Lenin on the World Revolution

1910

February 13, 1910

Towards Unity

Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 11

Lenin, Volume 16, pages 147 - 155

The "basic principles" of Social-Democratic tactics, which, in accordance with the method of the whole of international Social-Democracy, cannot be calculated—especially in a period such as we are passing through—"merely for the given concrete circumstances of the immediate future", but must take into account various paths and all possible situations, both the possibility of a "rapid break-up" and the possibility of a "relatively unchanging situation". For the first time the possibility arises for the proletariat to apply this method in a planned and consistent fashion. At one and the same time, in one and the same action of the proletariat, in one and the same network of organisational units, our Party's tactics must "prepare the proletariat for a new open revolutionary struggle" (without this we should lose the right to belong to revolutionary Social-Democracy, we should not be carrying out our fundamental task, bequeathed to us by the period of 1905 and dictated. by every feature of the con temporary economic and political situation) and "afford the proletariat the possibility of utilising for itself all the contradictions of the unstable regime of counter-revolution" (with out this our revolutionary character would become a mere phrase, the repetition of revolutionary words instead of the application of the sum-total of the revolutionary experience, knowledge and lessons of international Social-Democracy to each practical activity, to the utilisation of each contradiction and vacillation of tsarism, its allies and all bourgeois parties). (page 150)

The revolutionaries are being harassed, tortured and exterminated as never before. Efforts are being made to vilify and defame the revolution, to erase it from the memory of the people. But in no country has the working class ever yet allowed its enemies to take from it the chief attainment of every revolution at all worthy of this name, viz., the experience of mass struggle, the conviction of millions of working and exploited people that this struggle is essential for any serious improvement of their position. And through all its trials the working class of Russia will preserve the readiness for revolutionary struggle, the mass heroism, by which it conquered in 1905 and which will enable it to be victorious more than once in the future. (page 151)

It has become impossible to raise the level of practical work without concentrating our forces, without creating a guiding centre. The Central Committee adopted a number of decisions on the organisation and functioning of this centre, on enlarging it by the addition of practical workers, on uniting its work more closely with that in the localities, etc. The theoretical interests that inevitably come to the fore during a period of stagnation likewise require to be united for the defence of socialism in general and of Marxism, as the only scientific socialism, especially in view of the bourgeois counter-revolution, which is mobilising all its forces to combat the ideas of revolutionary Social-Democracy. (page 152)

March 23, 1910

What to Fight For?

Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 12

Lenin, Volume 16, pages 165 – 170

The proletariat raised the movement to the highest possible form of struggle—the armed uprising in December 1905. It suffered defeat in this struggle but was not routed. Its uprising was crushed but it succeeded in uniting in battle all the revolutionary forces of the people, it did not allow itself to be demoralised by retreat but showed the masses—for the first time in the recent history of Russia—that the struggle could and must be fought to the finish. The proletariat was repulsed but it did not relinquish the great banner of revolution and at a time when the Cadet majority in the First and Second Dumas were repudiating the revolution, trying to extinguish it and assuring the Trepovs and Stolypins that they were ready and able to extinguish it, the proletariat raised the banner on high and continued to call to action, educating, uniting, and organising forces for the struggle.