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April Theses
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- Spartacus Educational - April Theses
April Theses , in Russian history, program developed by Lenin during the Russian Revolution of 1917 , calling for Soviet control of state power; the theses, published in April 1917, contributed to the July Days uprising and also to the Bolshevik coup d’etat in October 1917.
During the February Revolution two disparate bodies had replaced the imperial government—the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies . The Socialists who dominated the Soviet interpreted the February Revolution as a bourgeois revolution and considered it appropriate for the bourgeoisie to hold power. They therefore submitted to the rule of the Provisional Government, formed by liberals from the Duma. The Soviet agreed to cooperate with the government and to advise it in the interests of workers and soldiers.
Lenin, however, viewed the two bodies as institutions representing social classes locked in the class struggle. He felt that, as one class gained dominance over the other, its governing body would crush the rival institution; thus the two could not indefinitely coexist. On the basis of this interpretation he developed his theses, in which he urged the Bolsheviks to withdraw their support from the Provisional Government and to call for immediate withdrawal from World War I and for the distribution of land among the peasantry . The Bolshevik Party was to organize workers, soldiers, and peasants and to strengthen the Soviets so that they could eventually seize power from the Provisional Government. The theses also called for the nationalization of banks and for Soviet control of the production and distribution of manufactured goods. Lenin first presented his theses to a gathering of Social Democrats and later (April 17 [April 4, old style], 1917) to a Bolshevik committee, both of which immediately rejected them. The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda published them but carefully noted that they were Lenin’s personal ideas.
Nevertheless, within a few weeks the party’s seventh all-Russian conference (May 7–12 [April 24–29, old style]) adopted the theses as its program, along with the slogan “All Power to the Soviets.” Although some Bolsheviks still had reservations about the program, the concepts contained in the theses became very popular among the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, who, using Bolshevik slogans, unsuccessfully tried to force the Soviet to take power in July. It was not until October, however, that Lenin’s party was able to begin implementation of its program and seize power from the Provisional Government in the name of the Soviets.
April Theses
Vladimir lenin, the tasks of the proletariat in the present revolution. april 17, 1917.
Original Source: Pravda, 20 April 1917.
I arrived in Petrograd only on the night of April 16, and could therefore, of course, deliver a report at the meeting on April 17, on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only upon my own responsibility, and with the reservations as to insufficient preparation.
The only thing I could do to facilitate matters for myself and for honest opponents was to prepare written theses. I read them, and gave the text to Comrade Tseretelli. I read them very slowly, twice: first at the meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
I publish these personal theses with only the briefest explanatory comments, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.
1. In our attitude towards the war, which also under the new government of L’vov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession must be made to “revolutionary defensism.”
The class conscious proletariat could consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defensism, only on condition: (a) that the power of government pass to the proletariat and the poor sections of the peasantry bordering on the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not only in word; (c) that a complete and real break be made with all capitalist interests.
In view of the undoubted honesty of the broad strata of the mass believers in revolutionary defensism, who accept the war as a necessity only and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary very thoroughly, persistently and patiently to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic, non-coercive peace without the overthrow of capital.
The widespread propaganda of this view among the army on active service must be organized…
2. The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that it represents a transition from the first stage of the revolution – which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organization of the proletariat, placed power into the hands of the bourgeoisie – to the second stage, which must place power into the hands of the proletariat and the poor strata of the peasantry.
This transition is characterized, on the one hand, by a maximum of freedom (Russia is now the freest of the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence in relation to the masses, and, finally, by the unreasoning confidence of the masses in the government of capitalists, the worst enemies of peace and socialism.
This specific situation demands of us the ability to adapt ourselves to the specific requirements of Party work among unprecedented large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.
3. No support must be given to the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises must be explained, particularly those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure, and not the unpardonable, illusion- breeding “demand” that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.
4. The fact must be recognized that in most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies our Party is in a minority, and so far in a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and convey its influence to the proletariat …
It must be explained to the masses that the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their (the non-Bolshevik socialists) tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.
As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticizing and explaining errors and at the same time advocate the necessity of transferring the entire power of state to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the masses may by experience overcome their mistakes.
5. Not a parliamentary republic — to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step — but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Laborers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.
Abolition of the police, the Army and the bureaucracy.
The salaries of all officials, who are to be elected and subject to recall at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.
6. in the agrarian program the emphasis must be laid on the Soviets of Agricultural Laborers’ Deputies.
Confiscation of all landed estates.
Nationalization of all lands in the country, the disposal of the land to be put in charge of the local Soviets of Agricultural Laborers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organization of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The creation of model farms on each of the large estates… under the control of the Agricultural Laborers’ Deputies and for the public account.
7. The immediate amalgamation of all banks in the country into a single national bank, control over which shall be exercised by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
8. Our immediate task is not to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
9. Party tasks:
(a) Immediate summoning of a Party congress. (b) Alteration of the Party program, mainly:
(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war; (2) On the question of our attitude towards the state and our demand for a “commune state”. (3) Amendment of our antiquated minimum program.
(c) A new name for the Party.
10. A new International. Instead of ” Social Democrats”, whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism … we must call ourselves a Communist Party.
Source: V. I. Lenin, Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1952), Vol. 2, pp. 3-17.
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April Theses: Lenin’s fundamental role in the Russian Revolution
Submitted by World Revolution on 2 April, 2007 - 17:08
It is 90 years since the start of the Russian revolution. More particularly, this month sees the 90th anniversary of the ‘April Theses’, announced by Lenin on his return from exile, and calling for the overthrow of Kerensky’s ‘Provisional Government’ as a first step towards the international proletarian revolution. In highlighting Lenin’s crucial role in the revolution, we are not subscribing to the ‘great man’ theory of history, but showing that the revolutionary positions he was able to defend with such clarity at that moment were an expression of something much deeper – the awakening of an entire social class to the concrete possibility of emancipating itself from capitalism and imperialist war. The following article was originally published in World Revolution 203, April 1997. It can be read in conjunction with a more developed study of the April Theses now republished on our website, ‘ The April Theses: signpost to the proletarian revolution ’.
On 4 April 1917 Lenin returned from his exile in Switzerland, arrived in Petrograd and addressed himself directly to the workers and soldiers who crowded the station in these terms: “Dear comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers. I am happy to greet in you the victorious Russian revolution, to greet you as the advance guard of the International proletarian army... The Russian revolution achieved by you has opened a new epoch. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution!...” (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution ). 80 years later the bourgeoisie, its historians and media lackeys, are constantly busy maintaining the worst lies and historic distortions on the world proletarian revolution begun in Russia.
