Revolution and Survival: The foreign policy of soviet

Russia- Richard Debo

(((()(The new foreign policy- DEBO 1979:

 In late February 1918, Lenin had won an enormous political victory, defeating the left
Bolshevik party. After nearly two months of procrastination and fruitless argument
the onrushing tide of German infantry had forced his colleagues to face reality and
admit the bankruptcy of the regime’s first foreign policies. ‘Permanent revolution’
had failed and ‘ no war, no peace’ had proved to be made of tissues paper. The
Central Committee faced with the choice of revolutionary war of capitulation had
opted for the latter, tacitly abandoning the ideological baggage which threatened the
survival of the revolution. Lenin had received a mandate to salvage wha he could
from the wreckage of Trotskii’s policies. Not much was left, but from the debris he
saved the Soviet state, the badly damaged myth of proletarian internationalism, and a
slim chance for future revolutionary aggrandizement. The rest he allowed to sink from
sight never again to be honoured in its land of origin.
 The decision of 23 February marked a major divided in the history of the Russian
Revolution.
 Those qualities which previously had marked Lenin’s personal style of politics now
became dominant in the Soviet State, shouldering aside the more flamboyant
approach to Trotskii and the doctrinal intensity of the left Bolsheviks. Never again
would the advocates of ideological purity divorced from “ raison d’etat’ receive a
serious hearing in Bolshevik councils. In the days following victory, Lenin moved
swiftly to overhaul both party and state, forging policies which reflected his
uncompromising views on the future course of the revolution.
 Lenin’s first task was to have his victory ratified by the Party Congress which had
been summoned to render a definitive answer to the question of war or peace.
 The Party Congress was held three days after the conclusion of the Peace of
Brest-Litovsk. This was a very poor times to debate the merits of the revolutionary
wat, but an excellent opportunity for Lenin to exploit his victory.
 In January, his demand for a party Congress had been a tactical measure
designed to forestall Bukharin’s effort to summon a party conference, but after
the events of late February the congress quickly assumed strategic importance.
 Known in the annals of Soviet historiography as the Seventh “ extraordinary”
congress this gathering unquestionably deserves its description. Never before or
afterwards was there a party congress quite like this one. Rather overlooked in most
studies of the Russian Communist Party, the seventh Congress servers much
more attention that it has received.
 The most striking feature of the Congress was its diminutive size, in comparison
to the 6th Congress that had met in June 1917 and was attended by 267 delegates,
representing 176,750 party members, the 7th Congress was composed of only 70
delegates, representing less than 150,000 Bolsheviks. In the interval between the
 6th and 7th Congresses, the party had grown from less than 200,00 to more than
300,000 members, meaning that in March 1918, less than half of the party was
represented.
 Of the 46 delegates with the right to vote, 27 represented party organisation in
Moscow and Petrograd while at least five of the remaining 19 delegates supposedly
drawn from the provinces actually worked in the capital and had little if any contact
with their nominal constituencies.
 The Congress was composted primarily of delegates drawn from the central organs of
party government with only a few representatives from the provinces. This can be
explained by the sudden decision to summon the Congress and the chaotic conditions
existing in Russia at the time. In early March, with railway transportation totally
disrupted, the larger number of delegates could simply not reach Petrograd.
 Lenin had no problem with the delegates. They were few in number, drawn mainly
from the two capitals and easily influenced by the strong current of public opinion
favouring peace. This current was quite genuine, fed by the steady flow of
demoralised soldiers fleeing the front, but in late February, it was given new direction
and force as Lenin began consciously to pump it into politically useful channels.
 Lenin solicited the views of the Soviets and land committees on whether the
government should wage revolutionary war or ratify the peace treaty with Germany.
The results revealed that 262 local soviets and land committee had voted for
ratification of the peace treaty with 233 opposed to it. Lenin, therefore could claim
that this poll supported his positions. His opponents had been outmanoeuvred every
step along the way with Lenin having seized control of the Central Committee,
undermined their previous predominance in Moscow and Petrograd and secured a
mandate from the country at large.
 The Left Bolsheviks did not have neither the prestige, information not resources of the
Central Committee
 Before the Congress met the issue had already been decided in favour of peace.
 With full control of the Congress Lenin had only to decide how he would exploit the
unprecedented opportunity which the meeting offered him. As he had no desire to
drive his opponents from the party he decided to make their defeat as painless as
possible.
 Bukharin was allowed to argue his case, those who supported revolutionary war were
given every opportunity to be heard, and despite considerable invective, particularly
from Karl Radeck, no attempt was made to muzzle the left Bolsheviks. Lenin made a
great show of allowing free discussion. He could do this because the left Bolsheviks
were isolated.
 The circumstances the made Trotskii abstain from voting in the Central
Committee on 23 February still prevented him from making common cause with
the left Bolsheviks. Trotskii was irrelevant to the proceedings of the Congress, a
completely neutral factor in the uneven contest. This neutrality was the key to Lenin’s
success at the Congress, just as it had been two weeks earlier in the Central
Committee. If Trotskii had passed into opposition the entire balance of power within
the party would have shifted dramatically, probably resulting, as Trotskii feared, in an
open, and most likely armed conflict between the two Bolshevik factions.
 On the afternoon of 8 March, the delegates voted thirty to twelve with four
abstentions in favour of Lenin’s resolution “recognising the necessity to confirm
the extremely harsh , humiliating peace with Germany”
 With his resolution the Congress places its seal of approval on Lenin’s policy.
Henceforth the party was bound by this decision, and , as consequence, ratification of
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the Boshevik-dominated All-Russian Congress of
Soviets became a foregone conclusion.
 When the body met a week later it voted 784 to 261 in favour of peace. The defeat of
the left Bolshevik and Trotskii had thus confirmed, a sufficiently momentous even in
itself, but only the thin end of the wedge as far as Lenin was concerned .
 Having won a majority, Lenin now proceeded to exploit it, turning the defeat of his
opponents into an absolute rout.
 Trotskii argued nearly in the end of the Congress that the international situation could
change very quickly, and withing a few days the Bolsheviks might not wish to ratify
the peace treaty. Yet under the terms of Lenin’s motion the party would be bound to
support ratification in any circumstances. Instead of recognising the necessity of
confirming the treaty Trotskii suggested that the Congress acknowledge “ that it is
permissible” to do so.
 Lenin who saw in these proposals yet another attempt to escape reality, rejected
the amendments saying that “ we must in no way bind our hands in any strategic
manoeuvre. Everything depends on the relationship of forces and the time of the
attach against us by these or those imperialist countries. Trotskii added that the
Soviet Government might be soon in a position ‘ not merely to refrain from
concluding peace, but to declare war’Therefore, supposedly to meet Trotskii’s
objections, Lenin proposed that the Congress ‘ empower the Central Committee
of the Party both to break all the peace treaties and to declare war on any
imperialist power or the whole world when the Central Committee of the party
considers that the appropriate. The congress accepted this extraordinary
amendment unanimously, thus vesting the Central Committee with unlimited
power in the field of foreign affairs.
 Lenin had scored another major victory over his politically naïve opponents.
 Ultimately, by virtue of the 7th Congress, the 4th All-Soviet Congress practically
charged the Central Committee to establish an unfettered military dictatorship,
Surprisingly, hardly anyone took notice of it. Only D.B Riazanov, a former
Menshevik and trade Union leader, called attention to the sweeping powers granted to
the Central Committee and called for their modification though substitution of
persuasion for the Draconian measures which Lenin wanted.
 Bukharin and his associates agreed with the Bolshevik chief that the most extreme
measures were needed if the revolution was to survive. Where Bukharin and Lenin
differed is that the latter saw them as a form of retrenchment, a long-term
commitment to prolonged struggled, while the left viewed them as short-term
commitment to the preparation of an imminent revolutionary war. Lenin allowed his
opponents to delude themselves, playing all the while on their blinding passion to
gather ever greater power in his own hands.
 On the 8th of March, Lenin proposed to change the name of the party and transform its
programme from Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the Russian Communist
Party of Bolsheviks.

