Road to Revolution

Lenin is the pseudonym which the then young Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Ulyanov first used for reasons of secrecy to sign an article written in 1901. And though he used many other names, it was as Lenin that his party comrades and the working masses had known him. And it was under this name that he became world-famous as founder of the Soviet state and its Communist Party, and as the leader of the world proletariat.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin was born on April 22, 1870 in the Volga town of Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk, where he spent his childhood and youth, those formative years that were to transform him into a great revolutionary and thinker. The American journalist John Reed, author of the famous book about the October Revolution in Russia, "Ten Days that Shook the World," wrote after visiting Simbirsk that as he looked at the Volga's rolling expanses, he thought that Lenin had to be born on the banks of such a mighty river.

Still intact is the wooden house in which Lenin was born, as well as the house to which his family moved later. Today this is a museum, where great care has been taken to reproduce the atmosphere of those years. Hundreds of thousands of people from all parts of the world have visited Ulyanovsk to see Lenin's birthplace.

Lenin's parents came of a progressive, democratic, intellectual milieu. His paternal grandfather, Nikolai Ulyanov, had been a serf of an estate in Nizhni Novgorod Gubernia; in search of a livelihood he had gone to Astrakhan where he worked as a tailor and died in poverty. Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolayevich, a man of many gifts and great industry, worked his way through secondary school and Kazan University, following which he taught mathematics and physics at various schools in the cities of Penza and Nizhni Novgorod. In 1869 he was appointed inspector and subsequently director of state schools in Simbirsk Gubernia.

A man of the people, Lenin's father was a dedicated educator, and worked indefatigably in the field of public education. As Lenin's younger brother Dmitri recalled later:

"Father infected us with a feeling of affection for the common people, to whose wellbeing he devoted all his energies and knowledge. For us he was the authority, and an example of a man with a high standard of culture and education, an industrious and noble man, a man of integrity".

Lenin's mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank), was the daughter of a physician. Prior to her marriage she had lived in the country and was educated at home. But, as a person of many parts and abilities, she passed the necessary examinations to be certified as an elementary school-teacher. She knew several languages, was fond of music and played the piano, was good at needlework and, generally, displayed great industry. She devoted every moment of her life to her children. As friends of the family observed, "she was a real friend to her restless brood. Outwardly quiet and serene, she was brimming with some great inner power; she never complained, never lost heart, but always silently and proudly assumed one more burden. She was a person of enormous will power and of a warm and brave heart."

The Ulyanovs had six children, all of whom, with the exception of Olga who died early, embraced the cause of revolution. These were, besides Lenin himself, his two brothers Alexander and Dmitri, and his sisters Anna and Maria.

At the age of nine Lenin entered the Simbirsk gymnasium. Highly gifted and diligent, and well prepared at home, he made excellent progress, and showed a keen interest in literature, history and languages, including Latin and Greek. He could freely translate the ancient classics and spoke and read in several modern European languages. All this helped to develop in him an encyclopaedic turn of mind.

The social conditions of the time, the atmosphere at home and the example afforded by his parents were decisive in moulding his character and outlook.

Even in his early youth Lenin was able to discern the reactionary character of the political and social system in tsarist Russia. His own observations, complemented by the stories his father related after visiting one or another village, and the shocking scenes of misery, and the suffering of the down-trodden, ignorant peasants and workingmen, who were so harshly exploited by the capitalist and landowning class and tsarist officialdom, moved him together with his brothers and sisters to protest against social and national inequality and to vow to dedicate their lives to the emancipation of the working people.

A fondness for reading was a tradition with the Ulyanovs and to the end of his days books remained among Lenin's faithful friends and companions. In prison, exile or emigration, his first care was to surround himself with books. He had done research in some of the world's best-known public libraries, including those in St. Petersburg, Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin, and Geneva.

Progressive writings, and above all the works of the great Russian revolutionary democrats Belinsky, Herzen and Chernyshevsky helped develop the revolutionary outlook of the Ulyanov children. Lenin particularly admired Chernyshevsky for his intellectual power, who as inspirer and leader of the Russian revolutionaries of the 1860s, was close in thought to Marx.

Lenin revealed his revolutionary sentiments already in his school compositions. One day, his teacher, who had always held him up as an example for his classmates, irascibly observed when returning a composition: "What are these oppressed classes you've written about here? Where do they come in?"

In 1887, Vladimir Ulyanov completed his course at the gymnasium and was the only pupil in his class to receive a gold medal for outstanding ability. His headmaster wrote the following in his student record: "Highly capable, hard-working and painstaking, Ulyanov was a top scholar in all forms, and upon completing the course has been awarded a gold medal as the most deserving pupil in regard to progress, development and conduct."