The ruling class’ hatred and contempt for the titanic movement of the exploited masses aims to ridicule it and to ‘show’ the futility of the communist project of the working class, its fundamental inability to bring about a new social order for the planet. The collapse of the eastern bloc has revived its class hatred. It has unleashed a gigantic campaign since then to hammer home the obvious defeat of communism, identified with Stalinism, and with that the defeat of marxism, the obsolescence of the class struggle and even the idea of revolution which can only lead to terror and the Gulag. The target of this foul propaganda is the political organisation, the incarnation of the vast insurrectionary movement of 1917, the Bolshevik Party, which constantly draws all the vindictiveness of the defenders of the bourgeoisie. For all these apologists for the capitalist order, including the anarchists, whatever their apparent disagreements, it is a question of showing that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were a band of power-hungry fanatics who did everything they could to usurp the democratic acquisitions of the February 1917 revolution (see ‘February 1917’ WR 202) and plunge Russia and the world into one of the most disastrous experiences in history.
Faced with all these unbelievable calumnies against Bolshevism, it falls to revolutionaries to re-establish the truth and reaffirm the essential point concerning the Bolshevik Party: it was not a product of Russian barbarism or backwardness, nor of deformed anarcho-terrorism, nor of the absolute concern for power by its leaders. Bolshevism was, in the first place, a product of the world proletariat, linked to a marxist tradition, the vanguard of the international movement to end all exploitation and oppression. To this end the statement of positions Lenin brought out on his return to Russia, known as the April Theses, gives us an excellent point of departure to refute all the various untruths on the Bolshevik Party, its nature, its role and its links with the proletarian masses.
The conditions of struggle on Lenin’s return to Russia in April 1917
In the previous article ( WR 202) we recalled that the working class in Russia had well and truly opened the way to the world communist revolution with the events of February 1917, overturning Tsarism, organising in soviets and showing a growing radicalisation. The insurrection resulted in a situation of dual power. The official power was the bourgeois ‘Provisional Government’, initially lead by the liberals but which later gained a more ‘socialist’ hue under the direction of Kerensky. On the other hand effective power already lay, as was well understood, in the hands of the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. Without soviet authorisation the government had little hope of imposing its directives on the workers and soldiers. But the working class had not yet acquired the necessary political maturity to take all the power. In spite of their more and more radical actions and attitudes, the majority of the working class and behind them the peasant masses, were held back by illusions in the nature of the bourgeoisie, and by the idea that only a bourgeois democratic revolution was on the agenda in Russia. The predominance of these ideas among the masses was reflected in the domination of the soviets by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who did everything they could to make the soviets impotent in the face of the newly installed bourgeois regime. These parties, which had gone over, or were in the process of going over, to the bourgeoisie, tried by all means to subordinate the growing revolutionary movement to the aims of the Provisional Government, especially in relation to the imperialist war. In this situation, so full of dangers and promises, the Bolsheviks, who had directed the internationalist opposition to the war, were themselves in almost complete confusion at that moment, politically disorientated. So, “ In the ‘manifesto’ of the Bolshevik Central Committee, drawn up just after the victory of the insurrection, we read that ‘the workers of the shops and factories, and likewise the mutinied troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government’... They behaved not like the representatives of a proletarian party preparing an independent struggle for power, but like the left wing of a democracy ” ( Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution , vol. 1, chapter XV , p.271, 1967 Sphere edition). Worse still, when Stalin and Kamenev took the direction of the party in March, they moved it even further to the right. Pravda, the official organ of the party, openly adopted a defencist position on the war: “Our slogan is not the meaningless ‘down with war’... every man remains at his fighting post.” (Trotsky, p.275). The flagrant abandonment of Lenin’s position on the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war caused resistance and even anger in the party and among the workers of Petrograd, the heart of the proletariat. But these most radical elements were not capable of offering a clear programmatic alternative to this turn to the right. The party was then drawn towards compromise and treason, under the influence of the fog of democratic euphoria which appeared after the February revolt.
The political rearmament of the Party
It fell to Lenin, then, after his return from abroad, to politically rearm the party and to put forward the decisive importance of the revolutionary direction through the April Theses: “Lenin’s theses produced the effect of an exploding bomb” (Trotsky, p. 295). The old party programme had become null and void, situated far behind the spontaneous action of the masses. The slogan to which the “Old Bolsheviks” were attached, the “democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants” was henceforth an obsolete formula as Lenin put forward: “ The revolutionary democratic revolution of the proletariat and the peasants has already been achieved... ” (Lenin, Letters on tactics ). However, “ The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution - which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie - to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants. ” (Point 2 of the April Theses). Lenin was one of the first to grasp the revolutionary significance of the soviet as an organ of proletarian political power. Once again Lenin gave a lesson on the marxist method, in showing that marxism was the complete opposite of a dead dogma but a living scientific theory which must be constantly verified in the laboratory of social movements.
Similarly, faced with the Menshevik position according to which backward Russia was not yet ripe for socialism, Lenin argued as a true internationalist that the immediate task was not to introduce socialism in Russia (Thesis 8). If Russia, in itself, was not ready for socialism, the imperialist war had demonstrated that world capitalism as a whole was truly over-ripe. For Lenin, as for all the authentic internationalists then, the international revolution was not just a pious wish but a concrete perspective developed from the international proletarian revolt against the war - the strikes in Britain and Germany, the political demonstrations, the mutinies and fraternisations in the armed forces of several countries, and certainly the growing revolutionary flood in Russia itself, which revealed it. This is where the appeal for the creation of a new International at the end of the Theses came from. This perspective was going to be completely confirmed after the October insurrection by the extension of the revolutionary wave to Italy, Hungary, Austria and above all Germany.