 Lenin presented a resolution calling for the fundamental reform of the party
programme. The theoretical portion of the old programme, he said, should be
retained, as there is “ nothing incorrect in it” but to this section which analysed
the development of capitalism he wanted to add a “ definition of imperialism and
the era of the international socialist revolution that has begun”. Lenin’s proposals
for the new party programme fit perfectly with his view of the manner in which the
revolution would develop in the future, relying fundamentally on the instrumentalities
of an all-powerful state, liquidating the old order and proceeding to the transformation
of Russia into a socialist society. With such programme, it was clear, there could be
no question of conducting an adventurous foreign policy or launching the revolution
on ruinous crusade against imperialism. There would certainly be war, but it would
not be the “ all or northing” type of romantic conflict with the left Bolsehviks
advocated.

 Lenin gazed deeply into the future and explained to the delegates how he envisaged
the way in which the revolution would spread to the rest of the world, it is
summarised with the quote which shows his basic assumption and expectation so
well.

 In the quote, he brilliantly illuminated the fundamental differences between Lenin and
his opponents at the Seventh Congress. For him, the great era of violence was just
beginning, and he foresaw it continuing unabated for an indefinite period of time. It
would be in his view, an era of untold danger, a Darwinian jungle of international
propositions in which the weakest and least adaptable “species” would most surely
perish. Resolved that his fledgling state would survive the terrible years to come, he
saw his task as one of preparing Soviet Russia for the contest. The left Bolsheviks
would not agree that the era of violence had only begun. Steeped in the wisdom of the
19th century Europe, which had no imagined that anything so terrible as the Great War
could drag on for so long as it did, they believed that the years of destruction were
drawing to a close and would be terminated by the world workers’ revolution.
Therefore, they proclaimed that it was necessary to make only one last supreme effort
to achieve the revolutionary breakthrough which would bring both the war and
imperialism to an end. Believing this, Bukharin quite naturally opposed Lenin’s
proposed revision of the party programme and submitted his own design for the
consideration of the delegates.
 Bukharin’s programme mirrored his expectations for the future. As he believed
that the days of capitalism were numbered, his first wish was to exclude the section in
the old programme which dealt wit its development. In its place he wished to include
an extensive description of socialism and communism as they would soon function,
placing special emphasis on the way in which all states, including the dictatorship of
the proletariat, would wither way to nothing. Rather than celebrating the virtues of the
 Soviet State as Lenin wished Bukharin called for a party program which would
map out its destruction.
 Lenin would not tolerate his, he immediately attacked Bukharin’s proposals,
reaffirming the usefulness of the state, declaring that the day of ultimate revolutionary
victory was “ still long way off” and asserting that there was virtually nothing which
could be said at that moment about the future functioning of socialist society and its
development form.
 Lenin and the left Bolsheviks had no common basis for the agreement, and in essence,
were locked in the eternal debate between the Janus-like concept of voluntarism and
determinism found at the heart of Marxist doctrine. Agreement, however, was not
necessary as Lenin commanded the votes needed to pass his resolution. As time did
no permit the immediate elaboration of these guidelines into an actual programme the
Congress struck a seven-man commission to prepare a final draft for submission to
the next party Congress. Bukharin was in the committee but his presence was merely
nominal.
 Lenin, in fact, did not want anyone to influence his commission, for he even rejected a
proposal that it should canvas the party to obtain a wider range of views on the new
programme. Far from agreeing to this proposal, he insisted that the commission
publish its programme even before the meeting of the next Congress. The delegates
agreed and Lenin received a black cheque to prepare and publish a new party
programme which would reflect his own revolutionary philosophy.
 Just as he had locked the Soviet state into a party political programme of his own
design he now succeeded in locking the party into the same framework.
 In the long run, none of this would have been of value had Lenin not also secured
control of the Central Committee. The vast powers just voted by the Congress had
been vested in that body, and its decrees guided the policies of all agencies of the
Soviet government. The last and most important victory won by Lenin at the Seventh
Congress, therefore, was the election of a Central Committee subordinate to his well.
So absolute was Lenin’s hold on the delegates, however, that he election appeared
almost anti-climatic. Some of the left Bolsheviks, discouraged by their earlier defeats,
did not even wait for the election, but left the Congress beforehand. The other might
just as well have done so, because the obedient delegates promptly provided Lenin
with the Central Committee which he wanted.
 The numbers of people in the Central Committee was reduced from 21 to 15.
 Finally, with the lection of new members the Committee was restricted to
prevent any serious challenge to Lenin’s rule. His hands were now free to
manage the affairs of the Soviet State in anyway he saw fit, unchecked by
doctrinal fetters or vexatious colleagues. Lenin, in fact ‘ left the Seventh
Congress clothed in virtually absolute power. No longer was he merely primus
inter pares in the revolutionary leadership of Russia, he had very nearly becomes
princeps.
 Lenin had no desire to turn his victory into a vendetta.
 Shortly after the seventh Congress, Lenin accepted Trotsky’s resignation as foreign
commissar but immediately appointed him commissar of war.
 The new foreign policy was followed logically from the decision of 23 February and
was based on the fundamental circumstances which had governed that decision. “ To
 gain time, I want to surrender space to the actual victor. That and that alone is the
whole point of the issue.”
 Behind this policy there were politics and strategy involved. By this he meant that in
addition to the patent impossibility of resisting German aggression any attempt to do
so would play into the hands of the Russian bourgeoisie, alienate the peasantry, and
undercut the foundations of Soviet power. “ I know quite well that it is the
bourgeoisie who are bawling for a revolutionary war.” Their class interests demand
it”
 The war-weariness of the peasantry was, in fact, key to Lenin’s political calculations.
The peasantry wanted peace, and to declare war would under cut the alliances of the
peasantry and the proletariat which had originally allowed the seize of power.
 The policy which emerged from these calculations was one of sheer desperation
designed to secure the survival of Soviet Russia and little else. Lenin explicitly
abandoned the great hopes of late 1917, repudiated the prospect of a great “ field
revolution”, denied that victory could be attained through a “ triumphant march with
flying banners” and described the imminent coming of the world workers’ revolution
as a “ very beautiful fairy tale” I quite understand children liking beautiful fairy tales”
he cruelly declared, but I ask, is it proper for a serious revolutionary to believe in fairy
tales”.
 However, Lenin did not say that the revolution would remain always isolated.
Such admission would have made nonsense of all his former policies and in,
Marxist framework, would have destroyed the theoretical and practical
justification of the revolution, smashing all hopes of survival. Therefore, he
retained the myth of proletarian internationalism and the prospect of eventual
world revolution.
 In the days after Brest-Litovsk, however, Lenin shoved the probable date for this
revolution further back into the voluminous folds of the indefinite future,
allowing it to assume a rather shadowy existence somewhat akin to the second
coming of Christ. He changed from saying that “ there were ninety-nine chances
in a hundred” that the revolution would spread from Europe to the rest of
Europe to “ all good things come to him who waits”, “ one may dream of the field
of worldwide revolution, for it will come/”
 Lenin believed that the Soviet regime survived because of a “ special combination of
international circumstances that temporarily shielded us from imperialism.
Imperialism had other things to bother about bsides us.
 Due to the mistaken policy of “ no war, no peace” this protective shield had been
lost. Rather than staying the hand of German imperialism Trotsky had provoked
it, calling attention to Russia’s debilitated state and virtually asking for the
crushing military defeat which Hoffman had administrated. But even after
Brest-Litovsk, Lenin believed, not all was lost. Although Russia lived in the
shadow of German war machine she still remained a factor of international
politics.
 “We have just one chance until the outbreak of the European revolution, the
continuation of the struggle of the international imperialist giants”
  “ Our task, since we are alone, is to maintain the revolution, to preserve for it at least
a certain bastion of socialism… until the revolution matures in other countries, until
other contingents come up to us”
 How did Lenin intend to translate these general principles of his foreign policy into
concrete reality? It was one thing to say that the peace treaty was “ a means of
gathering strength” and quite another to draw energy from its hostile pages. Yet
Russia’s armed forces, the most tangible measure of Soviet strength, provide a ready
example of Lenin’s plan in action As everyone realised, these forces had deteriorated
badly in the previous year, and by early 1918, they no longer represented a military
organisation of any significance. As long as the war continued, however, the Soviet
government had no choice but to perpetuate the fiction that the Russian army was
viable fighting force and maintain its decimated divisions along the entire front from
Baltic to Galicia. No matter how weak and useless the army had become it was
impossible to disband it while negotiations were still in process or actual combat was
under way.
 Thanks to Brest-Litovsk , the Soviet government could secure the formation of the
new red army. Strictly speaking, the treaty forbade the creation of a new army, but
the Soviet government had a an answer to this problem “ we are obligated to proceed
to the full demobilisation of our army”. Here is a question of demobilisation not
disbandment, the transfer of the army to a peacetime basis not the total eminiation of
the army.
 By capitulating in Brest-Litovsk Lenin was buying time to make far-reaching
changes in Russia. A the 7th Party Congress he had secured dictatorial power to
carry out this task, and he lost no time in using them to strengthen the Soviet
state in the manner he felt necessary.
 The world revolution remained the shrine at which the Russian revolution
worshipped and its golden hope for ultimate deliverance from the hands of the
capitalist world, but in the meanwhile, Lenin made clrear, and others grudgingly had
to admit, that the revolution in Russia would survive through its own efforts. This
meant hard work, drudgery and sacrifice.
 Brest-Litovsk had been the first Bolshevik break with proletarian internationalism; it had
placed Russian interests above those of all other nationalities. This had developed, however,
on a purely ad hoc basis, necessitated by German power and Bolshevik impotence.
 Brutal realism was a major feature of Bolshevik policy. Its practice had allowed the Soviet
government to survive 1918, and it continued in the following years.

