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Lvov and Co., owing to the capitalist nature of this government, the war on Russia's part remains a predatory imperialist war.

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2. 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.

3. 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 capitalists, cease being imperialistic.

4. Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies our party constitutes a minority. . . .

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Despite his awareness that the Bolsheviks constituted a minority group in the Soviets Lenin adhered to his program of "all power to the Soviets," obviously expecting to assume a stronger position and then to be able to overthrow the democratic system.

5. 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.

6. In the agrarian programme, the emphasis must be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies.

Confiscation of all private lands.

Nationalisation of all lands in the country, and management of such lands by local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies.

7. Immediate merger of all the banks in the country into one general national bank, over which the Soviet of Workers' Deputies should have control.

8. 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.10

Lenin did not advocate an uprising against the new government. He realized that, being a small minority even in the Soviets, his party would be easily crushed if it took up arms at once. At the Bolshevik party conference in May [April] 1917, Lenin took exception to the views of a

Lenin, "On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution" (printed in Pravda, April 20 [7], 1917), Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), pp. 106, 107. 10 Ibid., p. 108.

few impatient "leftists" and advised against armed street demonstrations and use of arms against the other parties.

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On Lenin's initiative, the conference adopted a resolution stating that:

.. extreme caution and prudence must be displayed, a solid majority of the population and their conscious conviction in the practical preparedness of such measures must be assured. . . .12

Lenin suggested, and the conference adopted, a resolution against an unpopular separate peace with Germany. This resolution is of historical importance in view of the separate peace signed by Lenin less than a year later. On the other hand, the conference endorsed the Bolshevik attempts at encouraging "fraternization" among Russian and German soldiers at the front, despite the harmful effects of this on the army's morale:

The war cannot be ended by a refusal of the soldiers of only one side to continue the war, merely by a one-sided cessation of war activities by one of the belligerents.

Again and again the conference reiterates its protest against the base slander circulated by the capitalists against our party to the effect that we are in favor of a separate . . . peace with Germany. We consider the German capitalists to be robbers no less than the capitalists of Russia, England, France, etc., and Emperor Wilhelm II to be a crowned murderer no less than Nikolai II and the monarchs of England, Italy, Rumania, and all the rest.

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our party will support the mass fraternization at the front of soldiers of all belligerents which has already started, aiming at the transformation of this spontaneous display of solidarity by the oppressed into a conscious and possibly more organized movement for the transition of full government power in all belligerent countries into the hands of the revolutionary proletariat. 18

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A special resolution on the involved agrarian question was adopted by the conference. The agrarian program was among the problems that had aroused major controversies in the Bolshevik ranks. Now the party, while in principle advocating nationalization of the land, in effect urged

"Lenin, "Report on the Political Situation," Delivered May 7 [April 24], 1917 to the Seventh All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, Collected Works, vol. XX (1929), p. 278. This conference, frequently referred to as the "April" Conference, was held May 7-May 12 [April 24-29], 1917.

12 "O Tekushchem Momente" ([Resolution] On the Present Situation), adopted at the Seventh All-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP (b) in 1917, KPSS v Rezolyutsiakh i Resheniyakh S"ezdov, Konferentsii i Plenumov TsK (CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee) (7th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1953), part 1, p. 352.

13 "O Voine" ([Resolution] On the War), adopted at the Seventh All-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP (b) in 1917, KPSS v Rezolyutsiyakh i Resheniyakh..., part 1, pp. 337, 338.

the peasants, without waiting for new laws and reforms, to take over the landlords' estates by sheer force:

(1) The party of the proletariat fights with all its forces for the immediate and total confiscation of all land owned by landowners in Russia (as well as ecclesiastical lands, lands belonging to the state and the court, etc.).

(2) The party categorically demands the immediate transfer of all land to the peasantry organized in Soviets of Peasants' Deputies or other municipal institutions elected in a real democratic way and completely independent of landlords and officials.

(3) The party of the proletariat demands nationalization of all land in the state; this means transfer of the right of property on all lands to the state. Nationalization transfers the right of disposition of the land to the local democratic institutions. . .

(5) The party advises the peasants to take the land in an organized way, tolerating not the slightest damage to the property, and to take care of increasing production.14

2. Leon Trotsky in 1917

Early in May 1917 there arrived from the United States a man who was to side with Lenin, as leader No. 2 of bolshevism, during the era of revolution-Leon Trotsky-Bronstein.

The son of a well-to-do though uneducated Jewish farmer, Lev (Leon) Davidovich Bronstein was born in October 1879 in the small village of Yanovka in the southern Ukraine. Unlike Lenin, he had not had the advantage of early systematic education. In 1888 he was sent to live with friends of his family in Odessa, where he entered a high school, completing the course in 1896. He never studied at a university. At the early age of 17 he joined revolutionary groups in Nikolaiev, first the Populists and soon after, the Marxists.

In 1898 Lev Bronstein was arrested and after more than two years in prison was exiled to Ust-Kut, on the Lena River in Siberia. He began to contribute to a local newspaper and soon showed himself to be a gifted writer. In 1902 he fled from Siberia to Europe under a false passport in the name of Trotsky. Soon afterward he crossed to Austria, and then came to Lenin in London. A few lectures and articles written for Iskra (which was issued abroad by the leading group of Russian Marxists) revealed Trotsky's gifts as a speaker and writer; it was not long before he was admitted to the party's highest circles.