This new definition of the proletariat’s tasks also brought another conception of the role and function of the party. There also the “Old Bolsheviks” like Kamenev were at first revolted by Lenin’s vision, his idea of the soviets taking power on the one hand and on the other his insistence on the class autonomy of the proletariat against the bourgeois government and the imperialist war, even if that would mean remaining for awhile in the minority and not as Kamenev would like: “ remaining with the masses of the revolutionary proletariat ”. Kamenev used the conception of “ a mass party ” to oppose Lenin’s conception of a party of determined revolutionaries, with a clear programme, united, centralised, minoritarian, capable of resisting the siren calls of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie and illusions existing in the working class. This conception of the party has nothing to do with the Blanquist terrorist sect, that Lenin was accused of putting forward, nor even with the anarchist conception submitting to the spontaneity of the masses. On the contrary there was the recognition that in a period of massive revolutionary turbulence, of the development of consciousness in the class, the party can no longer organise nor plan to mobilise the masses in the way of the conspiratorial associations of the 19th century. But that made the role of the party more essential than ever. Lenin came back to the vision that Rosa Luxemburg developed in her authoritative analysis of the mass strike in the period of decadence: “ If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative mass strikes artificially brought about by order of the parties and trade unions, and turn to the living picture of a peoples’ movement arising with elemental energy... it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but first and foremost in the political leadership of the whole movement. ” (Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions ). All Lenin’s energy was going to be orientated towards the necessity of convincing the party of the new tasks which fell to it, in relation to the working class, the central axis of which is the development of class consciousness. Thesis 4 posed this clearly: “ The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses… we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. ” So this approach, this will to defend clear and precise class principles, going against the current and being in a minority, has nothing to do with purism or sectarianism. On the contrary they were based on a comprehension of the real movement which was unfolding in the class at each moment, on the capacity to give a voice and direction to the most radical elements within the proletariat. The insurrection was impossible as long as the Bolshevik’s revolutionary positions, positions maturing throughout the revolutionary process in Russia, had not consciously won over the soviets. We are a very long way from the bourgeois obscenities on the supposed putschist attitude of the Bolsheviks! As Lenin still affirmed: “ We are not charlatans. We must base ourselves only on the consciousness of the masses ” (Lenin’s second speech on his arrival in Petrograd, cited in Trotsky, p. 293).
Lenin’s mastery of the marxist method, seeing beyond the surface and appearances of events, allowed him in company with the best elements of the party, to discern the real dynamic of the movement which was unfolding before their eyes and to meet the profound desires of the masses and give them the theoretical resources to defend their positions and clarify their actions. They were also enabled to orientate themselves against the bourgeoisie by seeing and frustrating the traps which the latter tried to set for the proletariat, as during the July days in 1917. That’s why, contrary to the Mensheviks of this time and their numerous anarchist, social democratic and councilist successors, who caricature to excess certain real errors by Lenin [1] in order to reject the proletarian character of the October 1917 revolution, we reaffirm the fundamental role played by Lenin in the rectification of the Bolshevik Party, without which the proletariat would not have been able to take power in October 1917. Lenin’s life-long struggle to build the revolutionary organisation is a historic acquisition of the workers’ movement. It has left revolutionaries today an indispensable basis to build the class party, allowing them to understand what their role must be in the class as a whole. The victorious insurrection of October 1917 validates Lenin’s view. The isolation of the revolution after the defeat of the revolutionary attempts in other countries of Europe stopped the international dynamic of the revolution which would have been the sole guarantee of a local victory in Russia. The soviet state encouraged the advent of Stalinism, the veritable executioner of the revolution and of the Bolsheviks.
What remains essential is that during the rising tide of the revolution in Russia, the Lenin of the April Theses was never an isolated prophet, nor was he holding himself above the vulgar masses, but he was the clearest voice of the most revolutionary tendency within the proletariat, a voice which showed the way which lead to the victory of October 1917. “ In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to ‘Bolshevism’. ” (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution ). SB, March 2007.
[1] Among these great play is made by the councilists on the theory of ‘consciousness brought from outside’ developed in ‘What is to be done?’. Well, afterwards, Lenin recognised this error and amply proved in practice that he had acquired a correct vision of the process of the development of consciousness in the working class.
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Primary Documents - Lenin's April Theses, April 1917
Introduction
In Russian the "Aprelskiye Tezisy", the April Theses formed a programme developed by Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution. In these Lenin called for Soviet control of the state. When published the theses contributed to the July Days rising and to the subsequent coup d'etat of October 1917, bringing the Bolsheviks to power.
Lenin's April Theses
I have outlined a few theses which I shall supply with some commentaries. I could not, because of the lack of time, present a thorough, systematic report. The basic question is our attitude towards the war.
The basic things confronting you as you read about Russia or observe conditions here are the triumph of defencism, the triumph of the traitors to Socialism, the deception of the masses by the bourgeoisie... The new government, like the preceding one, is imperialistic, despite the promise of a republic - it is imperialistic through and through.
In our attitude toward the war not the slightest concession must be made to "revolutionary defencism," for under the new government of Lvov & Co., owing to the capitalise nature of this government, the war on Russia's part remains a predatory imperialist war.
In view of the undoubted honesty of the mass of rank and file representatives of revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity and not as a means of conquest, in view of their being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary most thoroughly, persistently, patiently to explain to them their error, to explain the inseparable connection between capital and the imperialist war, to prove that without the overthrow of capital it is impossible to conclude the war with a really democratic, non-oppressive peace.
This view is to be widely propagated among the army units in the field...
The peculiarity of the present situation in Russia is that it represents a transition from the first stage of the revolution - which, because of the inadequate organisation and insufficient class-consciousness of the proletariat, led to the assumption of power by the bourgeoisie - to its second stage which is to place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry...
This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the specific conditions of party work amidst vast masses of the proletariat just wakened to political life.
No support to the Provisional Government; exposure of the utter falsity of all its promises, particularly those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Unmasking, instead of admitting, the illusion-breeding "demand" that this government, a government of capitalist, should cease to be imperialistic...
Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies our party constitutes a minority, and a small one at that, in the face of the bloc of all the petty bourgeois opportunist elements... who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie...
It must be explained to the masses that the Soviet of Workers' Deputies is the only possible form of revolutionary government and that, therefore, our task is, while this government is submitting to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent analysis of its errors and tactics, an analysis especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses...
Not a parliamentary republic - a return to it from the Soviet of Workers' Deputies would be a step backward - but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the land, from top to bottom.
Abolition of the police, the army, the bureaucracy...
All officers to be elected and to be subject to recall at any time, their salaries not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker...
In the agrarian programme, the emphasis must be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies.
Confiscation of private lands.
Nationalisation of all lands in the country, and management of such lands by local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies.
A separate organisation of Soviets of Deputies of the poorest peasants.
Creation of model agricultural establishments out of large estates...
Immediate merger of all the banks in the country into one general national bank, over which the Soviet of Workers' Deputies should have control...