Connect this to political and social history. History from top vs below. I think this is
going to be something that Heywood would appreciate.
 Ullman:
Russian policy was governed by the fear that if Russia collapsed and made a separate
peace, a vengeful Germany would emerge as a power in the Far East. As Kennan
aptly puts it: “To this danger, the Japanese responded, in the peculiarly dialectical
fashion of the East, by a combination of military aid to Russia (for a serious price)
and veiled threats of a military occupation of Russian territory in the Far East in case
a German-Russian peace should become a reality.”8
 The Bolsheviks could place the fact that ratification of the peace with Germany would
bring at least temporary relief from one grave anxiety. Thus Lockhart’s efforts were
virtually doomed from the start. Working against him were not only the Germans, but
his own government’s policy towards the “other Russia” on the fringes of Bolshevik
power
 On 1 March, Lockhart had his first interview with Lenin. Germany, Lenin told him, had long
before withdrawn all of her best troops from the Eastern Front. As a result of “this robber
peace” the Germans would have to maintain larger, not fewer, forces in the east. Nor would
they be able to obtain large quantities of supplies from Russia. “Passive resistance,” Lenin
said, “is a more potent weapon than an army that cannot fight.”113 The Bolshevik leader
wanted assistance from the Allies, but he doubted that it would be coming, and he told his
caller: “We can afford to compromise temporarily with capital. It is even necessary, for, if
capital were to unite, we should be crushed at this stage of our development. Fortunately
for us, it is in the nature of capital that it cannot unite .So long, therefore, as the German
danger exists, I am prepared to risk a co-operation with the Allies, which should be
temporarily advantageous to both of us. In the event of German aggression, I am even
willing to accept military support. A t the same time I am quite convinced that your
Government will never see things in this light. It is a reactionary Government. It will co-
operate with the Russian reactionaries ”
 c Allied action to prevent ratification of the treaty, the emergency (and highly secret)
Seventh Congress of the Bolshevik Party was meeting in Petrograd to decide whether or
not to recommend ratification to the forthcoming Congress of Soviets. Had Lockhart
known of it, he would not have been so optimistic. Throughout its sessions (on 6, 7, and 8
March), Lenin took a line implacably opposed to renewing the war and in favour, instead,
of immediate ratification. Russia, he maintained, was desperately in need of a breathing
space before the Japanese invasion which he believed inevitable, and before Germany
continued the penetration which Brest-Litovsk had only delayed. German imperialism
would bog down in the Ukraine, in Finland, and in France, Japanese imperialism was still
more to be feared. Hence it might be necessary to conclude “a series of the most shameful
agreements with Anglo-French imperialism,” with America and even Japan, simply to buy
time.1
 between the two was less open than the British agent believed. After the secret Party
congress
 After the secret Party congress the Soviet government was transferred to Moscow as a
safeguard in the event of renewed hostilities, and the Congress of Soviets that would
formally ratify the treaty was postponed from 12 to 14 March.
 Robins— and Lockhart, too— were surely misguided in thinking that any Allied action could
have altered Lenin’s course. Of the 14 days (from 3 March) which the Germans had given the
Russians in which to ratify the treaty, only one was left. Allied aid, had it been promised at
this stage, would have been months making its effect felt. And Hoffmann’s armies, poised
 and ready, would long before have liquidated the Soviet regime. Even the possibility of
removing the dreaded threat of Japanese invasion could not have prevented the Bolsheviks
from acting when they did to confirm the peace with Germany, and thus to save the
Revolution
 During the course of these negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, the Soviet regime took two steps
that, more than any others since the Bolshevik seizure of power, marked the gulf between
them and the rest of the world. The first was their dissolution, in the early hours of 19
January, of the democratically elected Constituent Assembly.33 By their ruthless
intimidation and summary dismissal of this body (in which they themselves had only 175
seats out of 707, the majority being held by the Socialist-Revolutionaries with 410 seats) the
Bolsheviks forcibly underlined what perceptive observers had long known: Lenin’s
government paid only the most cynical lip service to the principle of democracy, and had no
right whatsoever to call themselves the chosen government of the people of Russia. The
demonstration of this fact calmed the consciences of Western statesmen who felt uneasy in
supporting dissident Russian groups against the central Soviet authority.
 To the Bolsheviks, the only thing which mattered was the immediate consolidation of their
own power. It must not be forgotten that not only the Allies but the Bolsheviks themselves
did not expect the infant Soviet regime to survive the dangers confronting it on every side.
Through the treaty of Brest-Litovsk they had purchased a breathing space which, in the
circumstances, was worth more than any amount of territory lost to the Germans. To
Lenin, the certainty of freedom from further German attacks was much more valuable
than the possibility of future Allied good will should the Russians be forced back into the
war. A principal tenet of Bolshevik thought was that there necessarily existed an
implacable hostility between themselves and the bourgeois world. Any good will which
they might have bought by helping one bourgeois coalition against the other would, in the
long run, have brought them little benefit and would have exposed them to the immediate
risk of annihilation at the hands of the other coalition. As Lockhart discovered, the Soviet
leaders would have invited Allied co-operation only if the Germans had again attacked.
But the Germans, after the peace of Brest-Litovsk, were too concerned about the military
situation in the west to penetrate further into Russia. Why, then, should the Bolsheviks
have provoked further penetration ?

