).

The publication of secret treaties dealt a severe blow to both Russian capitalists and landowners, and foreign ones, and along with them to social traitors - the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who also supported the war to a victorious end and supported the bourgeoisie in every possible way.

By fighting for peace, the party and the Soviet government won over to their side huge masses of working people. The counter-revolutionaries represented by the landowners, factory owners, bankers and white generals tried in every possible way to disrupt the peaceful policy of the party, to prevent the Soviet government from establishing a truce on the fronts. In the struggle against Soviet power, striving in every possible way to destroy it, some counter-revolutionary organizations - the all-army committee at headquarters, various committees for the defense of the motherland and the revolution (read - counter-revolution), headed by inveterate opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat - the Socialist-Revolutionaries Chernov and Gotz, Stankevich and others, in the October days they tried to deceive the soldiers and workers, portraying themselves as peacekeepers and trying to take peace negotiations into their own hands only to frustrate them. But they failed.

The revolution in Russia in October 1917 was a proletarian, socialist revolution. In doing it, the working class, according to Vladimir Ilyich's definition, decided - "in passing, in passing, as a" by-product "of our main and real, proletarian-revolutionary, socialist work" - and the questions of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, primarily land and national issues. The completion of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution exerted its influence on the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the landowners, and the kulaks in October and in the subsequent years of the civil war. Here is what Comrade Stalin wrote about this:

"One of the most greatest achievements of the dictatorship of the proletariat lies in the fact that it carried the bourgeois revolution to the end and swept clean the filth of the Middle Ages. For the village, this was the most important and truly decisive. Without this, the union of the peasant wars with the proletarian revolution could not be carried out, as Marx spoke of as early as the second half of the last century. Without this, the proletarian revolution itself could not be consolidated. In doing so, the following important circumstance should be borne in mind. Bringing the bourgeois revolution to an end is not a single act. In fact, it stretched out over a whole period, capturing not only pieces of 1918 ... but also pieces of 1919 (Volga region - Urals) and 1919–1920. (Ukraine). I have in mind the offensive of Kolchak and Denikin, when the peasantry as a whole was faced with the danger of restoring the power of the landlords, and when, exactly how whole, forced to rally around the Soviet government in order to ensure the completion of the bourgeois revolution and to preserve the fruits of this revolution" ( Stalin Questions of Leninism, p. 248, ed. 9th (according to this edition, all quotations from Questions of Leninism are given in the book).).

The October Revolution established the complete equality of all peoples inhabiting Russia. The peoples, previously oppressed by the tsarist government, were given the opportunity to independently arrange their lives up to separation from Russia and the formation of their own state. Leninskaya national policy party, held under the direct supervision of the closest colleague and best student Lenin t. Stalin, who was at that time People's Commissar on the Affairs of Nationalities, played a huge role in ensuring the victory of the working class in the October days and during the years of the civil war.

“The Russian workers could not have defeated Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel without such sympathy and self-confidence on the part of the oppressed masses of the border regions. former Russia. It should not be forgotten that the area of ​​action of these rebellious generals was limited to the outskirts, populated predominantly by non-Russian nationalities, and the latter could not help but hate Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel for their imperialist and Russification policies. The Entente, which intervened in the matter and supported these generals, could rely only on the Russification elements of the outskirts. By doing this, it only kindled the hatred of the population of the outskirts of rebel generals and deepened his sympathy for the Soviet regime.

This circumstance determined the internal weakness of the rear of Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel, and hence the weakness of their fronts, that is, in the end, their defeat " (Stalin, On the October Revolution, p. 40).

The Party led the working class and led it to storm capitalism in order to overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and build a socialist society for the first time in the world.

The party proceeded from the indisputable Leninist proposition that the victory of socialism in one country is entirely possible. The point is that in the epoch of imperialism, the uneven economic and political development of the capitalist countries becomes especially aggravated. They develop “not evenly, not in the order of an established queue, not in such a way that one trust, one branch of industry or one country goes ahead all the time, while other trusts or countries lag behind sequentially one after another, but spasmodically, with interruptions in the development of some countries and with leaps forward in the development of other countries" (Stalin, Questions of Leninism, p. 83). Not in all countries the working class and its party are equally strong, united and organized. And the bourgeoisie is stronger in some countries than in others. It was precisely this uneven, spasmodic development that made possible the victory of socialism in one country, and moreover, in that country where the chain of imperialism proved to be the weakest.

Back in 1915 Lenin, exposing Trotsky, who denied the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country, proved that such a victory was entirely possible. “Uneven economic and political development; - Lenin wrote, - there is an unconditional law of capitalism. It follows from this that the victory of socialism is possible initially in a few or even in one, taken separately, capitalist country. (Lenin, vol. XVIII, p. 232).

Under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich, the party led the Russian proletariat in its struggle for the socialist revolution, crushing all enemies and opponents of the party line both among the working class and within the ranks of the party itself.

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, these direct agents and accomplices of the bourgeoisie in the ranks of the working class and peasantry, betrayed the interests of the workers and working people long before October. Against socialism - for capitalism, against the dictatorship of the proletariat - for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, against peace - for the imperialist war - such was the political line of the social traitors, which they opposed to the line of our Party. During the October days, and especially after the October Revolution, they fought with arms in hand against the working class and peasantry on the side of the capitalists and landlords.

Within the Bolshevik Party, there were also opponents of Lenin's position on the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country. Trotsky and his supporters, admitted to the party not long before October and remaining in it all the time a faction vacillating between Bolshevism and Menshevism, opposed this proposition of Lenin. Trotsky argued as early as 1906 that "without the direct state support of the European proletariat, the working class of Russia will not be able to stay in power." Just before October, he criticized Lenin's views, declaring that the victory of socialism in one country (it was Russia) was impossible. With this reservation, he went to the October uprising. At the Sixth Party Congress (in August 1917), Comrade Stalin had to come out sharply against individual supporters of Trotskyist views. At his suggestion, an amendment to the resolution on the political situation, introduced by Preobrazhensky (a future member of the Trotskyist opposition), who argued that Russia could go to socialism only after the victory of the proletariat in the West, was rejected. In contrast to these views, the resolution emphasized that the next task of the proletariat of Russia is the seizure of state power and the socialist reorganization of society. Thus, even before the October Revolution, the highest organ of the Party, the Party Congress, put forward the building of socialism in Russia as the most important task after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

S. M. Kirov (in 1919).

Just before October, Zinoviev and Kamenev, who also did not believe in the possibility of the victory of socialism in our country, opposed the Party's decision to organize an armed uprising. In the days when the party was finishing preparations for the uprising, they were on the pages of the Menshevik newspaper hostile to the Bolsheviks " New life"began to agitate against the uprising, thereby giving out the party plan to the enemies. Lenin attacked them as deserters and scabs. Under the threat of immediate expulsion from the party, they were forced to drag themselves into an uprising literally under pressure.

A few days after the victory of the October Revolution, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Shlyapnikov, together with a number of other workers, future right opportunists, again came out against Lenin's line. Not believing in the strength of the working class and its party, they demanded the inclusion in the first Soviet government of representatives of all the parties that participated in the Second Congress of Soviets in the October days of 1917. In reality, this would have meant the surrender of power to the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries and the complete defeat of the proletarian revolution. That is why Lenin waged a merciless struggle against Zinoviev, Kamenev and other traitors to the cause of the working class, accomplices of the bourgeoisie. Only under the threat of immediate expulsion from the party were they compelled to submit to the demands of the Central Committee of the party. As the subsequent activities of Zinoviev and Kamenev showed, especially after the death of Lenin, their behavior during the days of October was not accidental. In their struggle against the general line of the party, pursued by the Leninist Central Committee headed by Comrade Stalin, they descended to the vile deception of the party and double-dealing, became direct accomplices of the counter-revolutionary groups, traitors to the cause of communism, for which they were expelled from the party in October 1932.

Having deceived the Party and the working class, the remnants of the defeated Zinoviev opposition, powerless and embittered at the Party, completely isolated from the working class, sank down onto the path of white bandit fascist means of struggle—to individual terror. On 1/XII 1934, the secretary of the Central and Leningrad committees of the party, the beloved leader of the proletariat, Sergei Mironovich Kirov, fell from their hands. The dictatorship of the proletariat severely cracked down not only on the outright murderers and accomplices in the murder of Comrade Kirov, but also brought to justice the leaders of the Zinoviev opposition, who brought up the heinous murderers.

Crushing the resistance of the class enemy - the capitalists and landowners and their lackeys - the social compromisers who betrayed the interests of the proletariat and the working peasantry, eradicating the bourgeois agents in their own ranks, the party, under the leadership of Lenin, led the working class to overthrow the capitalist system.

The socialist revolution began on November 7 (October 25) in Petrograd (Leningrad), Moscow and other proletarian centers.

Approaching the armed insurrection as an art, the party set about organizing and preparing the uprising in advance in order to carry it out most successfully.

Lenin directly led and directed both the preparation for the uprising and its conduct. His closest assistants were members of the military revolutionary center specially created by the Central Committee of the Party (October 29/16) - Comrades. Stalin, Sverdlov, Bubnov, Uritsky and Dzerzhinsky.

The center of the uprising was Petrograd. Lenin, in a number of directives, personally developed specific plan struggle in St. Petersburg and measures to ensure victory.

Revolutionary Center. From a painting by the artist V. Svarog.

One of essential conditions The success of the uprising was the prevention of the armed forces of counter-revolution to Peter, as well as to Moscow. Proceeding from this, local party organizations, especially in the most important railway junctions, had to carry out their practical tasks. The Central Committee of the Party sent out a group of responsible comrades with a special mission to help the local Party organizations ensure victory in the center.