Not the "introduction" of Socialism as an immediate task, but the immediate placing of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies in control of social production and distribution of goods...
Party tasks:
- A. Immediate calling of a party convention.
- Concerning imperialism and the imperialist war.
- Concerning our attitude toward the state, and our demand for a 'commune state."
- Amending our antiquated minimum programme.
Rebuilding the International. Taking the initiative in the creation of a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the "centre"...
Saturday, 22 August, 2009 Michael Duffy
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Russian Revolution
Extracts from lenin’s april theses (1917).
“1. In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and company unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war, owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defensism” is permissible. The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defensism, only on condition. One, that power passes to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat. Two, that all [territorial] annexations be renounced in deed and not in word. Three, that a complete break be effected with all capitalist interests… 2. The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution — which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie — to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants… This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life. 3. No support for the Provisional Government! The utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of [territorial] annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding “demand” that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government. 4. Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements – from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee – who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat. The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies is the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses. As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time, we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience. 5. No parliamentary republic! To return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step… Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker. 6. The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies. Confiscation of all landed estates. Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants… 7. The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. 8. It is not our immediate task to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. 9. Party tasks… The immediate convocation of a Party congress. Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly on the question of imperialism and the imperialist war… Change of the party name. 10. A new International. We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the ‘Centre’.”
V. I. Lenin
Preliminary draft of the april theses [2].
Written: Written on April 3 (16), 1917 Published: First published in 1928 in Lenin Miscellany VII . Printed from the original. Source: Lenin Collected Works , Progress Publishers, 1971 , Moscow, Volume 36 , pages 431-432 . Translated: Andrew Rothstein Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README
1) Attitude to the war. No concessions to “revolutionary defencism”.
2) “ The demand that the Provisional Government” should “renounce conquests”. (α) Attitude to the Provisional Government. (β) Attitude to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
2 bis ) Criticism of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
3) Not a parliamentary republic, but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
(α) Abolition of the army, the bureaucracy and the police. (β) Salaries to officials.
4) Specifics of propaganda, agitation and organisation in the period of transition from the first stage of the revolution to the second. Maximum of legally recognised rights.
Supporters, honest, but duped by the bourgeoisie, of only “war through necessity”, “war not for conquest”, and their deception by the bourgeoisie.
5) The agrarian programme. (α) Nationalisation. (Confiscation of all landed estates.) (β) Each large-scale estate to be turned into a “model farm” under the control of a Soviet of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.
+ (γ) Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies to be pivotal.
6) A single bank under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
6 bis) Not introduction of socialism at once , but the immediate, systematic and gradual transition of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies to control over social production and distribution of products.
7) Congress. Change of programme and name. A new International. Creation of a revolutionary international.... [1]
[1] The MS. breaks off at this point.— Ed .
[2] Upon his arrival in Russia on April 3 (16), 1917, Lenin spoke about the new tasks facing the Bolshevik Party at a meeting of Petrograd Party workers organised that very night at the former K&shat;esinska mansion to mark his arrival. His speech was apparently based on the preliminary draft of the April Theses.
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April Theses
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The April Theses were the directives Vladimir Lenin issued to the Bolshevik Party upon his return to Russia, following a long exile in Switzerland.
The Theses, delivered in April 1917, provided the backbone to their goals during the Russian Revolution of October 1917 (November in the Gregorian Calendar). Upon their reception fellow Bolsheviks were alarmed, believing Lenin to be out of touch with the political situation in Russia. Nevertheless, these were the ideological core of the revolution that came less than a year later.
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The April Theses (The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution)
- Soviet Power
This article contains Lenin’s famous April Theses, read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, on April 4, 1917. Published April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26. Signed: N. Lenin.
I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.
The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself—and for honest opponents—was to prepare the theses in writing . I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tsereteli . I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks .
I publish these personal theses of mine with only the briefest explanatory notes, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.
1) In our attitude towards the war , which under the new [provisional] government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.
The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.
In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.
The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.
Fraternisation.
2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage , which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.
This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.
This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.
3) No support for the Provisional Government ; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding “demand” that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.
4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee ( Chkheidze , Tsereteli , etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.
The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.
As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.
5) Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.
Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.
The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.
6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.
Confiscation of all landed estates.
Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines , according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and for the public account.
7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
8) It is not our immediate task to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
9) Party tasks:
(a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;
(b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly:
(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war,
(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a “commune state”;
(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme;
(c) Change of the Party’s name.
10. A new International.
We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the “Centre”.
In order that the reader may understand why I had especially to emphasise as a rare exception the “case” of honest opponents, I invite him to compare the above theses with the following objection by Mr. Goldenberg: Lenin, he said, “has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy” (quoted in No. 5 of Mr. Plekhanov ’s Yedinstvo ).
Isn’t it a gem?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism ... in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them....”
Yet the bourgeois gentlemen who call themselves Social-Democrats, who do not belong either to the broad sections or to the mass believers in defencism, with serene brow present my views thus: “The banner[!] of civil war” (of which there is not a word in the theses and not a word in my speech!) has been planted(!) “in the midst [!!] of revolutionary democracy...”.
What does this mean? In what way does this differ from riot-inciting agitation, from Russkaya Volya ?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and therefore our task is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.”
Yet opponents of a certain brand present my views as a call to “civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy”!
I attacked the Provisional Government for not having appointed an early date or any date at all, for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly , and for confining itself to promises. I argued that without the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible.
And the view is attributed to me that I am opposed to the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly!
I would call this “raving”, had not decades of political struggle taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.
Mr. Plekhanov in his paper called my speech “raving”. Very good, Mr. Plekhanov! But look how awkward, uncouth and slow-witted you are in your polemics. If I delivered a raving speech for two hours, how is it that an audience of hundreds tolerated this “raving”? Further, why does your paper devote a whole column to an account of the “raving”? Inconsistent, highly inconsistent!
It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain, to recall what Marx and Engels said in 1871, 1872 and 1875 about the experience of the Paris Commune and about the kind of state the proletariat needs. [See: The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme ]
Ex-Marxist Mr. Plekhanov evidently does not care to recall Marxism.
I quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg , who on August 4, 1914 , called German Social-Democracy a “stinking corpse”. And the Plekhanovs, Goldenbergs and Co. feel “offended”. On whose behalf? On behalf of the German chauvinists, because they were called chauvinists!
They have got themselves in a mess, these poor Russian social-chauvinists—socialists in word and chauvinists in deed.