Thomas Krasus, reconstructing Lenin: The most accurate and comprehensive definition
possible of the new type of state, the Soviet Republic .... The Programme must show that our
Party does not reject the use even of bourgeois parliamentarianism, should the course of the
struggle push us back, for a time, to this historical stage which our revolution has now
passed.69 At the time he outlined a concept for the soviets that harmonized, in part, with
views expressed in State and Revolution

The "unity" and "difference" of Marx and Lenin is not only a theoretical, but also a
historical, issue. The difference between the periods in which these two thinkers and
 revolutionaries lived was manifested in their different historical "missions": their
political and theoretical tasks differ from each other objectively, and not in a
"teleological"
 In Grundrisse Marx's analysis had already shown that it was not revolution alone that
holds the possibility of a violent overthrow of the universal capitalist system, but the
crises of the capitalist system accompanied by violence. During such periods,
progress "suspends the self-realization of capital."
 With the outbreak of the First World War, Lenin could feel the universality of the
catastrophe in the Marxist sense of the word, from which it followed that the famous
idea in The German Ideology stating that "communism is only possible as the act of
the dominant peoples 'all at once' and simultaneously"4 could be set aside for good.
 His starting idea however remained rooted in the global nature of capitalism.
What his theory added, however, was that due to uneven development, world
revolution develops in different ways at different times and places. Lenin could
never give up the hypothesis that the revolution had an international
 character, which is how the world war would signifY the beginning of world
revolution
 Though theoretically Lenin upheld worldwide-or at least international-
revolution as a strategy, until the autumn of 1920, as a practical prospect he was
measuring the Soviet government's chances of the survival, and was paving the
way to this end. His stance at the Brest-Litovsk Treaty talks and ratification
(which demanded unheard-of energy on his part, but was worth it) can only be
understood as a model of revolutionary realpolitik and political compromise
with imperialism-primarily in the matter of war and peace, but also of
patriotism and internationalism. In reality, these phenomena did not split apart
from each other. After all, the well-known arguments within the Central
Committee of the Bolshevik Party on the question of signing an armistice with
imperial Germany raised quite a dilemma: Is any sort of peace treaty with an
imperialist country possible?
 he fundamental theoretical lessons of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty's consequences, as
formulated by Lenin, can be grouped around two big issues: patriotism, the way
"petit-bourgeois democracy" relates to the revolution; and the way Soviet realpolitik
deals with the "concretization" of internationalism.
 Trotsky, who as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs headed the Soviet
delegation at the treaty talks that had begun at the end of December 1917, �. did not
wish to sign or reject the peace treaty, citing the slogan, neither war, not peace. Ther
German Army's answer to this was to occupy vast tracts of Ukrain territory, leaving
Chiherin, the new people's Commisar for Foreign Affais, a peace treaty with far wrose
condtions to sign.
 The fundamental theoretical lessons of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty's consequences,
as formulated by Lenin, can be grouped around two big issues: patriotism, the
way "petit-bourgeois democracy" relates to the revolution; and the way Soviet
realpolitik deals with the "concretization" of internationalism. The "Tilsit
peace," as Lenin called the treaty, threw even his closest friends and comrades
into despair, even though they would have marched up to Berlin with him under
the banner of world revolution. Unlike Lenin, many driven by the spirit of
 abstract internationalism, such as Bukharin, Dzerzhinsky, and Radek, rejected
positive answers to the questions raised above.
 One of them remained devoted to world revolution, and gave precedence to a revolutionary
politics of offense, especially where the German developments were concerned. The other
interpreted and evaluated European processes from the unilateral perspective of Soviet-
Russian interests in the arena of international power distribution. While continuing to
uphold the "scientifically predictable" international revolution, Lenin discarded all
conjecture that was not based on the strict accounting of facts. For him, the revolution had
not been simplified to any one or another surge, or to the repetition of abstract principles:
he dealt with international politics in concrete measures.
 And though the Gennan revolution confinned Lenin's expectation that the peace of
Brest-Litovsk was not to last, he nevertheless did not give up the BrestLitovsk tactic.
His stance did not change that, until a general European revolution unfolded, the most
important position was to defend the gains of the Russian Revolution.ls This was seen
as a sort of patriotic turn by certain social strata in Russia (especially by the leftist
communists who rejected this position), whereas others (especially the S.R.s) had the
opposite view, seeing it as an act of unpatriotic selfsacrifice and national capitulation.
Regarding the accusations of allowances made to patriotism, by the beginning of
January Lenin had written to his Muscovite critics that they "have not even taken into
consideration the fact that we Bolsheviks have now all become defensists.m
 Marxism, when pitted against the wartime patriotism of the tsar and the landlords,
stood on a political and ideological platfonn of "anti-patriotism"; but following the
October Revolution the notion of "fatherland" had gained a new meaning, as the
Brest-Litovsk peace debates showed. In an article published in the 11 March issue of
Izvestia, Lenin quoted the following lines by Nekrasov in defense of the "Tilsit" peace
and against the two "one-sidednesses" described above: "Thou art wretched, thou art
abundant, / Thou art mighty, thou art impotent-Mother Russia!"22 Yet this had
changed on 25 October, and this was why the new notion of motherland, which took
territorial-social-cultural factors as its basis, could no longer bear any kind of
nationalistic, ethnic, or religious content.
 Since October 25,1917, we have been defencists. We are for "defence of the
fatherland"; but that patriotic war towards which we are moving is a war for a
socialist fatherland, for socialism as a fatherland, for the Soviet Republic as a
contingent of the world army of socialism. "Hate the Germans, kill the Germans"-
such was, and is, the slogan of common, i.e., bourgeois, patriotism. But we will say
"Hate the imperialist plunderers, hate capitalism, death to capitalism" and at the same
time "Learn from the Germans! Remain true to the brotherly alliance with the German