Thanks exclusively to careful preparation in advance, the party was able to create a strong encirclement around Petrograd, through which the counter-revolutionary detachments could not break through. Not only from Kronstadt, but also from Finland, Reval, from the XII and Fifth armies (closest to Peter), the counter-revolution was not able to move the armed forces devoted to it to prevent the uprising or immediately suppress it. On the contrary, by the time of the uprising the party had summoned large detachments of revolutionary Baltic sailors to Petrograd.

When an uprising broke out in Moscow, the White Guards called for help from the western front, from the Don, a significant number of forces - "drummers", Cossacks, etc. But not one of the summoned units reached Moscow: workers, railway workers, revolutionary soldiers under the leadership parties in every possible way thwarted the transfer of the White Guard forces. On the contrary, the forces of the revolution passed unhindered to Moscow from Tula, and from St. Petersburg, and from Shuya and Ivanovo-Voznesensk (a detachment of two thousand strong under the command of M.V. Frunze), and other places.

This preparation ensured victory. In Petrograd, where the uprising was directly led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, power was seized by the Soviets within a day.

In Moscow, where some of the leaders of the uprising (comrades Nogin and others) did not act decisively enough and where the counter-revolution had time to better prepare, the struggle dragged on longer. The working class finally won here only on November 15 (2).

Through intense revolutionary work among the soldiers of the old army throughout 1917, the Bolshevik Party secured the transition to the side of the working class. military units on the fronts, in a number of cities and regions. The elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917 showed that by October the Bolsheviks had behind them almost half of all the votes of the army in general and an overwhelming majority on the fronts closest to the capitals: on the northern front - 480 thousand votes out of 780 thousand, on the western front - 653 thousand out of 976 thousand Baltic Fleet was completely for the Bolsheviks.

In the Northern, Central Industrial and Western regions of Russia (Pskov, Tver, Minsk, Smolensk, Tula, etc.), where the Bolsheviks received more votes in the elections to the Constituent Assembly than any other party, where there were strong Bolshevik organizations, the Soviet government won quickly and easily. But in the peasant regions (Siberia, the Volga region, the Right-Bank Ukraine), especially in the outskirts, in the south and southeast, where the proletariat was numerically small, where national contradictions were strong, the establishment of Soviet power was somewhat delayed.

The capitalists and landlords firmly clung to their power and their property, to the right to unlimited exploitation of the workers and peasants, to their former well-fed life. They vehemently resisted the onslaught of the working class.

Literally four days after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, on November 11 (October 29), the bourgeoisie under active participation Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks through the counter-revolutionary "Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and the Revolution" organized an uprising of the Junkers in Petrograd. According to the plan of the White Guards, this uprising was to be reinforced by a strike on Petrograd by the Cossack troops of General Krasnov, who, together with Kerensky, was moving from Pskov. But the junkers were defeated on the same day by the Red Guards and revolutionary soldiers and sailors. And the Krasnovsky units, detained by the revolutionary troops near Petrograd, under the influence of Bolshevik agitation, completely refused to fight the Soviet government and demanded to return home - to the Don. General Krasnov, taken prisoner, solemnly undertook not to raise arms against the Soviet government and was released by us, but, having received freedom, he immediately “forgot” about his word of honor and, returning to the Don, began to intensively prepare for further struggle with the Soviets. Simultaneously with the organization of the Junker uprising and Krasnov's campaign, the counter-revolutionaries gathered and organized armed forces in the most reliable areas for them to fight the Soviet regime, striving to regain the lost political and economic dominance and restore the old, imperialist Russia. First of all, the counter-revolutionaries rushed to the outskirts.

Entry of the Red Guard into the Kremlin. From a painting by the artist Lissner.

“Even at the beginning of the October Revolution,” says Comrade Stalin, “a certain geographical demarcation between revolution and counter-revolution was outlined. In the course of the further development of the civil war, the areas of revolution and counter-revolution were finally determined. Inner Russia with its industrial and cultural-political centers (Moscow and Petrograd), with a nationally homogeneous population, predominantly Russian, has become the base of the revolution. The outskirts of Russia, mainly the southern and eastern outskirts, without important industrial and cultural and political centers, with a population highly diverse in national terms, consisting of privileged colonial Cossacks, on the one hand, and incomplete Tatars, Bashkirs, Kirghiz (in the east ), Ukrainians, Chechens, Ingush and other Muslim peoples, on the other hand, have become the base of the counter-revolution.

It is not difficult to understand that there is nothing unnatural in such a geographical distribution of the fighting forces of Russia. Indeed, who else should be the base of the Soviet government if not the Petrograd-Moscow proletariat? Who else could be the stronghold of the Denikin-Kolchak counter-revolution, if not the original instrument of Russian imperialism, enjoying privileges and organized into a military class - the Cossacks, who have long been exploiting non-Russian peoples in the border regions?

Isn't it clear that there could be no other "geographical distribution"? (Stalin, On the military situation in the south of Russia, Pravda No. 293, 1919).

Even before the start of the October Revolution, capitalists and landlords began to gather in the Don and Kuban. Especially many white officers gathered here who had fled from the army, considering the Don as a hearth, as the center of the entire Russian counter-revolution. Cossack regiments were also drawn here, most of them hostile to the Bolsheviks and the Soviet regime. Generals tsarist army Alekseev, Kornilov, Denikin began to form a white volunteer army to fight the Soviet regime. The working population called this Dobrarmiya "grabarmy" for continuous robberies and robberies.

Clearly, the Soviet government could not allow the existence of this counter-revolutionary nest. The proletarians of Rostov-on-Don fought heroically against the bourgeoisie. For a short time (in November) they even managed to establish Soviet power. But the forces were unequal. The White Guards crushed the uprising, drowned it in blood. From Rostov, they began to throw out detachments to the Donbass against the revolutionary miners. Then several united detachments of the Red Guard and revolutionary soldiers were sent to the Don to fight the White Army from St. Petersburg, Moscow and other centers under the general command of Comrade Antonov-Ovseenko. Passing through the Donbass, these detachments received reinforcements from the miners. Among the Don Cossacks themselves, a stratification began: the poor Cossacks and the peasants who settled on the Don from other provinces (non-residents, as they were called), for the most part also poor, were hostile to the kulak counter-revolutionary Cossacks who oppressed them. The revolutionary Cossacks on January 23, 1918, at a congress in the village of Kamenskaya (representatives of several dozen Cossack units gathered here) openly opposed Ataman-General Kaledin and elected their own revolutionary committee. They formed their detachments and, together with the miners of Donbass, joined the Soviet troops.

During January - February 1918, after a series of battles, the Don was cleared of whites, Rostov (on the night of February 23-24) and Novocherkassk (February 26) became Soviet cities. Lenin, in a special telegram, demanded the capture of Rostov on February 23, and his order was exactly carried out. The White Guards were forced to flee to the Kuban and the Sal steppes (With exceptional strength, a brightly civil warrior on the Don in 1918 is shown in Sholokhov, Quiet Don, part 2.).

K. E. Voroshilov.

In Ukraine, after the short existence of Soviet power in a number of major cities power was seized by the Ukrainian Central Rada - the national bourgeois government. The Ukrainian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who headed the Rada, fulfilling the tasks of their bourgeoisie, sought to turn Ukraine into a bourgeois state. The working masses of the industrial centers of Ukraine, as well as the poorest peasantry, under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, fought for the establishment of Soviet power. In the fight against the Bolsheviks, the Rada provided support to all counter-revolutionary forces. So she let through the White Guard officers from the southwestern and Romanian fronts to the Don. In all its policy, the Rada at first followed the lead of the Entente. Only by making sure that the latter cannot render her real help and that the German-Austrian troops were close, the Rada went over to the side of Germany. First of all, she led negotiations with the German command on the entry of German troops into Ukraine for a joint fight against the Bolsheviks. To fight the counter-revolutionary Rada, revolutionary troops were sent to Kyiv, where it was located. In early January, the troops of the Ukrainian Soviet government formed in Kharkov began an offensive against Kyiv. Troops from the center who had come to the aid of the Ukrainian workers and peasants advanced on Kyiv from the north. In Kyiv itself, an uprising of workers unfolded, which was strangled with great difficulty by the Ukrainian counter-revolution. February 9, 1918 with a joint strike Soviet troops and workers Kyiv was captured. The Rada fled to Zhytomyr under the protection of the German bayonets. Soviet power was restored in Ukraine.

In Belarus, the counter-revolutionary Polish corps of General Dovbor-Musnitsky, formed even before the revolution, opposed the Soviet government. This corps, acting on orders from the Entente, supported local landowners who did not want to give up land to the peasants, and conspired with the White Guard generals on the Don to jointly fight against the proletarian state. General Dovbor-Musnitsky planned to cut in the Zhlobin area railway, along which Ukrainian grain was transported to Petrograd and Belarus, and thereby weaken Soviet power. But by the combined actions of the Latvian riflemen, sailors and local Red Guards, the corps near Zhlobin (February 7) and Rogachev (February 13) was defeated. By mid-February, the Poles were forced to clear the cities and junction stations they had captured.

On January 26, 1918, the revolution also won in Finland. In its southern part, from the Gulf of Bothnia to Lake Ladoga, the rule of the bourgeoisie was overthrown and workers' power was established. Unfortunately, this power was not yet a true dictatorship of the proletariat, which was very strongly reflected in the subsequent struggle of the working class.