Source: Marxist Internet Archive
The April Theses and The State and Revolution
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Lenin arrived in Petrograd from political exile in Switzerland on April 3 (16), 1917. In the Bolshevik organ of Pravda on April 7 (20), 1917, he published his Bolshevik Party program for a revolutionary strategy that was to prevail until the Bolshevik seizure of political power on October 25 (November 7), 1917. Formally published as The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution , the program is popularly known as Lenin’s April Theses (henceforth referred to as the April Theses ).In Thesis (1) Lenin declared that “without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.” 1 This first thesis has reference to the shift in emphasis from Great Russian chauvinism as the Tsarist motivation for Russia’s participation in the war to the Kadet capitalist profits as a bourgeois partner in Anglo-French imperialist capital. In Thesis (3) Lenin added that Bolsheviks must expose the “illusion-breeding ‘demand’ that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.” 2 From this, Lenin argued that the Provisional Revolutionary Government must be completely deposed with the call of: “All Power to the Soviets.”
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Statesmanship and Geopolitics
The “Great War,” 1917, and Beyond
The Coming of the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg Regime and the Stages of its Development
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Davidshofer, W.J. (2014). The April Theses and The State and Revolution. In: Marxism and the Leninist Revolutionary Model. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137460295_6
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Lenin’s April Theses, 1917
In February 1917 in Russia, women textile workers in Petrograd went on strike and during subsequent days were joined by industrial workers across the city, small business people, students and many soldiers. By 25 February 240,000 workers were on strike according to the government’s figures.
With the background of the First World War and widespread food shortages, the workers and peasants were demanding bread, peace and an end to the autocracy. These events in Petrograd were echoed in Moscow and other cities across Russia.
A Soviet – the Russian word for council – of workers and soldiers was set up in Petrograd to organise the developing revolution and represent the interests of the workers and peasants.
It proceeded to take control of all the main state institutions, and soviets were springing up elsewhere too.
But at that stage the leaders of the soviets didn’t have the aim of placing power in the hands of the working class and peasantry.
Instead they ended up giving conditional support to a newly set-up provisional government led by Prince Lvov.
The February revolution overthrew the Czarist regime – Czar Nicolas was forced to abdicate – but it failed to solve the central issues of bread, peace and land.
In April 1917, when Lenin returned from exile, power still potentially lay in the hands of the workers, soldiers and peasants through the soviets, but even the Bolshevik leaders in the soviets were giving critical support to the capitalist provisional government rather than seeking to take power into soviet hands.
It was only in October 1917 that the Bolshevik revolution brought the soviets to power, placing the working class and peasants in control of their destiny for the first time.
The role that Lenin played through his writings in April 1917, known as the April Theses, and in his interventions after returning from exile, played a critical role in reorientating the Bolshevik party and bringing about the successful October revolution.
The below article by Lynn Walsh, editor of Socialism Today, was originally printed in 1987 in the South African publication Inqaba ya Basebenzi, during the inspiring uprising of the South African working class which led to the overthrow of the South African apartheid regime.
Lynn briefly explains both this success and the subsequent degeneration of that revolution and the influence of stalinism.
Below Lynn’s introduction is the text of Lenin’s April Theses, originally published on 7 April 1917 in Pravda no.26.
Introduction to Lenin’s ‘April Theses’, by Lynn Walsh
The bolsheviks adopt a programme for power, lenin’s april theses form one of the most decisive manifestos in the history of the revolution. they consist of just a few short notes, the bare skeleton of lenin’s speeches when he arrived back in petrograd in april 1917., but the ideas outlined within them brought about a decisive reorientation of the bolshevik leadership. lynn walsh re-examines the april theses and their lessons for today..
Lenin’s return from exile crystallized a crisis in the Bolshevik party. The leadership in Russia around Kamenev and Stalin, who had assumed responsibility on their return from Siberia in March, endorsed the Soviet’s position of conditional support for the Provisional government of Prince Lvov – even though the Soviet held the real power on the streets and in the factories.
Lenin had already rejected this stance, as his Letters from Afar in February demonstrated. The Provisional government, in his view, was so bound up with the landlords, the industrialists and the bankers that it was incapable of fulfilling its promises.
To believe that the government would end the war, distribute the big estates, solve the economic crisis and meet workers’ demands was a dangerous illusion.
There was no question, as far as Lenin was concerned, of supporting the Provisional government while it carried out reforms in the expectation that, at a later stage, more favourable conditions would emerge for the struggle for socialism.
The liberal bourgeois government, pushed reluctantly into power by the February revolution, had already gone as far as it was capable of going.
Unless the Soviets smashed the remnants of the old state and placed power decisively in the hands of the workers, the Provisional government would succumb to counter-revolution. The next phase would be a new regime of totalitarian reaction.
Socialist Programme
In the April Theses, therefore, Lenin called for a struggle for a socialist programme based on the independent action of the working class. Its main elements were:
- No Support for the Provisional government.
- Fight for the Soviets to take power.
- End the war.
- Confiscate the big estates.
- Nationalise the banks.
- Establish workers’ control of industry.
- Replace the police and army with a workers’ militia.
- Replace the old state bureaucracy with workers’ administration.
- Proclaim a Communist Party; establish a new international.
A programme on these lines, with the strategy and tactics also spelt out, was an essential pre-requisite for the success of the October revolution.
In April it was opposed by the leaders castigated by Lenin as ‘Old Bolsheviks’. However, by appealing to the leading Bolsheviks at rank and file level, Lenin won a majority for his ideas.
The new upsurge of workers and peasants, which provoked a new crisis for the Provisional government, confirmed Lenin’s position in a few stormy months. Without the April Theses, 1917 would have ended quite differently.
Underlying Lenin’s strategy and tactics was a clear perspective. This provided a clear guide to action during the ebbs and flows of the revolution.
On the other hand, it was precisely because the ‘Old Bolsheviks’ were working on the basis of a confused perspective, derived from a misinterpretation of Lenin’s previous position, that they adopted a policy which prefigured the disastrous Popular Frontism of the Stalinist leaders in the 1930s and since.
Permanent Revolution
The perspective which Lenin arrived at in 1917 coincided with Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, worked out following the experience of the 1905 revolution.
This resolved the long debate within the Russian labour movement which revolved around three different conceptions of the coming revolution.
All the Russian Marxists were agreed that the tasks of social transformation facing them were those of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
These were: The breaking up of the big estates and the distribution of the land to the peasants. The abolition of the Tsarist monarchy and the establishment of a democratic republic.