workers."
 His theoretical views on patriotism-expressing the concrete political and class power
relations behind the political compromises-can be summarized as an unwillingness to
risk the positions already secured by the revolution for any European (or Asian)
revolutionary offensive whose outcome was not clearly foreseeable. In his critique of
Bukharin's approach, which ruled out accepting any compromise with the
imperialists, he aimed his barbs at an abstract image of world revolution which was
oblivious to the concrete balance of forces. Lenin was not willing to make a dogmatic
issue of what he believed to be most relevant to the interests of the revolution, and
 was therefore willing to purchase food from any foreign enemy right from the start,
not basing his actions on the typically leftyintellectual valuation of "capitulation to
imperialism."
 In the course of the year 1919, Lenin tried to avoid (at least as a matter of
principle) the contraposition of the European perspectives of revolutionary
development with the "local" interests and military defense of the Russian
Revolution-despite the contradictions coming to light, as demonstrated
unequivocally in the aftermath of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the socialist tum
in Hungary. Lenin always made his decisions after making a concrete analysis,
gauging which interests were more important and which could be better
defended in the given situation. Nonetheless he continued to voice his opinion
that the fate of the Soviet government, in the long run, hung in the balance of the
development and victory of the European revolution. With the passing of the
revolutionary upsurge of the spring ofl919, to put it euphemistically28 -that is, of
the Hungarian Soviet republic, the short-lived Slovakian, and the proclamation
of the Bavarian Soviet Republic on 7 April-the balance of forces did not shift in
favor of the Soviet government. This also played an important part with respect
to Lenin's evaluation of relations with the Hungarian Soviet Republic. He
wanted to support the revolution's taking root in Hungary at all costs, but the
internal power-relations developed disadvantageously
 There is an extensive literature that deals with the Polish-Soviet War and Soviet
historiography's point of view on it,35 but a number of Lenin documents that
surfaced in the 1990s are also important.36 They make it amply clear that Lenin
gave international revolution a central place of importance in the end goals of
the Russian Revolution, because he was concerned above all with Russian
socialism becoming isolated from its European background. After all, in 1920 he
looked at the Polish-Soviet conflict (which began with an unprovoked attack on
Soviet Russia) from this angle. Even the year before, Polish forces controlled the
western territories of Belorussia, despite the fact that by December 1917,in
advance of any peace treaty, Lenin and the Soviet government had recognized
the independence of Poland.
 Lenin finally demonstrated that he had broken for good with all political and
theoretical approaches and traditions that suggest or urge revolutionary action in
nonrevolutionary situations. He recognized and emphasized the need for a flexible
politics suitable to the reigning political situation, that is, a politics that appreciates
the significance of compromise. "Representation of the politics of the working class"
does not always, and in most cases moreover expressly does not, mean solutions of
the most "revolutionary" or "radical kind," but entails an overview of the concrete
historical-political opportunities in the context of "the tactic-strategy-theory." And so
in the spirit of "concrete situation-concrete analysis,"

Lenin's Terror, James Ryan:

 His thinking clearly represented a distinct shift from the predominantly libertarian
overtones of 1917. He was forced to concede that there would be a ‘number of diffi cult
stages of transition’ to socialism in view of the ‘destruction of culture and means of
 production’ consequent upon the war; how many such stages would depend on the
commencement of European revolutions.147 In the meantime the Russian narod must
‘learn discipline from the Germans; for, if we do not, we, as a people, are doomed, we
shall live in eternal slavery.’148 That the ‘bricks of socialism’ had not yet been made in
Russia suggested that October could only have been merely a democratic revolution,
and that the Bolsheviks had transgressed a fundamental Marxian tenet that a higher
socialist revolution could only successfully take place when a society would be
economically and culturally ready for it.
 The road to socialism, Lenin reasoned, would in reality ‘never be straight, it
will be incredibly involved.’ Hence perhaps the need to emphasize the
ultimate goal of realizing a communist society; the name of the party now
changed to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to distinguish it from
social-democratic ‘opportunism’. Revealingly, Lenin lamented that ‘History
has not provided us with the peaceful situation that was theoretically
assumed for a certain time, and which is desirable for us, and which would
enable us to pass through these stages of transition speedily.’149 He yielded
not to a modifi cation of the political nature of the revolution but, as he had
been doing since December, to a renewed theoretical awareness of the
creative importance of struggle and violence in the Marxist revolutionary
conception, almost predicting the course on which Soviet Russia was about to
embark
 With the old order collapsing, the new order was being born, albeit ‘amid indescribable
suff ering.’ There were those he explained who ‘seek salvation from the at times too
bitter reality in fi ne-sounding and alluring phrases’, but they were merely proving their
ineptitude for the task at hand, the need to ‘strain every muscle’ and seek ‘salvation’
along the road of world socialist revolution.158 The Russian revolution was born of the
utter destruction of war, and Lenin ridiculed those who thought that such a revolution
could develop ‘without torment, without horror.’159 He was speaking as the
representative of the vanguard party, the party that would not give way to despair and
seek the easy way out by abandoning this diffi cult path and making concessions to the
agents of capital, to the forces of reaction. He held onto his remarkable dialectical
conviction – the war would in fact prove the salvation of the masses for it had shaken
them up and was pushing history forward ‘with locomotive speed

Side notes:

Engels had even then foreseen the world conflagration, and predicted the overthrow of
kingdoms, devastation on an immense scale and, amid all this, the victory of the
working class or the creation of conditions which will make this victory possible" Lenin
declared too that human culture was indestructible, though hea admitted that its
renaissance at the present time might well prove an arduous task

In March 1919, the Comintern, the organisation of the Communist International, was
established under the control of Moscow.