In the Urals, the Orenburg and Ural Cossacks, mostly kulaks, who feared that the October Revolution would deprive them of all privileges. The struggle unfolded mainly around Orenburg as the center of the region. On December 8, the city was captured by counter-revolutionary Cossacks. The proletarians of Yekaterinburg, Perm, Ufa, Samara threw their detachments to the aid of the Orenburgers. Reinforcements were also coming from Tashkent. On January 7, a decisive offensive began on Orenburg from Buzuluk. The commander of the red units was the old Bolshevik comrade Kobozev, who received direct instructions and assistance from comrade Stalin. By January 17, the red units were near Orenburg. On the evening of the same day, the workers of the city rebelled under the leadership of an underground party organization. The Dutovites found themselves between two fires and fled in panic to the Orenburg and Ural steppes.

In November-December, the working class crushed the resistance of the bourgeoisie throughout Siberia and established its power there. February 26, 1918 at the II All-Siberian Congress of Soviets elected the All-Siberian Central Executive Committee ("Centrosibir").

Finally, in Central Asia, on the territory of the present Uzbek SSR, the counter-revolutionary "autonomous government" was liquidated on February 19 by the combined efforts of the Tashkent and Samarkand Red Army detachments, which had grouped its forces in Kokand.

Thus, from November 1917 to February 1918, both the Russian bourgeois-landowner and the nationalist counter-revolution were defeated almost everywhere. Soviet power won over a vast territory - from Minsk to Vladivostok, from Murmansk and Arkhangelsk to Odessa, Rostov and Tashkent.

“Since October,” Lenin said, “our revolution, which placed power in the hands of the revolutionary proletariat, established its dictatorship, secured for it the support of the vast majority of the proletariat and the poorest peasantry, since October our revolution has been on a victorious, triumphal march. In all parts of Russia, a civil war broke out in the form of resistance from the exploiters, landowners and bourgeoisie, supported by part of the imperialist bourgeoisie.

A civil war has begun, and in this civil war the forces of the opponents Soviet power, the forces of the enemies of the working and exploited masses turned out to be insignificant; The civil war was a complete triumph of Soviet power, because its opponents, the exploiters, the landlords and the bourgeoisie, had no political or economic support, and their attack was thwarted. The fight against them combined not so much military operations as agitation; Layer after layer, mass after mass, up to the working Cossacks, fell away from those exploiters who tried to lead it away from Soviet power. (Lenin, vol. XXII, p. 390).

The period from the beginning of the October Revolution to mid-February 1918, when the Austro-German intervention began, was what Lenin called the period of "the triumphal march of Soviet power."

“In a few weeks,” he said, “having overthrown the bourgeoisie, we defeated its open resistance in a civil war. We marched in a victorious triumphal procession of Bolshevism from end to end of a vast country. (Lenin, vol. XXII, p. 375).

The bourgeois-landlord counter-revolution received a crushing blow. However, it was only defeated, but not yet finished to the end. A significant number of counter-revolutionaries went underground, united in various organizations and unions, disguised themselves, some of them penetrated into the Soviet organs, into the Soviet troops in order to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat and its armed forces from within. The counter-revolution on the outskirts also continued to accumulate its forces. In particular, all of Transcaucasia (with the exception of Baku) was under the rule of landlords and capitalists, who ruled through the hands of social traitors. And most importantly, there remained the ground on which the bourgeois-landowner counter-revolution could rely, the kulaks remained - the worst enemy of the working class and the working peasantry, the worst enemy of socialism. Finally, the henchmen of the landlords and capitalists in the ranks of the workers and peasants, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, had not yet been completely defeated.

The counter-revolutionaries continued to resist, to wage an armed struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nevertheless own forces for a broad struggle against the Soviet regime, the Russian counter-revolution was still not enough. But with outside support, it could relatively easily launch an armed struggle. It received this support from international imperialism.

Even before October, in preparing for the socialist revolution, the Party took into account that the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship would evoke fierce armed resistance against the domestic counter-revolution and that the imperialist states would inevitably come out with armed force against the proletarian state in order to crush and crush the proletarian revolution.

In all the speeches in which Vladimir Ilyich substantiated the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country, he simultaneously emphasized the inevitability of revolutionary wars by the victorious proletariat to protect itself from the counter-revolutionary attacks of the world bourgeoisie. For example, in the article “The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution” (1916), he directly pointed out that the victory of socialism in one country should “cause not only friction, but also a direct desire of the bourgeoisie of other countries to defeat the victorious proletariat of the socialist state.”

That is why the Party has always devoted exceptionally great attention to the creation of a proletarian armed organization: the Red Guard during the period of the struggle for power, the Red Army for the defense of the proletarian state.

"The first commandment of every victorious revolution - Marx and Engels emphasized this many times - was: smash the old army, disband it, replace it with a new one" (Lenin, vol. XXIII, pp. 378–379). This exceptionally clearly formulated by Vladimir Ilyich line of the Party's military policy was steadily pursued by the Bolsheviks in the first period of the proletarian revolution.

The necessity of destroying, breaking up the old army as an armed stronghold of bourgeois power was as clear to the Party as the need for destroying, breaking in general the entire old state apparatus. The demolition of the bourgeois state machine is the most important task of every proletarian revolution. The breaking up of the old army was an inseparable part of the breaking up of the entire old state machine.

The tasks of destroying the old, bourgeois army and creating in its place a new, proletarian army were inextricably linked with one another. Long before the October Revolution, the party, through active revolutionary propaganda and agitation, was destroying the foundations of the old army and at the same time creating an armed organization of the working class - the Red Guard. The Party (through its military organizations) also created an armed stronghold for the proletarian revolution from the most revolutionary soldiers of the old army.

Just like the uprising of the proletariat in Moscow, Donbass, Siberia, the North Caucasus, like the armed struggle of the peasants in the Baltic, in the Central Black Earth region and other regions, like the armed uprisings in the army and navy in 1905-1907. were, in the words of Comrade Voroshilov, a prelude to the civil war of 1917-1921, so the detachments of the Red Guard, workers and partisan squads of the era of the revolution of 1905 are the predecessors, the prototype of the Red Army.

In order to seize power and suppress the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, the working class at first sufficed as its armed force with detachments of the Red Guard and those detachments of revolutionary soldiers who had emerged from the old army. But for the defense of the Soviet country from the inevitable counter-revolutionary attack on it by the imperialist states and the forces of the scattered Red Guard detachments that had strengthened under their wing, the White armies were no longer enough. The armed workers were, according to Lenin, only the germ of a new army. And under the leadership of the party, the victorious proletariat begins to create its own powerful army.

First of all, it was necessary to finally smash and disband the old army. The Party rejected the opinion of some military workers who believed that the old army, if not entirely, then partially, could be rehabilitated and reorganized, and decided to completely demobilize the old army and start building a new army to replace it.

Krasnogvardeisky detachment

On January 16/3, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approves the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People” drawn up by Lenin, in which “in the interests of ensuring full power for the working masses and eliminating any possibility of restoring the power of the exploiters, the arming of the working people, the formation of a socialist red army of workers and peasants are decreed and the complete disarmament of the propertied classes" (Lenin, vol. XXII, pp. 176–177). On the basis of this decision of the highest body of Soviet power, party organizations and local councils launched a large campaign and organizational work to form a new, Red Army. Lenin's basic guidelines for the creation of the Red Army and the little experience of the localities in building a new army were summed up in the historic decree on the organization of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, which was personally edited and signed by Lenin on January 28/15, 1918. The decree was immediately sent throughout the country and immediately began to be put into practice.

The decree established that at first the Red Army should be built on the basis of volunteerism. Volunteering was an inevitable stage in the construction of the Red Army. It was impossible to enter a mandatory military service until the end of the demobilization of the old army, until the soldiers went home, where they personally took part in the division of the landowners' land, until they were personally convinced of what the proletarian revolution gave the workers and peasants, and did not understand the need to defend the October conquest from class enemies. Prior to such a change in the minds of at least a part of the working peasantry, the Red Army could only be built on the basis of volunteerism. In addition, there was no corresponding military apparatus for conducting mass conscriptions and mobilization. The tremendous significance of the decree also lay in the fact that it put the construction of a new army into a certain course, outlined the main ways of this construction. And most importantly, the decree emphasized the need to create a new, powerful, centralized and disciplined army of the proletarian state.

Following the issuance of a decree on the organization of the Red Army, the All-Russian Collegium for the formation of the Red Army was created. A particularly important role in the development of work on the construction of the Red Army was played by the organizational and propaganda department of this collegium, headed by L. M. Kaganovich, the current secretary of the Central Committee and MK of the CPSU (b), the closest associate of Comrade Stalin.

In the party there were opponents of the creation of a centralized army, the so-called "left" communists, who did not believe at all in the possibility of the victory of socialism in Russia, and therefore did not believe in the possibility of carrying out such a huge task as creating a powerful Red Army. They proposed not to set ourselves such a task, but to limit ourselves to the creation of small partisan, quickly mobilized detachments. The Party fought mercilessly against such views, consistently pursuing the Leninist line in the matter of creating a new army. In this work, the party proceeded from what the founders of Marxism-Leninism taught the working class, widely using both the experience of the military work of the Bolsheviks in the revolution of 1905 and the experience of creating Red Guard detachments in 1917, and the practical military experience that the revolutionary workers endured. and peasants - old soldiers - from the imperialist war.

PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION AND RENEGATE KAUTSKY - the work of V.I. Lenin, written

October - no later than November 10, 1918. Appendix II - in November, later than November 10, 1918. Printed in 1918 in Moscow.

FOREWORD

Kautsky's pamphlet The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, recently published in Vienna, testifies to the complete collapse of the Second International, which is confirmed by all honest socialists in all countries. The revolution in a number of countries weighs in question. Therefore, an analysis of Kautsky's departure from Marxism is necessary.