His close friendship with Lenin did not last long, however. Their paths parted in 1903, when Trotsky began to side with the Mensheviks. Trotsky returned to Russia in 1905 and was elected vice chairman of

"Po Agrarnomu Voprosu" ([Resolution] On the Agrarian Question), adopted at the Seventh All-Russian or "April" Conference of the RSDLP (b) in 1917, KPSS v. Rezolyutsiyakh i Resheniyakh . "" part 1, p. 341.

the first St. Petersburg Soviet. Arrested and exiled, he again escaped from Siberia and lived as an émigré in Western Europe from 1906 to January 1917. Expelled from France, he emigrated to New York. Soon after his arrival in the United States the Russian upheaval occurred and he returned to St. Petersburg.

Trotsky vacillated between the various Social-Democratic factions; he was never, at least until 1917, a full-fledged Bolshevik; he had his own small following and occupied a position between the factions, advocating their reunification. Although a man of talents, he remained a lone leader almost all his life; he had few personal friends. A certain haughtiness was one of his traits; he often stressed his superiority and influence over others; he was reproached for being self-enamored and self-preoccupied. At the height of the revolution he was by far the best of the Bolshevik orators.

In Petrograd, in 1917, Trotsky's small organization ("Mezhraiontsy"), under his influence, stretched out its hand to the Bolsheviks and began a close cooperation with them. On July 15 [2], 1917, Trotsky wrote in Pravda:

At present, I think there are no differences between the "United" [Trotskyites] and the Bolshevik organizations, either in principle or tactics. This means there are no motives which would justify separate existence of their organizations.15

The "unification" between Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Trotsky group, announced at the Bolshevik congress in August 1917, was at the time a formality. There remained divergent views on issues which did not involve current tactics, and in the following years these differences were to become very important.

Trotsky was more international-minded than most of the Bolshevik leadership; to him the "imminent" world revolution was more of a reality than to them; the slogan of a "United States of Europe," which had been discarded by Lenin some time before, was still adhered to by Trotsky, who saw a union of a revamped United States of America with a "United States of Europe" into one world socialist commonwealth. Of course, Trotsky admitted, Marx's expectation of a social revolution in the West in the 19th century had not materialized; Marx's timing had proved to be wrong, but—

If Marx was premature in predicting the social revolution, this does not mean that our predictions, too, will be premature. After all the commotion of war, after fifty years of socialist cultural education, after all that people have gone through-what conditions could be more favorable for

"Trotsky, "Nuzhno Nemedlenno Ob❞edinyatsya na Dele, Otvet na Zaprosy" (It Is Necessary to Unite in Practice Immediately, Answer to Inquiries) (July 2 [15], 1917), Sochineniya (Works) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo (State Publishing House), n. d.), vol. III, part 1, p. 149.

a social revolution? And if the war, which has forced all peoples to shake off hypocrisy, falsehood and the tarnish of chauvinism, will not lead Europe toward the social revolution, this will mean that Europe is destined for economic stagnation, that it will perish as a civilized country and will serve only the curiosity of tourists; the center of revolutionary movements will switch to America or Japan. . . .16

The United States of Europe-without monarchy, standing armies and secret diplomacy-are therefore the most important component part of the proletarian program of peace. . . .

we have all reason to hope that during this war there will develop in the whole of Europe a mighty revolutionary movement. It is obvious that it will be able to grow successfully and achieve victory only as an allEuropean movement. Remaining isolated within national boundaries, it would be doomed. Our social-patriots are pointing to the dangers to the Russian revolution presented by German militarism. This danger certainly exists, but it is not the only danger. British, French, Italian imperialism is a no less ominous enemy of the Russian revolution than the military machine of the Hohenzollerns. The salvation of the Russian revolution lies in extending it over the whole of Europe.

It goes without saying that the United States of Europe will become only one of two axes of the worldwide organized economy. The other axis will be the United States of America ....

To perceive the perspectives of the social revolution within a national framework would mean to become a victim of the same national narrowness which represents the essence of social-patriotism. . . .17

The last sentence contained an implied condemnation of "Socialism in one country"-as well as the seeds of the future conflict with Stalinism.

3. Socialism and Dictatorship as Immediate Goals

This issue of socialism in Russia occurring without a prior revolution in the West haunted most of the Bolshevik leaders. At the beginning of 1917, Lenin, the Marxist and anti-Populist, was adhering to his old view that backward Russia was not ripe for a social and economic transformation on socialist bases. On these issues Lenin was not always consistent, often amending his strategy and even his theories in accord

"Trotsky, "Rech na Obshchegorodskoi Konferentsii Ob"edinennoi S.-D. Po Dokladu t. Uritskogo ob Otnoshenii k Vremennomu Pravitelstvu 7 Maya 1917" (Speech at the All-City [Petrograd] Conference of the United Social-Democrats On the Report by Comrade Uritsky Regarding the Attitude Toward the Provisional Government) (May 7 [20], 1917), Sochineniya, vol. III, part 1, p. 48.

"Trotsky, "Soedinennye Shtaty Evropy" (The United States of Europe), Sochineniya, vol. III, part 1, pp. 86, 88-90.

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