Prior to the outbreak of war, Lenin had co-written, with Rosa Luxemburg and Yuri
Martov, the antiwar resolution that had been passed at three consecutive congresses of
the socialist international. It argued that Social Democrats should do everything in their
power to prevent war, and, in the event of the outbreak of war, to use the economic and
social crisis brought about by it to hasten the downfall of capitalism.
Lenin stayed true to these precepts, whereas the Social Democratic party leaderships
throughout Europe did not.

Lenin was beginning to realize that the world revolution was considerably further ofi than he, or
anyone else, had ever suspected. On the other hand, the Revolution in Russia was in actual being,
but by no means consolidated. It was threatened, seriously jeopardized, both by schisms within its
own ranks and by the now reorganized forces of anti-Bolshevism. The world revolution was a dream
which might in time be realized, the Russian Revolution was a fact which must at all costs be
defended and consolidated, and to this end Lenin bent his mental efforts, leaving to Trotsky and his
fellow enthusiasts the task of turning the conference at Brest-Litovsk into a sounding-board for the
advocacy of Marxism and the gospel of revolution

For what Lenin had decided upon was no less than the temporary abandonment of world revolution
to save the Russian Revolution. It was that principle of strategic defeat which he had had the
courage

Melograni, Piero. Lenin and the Myth of World Revolution: Ideology and Reasons of
State, 1917-1920:
 a "state without revolution." Not only did it block the revolutionary aspirations of
Russian socialism, but it was also a state that looked inward, that closed itself up in
its diversity, that gave up its designs of global revolution.
 World revolution, Melograni argues, may not have appealed to Lenin since it would
have "irreparably weakened Bolshevik hegemony over the European Left," and
induced the great powers to form an alliance against the Soviets. Instead, the
Bolshevik leader "con- ceived the idea of 'socialism in one country' from the moment
he took power" (p. xi) and foresaw "many years of coexistence" with the capitalist
 West (p. xii). Thus, revolution in Russia and its extention abroad Melograni describes
as a "myth." In fact, the author claims, Lenin "organized the Soviet state assuming
world revolution was never going to take place" (p. 37).
 . In 1918 this led to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and, in 1921, to
the trade agreement with Great Britain. Melograni believes that Lenin created
the Comintern only for the sake of appearing to pursue revolutionary aims. The
Comintern allegedly had many purposes, including the deception of idealistic
Bolsheviks who needed reassurance that their party was actually trying to foment
revolution abroad, but Lenin himself "never considered [it] a suitable means for
initiating . . . a [world] revolution" (p. 58). Once in power, Lenin is said to have
abandoned plans for global revolution and conducted only Realpolitik.
 Melograni has greatly overstated his case and not allowed for the natural ambiguity
and multiple contingencies which are an integral part of the historical process. His
thesis is somewhat reminiscent of the traditional Western interpretation of the
November Revolu- tion. Here again we have the ruthless Lenin, uninfluenced by his
political environment, relentlessly pursuing objectives he has to conceal not only from
the masses but from his own party as well. As before, Lenin's policy is depicted as
being based on conspiracy, German gold, meaningless rhetoric and carefully crafted
front organizations. What is lacking in both the earlier interpretation and Melograni's
thesis is a sense of the vast complexity of the Russian political environment, the still
more complex relation of the borderlands to the Russian center and the reciprocal
relationship of them all to the powers intervening in the Russian civil war
 This is all the stranger because Melograni recognizes and devotes an entire
chapter to Lenin's adherence to the Napoleonic dictum "on s'engage et puis on
vois." Lenin conducted his politics in the way Napoleon waged war. In this instance,
he "engaged" the enemy in November, "saw" the results in December and then moved
on to a new "engagement" in January 1918. It should be noted that, in reverse order,
Napoleon's dictum becomes the "theory and practice" of classical Marxism. Lenin and
other Bolshevik leaders saw themselves as practicing social scientists, heavily armed
militarily to be sure, but social scientists all the same. This outlook allowed them to
learn their lessons quickly while most of their enemies did not

Quotes form the source:

“I expressed that point of view in the draft Programme that I have published [See Materials
Relating to the Revision of the Party Programme]. Another draft was published by Comrade
Sokolnikov in the Moscow symposium. The second point of view has been expressed in our
private conversations, in particular by Comrade Bukharin, and by Comrade V. Smirnov in the
press, in the Moscow symposium. This point of view is that the old theoretical part of our
Programme should be completely or almost completely eliminated and replaced by a new
part that does not analyse the development of commodity production and capitalism, as the
present Programme does, but analyses the contemporary, highest stage of capitalist
development—imperialism—and the immediate transition to the epoch of the social
revolution”.

“I do not think that these two points of view diverge radically and in principle, but I shall
defend my point of view. It seems to me that it would be theoretically incorrect to eliminate
the old programme that analyses the development from commodity production to capitalism.
There is nothing incorrect in it. That is how things were and how they are, for commodity
production begot capitalism and capitalism led to imperialism. Such is the general historical
perspective, and the fundamentals of socialism should not be forgotten. No matter what the
further complications of the struggle may be, no matter what occasional zigzags we may have
to contend with (there will be very many of them— we have seen from experience what
gigantic turns the history of the revolution has made, and so far it is only in our own country;
matters will be much more complicated and proceed much more rapidly, the rate of
development will be more furious and the turns will be more intricate when the revolution
becomes a European revolution)—in order not to lose our way in these zigzags, these sharp
turns in history, in order to retain the general perspective, to be able to see the scarlet thread
that joins up the entire development of capitalism and the entire road to socialism, the road
we naturally imagine as straight, and which we must imagine as straight in order to see the
beginning, the continuation and the end—in real life it will never be straight, it will be
incredibly involved—in order not to lose our way in these twists and turns, in order not to get
lost at times when we are taking steps backward, times of retreat and temporary defeat or
when history or the enemy throws us back—in order not to get lost, it is, in my opinion,
important not to discard our old, basic Programme; the only theoretically correct line is to
retain it.”

“Today we have reached only the first stage of transition from capitalism to socialism here in
Russia. History has not provided us with that peaceful situation that was theoretically
assumed for a certain time, and which is desirable for us, and which would enable us to pass
through these stages of transition speedily. We see immediately that the civil war has made
many things difficult in Russia, and that the civil war is interwoven with a whole series of
wars.”