Even from the beginning of the First World War, Lenin pointed to this phenomenon. For example, in a pamphlet published in 1915 in Geneva, he said that Kautsky, having acquired authority in the International, by verbally recognizing Marxism, was distorting it. Turning it into a liberal-bourgeois trend, calling for a non-revolutionary "class struggle", which Struve and Brentano dreamed of. This can also be seen in the example of Plekhanov, who recognized everything in Marxism except revolutionary struggle.

Back in 1909, Kautsky published a book on the approach of the revolution, and in 1912 he signed the Basel Manifesto on the revolutionary use of imperialist war, thereby justifying social chauvinism, just like Plekhanov, ridiculing revolutionary ideas. The working class will not be able to carry out the revolution without fighting opportunism, in particular the product of the contradictions of the Second International, Kautskyism. In 1916, in the book Imperialism, as the Newest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin analyzed in detail Kautsky's falsehood about imperialism. According to Kautsky, imperialism is a product of highly developed industrial capitalism. It consists in the striving of every industrial capitalist nation to annex or subjugate all the large agrarian (Kautsky's italics) regions, regardless of what nations they are inhabited by. Lenin wrote about the infidelity and opportunism of this definition. In fact, imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development when the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has taken shape, the export of capital has acquired an outstanding importance, the division of the world by international trusts has begun, and the division of the entire territory of the earth by the largest capitalist countries has been completed. But Kautsky's criticism of imperialism is lower than bourgeois and philistine criticism. In 1917-18. In the work "The State and Revolution", in the chapters "The Teaching of Marxism about the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution", "The Defaming of Marxism by the Opportunists", much criticism is devoted to Kautsky as a corrupter of Marxism and an apostate from revolutionary ideas.

HOW KAUTSKY TURNED MARX INTO A DOZEN LIBERAL

The dictatorship of the proletariat, about which Kautsky wrote, is the fundamental content of the proletarian revolution, and therefore it is worth dwelling on it in detail.

Kautsky contrasts the Bolsheviks with the non-Bolsheviks, erroneously calling the latter socialists. He called the Bolshevik method dictatorial, and the non-Bolshevik method democratic. The question of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the question of the relation of the proletarian state to the bourgeois state, of proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy, but Kautsky, in a whole series of paragraphs, chews and chews on the junk about the relation of bourgeois democracy to absolutism and the Middle Ages! Kautsky speaks of "pre-socialist democracy", embellishing bourgeois "democracy" and obscures the question of revolution. According to the author of the pamphlet, Marx only once uttered a “word” about the dictatorship of the proletariat, in 1875: “Between capitalist and communist society lies a period of revolutionary transformation of the first into the second. This period also corresponds to a political transition period, and the state of this period cannot be anything other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." This is surprising, because Kautsky knew Marx almost by heart, knew that he and Engels had been talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat for forty years.

This suggests that Kautsky deliberately wanted to replace dialectics with eclecticism, deliberately leaning towards opportunism, playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Then Kautsky said that Marx allegedly did not describe the very essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a dictatorship in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, this is fundamentally not the case. Marx and Engels gave a number of conditions for the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and this concept itself does not mean the destruction of democracy, not autocracy or despotism, but the power of a particular class. Kautsky began with a definition of the very word "dictatorship", incorrectly defining this word as "destruction of democracy", which in essence is not a definition. Secondly, only liberals tend to talk about democracy globally, while Marxists should clarify for whom it is intended.

Then Kautsky writes that the uprisings of slaves in antiquity meant the undermining of ancient statehood and the establishment of the dictatorship of slave owners, without foreseeing that the dictatorship of slave owners provided for democracy for them. Dictatorship does not necessarily mean the destruction of democracy for the class that exercises this dictatorship over other classes, but it necessarily means the destruction (or the most essential limitation, which is also one of the types of destruction) of democracy for the class over which or against which the dictatorship is exercised. But, no matter how true this statement is, it does not give a definition of dictatorship.

Further, Kautsky, like a blind puppy, repeats that any dictatorship means the dictatorship of a concrete person, accidentally stumbling upon the idea that a dictatorship is not bound by any laws. The first is fundamentally wrong, because a class, a handful of individuals, a junta can exercise dictatorship. After which Kautsky points out the difference between dictatorship and despotism, but although his indication is clearly incorrect, we will not dwell on it, because this does not at all relate to the question that interests us. As a result, we get that, when he undertook to talk about dictatorship, Kautsky uttered a lot of deliberate lies, but did not give any definition! In fact, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is a power won and maintained by the proletariat's violence against the bourgeoisie, a power not bound by any laws. This obvious thing has to be "won back" by Kautsky! How to explain this? That spirit of servility, which imbued the leaders of the Second International, who became despicable sycophants in the service of the bourgeoisie. Kautsky also confused the state of the dictatorship from its form. By interpreting dictatorship as a "state of domination" when violence and revolution disappear, he dooms revolution to extinction. Still, after all, the dictatorship of the proletariat provides for the destruction of one class by another, which is extremely unfavorable for the renegades.

If one does not mock common sense and history, then it is clear that one cannot speak of "pure democracy" as long as there are different classes, but one can speak only of class democracy. "Pure democracy" is the lying phrase of a liberal who fools the workers. History knows bourgeois democracy, which is replacing feudalism, and proletarian democracy, which is replacing bourgeois democracy. Kautsky devotes almost dozens of pages to "proving" the truth that bourgeois democracy is progressive in comparison with the Middle Ages and that it must be used by the proletariat in its struggle against the bourgeoisie, this is precisely liberal chatter that fools the workers.

Kautsky simply throws "learned" sand in the eyes of the workers, talking with an air of importance about Weitling and the Jesuits in Paraguay, and about many other things, in order to bypass the bourgeois essence of modern, i.e., capitalist, democracy. Kautsky takes from Marxism what is acceptable to the liberals, to the bourgeoisie (criticism of the Middle Ages, the progressive historical role of capitalism in general and capitalist democracy in particular), and throws out, hushed up, obscures in Marxism that which is unacceptable to the bourgeoisie (the revolutionary violence of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for its destruction). Bourgeois democracy, being a great historical progress in comparison with the Middle Ages, always remains - and cannot but remain under capitalism - narrow, truncated, false, hypocritical, a paradise for the rich, a trap and deceit for the exploited, for the poor.

This truth, which is essential constituent part Marxist doctrine, the "Marxist" Kautsky did not understand. It is in this fundamental question that Kautsky presents "pleasures" for the bourgeoisie instead of scientific criticism of the conditions which make every bourgeois democracy a democracy for the rich. Not only the ancient and feudal, but also the modern representative state is a tool for the exploitation of wage labor by capital.

The state is only a transitory institution that has to be used in a struggle, in a revolution, in order to forcibly suppress its opponents, then to speak of a free state of the people is pure nonsense: as long as the proletariat still needs the state, it needs it not in the interests of freedom, but in the interests of suppression of their opponents, and when it becomes possible to talk about freedom, then the state, as such, ceases to exist. The State is nothing but a machine for the suppression of one class by another, and no less in a democratic republic than in a monarchy. Universal suffrage is an indicator of the maturity of the working class. It cannot give more and will never give in the present state. The hypocrisy of bourgeois "democracy" lies in the fact that the legislation of bourgeois states guarantees people the freedom of assembly, the press, and the equality of citizens before the law. In fact, there are many loopholes through which the bourgeoisie puts pressure on the working class. Kautsky embellishes bourgeois "democracy" while remaining silent about reverse side medals. According to Kautsky, democracy is "the protection of minorities." Kautsky “forgotten” that the ruling party of bourgeois democracy gives protection to the minority only to another bourgeois party, while the proletariat, on every serious, profound, fundamental question, instead of “protection of the minority” gets martial law or pogroms.

An example of this is the lynching of Negroes and internationalists in America, the persecution of the Bolsheviks in Russia. The stock exchange and the bankers dominate the bourgeois parliament, and the stronger this tendency, the stronger the bourgeois "democracy". This testifies to the historical limitations and conventions of parliament. This is the hypocrisy of capitalism. One of the forms of true proletarian democracy is Soviet power, which opened up prospects for the expansion of democracy for the majority of the population.

Take foreign policy. It is not done openly in any of the most democratic bourgeois countries. Everywhere the deception of the masses is a hundred times wider and more subtle in democratic France, Switzerland, America and England than in other countries. The Soviet government revolutionary tore the veil of secrecy from foreign policy. Kautsky did not notice this, he is silent about it, although in the era of predatory wars and secret agreements on the "division of spheres of influence" (i.e., on the division of the world by robber capitalists), this is of cardinal importance, because the question of peace depends on this, the question of life and death of tens of millions of people. Kautsky criticizes Soviet power, pointing to "indirect" elections under it. Not seeing the class essence of the state apparatus. Not to mention the fact that bourgeois elections in every way push the working masses away from power. The Soviet government is doing everything exactly the opposite.

The Soviets are the direct organization of the working and exploited masses themselves, making it easier for them to organize the state themselves and govern it in every possible way. Elections under Soviet power are controlled by the urban proletariat. Soviet power completely destroys the old state apparatus (officialdom, privileges, etc.). Freedom of the press ceases to be hypocrisy, for printing houses and paper are taken from the bourgeoisie. The same with the best buildings, palaces, mansions, manor houses. Main managerial functions Regional Congresses of Soviets provide local power, while the General Congress of Soviets exercises central power. All this was achieved after the October Revolution in Russia.

Can there be equality between the exploited and the exploiter?

