Bolshevik Party influenced the restless mood of the Russian masses. Miliukov, typical of the historians of the right, holds their agitation largely responsible for the existence of the mass attitudes which they thereupon skilfully exploited. Trotsky, typical of the historians of the left, maintains that the Bolsheviks from first to last lagged behind the temper of the workers and peasants. Kerensky, speaking for the centre, asserts that “the psychology of absolute distrust for the authorities” was aroused in the masses primarily by the attempted coup d’état of Kornilov, aided by the friends of Miliukov; the Bolsheviks did the rest.[1] But no matter how the mood of the Russian masses was created, it did not make the Russian Revolution. That was the work of the Bolshevik Party.
But without Nicolai Lenin the work of the Bolshevik Party from April to October, 1917, is unthinkable. Anyone who familiarizes himself with its internal history will discover that objectives, policy, slogans, controlling strategy, day-by-day tactics were laid down by Lenin. Sometimes he counselled in the same painstaking way that a tutor coaches a spirited but bewildered pupil; sometimes he commanded like an impatient drill sergeant barking at a raw recruit. But from first to last it was Lenin. Without him there would have been no October Revolution. Here is the evidence.
(a) Until Lenin’s return to Russia on April 3, and his presentation of his thesis of April 4, the Bolshevik Party and its official organ were supporting the Provisional Government of Kerensky. Lenin’s April Theses, which called for the overthrow of this Government by armed insurrection and for all power to the Soviets, came as a bombshell in his own party.
Speaking of the position of the Bolshevik Party in Russia before Lenin arrived, Joseph Stalin wrote on November 19, 1924.
This position was utterly erroneous, for it begot pacifist illusions, poured water on the mill of defensism and hampered the revolutionary education of the masses. In those days I shared this erroneous position with other Party comrades, and completely renounced it only in the middle of April, when I endorsed Lenin’s thesis.[2]
- ↑ Kerensky’s Prelude to Bolshevism, English translation, p. 277, New York, 1919.
- ↑ Stalin, The October Revolution, p. 76. English translation by Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U. S. S. R., Moscow, 1934. Also issued in New York, 1934.