“We therefore have no reason to discard everything bearing on the definition of commodity
production in general, of capitalism in gen- eral. We have only just taken the first steps
towards shaking off capitalism altogether and beginning the transition to socialism. We do
not know and we cannot know how many stages of transition to socialism there will be. That
depends on when the full-scale European socialist revolution begins and on whether it will
deal with its enemies and enter upon the smooth path of socialist development easily and
rapidly or whether it will do so slowly. We do not know this, and the programme of a Marxist
party must be based on facts that have been established with absolute certainty. The power of
our Programme—the programme that has found its confirmation in all the complications of
the revolution—is in that alone. Marxists must build up their programme on this basis alone.”

“That imperialism begins the era of the social revolution is also a fact, one that is obvious to
us, and about which we must speak clearly. By stating this fact in our Programme we are
holding high the torch of the social revolution before the whole world, not as an agitational
speech, but as a new Programme that says to the peoples of Western Europe, “Here is what
you and we have gathered from the experience of capitalist development. This is what
capitalism was, this is how it developed into imperialism, and here is the epoch of the social
revolution that is beginning”

“This is what capitalism was, this is how it developed into imperialism, and here is the epoch
of the social revolution that is beginning, and in which it is our lot to play, chronologically,
the first role.” We shall proclaim this manifesto before all civilised countries; it will not only
be a fervent appeal but will be substantiated with absolute accuracy and will derive from facts
recognised by all socialist parties. It will make all the clearer the contradiction between the
tactics of those parties that have now betrayed socialism and the theoretical premises which
we all share, and which have entered the flesh and blood of every class-conscious worker—
the rise of capitalism and its development into imperialism.”

Such is the basis which I consider to be the only theoretically correct one on which to build a
programme. The abandoning of the analysis of commodity production and capitalism as
though it were old rubbish is not dictated by the historical nature of what is now happening,
since we have not gone farther than the first steps in the transition from capitalism to
socialism, and our transition is made more intricate by features that are specific to Russia and
do not exist in most civilised countries. And so it is not only possible but inevitable that the
stages of transition will be different in Europe; it would be theoretically incorrect to turn all
attention to specific national stages of transition that are essential to us but may not be
essential in Europe. We must begin with the general basis of the development of commodity
production, the transition to capitalism and the growth of capitalism into imperialism. In this
way we shall occupy and strengthen a theoretical position from which nobody without
betraying socialism can shift us. From this we draw the equally inevitable conclusion—the
era of the social revolution is beginning.

It is, however, historically important that we are setting about its fulfilment, and not only
from the point of view of our one country; we are calling upon European workers to help. We
must give a concrete explanation of our Programme from precisely that common point of
view. That is why we consider it a continuation of the road taken by the Paris Commune.
That is why we are confident that the European workers will be able to help once they have
entered on that path. They will do what we are doing, but do it better, and the centre of
gravity will shift from the formal point of view to the concrete conditions. In the old days the
demand for freedom of assembly was a particularly important one, whereas our point of view
on freedom of assembly is that nobody can now prevent meetings, and Soviet power has only
to provide premises for meetings.

It cannot be denied historically that Russia has created a Soviet Republic. We say that if ever
we are thrown back, while not rejecting the use of bourgeois parliamentarism—if hostile
class forces drive us to that old position—we shall aim at what has been gained by
experience, at Soviet power, at the Soviet type of state, at the Paris Commune type of state.
That must be expressed in the Programme. In place of the minimum programme, we shall
introduce the Programme of Soviet power. A definition of the new type of state must occupy
an important place in our Programme.

“The imperialist war is proceeding before the eyes of all people, a war that is nothing but a
war of plunder. When the imperialist war exposes itself in the eyes of the world and becomes
a war waged by all the imperialists against Soviet power, against socialism, it will give the
proletariat of the West yet another push forward. That must be revealed, the war must be
described as an alliance of the imperialists against the socialist movement .”

Lenin, imperialism highest stage of capitalism:

 If Lenin’s analysis of Russian capitalism was the centerpiece of his prewar analysis of
the tasks of Russian socialists, Lenin’s analysis of imperialism was the cornerstone of
his new perspective.

 As Harding makes clear, Lenin embarked in this period on a thorough study of

international capitalism and imperialism in order to nail down his position.
 First, he argued that the war was a product of late capitalism—which had, in
Harding’s words, “exhausted its progressive role in history.” The world war was a
clash between the most powerful capitalist states—each representing the interests of
highly concentrated, monopolistic industrial and financial interests—over which state
would be the dominant world power. In this battle over the division and redivision of
the globe, there was thus no side for the workers in each country to support. In order
to drive the point home, Lenin argued that revolutionaries in the belligerent countries
should wish for the defeat of their own ruling class, and he exhorted the working class
to “turn the world war into a civil war.”
 First, the development of modern capitalism in its imperialist stage had created the
material conditions ripe for a transition to socialism, not only by developing the
productive forces, but by socializing the means of production, and second, the horrors
 and deprivations of the world war would produce revolutionary situations of which
revolutionaries must be prepared to take advantage.
 Lenin was willing to begin with very small forces because he believed, rightly, that
events would develop as he predicted. For Lenin, perhaps like no other revolutionary
before or since, theory was an immediate guide to action. The imminence and
necessity of revolution permeates his writings in this period leading all the way up to
and through the October Revolution in Russia and beyond. For him, Russia, though
too backward to establish socialism in isolation, would, by being the weak link in the
chain of world imperialism, become the starting point for a socialist conflagration that
would carry to Europe and the rest of the world.
 If Lenin’s study of imperialism was his “theoretical justification for socialist
revolution,” then State and Revolution “was his attempt to establish a yardstick for
socialist practice.” Most writers then and now considered this book, with its emphasis
on smashing the state machine and replacing it with direct and democratic initiative of
the masses, to be a departure from “Leninism. ” It is to Harding’s credit that he shows
that it was the heart and soul of Lenin.
 Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), by Vladimir Lenin, describes the
function of financial capital in generating profits from imperialist colonialism as the
final stage of capitalist development to ensure greater profits. The essay is a synthesis
of Lenin's modifications and developments of economic theories that Karl Marx
formulated in Das Kapital (
 In his Prefaces, Lenin states that the First World War (1914–1918) was "an
annexationist, predatory, plunderous war"[2] among empires, whose historical and
economic background must be studied "to understand and appraise modern war and
modern politics".[3]