Kautsky came to this conclusion based on the fact that the exploited are larger in number than the exploiters. If we think in a bourgeois way, then we must take as a basis the attitude of the majority to the minority, and if in a Marxist way, then the attitude of the exploited to the exploiters. The exploiters inevitably turn the state (and we are talking about democracy, that is, one of the forms of the state) into an instrument of domination by their class, the exploiters, over the exploited. Therefore, a democratic state, as long as there are exploiters dominating the majority of the exploited, will inevitably be a democracy for the exploiters. The state of the exploited must be fundamentally different from such a state, it must be a democracy for the exploited and the suppression of the exploiters, and the suppression of a class means the inequality of this class, its exclusion from "democracy". Kautsky considers that the minority must always obey the majority, but he is silent about the relationship of the one and the other to each other. Marx and Engels said that the task of the majority (the proletariat) is to destroy the minority (the bourgeoisie). Kautsky did not mention this either. Violence, on the other hand, under the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary in order to break the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to inspire fear in the reactionaries, to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie, so that the proletariat can forcibly suppress its opponents. Kautsky does not recognize this. The exploiter cannot be equal to the exploited, there can be no real, factual equality until all possibility of exploitation of one class by another is completely destroyed. This is not so easy to do, even after the revolution, the bourgeoisie retains its influence and means of production for a long time. A revolution in a particular country destroys the bourgeoisie in a single one. Moreover, even after the revolution, part of the proletariat continues to support the bourgeoisie. For example, among the Versailles troops that suppressed the Commune were proletarians. Therefore, the resistance of the bourgeoisie after the revolution is often very successful. Plus, the petty bourgeoisie is drawn to the ranks of the big bourgeoisie. Proceeding from this, it is foolish to say that the revolution decides the attitude of the majority towards the minority. The transition from capitalism to communism is a whole historical epoch. As long as it is not over, the exploiters inevitably have hope for restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. And after the first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters, who did not expect their overthrow, rush into battle for the return of the "paradise" taken away, for their families, who lived so sweetly and who are now condemned by the "common bastard" to work. And in the era of confrontation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, it is stupid to talk about their equality. This myth was struck by the renegades in the era of relatively peaceful capitalism 1871-1914.

Then Kautsky condemned the disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie by the Soviet government. He raised the question of whether there can be democracy for both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat at the same time. Silent about the fact that the suppression of the exploiting classes is a sign of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, he argued that under the dictatorships of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie should not be infringed in any way.

THE SOVIETS DARE NOT BECOMING STATE ORGANIZATIONS.

Kautsky, as a person who considered the topic of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the chapter devoted to the Soviets, it would be worthwhile to consider their national specifics, because they first appeared in Russia. Kautsky writes about the Soviets as an organization uniting all layers of wage workers, forgetting about the labor aristocracy. He then remarks that the Soviets, despite being positive, are not strong enough to carry out their tasks. And we cannot demand more from the Soviets, moreover, what they did in 1917. Kautsky practically rewrites Menshevik literature, saying that the Soviets should not become militant organizations after taking power into their own hands. Moreover, the Soviets must not become state organization. But the state is a machine for suppressing one class by another. Respectively state form needed by the Soviets to suppress the bourgeoisie. Kautsky does not recognize this.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote that the victorious proletariat must form a state. In the perspective of replacing bourgeois democracy with a proletarian one, it was worthwhile to prepare for the revolution, to train the proletarian army, not being limited by these limits. If in 1909 Kautsky wrote that one should not be afraid of a premature revolution, now he does not mind asserting that neither Europe nor Russia is ready for socialism, contradicting himself that the Soviets have become a militant organization. The Soviets must undoubtedly be fighting, because even in non-revolutionary times, during a strike, a struggle is brewing between the workers in the Soviets and the bourgeoisie, which engenders hatred on both sides, and thoughts of reconciliation do not stand up to scrutiny.

A significant part of Kautsky's pamphlet is devoted to the Constituent Assembly, or rather to the accusation of the Bolsheviks of "destroying democracy", because they dispersed it. According to the author, the Soviets, although a more democratic form of power, are still only capable of making a "useless" transition to socialism. Kautsky agreed with the bourgeois lie that the Bolsheviks dispersed the Assembly only because they found themselves in a minority in it. According to Lenin, the dispersal was necessary because the Soviet, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, must stand above any bourgeois organ in its April theses, which were to reach Kautsky. The second of which says that the Soviet Republic is more democratic than any bourgeois one. Despite this, Kautsky calls the Bolsheviks "revolutionary opportunists."

But even Marx, in a letter to Bebel of March 28, 1875, said that the Commune was more democratic than the bourgeois parliament. To explain the expediency of dispersing the Assembly before the pro-bourgeois elements is like throwing pearls before swine. Despite the renegade, many of the works of Kautsky, as well as Plekhanov, are still of great importance for Marxist philosophy to this day.

Also, Kautsky does not analyze the class essence of the Constituent Assembly, because even after the dispersal of the slogan "All Power to the Constituent Assembly!" the Koledintsy and Cadets will take it into their arsenal. The author has forgotten that only petty-bourgeois and reactionary governments give universal suffrage. And what is important here is not so much the form of the elections as the class essence of the elected body. Kautsky did not touch upon the history of the divergence between the Soviets and the Assembly. What actually is the history of the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie. He believed that the proletarian and bourgeois governing bodies could exist without interfering with each other. He also kept silent about the non-Soviet essence of the Soviets during the reign of the Mensheviks in them. At this time, the Mensheviks called the Soviets a form of revolutionary democracy, and after the appearance of the Assembly they abandoned them. Similarly, even though Kautsky praises the Soviets, he believes that they should not wage a sharp class struggle. The Soviets during the first days of their existence after the October Revolution, the Soviets created two large congresses, in which a gigantic number of the population participated. Not to mention regional congresses. And the bourgeoisie has not created a single institution in which it would have representatives from the proletarian class. During the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, it was already clear that the Constituent Assembly had turned away from the people, so its dispersal was inevitable.

The results of the elections to the Soviets spoke for themselves: in the first convocation, 13% voted for the Bolsheviks, in the second - 51%, in the third - 61%, in the fourth - 64%, in the fifth - 66%.

Kautsky criticized the Bolsheviks for disenfranchising the bourgeoisie, forgetting that this is not the main sign of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This feature became the task of the Soviets after their formation. It was impossible not to notice that after the establishment of Soviet power, the bourgeoisie boycotted the Soviet elections. And under the rule of the Mensheviks in the Soviets, the bourgeoisie separated itself from conscientious deputies. Therefore, their squeeze from the authorities was inevitable.

Kautsky is silent about Kornilovism and other obstacles in the path of Soviet power, which again points to the need to fight the bourgeoisie. But Kautsky believes that if the bourgeoisie in the Soviet simply constituted a minority (ie, if it were the opposition), then it would put up with it. Not realizing that the history of the class struggle did not know such cases. What is the case when the Versailles bourgeoisie during the French Revolution, being in the minority, used the help of Bismarck. And the very concept of "opposition" refers only to peacetime, during the parliamentary struggle.

According to Kautsky, capitalists are a legal status, which is not easy to overthrow. In addition, the proletarian party may be in the majority among this or that class and a minority of the general share of the population. Kautsky cited statistics on the number of exploiters in Germany according to the type of their activity, not realizing that for the proletariat they are all equally negative.

Kautsky criticizes the Soviet Constitution, forgetting that all previous laws openly enslaved ordinary people.

The author of the pamphlet considers the Soviet Constitution almost despotic. All because the proletariat is forced to fight the oppressors in a single country, in the era of the restriction of the imperialist war from their foreign brothers. Criticism is directed towards the decision of the Bolsheviks to expel the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and other bourgeois elements from the Soviets. It was physically impossible not to fight them, because the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries went over to the side not only of the enemies of Soviet power, but also of Russia itself. Kautsky considers that the bourgeoisie, who has one hired apprentice, may well be allowed to run for elections, forgetting that the petty bourgeoisie is even more vicious than the big bourgeoisie. Such criticism Soviet constitution not only Western capitalists were pleased, but also the leaders of the European labor movement, who, being led astray by Kautsky, deepened the split between Russian and Western revolutionaries. The capitalists (especially in Switzerland) specially bought Kautsky's pamphlet in large numbers and distributed it to class-conscious workers. But despite this, many workers did not fall for the author's demagogy. Once again, it should be emphasized that by depriving the bourgeoisie of the right to vote, the Soviet from a compromising one becomes truly proletarian. In 1903, Plekhanov was a revolutionary Marxist and advocated the removal of voting rights from the bourgeoisie, but later became a renegade, following the example of Kautsky.

WHAT IS INTERNATIONALISM?

Kautsky calls himself an internationalist. Before refuting this, Lenin criticized his position in relation to the First World War. For he argued that the war had to be continued until the parties reached a mutually beneficial agreement. And the Bolsheviks were not supposed to take power into their hands, but to be content with the Constituent Assembly. Which once again spoke of Kautsky's renunciation of the revolution. According to Lenin, Kautsky's ideas about "defending the Fatherland" spoke of his desire to continue the imperialist war, for the benefit of the capitalists. Kautsky shared the Menshevik lie that this war was not imperialist but revolutionary. It was this reformist policy of the Mensheviks that Kautsky called "internationalism." He also scolded the Bolsheviks for the "disorganization of the army" without which no revolution can do. The revolutionaries need to disorganize the army because it is the backbone of bourgeois society and the means of suppressing the working people, and the new army must rise from the armed workers. Kautsky is also silent about the class essence of war, and such questions must be put to a Marxist, but he does not do this, because this would threaten to expose his renegade. Kautsky believed that socialists must defend the Motherland under any circumstances, which is a mockery of socialism. Although he correctly argued that nations need mutual respect and the right to self-determination. But again, not a word about the class character of this or that war. The Basel Manifesto in 1912 stated that any war consists in violence against nations. And an imperialist war is a war between two groups of the imperialist bourgeoisie for the division of the world, for the division of booty, for the plunder and strangulation of small and weak nations. If a socialist says that he is ready to defend the Motherland in case of any enemy invasion, then he is inclined towards nationalism because the class essence disappears from this judgment. Kautsky's analogs believe that in any war even the "native" bourgeoisie must be defended. The socialist, on the other hand, must recognize the class background of the war, and even if he goes to the front after that, he automatically becomes a servant of "his" bourgeoisie. This is what internationalism is all about.