The separation of the church and state. The introduction of social reforms, urgently demanded by the workers and the peasants, but also necessary to clear the way for the development of capitalism.
Given this, which political forces would provide the leadership?
Would it be (a) the liberal capitalist representatives? If so, would the workers’ parties, including the Bolsheviks, limit themselves to conditional support for the liberals, accepting that the struggle for socialism would come later, under more favourable conditions which would develop under a capitalist regime?
Would it be (b) the working class, in alliance with the representatives of the peasantry, who would take the power – limiting themselves, however, at this stage to bourgeois-democratic tasks?
Or would it be (c) the working class leading the exploited peasantry behind them, who would take power, carry through the bourgeois-democratic tasks – but at the same time implementing radical changes in their own interests which would begin the transition to socialism?
Position (a) was adopted by the Mensheviks, who formed the right wing of the Social-Democratic party.
From Marx, they drew highly schematic conclusions: that feudalism, capitalism and socialism followed in succession and one historical stage had to be complete before another could commence.
There was no question, according to this view, of the working class initiating a socialist revolution until the bourgeois revolution was complete.
This schema, alien to Marx’s dialectical method, took no account of the relationship of forces resulting from Russia’s uneven development.
Elements of modern industry can be injected, through foreign capital, into a society dominated by landlords and ruled by an absolute monarchy.
The capitalists had arrived too late on the scene, and were too cowardly to fight for progressive changes.
Long before 1917 they had held the real economic power. But they relied on the Tsar for protection, and feared the consequences of any big movements among the masses.
Above all, they feared the working class – relatively small, but compact, highly conscious and combative.
The Liberal Capitalists, in Lenin’s view, had long ago proved their inability to carry through their historical tasks.
The workers should place no reliance on the liberals whatsoever. Lenin always argued for an independent policy and organisation for the working class.
In the years before the revolution Lenin had accepted position (b). Given the bankruptcy of the liberal bourgeoisie, the revolution would be carried through by an alliance of the workers, the most dynamic force, and the peasantry, the predominant exploited class.
This perspective was summed up in Lenin’s formula “the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.”
‘Dictatorship’ did not mean totalitarian rule (this was before the monstrosity of Stalinism!) but class domination, which would be based on democratic soviet-type organizations. ‘Democratic’ expressed recognition of the bourgeois character of the tasks to be carried out.
However, Lenin was far from putting a Chinese wall between the bourgeois-democratic and the socialist revolutions.
He was convinced that, because of capitalism’s international character, the Russian revolution would be one link in a chain of worldwide revolutions.
A revolutionary government in Russia would, through collaboration with the revolutionary workers’ governments in the advanced capitalist countries, move towards a second, socialist revolution in Russia.
How quickly this would happen would depend not on any predetermined historical timetable, but on the relationship of forces.
Above all, it would be determined by the strength of the proletariat involved in the struggle. As far back as 1906 Lenin had written: “We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop halfway.”
Lenin’s formula, as he explained in April 1917, was ‘algebraic’. It expressed the class relationships but left open the specific weight of political forces involved, and did not attempt to quantify the concrete tasks to be carried out.
Trotsky, whose perspective was bolder and more concrete, warned in 1906 that any tendency on the part of the proletariat to accept bourgeois-democratic limits would become anti-revolutionary, and could be potentially fatal to the revolution.
A failure on the part of the revolutionary dictatorship to implement socialist measures would in practice undermine the forces of the proletariat.
The leadership would in reality be conceded, under these circumstances, to the liberal bourgeoisie – opening the door to the danger of counter-revolution.
Old Bolsheviks
By developing the revolutionary essence of his formula in relation to the concrete events of 1917 Lenin avoided this danger.
With regard to the ‘Old Bolsheviks’, Trotsky’s warning proved far-sighted and all too true. The Old Bolsheviks clung to Lenin’s ‘antiquated’ and now ‘meaningless’ (as Lenin made clear in the April Theses) formula of the democratic dictatorship.
Kamenev and Stalin claimed to be standing on Lenin’s previous perspective (b). In reality, the logic of this position – conditional support for the Provisional government and the postponement of the struggle on the workers’ own demands – led them back to the Menshevik’s position (a) of an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, with the workers playing second fiddle.
Was it an accident that, prior to Lenin’s return, Stalin and Kamenev supported discussions with the Mensheviks on re-unification?
The remaining position (c), the only one which proved genuinely revolutionary in 1917, was that of the Permanent Revolution. This was the position adopted by Lenin in February 1917, outlined in his Letters From Afar and spelt out in the April Theses:
“The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution … to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants …
“The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government…”
The position of Lenin and Trotsky coincided in 1917. Lenin saw that in the epoch of imperialism which dominated class relations internationally, the bourgeoisie of semi-developed countries like Russia had exhausted their historical mission.
They could no longer complete the tasks undertaken by their predecessors in the classical revolutions of the past.
These tasks now fell on the shoulders of the working class. Lenin now accepted Trotsky’s bold conclusion that the working class had to take power notwithstanding its numerical weakness.
But in taking on these tasks, left over from a previous era, the proletariat could not avoid linking them with the socialist measures essential to meet the workers’ immediate needs.
Given the economic backwardness and barbarous culture of a country like Russia, however, it was clearly imperative for the proletariat to adopt an internationalist outlook, striving to link up with the proletariat of more advanced countries possessing the material conditions for socialist development.
For fundamental material reasons, it is only on the basis of the international extension of the revolution that the workers of a backward country could proceed to the construction of socialism.
Referring to the Permanent Revolution, Lenin told his comrade Adolf Joffe: “Trotsky was right.” After 1917 the polemics of the past no longer seemed so important.
Lenin’s contempt for those who clung to the old formula was made clear in the brutal language of the April Theses.
However, there are many later comments which remove all doubt about Lenin’s view. On the fourth anniversary of the revolution, for instance, Lenin said: “In order to consolidate the achievements of the bourgeois-democratic revolution … we are obliged to go farther; and we did go farther.
“We solved the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in passing as a ‘by-product’ of our main and genuinely proletarian-revolutionary, socialist activities.” (Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, 14 October, 1921)
The April Theses Today
Had the Russian revolution been successfully extended internationally, with the development of a socialist federation embracing economically advanced countries, the discussion of pre-1917 perspectives would now be of only historical interest to Marxists.
Unfortunately, with the defeat of the revolution in Europe, Soviet Russia was isolated. The revolution suffered an inevitable degeneration.