 In order for capitalism to generate greater profits than the home market can yield, the
merging of banks and industrial cartels produces finance capitalism and the
exportation and investment of capital to countries with underdeveloped economies is
required. In turn, such financial behaviour leads to the division of the world among
monopolist business companies and the great powers. Moreover, in the course of
colonizing undeveloped countries, business and government eventually will engage in
geopolitical conflict over the economic exploitation of large portions of the
geographic world and its populaces. Therefore, imperialism is the highest (advanced)
stage of capitalism, requiring monopolies (of labour and natural-resource exploitation)
and the exportation of finance capital (rather than goods) to sustain colonialism,
which is an integral function of said economic model.[4][5] Furthermore, in the
capitalist homeland, the super-profits yielded by the colonial exploitation of a people
and their economy permit businessmen to bribe native politicians, labour leaders and
the labour aristocracy (upper stratum of the working class) to politically thwart
worker revolt (labour strike).
 Lenin's socio-political analysis of empire as the ultimate stage of capitalism derived
from Imperialism: A Study (1902) by John A. Hobson, an English economist, and
Finance Capital (Das Finanzcapital, 1910) by Rudolf Hilferding, an Austrian Marxist,
whose synthesis Lenin applied to the new geopolitical circumstances of the First
 World War, wherein capitalist imperial competition had provoked global war among
the various colonial powers of Europe.
 The post-War edition of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1920)
identified the territorially punitive Russo–German Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) and
the Allied–German Treaty of Versailles (1919) as proofs that empire and hegemony—
not nationalism—were the economic motivations for the First World War.[8] In the
preface to the French and German editions of the essay, Lenin proposed that revolt
against the capitalist global system would be effected with the "thousand million
people" of the colonies and semi-colonies (the system's weak points), rather than with
the urban workers of the industrialised societies of Western Europe.[9] He proposed
that revolution would extend to the advanced (industrial) capitalist countries from the
underdeveloped countries, such as Tsarist Russia, where he and the Bolsheviks had
successfully seized political command of the October Revolution of 1917.[10] In
political praxis, Lenin expected to realise the theory of Imperialism, the Highest Stage
of Capitalism via the Third International (1919–1943), which he intellectually and
politically dominated in the July and August conferences of 1920.
 From all that has been said in this book on the economic essence of imperialism, it
follows that we must define it as capitalism in transition, or, more precisely, as
moribund capitalism.
 The State and Revolution is considered to be Lenin's most important work on the state
and has been called by Lucio Colletti "Lenin's greatest contribution to political
theory".[2] According to the Marxologist David McLellan, "the book had its origin in
Lenin's argument with Bukharin in the summer of 1916 over the existence of the state
after a proletarian revolution. Bukharin had emphasised the 'withering' aspect,
whereas Lenin insisted on the necessity of the state machinery to expropriate the
expropriators. In fact, it was Lenin who changed his mind, and many of the ideas of
State and Revolution, composed in the summer of 1917 – particularly the anti-Statist
theme – were those of Bukharin"


The Origin of the Communist Autocracy_ Political Opposition in the Soviet State First
Phase 1917–1922, Leonard Schapiro :
In the course of 1917, before the October Revolution, the disagreements between Lenin on
the one hand and a Moscow group consisting of Bukharin, Lomov, Sokol'nikov and V. M.
Smirnov on the other, were developed in a series of pamphlets. 5 Although inconclusive,
these early controversies on theoretical questions revealed a difference of outlook between
Lenin and the 'Muscovites' which in part explained left communism. From the proposition
that a new phase of imperialist wars had been reached in world capitalism, in which future
military conflicts were inevitable, the more radical Moscow theorists drew the conclusion
that the only solution lay in the victory of the proletariat on an international scale.
Accordingly their proposals for the new programme stressed the need to work out one unified
programme for the international proletarian party, rather than to concentrate upon the specific
needs of the Russian party. The Moscow group were likewise anxious to abandon the
division of the programme into a 'minimum' and 'maximum', an immediate and an ultimate
part, on the grounds that, since the socialist revolution (as distinct from the middle-class
democratic stage) was imminent, the minimum programme was no longer applicable.

Michael Bentley – a reprised ‘great man’

history that looks at the social lives of
individual politicians

Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People (1999) –

parties don’t just mobilise pre-existing sentiment –
they help create it. The importance of ‘discursive battles’ (p248) in shaping
public political opinion

Many writers note that historical materialism represented a revolution in human thought, and
a break from previous ways of understanding the underlying basis of change within various
human societies. As Marx puts it, "a coherence arises in human history"[40] because each
generation inherits the productive forces developed previously and in turn further develops
them before passing them on to the next generation. Further, this coherence increasingly
involves more of humanity the more the productive forces develop and expand to bind people
together in production and exchange.7

The main modes of production that Marx identified generally include primitive communism,
slave society, feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism. In each of these social stages, people
interacted with nature and production in different ways. Any surplus from that production
was distributed differently as well. To Marx, ancient societies (e.g. Rome and Greece) were
based on a ruling class of citizens and a class of slaves; feudalism was based on nobles and
serfs; and capitalism based on the capitalist class (bourgeoisie) and the working class
(proletariat).
Marx himself took care to indicate that he was only proposing a guideline to historical
research (Leitfaden or Auffassung), and was not providing any substantive "theory of
history" or "grand philosophy of history", let alone a "master-key to history". Engels
expressed irritation with dilettante academics who sought to knock up their skimpy historical
knowledge as quickly as possible into some grand theoretical system that would explain
"everything" about history. He opined that historical materialism and the theory of modes of
production was being used as an excuse for not studying history.[54]

Lenin made some vital additions to Marx's teachings. Such supllments were primarily: the
elitist party model, the strategy of using the peasantry as a revolutionary force to faclitate the
seixure of power and Lenin's theory of imperialism. Lenin's voluntariosm and his insistance
on the dicatroship of the proletaritat stressed certain parts of Marx's and Engels' writings and
minimised other imporant passages.
Lenin's political world and revolutionary opporunities were quite different from those which
Marx faced. Because his opptunities were greater, Lenin's political thought was, perhaps even
more action-orientated than was tha tof the author of the 11th thesis on Feurebach. But
Lenin's instumentalist use of Marxism did not impair the docntrine's fundamental postulates.

It is principally a theory of history which asserts that the material conditions of a society's
mode of production or in Marxist terms, the union of a society's productive forces and
relations of production, fundamentally determine society's organization and development.
Historical materialism is an example of Marx and Engels' scientific socialism, attempting to
show that socialism and communism are scientific necessities rather than philosophical
ideals.

This put Marx in direct conflict with groups like the liberals who believed that reality was
governed by some set of ideals,[4] when he stated in The German Ideology: "Communism is
for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to
adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of
things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence

Lenin's alleged voluntarism is held to contrast with (a caricature of) Marxism that insists on
the iron laws of economic determinism. These supposedly demonstrated, as Lenin's rivals the
Mensheviks endlessly asserted, that undeveloped Tsarist Russia was ripe only for a
photocopy of the great bourgeois revolution in France in 1789.

Harding's argument is that the advent of world war in 1914 together with the abject (and to
Lenin very shocking) collapse of the international socialist movement into support for the
slaughter in the trenches forced Lenin to begin to reassess as he sought out explanations for
these momentous events.

Lenin's focus increasingly turned to international capitalism as a whole. The key work is his
Imperialism: The Latest (not "highest" as often mistranslated) Stage of Capitalism. Again the
research was exhaustive - Harding tells us Lenin read 148 books and 232 articles in
preparation for this work. Lenin's conclusion was that the world was ripe for socialism:
"Socialism is now gazing at us from all the windows of modern capitalism."