Talking about a separate peace, it would be worth saying what it would give the Russian people and the peoples of the separated territories. Kautsky criticized Lenin's desire to export the revolution to other countries, forgetting that it would give the European peoples the right to self-determination. If this did not work out, then in Kautsky's opinion this idea was erroneous. After all, Marx, Engels and Bebel did not give the revolution a definite time frame. It is expedient for a Marxist to take into account the specifics of the position of the proletariat in each country personally. Secondly, if there is no revolutionary situation, then revolution is impossible. And the war helped to create it, when Kautsky was not a renegade - he admitted it. The revolutionary situation in Europe is the aspiration not only of the Bolsheviks, but of all Marxists. Kautsky, on the other hand, tried to get away from this by covering himself with all sorts of phrases. Signs of a revolutionary situation are divided into economic (famine, ruin) and political (revolutionary moods). Strange as it may seem, Kautsky did not "see" this situation in the world. Despite this, Kautsky officially declared himself a revolutionary, wishing to cling to the victorious Bolsheviks.

As previously stated, Kautsky accused Bolshevism of "unfulfilled hopes" for a European revolution, but a few weeks after writing his pamphlet, the revolution fell upon his country as well. Further, Kautsky writes that if the proletarians do not wage a revolutionary struggle, then there is no one to blame for this. I was mistaken, it is necessary to blame the opportunists who mislead the working masses, who selfishly betrayed the proletariat.

The tactics of the Bolsheviks were truly internationalist, since they finished off the rotten Second International, creating in return a truly communist third, separated themselves from social chauvinism and social pacifism, and aroused sympathy among the masses. It was the Bolsheviks who established the dictatorship of the proletariat and showed the heroism of the workers of a backward country. The Bolsheviks helped the people like no other, setting a clear example for foreign comrades.

THE SERVICE OF THE BOURGEOISIE UNDER THE SPIRIT OF "ECONOMIC ANALYSIS".

The Russian revolution is bourgeois - all the Marxists of Russia said before 1905. The Mensheviks, replacing Marxism with liberalism, concluded from this: consequently, the proletariat must not go further than what is acceptable to the bourgeoisie, it must pursue a policy of agreement with it. The Bolsheviks said that this was a liberal-bourgeois theory. The bourgeoisie strives to transform the state in a bourgeois, reformist, and not revolutionary way, preserving as far as possible both the monarchy and landlordism, etc. The proletariat must lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution to its end.

The Bolsheviks formulated the class balance of forces during the bourgeois revolution as follows - the proletariat, by annexing the peasantry, neutralizes the liberal bourgeoisie and completely destroys the monarchy, the Middle Ages, and landlordism. It is in the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry in general that the bourgeois character of the revolution is revealed, for the peasantry in general are petty producers who stand on the basis of commodity production. Further, the Bolsheviks added at the same time, the proletariat, by taking over the entire semi-proletariat (all the exploited and working people), neutralizes the middle peasantry and overthrows the bourgeoisie: this is what the socialist revolution, in contrast to the bourgeois-democratic revolution, consists of. If in 1905 Kautsky took part in disputes about the class content of the revolution, now he no longer has, he is ashamed of his former revolutionary statements, fearing to expose his renegade to the public.

Now, in the guise of "economic analysis", Kautsky considers it necessary for the workers to come to an agreement with the bourgeoisie. Kautsky's first argument is based on the fact that the main part of the population of Russia at that time was made up of the peasantry. From this, in his opinion, it follows that the proletariat in Russia is small and the country is not ready for revolution. But he did not point out that there were a handful of exploiters among them, and the bulk of them were exploited. Secondly, he forgot that the small peasant producer inevitably wavers between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Kautsky also believes that the bulk of power after the revolution should go into the hands of the peasantry, in view of its large number. And the petty-bourgeois part of the peasantry must not be deprived of privileges either. And the fact that only the poorest representatives of the peasantry were present in the Soviets is criticized by Kautsky. He also condemns the fact that the Bolsheviks began to take bread from rich peasants, giving it to poor peasants. Kautsky also weeps for the speculators and kulaks who were punished by the Bolsheviks. In conclusion, Kautsky recalls his "Pure Democracy", thereby pointing out the bourgeois character of his "revolution". This point of view was based on the fact that in 1905 the proletariat and part of the bourgeoisie were on the same side of the barricades. The situation changed radically in 1917. During the first revolution The course of the revolution confirmed the correctness of our reasoning. First, together with "the whole" peasantry, against the monarchy, against the landowners, against the Middle Ages (and to that extent the revolution remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, together with the poorest peasantry, together with the semi-proletariat, together with all the exploited, against capitalism, including against the village rich, kulaks, speculators, and to that extent the revolution becomes socialist.

At first, the Soviets united the peasantry as a whole. For the kulaks took advantage of the ignorance of the poor and infiltrated the organs of government. So it was in the era of dual power and the Provisional Government. This is what is called the vacillation between the bourgeois and the proletarian essence of the Soviets. The October Revolution put an end to this. But it marked the beginning of resistance from the bourgeoisie in the summer of 1918, in the form of kulak revolts, and so on. The economic crisis added fuel to the fire. This was the reason for the introduction of armed people into the village, with the aim of breaking the bourgeois resistance. This further deepened the country into a crisis. Therefore, committees of the poor had to be formed. The consequence of the Bolshevik policy was that at the Sixth Congress of Soviets, 97% of the mandates were in the hands of the Bolsheviks, because they had won the confidence of the broad masses of the poor. Having completed the bourgeois-democratic revolution together with the peasantry in general, the proletariat of Russia finally passed over to the socialist revolution, when it succeeded in splitting the countryside, annexing its proletarians and semi-proletarians, uniting them against the kulaks and the bourgeoisie, including the peasant bourgeoisie. The peasantry must be split, because on the whole the poorest strata were subjected to the influence of the rural bourgeoisie.

Then Kautsky writes that the agricultural land taken from the kulaks should be leased to the peasants, as well as to agricultural workers, who at that time were very few in Russia. The Decrees of the Soviet government (under the rule of the Mensheviks) stated that the landowners' lands would pass into the hands of the volost committees. Based on this, Kautsky declares that "the peasants can do whatever they want with the land." Impressing readers that the Bolsheviks capitulated to the peasantry on the issue of private property. Then he accuses the Bolsheviks of radical reforms in relation to private property, adhering to reformist methods. And the collective Agriculture he considers it a utopia, in the conditions that the Bolsheviks set. The nationalization of the land, carried out in Russia by the proletarian dictatorship, most ensured the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. And besides, the nationalization of the land gave the proletarian state the greatest opportunity for the transition to socialism in agriculture. On the industrial plane, however, it is expedient to build socialism on the basis of large-scale capitalist industry. Kautsky sums up the book by saying that the conquests of the proletariat by Bolshevik methods are very doubtful, and under the rule of a constituent assembly, people would have achieved more. And the author is silent about the fact that temporary workers pursued a policy of imperialism.

proletarian revolution

"Proletarian Revolution"

proletarian revolution

"Proletarian Revolution" historical journal; published in Moscow in 1921-41 [in 1921-28 ≈ the organ of the Eastpart of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), in 1928-31 ≈ the Lenin Institute under the CC CPSU (b), in 1933-41 ≈ the Institute of Marx ≈ Engels ≈ Lenin under the CC CPSU ( b)]. 132 issues have been published. Editors in different years were M. S. Olminsky, S. I. Kanatchikov, M. A. Saveliev, V. G. Knorin, V. G. Sorin, M. B. Mitin. Circulation ≈ from 5 to 35 thousand copies, the frequency of issue varied. He published research articles, documents and memoirs on the history of the labor movement, the Communist Party, the October Revolution of 1917 and civil war 1918-20, about outstanding figures of the party, the labor and social democratic movement, criticism and bibliography, etc.

Lit .: "Proletarian Revolution". Systematic and alphabetical index. 1921≈1929, [L.], 1930.

Wikipedia

proletarian revolution

proletarian revolution- social and / or political revolution, during which the working class (proletariat) overthrows the power of the bourgeoisie. Supporters of the implementation of the proletarian revolution, as a rule, are radical socialists, communists and most anarchists.

In Marxism, the need for a proletarian revolution is the cornerstone and the first step towards the dismantling of capitalism. Marxists believe that the workers of the whole world must unite and free themselves from the oppression of capital in order to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that will create a world without exploitation and exploiters, class and national antagonisms. For Marxism, there is no doubt that only the proletariat is capable of preparing and carrying out such a revolution. From the Marxist point of view, proletarian revolutions will inevitably take place in all capitalist countries, becoming part of the world revolution.

Leninists argue that the proletarian revolution can only be carried out by a vanguard of "professional revolutionaries" - that is, people who are fully dedicated to the cause of communism and revolution, who form the core of the communist revolutionary movement. The task of the vanguard is to lead and organize the rest of the working class before and during the revolution, in order to prevent a situation in which the government will be able to defeat the revolutionary movement through the discipline and organization of the police and the army.