The democratic control of the workers was usurped by a bureaucratic elite, which found a bonapartist representative in the person of Stalin.
As the bureaucracy became more remote from the working class within Russia, so it increasingly gave up confidence in the proletarian revolution abroad.
The Communist International was transformed into an agency of the bureaucracy’s foreign policy. Searching for national security, the bureaucracy began to play a counter-revolutionary role on the world arena. The perspective for an independent struggle for socialism was abandoned.
In an effort to provide theoretical, ‘Leninist’ justification for this counter-revolutionary transformation, Stalin exhumed Lenin’s old formula of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.
In other words, they returned to the policy they had supported at the beginning of 1917 – before they had been defeated by Lenin in the struggle within the party.
The revival of this discredited policy was applied with disastrous results to the Chinese revolution of 1925-26.
Against the wished of the leadership of the Chinese Communists, the Stalinist bureaucracy imposed a policy of subordination to the Chinese bourgeoisie led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang.
This led to the defeat of China’s dynamic working class, with the massacre of thousands of Communists and militants. Since then, the same policy has been applied with the same disastrous results.
In the post-Second World War period the ex-colonial lands have experienced a series of revolutionary upheavals.
The communist party leaders, still dominated by Stalinist ideology, have invariably subordinated the workers’ organizations to the interests of national-capitalist leaders.
In many cases this has meant support for Bonapartist dictators, including military bonapartist leaders.
Sukharno in Indonesia, Kassim in Iraq, Gonçalves in Portugal – the list could be extended around the world many times.
In Chile between 1970-73, the Communist Party leaders supported the popular government of Salvador Allende.
This was on the basis of the so-called anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly programme – to make ‘inroads’ into the power of capital.
In other words, their perspective was that of completing a bourgeois-democratic stage of revolution, with the struggle for workers’ power and socialism postponed beyond the horizon.
Following this line, the Communist Party leaders helped to restrain the magnificent movement of the Chilean workers – who are still living with the horrendous results.
Similarly, in South Africa the Stalinists within the leadership of the ANC base themselves on the theory of stages.
In spite of the magnificent movement of the black workers and youth, they believe that the programme of the revolution must be limited, at this stage, to national democratic tasks.
They fail to see that capitalism has completely exhausted the progressive role it once played.
Crisis of Stalinism
The crisis in Stalinism and the reformist degeneration of the various communist parties has severed many of the links with Moscow.
But the CP leaders nevertheless perpetuate the false ideas of Stalin in 1917 – ideas which had to be swept aside by Lenin in order to ensure the success of the revolution.
If in 1917 the idea that the bourgeois-democratic revolution had to be exhausted before the workers could move towards socialism was incorrect, today it is totally absurd.
On the one side, the capitalist class of the underdeveloped countries is even more subservient to the big monopolies and banks of the advanced capitalist countries than in the past.
It is unable to play an independent, progressive role. Even where the national bourgeoisie has taken over, they have failed to complete their traditional tasks.
On the contrary, given the world-wide capitalist crisis, they have accumulated even more problems and fostered grotesque social contradictions.
On the other side, the national bourgeoisie of the ex-colonial lands is almost everywhere confronted by a powerful working class.
Especially in the semi-developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the capitalists are paralyzed by fear of the proletariat – much stronger now than the workers of Russia in 1917.
Many strikes, general strikes, and insurrectionary movements have proved the preparedness of the workers to struggle.
The weakness of the proletariat in the ex-colonial lands cannot be attributed to the incompleteness of the national bourgeois-democratic revolution.
The failure of the workers in these regions to assume the leadership of the exploited peasantry and the impoverished petty-bourgeoisie and to lead society out of its present blind alley is due to its political weakness.
This reflects the absence of revolutionary Marxist policy based on the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky and put to the test in 1917.
That is why the controversy of 1917 is still a live issue. The lessons of the April Theses have to be learned, re-learned and carried to class conscious workers throughout the world.
Inqaba ya Basebenzi, October 1987
The tasks of the proletariat in the present revolution, the april theses (published in pravda, no. 26, 7 april 1917), vladimir ilyich lenin.
I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.
The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself – and for honest opponents-was to prepare the theses in writing .
I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tsereteli. I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
I publish these personal theses of mine with only the briefest explanatory notes, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.
1) In our attitude towards the war, which under the new [provisional] government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.
The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.
In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.
The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.
Fraternisation.
2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution – which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie – to its second stage , which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.
This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.
This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.
3) No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations.
Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding “demand” that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.
4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee (Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.
The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.
As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.
5) Not a parliamentary republic – to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step – but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.
Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy.[1]
The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.
6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.
Confiscation of all landed estates.
Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies.
The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and for the public account.
7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
8) It is not our immediate task to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.
9) Party tasks:
(a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;
(b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly:
(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war,
(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a “commune state”[2];
(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programmeme;
(c) Change of the Party’s name.[3]
10. A new International.
We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the “Centre”.[4]
In order that the reader may understand why I had especially to emphasise as a rare exception the “case” of honest opponents, I invite him to compare the above theses with the following objection by Mr.
Goldenberg: Lenin, he said, “has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy” (quoted in No. 5 of Mr. Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo).
Isn’t it a gem?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism … in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them….”
Yet the bourgeois gentlemen who call themselves Social-Democrats, who do not belong either to the broad sections or to the mass believers in defencism, with serene brow present my views thus: “The banner[!] of civil war” (of which there is not a word in the theses and not a word in my speech!) has been planted(!) “in the midst [!!] of revolutionary democracy…”.
What does this mean? In what way does this differ from riot-inciting agitation, from Russkaya Volya?
I write, announce and elaborately explain: “The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and therefore our task is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.”
Yet opponents of a certain brand present my views as a call to “civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy”!
I attacked the Provisional Government for not having appointed an early date or any date at all, for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and for confining itself to promises.
I argued that without the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible.
And the view is attributed to me that I am opposed to the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly!
I would call this “raving”, had not decades of political struggle taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.
Mr. Plekhanov in his paper called my speech “raving”. Very good, Mr. Plekhanov! But look how awkward, uncouth and slow-witted you are in your polemics.
If I delivered a raving speech for two hours, how is it that an audience of hundreds tolerated this “raving”? Further, why does your paper devote a whole column to an account of the “raving”? Inconsistent, highly inconsistent!