Other Marxists, such as the Luxembourgists, agree with Lenin's idea of ​​the avant-garde, but believe that a proletarian revolution can only be successful if the entire working class - or at least most of it - is deeply involved and equally committed to communist ideas. To this end, it is necessary to build a mass labor movement with a very big amount members.

Finally, socialist anarchists and libertarian socialists, while agreeing with Marxists that a proletarian revolution is inevitable and necessary, do not share their view that the vanguard is obligatory. Their opinion is that the revolution should be decentralized and should not have a central leadership. They also object to the need to eventually establish the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

• A proletarian revolution is a social and/or political revolution in which the working class (proletariat) overthrows the power of the bourgeoisie. As a rule, radical socialists, communists and the majority of anarchists act as supporters of the implementation of the proletarian revolution.

  In Marxism, the need for a proletarian revolution is the cornerstone and the first step towards the dismantling of capitalism. Marxists believe that the workers of the whole world must unite and free themselves from the oppression of capital in order to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" that will create a world without exploitation and exploiters, class and national antagonisms. For Marxism, there is no doubt that only the proletariat is capable of preparing and carrying out such a revolution. From the Marxist point of view, proletarian revolutions will inevitably take place in all capitalist countries, becoming part of the world revolution.

  Leninists argue that the proletarian revolution can only be carried out by a vanguard of "professional revolutionaries" - that is, people who are fully dedicated to the cause of communism and revolution, who form the core of the communist revolutionary movement. The task of the vanguard is to lead and organize the rest of the working class before and during the revolution, in order to prevent a situation in which the government will be able to defeat the revolutionary movement through the discipline and organization of the police and the army.

  Other Marxists, such as the Luxembourgists, agree with Lenin's idea of ​​the avant-garde, but believe that a proletarian revolution can only be successful if the entire working class - or at least most of it - is deeply involved and equally committed to communist ideas. To this end, it is necessary to build a mass labor movement with a very large number of members.

  Finally, socialist anarchists and libertarian socialists, while agreeing with Marxists that a proletarian revolution is inevitable and necessary, do not share their view that the vanguard is obligatory. Their opinion is that the revolution should be decentralized and should not have a central leadership (although it may have local and temporary leaders). They also object to the need to eventually establish the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

Related concepts

On the issue of the right to carry out a Russian revolution earlier than in the West, the split among Russian Marxists was very deep. It continued after the end of the Bolshevik-Menshevik dispute in the Civil War - now in the form of a conflict between the "National Bolsheviks" (gathered around Stalin) and the "cosmopolitan Bolsheviks" (represented by Trotsky). M. Agursky writes about this side of the differences and attitudes of the Bolsheviks: “At the VI Congress of the Party, in August 1917, Stalin was the first to express them. When discussing the resolution of the congress, Preobrazhensky proposed an amendment, according to which one of the conditions for the Bolsheviks to take state power was the presence proletarian revolution in the West. Opposing this amendment, Stalin stated that "the possibility is not ruled out that it is Russia that will be the country that paves the way to socialism ... We must discard," said Stalin, "the obsolete idea that only Europe can show us the way."

Simultaneously with this major work on the agrarian program, Lenin continued to work on the work "The Agrarian Question and the 'Critiques of Marx'". In 1907-1908, the last (X-XII) chapters of this work were written and published (see Works, 5th ed., Volume 5, pp. 222-268). All this shows how important Lenin attached to the development and substantiation of the agrarian program of the revolutionary workers' party, the defense and further development of Marxist theory on the agrarian, peasant question - on classes and the class struggle in the countryside, the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat, their joint struggle against landowners and capitalists, for democracy and socialism. These questions acquired particular relevance in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. That is why the bourgeois economists, reformists and revisionists at that time intensified their fierce attack against Marxism on the agrarian question.

At the Second Congress, the representatives of the RSDLP split into Bolsheviks, headed by V. I. Lenin, and Mensheviks, headed by Yu. O. Martov and G. V. Plekhanov. The differences were based on different concepts of party building. V. Lenin demanded the creation of a strictly centralized party, consisting of professional revolutionaries, who should lead the working class from the path of economic struggle, instill in it a socialist consciousness and push it to implement proletarian revolution, i.e., the creation of a cadre party in the classical sense of the term. Yu. Martov, on the contrary, was a supporter of the creation of a democratic organization of the European type - a mass party. By the way, this was the CPSU after a few decades.

... The Mesame-dasi group was not homogeneous in its political direction. The majority of the Mesame-dasi, led by Zhordania, represented a group of "legal Marxism", which, in its writings on a number of basic issues of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, distorted the teachings of revolutionary Marxism, vulgarized Marxism and painted it in nationalist tones. Noe Zhordania and the majority of the Mesame Dasi denied the idea of ​​the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolutionary movement and the need proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The question of the working masses of the petty bourgeoisie, urban and rural, the question of winning these masses over to the side of the proletariat, is critical issue proletarian revolution. Whom the working people of town and country will support in the struggle for power, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, whose reserve he will become, the reserve of the bourgeoisie or the reserve of the proletariat - on this depends the fate of the revolution and the strength of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The revolutions of 1848 and 1871 in France collapsed, mainly because the peasant reserves turned out to be on the side of the bourgeoisie. The October Revolution was victorious because it succeeded in taking away from the bourgeoisie its peasant reserves, it succeeded in winning these reserves over to the side of the proletariat, and in this revolution the proletariat proved to be the only guiding force of the millions of working people in town and country.

And after all, this idea of ​​Engels, which had taken shape by 1858, was quite stable. On September 12, 1882, he writes to Kautsky that "the workers, together with them [the bourgeoisie] quietly enjoy the colonial monopoly of England and its monopoly on the world market." How, under such conditions, could Engels demand from the Russians that they wait proletarian revolution in England? From his own statements, it directly followed that there was no need to rely on a proletarian revolution in the metropolis of capitalism, and the revolution in the countries of peripheral capitalism, which included Russia, inevitably acquired not only an anti-capitalist, but also a national liberation character.

Since the beginning of the development of leftist social democracy (Bolshevism), the leaders of this movement have emphasized proletarian revolution in Germany. The Bolshevik-Leninists believed that the revolution in Russia would come through revolutions in the most industrialized countries, in the first place among them they put Germany. IN late XIX- the beginning of the XX century. it was the country with the most organized working class, with the most numerous and authoritative Social Democratic Party. In his works, written at the beginning of the First World War, V. Lenin called for the defeat of Russia in the war and the creation of conditions for a revolution, first in Germany and then in Russia.

Comrade Stalin's classic work "On the Foundations of Leninism" armed the communists with the weapon of Marxist-Leninist theory in questions proletarian revolution dictatorship of the proletariat, the victory of socialism in one country, the national liberation movement in colonial and semi-colonial countries, etc.

Under Stalin, many were judged as "traitors to the motherland", to which he ranked those who considered Russia as a base for the world revolution. He had this hunch: after the defeat of the idea of ​​a world revolution and its rollback to the borders of the USSR, these forces were bound to embark on the path of joint efforts with leading Western financiers. On the path that led them to serve the world's financial capital. They should have been liquidated even according to the then laws on foreign exchange transactions. By March 1938, Stalin had physically destroyed all Lenin's associates, everyone who remembered that Ilyich had died as a doctrinaire of the world proletarian revolution, for the sake of which the first "Fatherland of the world proletariat" was created - the USSR. All who dream of rebirth Soviet Union, stand up for the revival of the empire of the world proletariat. It doesn't sound serious today.

Lenin wrote: “Social Democracy has never looked and does not look at war from a sentimental point of view. While irrevocably condemning war as a brutal means of settling the disputes of mankind, Social Democracy knows that wars are inevitable as long as society is divided into classes, as long as there is exploitation of man by man. And in order to abolish this exploitation, we cannot do without war, which is always and everywhere started by the exploiting, ruling and oppressing classes themselves. This was written in 1905; later, in the article "Military program proletarian revolution Having analyzed the class struggle in the deepest way, Lenin will declare: “Whoever recognizes the struggle of classes cannot but recognize civil wars, which in any class society represent a natural, under certain circumstances inevitable continuation development and intensification of the class struggle. All great revolutions confirm this. To deny civil wars or forget about them would mean falling into extreme opportunism and renouncing the socialist revolution.

Stalin openly declared the essence of his vision of the path of development of the USSR in the report “On the results of the work of the XIV Conference of the RCP (b)”, made on May 9, 1925. Like all other members of the narrow leadership, he recognized industrialization as the only goal. He substantiated it with the usual references to Lenin, to his words that the “final” victory of the Bolsheviks will only be “when the country is electrified, when the technical base of large-scale industry is brought under industry, agriculture and transport.” At the same time, Stalin tried to play not only on reason, but also on feelings, using the surviving utopian hopes and expectations of almost the entire population, but especially the most orthodox communists, mostly leftists by conviction, who remained in their souls opponents of the NEP policy, the policy of “retreat”. Stalin dared to establish, but again referring to Lenin, hiding behind him, the approximate date of victory proletarian revolution on a global scale: it can be expected in 10-20 years ... " right relationship with the peasantry.

The main thing, however, is that it was precisely in the time of Peter the Great that a gulf appeared between the nobility and the working masses of the population, primarily the peasantry. The polarization of the interests of the landlords and peasants is the main axis around which the contradictions of Russian reality revolved for two centuries, which were ultimately resolved by the collapse tsarist Russia. Even at the moment of her fall peasant question was of paramount importance, and the participation of the peasants in the revolutionary events largely predetermined their outcome. And after the October Revolution, from the point of view of "social goals", the peasantry, according to V. I. Lenin, is "the most important thing." One can agree with the political scientist O. Arin, who believes that “the October Revolution was carried out by workers and soldiers, in the latter case, in fact, by peasants. Peasants and defended it during the Civil War. It was in form proletarian revolution, but in fact - the peasant. Thus ended the dramatic history of social injustice towards the Russian peasantry, at the origins of which stands Peter I. That is why he is statesman who contributed to the historical preparation of the Bolshevik revolution.