It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain, to recall what Marx and Engels said in 1871, 1872 and 1875 about the experience of the Paris Commune and about the kind of state the proletariat needs. [See: The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programmeme ]
Ex-Marxist Mr. Plekhanov evidently does not care to recall Marxism.
I quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg, who on August 4, 1914, called German Social-Democracy a “stinking corpse”.
And the Plekhanovs, Goldenbergs and Co. feel “offended”. On whose behalf? On behalf of the German chauvinists, because they were called chauvinists!
They have got themselves in a mess, these poor Russian social-chauvinists – socialists in word and chauvinists in deed.
[1] ie the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people. – Lenin
[2] ie, a state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype. -Lenin
[3] Instead of “Social-Democracy”, whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the “defencists” and the vacillating “Kautskyites”), we must call ourselves the Communist Party . -Lenin
[4] The “Centre” in the international Social-Democratic movement is the trend which vacillates between the chauvinists (=”defencists”) and internationalists, i.e., Kautsky and Co. in Germany, Longuet and Co. in France, Chkheidze and Co. in Russia, Turati and Co. in Italy, MacDonald and Co. in Britain, etc. -Lenin
This text of the April Theses was sourced from Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 24. Translated by Isaacs Bernard.
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April Theses, in Russian history, program developed by Lenin during the Russian Revolution of 1917, calling for Soviet control of state power; the theses, published in April 1917, contributed to the July Days uprising and also to the Bolshevik coup d'etat in October 1917.. During the February Revolution two disparate bodies had replaced the imperial government—the Provisional Government ...
The April Theses were first published in a speech in two meetings on 17 April 1917 (4 April according to the old Russian Calendar). [1] Some believe he based this on Leon Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution. [2] They were subsequently published in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.In the Theses, Lenin [3]. condemns the Provisional Government as bourgeois and urges "no support" for it, as ...
Notes. i.e. the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.—Lenin. i.e., a state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype.— Lenin. Instead of "Social-Democracy", whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the "defencists" and the vacillating "Kautskyites"), we must call ourselves the Communist ...
Vladimir Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution. April 17, 1917 . Original Source: Pravda, 20 April 1917. I arrived in Petrograd only on the night of April 16, and could therefore, of course, deliver a report at the meeting on April 17, on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only upon my own responsibility, and with the reservations as to insufficient preparation.
On 4 April 1917 Lenin returned from his exile in Switzerland, arrived in Petrograd and addressed himself directly to the workers and soldiers who crowded the station in these terms: "Dear comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers. I am happy to greet in you the victorious Russian revolution, to greet you as the advance guard of the ...
Introduction. In Russian the "Aprelskiye Tezisy", the April Theses formed a programme developed by Lenin during the 1917 Russian Revolution. In these Lenin called for Soviet control of the state. When published the theses contributed to the July Days rising and to the subsequent coup d'etat of October 1917, bringing the Bolsheviks to power.
APRIL THESES Vladimir Ilich Lenin's "April Theses" was one of the most influential and important documents of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik history. The main ideas of Lenin's April Theses were first delivered in speeches immediately after his arrival in Petrograd on April 16, 1917, and then formalized in a newspaper article ("The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution") in ...
Extracts from Lenin's April Theses (1917) Vladimir Lenin's April Theses were actually a brief account of a speech he delivered on his return to Russia on April 3rd 1917, then summarised in writing the following day: "1. In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and company unquestionably remains on Russia's ...
Lenin's "April Theses" represented a radical change in the Bolsheviks' political strategy. Previously, it was widely accepted that the Bolsheviks should work within the system of liberal democracy ...
Notes. The MS. breaks off at this point.—Ed.. Upon his arrival in Russia on April 3 (16), 1917, Lenin spoke about the new tasks facing the Bolshevik Party at a meeting of Petrograd Party workers organised that very night at the former K&shat;esinska mansion to mark his arrival. His speech was apparently based on the preliminary draft of the April Theses.
The April Theses were the directives Vladimir Lenin issued to the Bolshevik Party upon his return to Russia, following a long exile in Switzerland. The Theses, delivered in April 1917, provided ...
Lenin read the theses at two meetings held at the Taurida Palace. on April 4 (17), 1917 (at a meeting of Bolsheviks and at a joint. mecting of Bolshevik and Menshevik delegates to the All-Russia Con-. ference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies).
This article contains Lenin's famous April Theses, read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, on April 4, 1917. Published April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26. Signed: N. Lenin.
LENIN'S APRIL THESES 1917 I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the ... promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion- ...
128 l Marxism and the Leninist Revolutionary Model on the side of Anglo-French imperialist allies. And in his report to the Petrograd City Conference of Bolsheviks, which approved his April Theses, Lenin, once again, referred to the program in Several Theses in Sotsial-Demokrat Issue No. 47 of October 13 (26), 1915, which declared that the only just war of national defense must be a war fought ...
The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution The April Theses (published in Pravda, No. 26, 7 April 1917) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.
Lenin's April Theses form one of the most decisive manifestos in the history of the revolution. They consist of just a few short notes, the bare skeleton of Lenin's speeches when he arrived back in Petrograd in April 1917. But the ideas outlined within them brought about a decisive reorientation of the Bolshevik leadership.
Lenin delivered his famous April Theses at the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on April 4th, 1917. ... the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding "demand" that ...
LENIN'S DOCTRINAL REVOLUTION OF APRIL 1917. Bolshevik wing - which had shown itself less ready to follow the path of 'defencism' or 'social chauvinism'. And, of course, Lenin. socialist revolution on a European or even world-wide scale. But, given all this, he saw no necessity to revise the Bolshevik formulas.
The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution {1} [The April Theses] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.
The April Theses by V. I. Lenin. Topics marxism, communism Collection opensource Item Size 43.7M . a 1976 soviet book. Addeddate 2022-06-17 00:42:42 Identifier the-april-theses Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2f24rc7qxh Ocr tesseract 5.1.0-1-ge935 Ocr_autonomous true ...
The fallout from the April Theses. Given the general level of theoretical and strategic malaise among the Bolsheviks, Lenin's April Theses went down like the proverbial lead balloon. The party's Petrograd committee voted by 13 to two to reject it and the Bolshevik committees in Moscow and Kiev soon followed suit.
Solution. Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik party. He returned to Russia and put three demands which were known as Lenin's April Theses. They were: (i) The First World War be brought to an end. (ii) Land must be transferred to the peasants. (iii) The banks should be nationalised. Suggest Corrections. 409.