During the years of war communism, Trotsky adopted a position of isolationism due to increased fears about the direct colonization of Russia. In Outcomes and Perspectives, he clearly showed that, by their very nature, international trade and foreign investment should contribute to economic growth. In accordance with his theory of imperialism, he predicted economic collapse for the nation states. It seems that in both cases he meant that the socialist economy in separate country can lead to historical regression. The main problem was that Trotsky's analysis of imperialism led to very contradictory conclusions. In principle, trade and capital imports could have accelerated economic growth, but they were now seen by Trotsky as the main instruments of imperialist exploitation. Continued competition between capitalist countries meant that Europe would not be able to satisfy Russia's economic demands. According to Trotsky, if the West does not proletarian revolution, Europe will be doomed to a state of "permanent war", and the entire European continent will turn into a graveyard24. He believed that if the nightmare of imperialist hell led to continued suppression of the working class, the West would inevitably rot, decline, and become a new barbarism. Before the bourgeois militarists lead their countries to final collapse, forgetting for a while about the existing differences, they can unite, come out as a united front and destroy socialist Russia. Contact with the West will mean the end of socialist independence.

It is also important to follow the position of V. I. Lenin in January-February 1917. In neutral Switzerland, cut off from Russia, Lenin closely followed events in Russia, in Europe, and around the world. Of course, he was waiting for a revolution both in Russia and in all of Europe, and did everything in his power to hasten this revolutionary explosion. Lenin was sure that World War will end in revolution in most of the countries of Europe, but he, of course, could not foresee the specific course of political and military events. Lenin saw well that it was Russia that was the weakest link among the warring countries, and he carefully considered possible alternatives for the development of events. In this connection, reference is often made to Lenin's report to the Swiss youth on the lessons of the 1905 revolution. In this report in January 1917, Lenin, in particular, said: “We should not be deceived by the present deathly silence in Europe. Europe is fraught with revolution. The monstrous horrors of the imperialist war, the agony of high prices, everywhere give rise to a revolutionary mood. The ruling classes are falling more and more into a blind alley, from which, without the greatest upheavals, they cannot find a way out at all. Precisely in connection with this predatory war, the coming years will lead in Europe to popular uprisings under the leadership of the proletariat against the power of finance capital, against the big banks, against the capitalists, and these upheavals cannot end in anything other than the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism. We old people may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can express the hope that the youth who work so well in the socialist movement will have the happiness not only to fight, but also to win in the coming proletarian revolution».

However, he did not believe in the possibility of the transition of the peoples of pre-capitalist societies to socialism, bypassing capitalism, in the course of national liberation revolutions. Lenin, as we have seen, considered such a path possible. Stalin argued that talking about the possibility of a peaceful transition in China [in 1927 - A.D., I.F.] from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to proletarian revolution- this is mistake" .

In the late 1920s, there were still attempts to muddy the waters in Afghanistan. They were directly led by the prominent Soviet military leader Vitaly Primakov. Was popular revolution in Mongolia in 1921 with the direct support of Soviet troops. In 1920, the Second Congress of the Comintern met in Petrograd, at which the tasks of the world communist movement were set: the overthrow of capitalism, the universal establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the creation of a World Soviet Republic. "Our cause is the cause of the world proletarian revolution, the cause of the creation of the World Soviet Republic,” Lenin proclaimed.

The coercive (in relation to the expropriated class) nature of the initial socio-structural reforms is by no means a feature of the victorious proletarian revolution(dictatorship of the proletariat). These reforms are of the same character when carried out by the victorious bourgeois revolution(bourgeois dictatorship).

In developing his brilliant theory, Lenin relied on Marx's ideas about continuous revolution, about combining the peasant revolutionary movement with proletarian revolution. He further developed the ideas of Marx, creating a coherent theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.

The most important decision of the conference was the decision to expel the liquidator Mensheviks from the party. With this decision, the conference expressed the will of the entire party. In developing the organizational principles of a new type of party, Lenin taught that the party, as the leading organization of the working class, is strong in its solidarity, in the ideological and organizational unity of its ranks; The unity of the Party precludes the existence of factions and groupings, it requires all organizations of the Party, all its members to implement Party decisions in practical activities. He emphasized that without the fight against opportunism, without the defeat of the Menshevik liquidators, otzovists and Trotskyists, the party would not be able to maintain unity and discipline, would not be able to fulfill the role of organizer and leader proletarian revolution. The conference adopted a draft resolution written by Lenin "On liquidationism and on a group of liquidators." The resolution says that the group of liquidators by its behavior "has completely placed itself outside the Party," that the Party must wage a struggle against liquidationism, "explain all its harm to the cause of the emancipation of the working class, and exert every effort to restore and strengthen the illegal RSDLP" (p. 152 ).

By his own admission, Plekhanov, reading the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" by Marx and Engels became an epoch in his life. He "immediately decided to translate it into Russian", which finally sealed his decision to become a Marxist. When translating, Plekhanov had to deal with the development of scientific Marxist terminology, since the first translation of the "Manifesto", made, as is believed, by M.A. Bakunin in 1869, had significant shortcomings: the translation of the text was often given approximate and with errors, a number of terms were translated into Russian is inadequate. (For example, the concept of “class” was translated as “estate”, “class contradictions” as “class differences”, “open uprising” was replaced by the word “rebellion”, etc.) At the end of 1881, Plekhanov began translating the Manifesto . At his request, transmitted through P. L. Lavrov, K. Marx wrote a preface to the Russian edition. It spoke of the possibility of a shortened, bypassing the capitalist stage, the path of Russia's advance towards socialism: "If the Russian revolution serves as a signal proletarian revolution in the West, so that both of them complement each other, then modern Russian communal ownership of land can be the starting point of communist development. The Russian translation of the Manifesto went out of print in May 1882. In the preface, Plekhanov put forward the urgent task of creating an organization for the Russian working class.

During the period of counter-revolution (1907-1917), when the leadership national movement concentrated in the hands of the native bourgeoisie, they even more frankly than the Russian liberals sought an agreement with the monarchy. Polish, Baltic, Tatar, Ukrainian, Jewish bourgeois competed in the field of imperialist patriotism. After the February revolution they hid behind the backs of the Cadets or, following the example of the Cadets, behind the backs of their national Compromisers. By the autumn of 1917, the bourgeoisie of the border nations took the path of separatism, not in the struggle against national oppression, but in the struggle against the impending proletarian revolution

During the period of the counter-revolution (1907-1917), when the leadership of the national movement was concentrated in the hands of the native bourgeoisie, they sought an agreement with the monarchy even more frankly than the Russian liberals. Polish, Baltic, Tatar, Ukrainian, Jewish bourgeois competed in the field of imperialist patriotism. After the February Revolution they hid behind the backs of the Cadets or, following the example of the Cadets, behind the backs of their national Compromisers. By the autumn of 1917, the bourgeoisie of the border nations took the path of separatism, not in the struggle against national oppression, but in the struggle against the impending proletarian revolution. On the whole, the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations displayed no less hostility towards the revolution than the Great Russian bourgeoisie.

The history of the Civil War in Russia, by all accounts, began with the October Revolution. Only the assessments of this event differ, from the enthusiastic exclamation of N. Bukharin, the favorite of the Bolshevik Party: “ proletarian revolution there is ... a rupture of the civil world - this is a civil war ... a national fetish burns in the fire of civil war, ”to the accusatory words of the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government A. Kerensky:“ The violent seizure of the state apparatus by the Bolsheviks in November opened a period of civil war and terror in Russia ... " (1)

In contrast to the representatives of "legal Marxism", who embellished capitalism in every possible way and extolled the bourgeoisie, Lenin emphasized that capitalism is a historically transient system, that its historical role lies in the creation of material prerequisites and subjective factors. proletarian revolution, the transition to socialism.

The Trotskyists at one time were going to throw Russia into the furnace of the world proletarian revolution. The neo-Trotskyists, the liberal reformers, pushed it into the melting pot of globalization. Globalism divides peoples into categories of outcasts chosen and rejected by civilization, one gets everything from it, the other - leftovers from the master's table. The ideology of globalism is a new form of fascism that is advancing across the planet on a broad front. Globalism in practice is a new world war, which is waged with cold, information-psychological weapons and hot ones where nothing else is given.

The Kornilov offensive against Petrograd in August-September 1917, which was a campaign of the bourgeois-landowner counter-revolution against the revolutionary proletariat of Russia, marked the beginning of a bloody Civil War. This offensive was liquidated before it could take any real shape. The last attempt by the White Guards to take possession of Petrograd in October 1919, which coincided with the start of a decisive attack on Moscow by the southern counter-revolution, was already, in essence, the agony of the white cause, its death throes and was crowned with victory. proletarian revolution.

Despite the critical aspect of the conversation stated above, I consider myself obliged, first of all, to note some of the indisputable scientific achievements project compilers. Quite impressive are the assessments of the place and role of the Great October Revolution, the centenary of which is now being prepared to be celebrated by all progressive mankind. proletarian revolution in Russia meant the emergence and approval of a fundamentally unprecedented world order, opening up prospects for new era, true history human progress. This is precisely the main conclusion of the Program of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 1919 and the project of 1947, very skillfully presented to a wide audience by Professor V.V. Trushkov.