At the very moment Lenin was taking his school-leaving examinations the sad news came of the arrest and subsequent execution of his elder brother Alexander, a St. Petersburg University student, for involvement in a plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Lenin loved and greatly respected his brother, with whom he often discussed social and political subjects, though, for reasons of secrecy, the latter had never spoken of his revolutionary activity to anyone in the family.

Alexander Ulyanov was a member of the revolutionary wing of the movement known as Narodism. Though they sought to uphold popular interests, the Narodniks, ignorant of the laws of social development, were unable to find the right road in the struggle against tsarism and social oppression. Despite Russia's rising capitalism, they were convinced that her life followed its own peculiar pattern and that the traditions of rural community could serve as the starting point for a direct transition to socialism. They were incapable of understanding the role of the working class as the decisive factor in the socialist remaking of society, adhering as they did to the fallacious idealistic theory of "active" heroes and a "passive mob" that blindly followed in the wake of the history-making "great personalities". Part of the revolutionary Narodniks were of the view that they could rouse the peasant masses and lead them on to the road of socialist revolution, while another part, sceptical of this course, hoped that a small band of conspirators would be able to seize power and believed that the main means to this end were individual acts of terror against the tsar and his ministers. Though Lenin's brother was somewhere halfway between Narodism and Marxism - Lenin had seen "Capital" in his possession - he was for the most part a Narodnik.

Subsequently, Lenin was to make a brilliant Marxist critique of Narodism. While paying tribute to the heroism of the revolutionary Narodniks, he at the same time exposed the untenability of their ideology and tactics. Then a seventeen-year-old schoolboy, though stunned by his brother's execution, and honouring him for his courage, young Ulyanov arrived at an important conclusion that was to shape all his future activity. As his younger sister Maria noted later in her recollections, he had firmly said: "No, we shall not take that road, that is not the road to follow." And as she wrote further, "he began to gird himself for that road which he believed would lead, and indeed, did lead, to victory."

To continue his education, Lenin decided to enroll at Kazan University's Department of Law, as he was convinced that "it is the time now to study law and political economy." It is noteworthy that he took the same decision as Marx once did: Marx had chosen a university law course and subsequently devoted all of his life to the study of political economy.

Following Lenin's enrollment at the university, the Ulyanovs moved to Kazan, modestly subsisting on the pension granted them after the death of the head of the family, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, in 1886. However, Lenin's university career was cut short when he was sent down, arrested and jailed for taking part in a revolutionary student demonstration. When the policeman escorting him to the prison observed: "What's the use of rebelling, young man? Don't you see there's a wall before you?" Lenin replied: "Yes, but the wall is rotten. Give it a good push and it will topple over!" This was an answer of a dedicated revolutionary, and not of a casually involved student. Later, while in prison the arrested students, who were his cell-mates, began asking one another what they were going to do further. When his turn came Lenin said with a smile, after a short pause, during which he seemed to be gathering his thoughts: "There's nothing particularly much for me to think about. My elder brother has shown me the way."

Lenin had made his choice, once and for all. However, the road he took was a different one than that conceived by his elder brother and the preceding generations of revolutionaries.

The authorities banished Lenin to the village of Kokushkino, now Lenino, 40 km from Kazan. The police department at once instructed the Chief of the Kazan Gubernia Gendarmerie to "see to it that a strict and secret watch be kept on the banished Vladimir Ulyanov.' After that he was under continuous police surveillance. While in Kokushkino Lenin led a secluded life, reading avidly from morning to night.

In the autumn of 1888, he was allowed to return to Kazan, but failed to gain re-admission to the University. On his application the university administration had written: "Isn't this the brother of that Ulyanov? He's from the Simbirsk gymnasium too, isn't he? Not to be admitted under any circumstances." He was also denied a passport for travelling abroad.

At this time Lenin plunged wholeheartedly into a study of Marxist literature, and it was to become a lifelong rule with him "to take counsel with Marx." He had a high opinion of the writings of G. V. Plekhanov, a Marxist theoretician and propagandist, who in 1883 had organised the first Russian Marxist group - "Emancipation of Labour" - in Geneva. In his works Plekhanov explained what Marxism was, criticised Narodism and applied Marxist principles to the vital questions of Russian society. In Kazan Lenin joined a Marxist group, organised by N. I. Fedoseyev, one of Russia's first Marxists. He was enthusiastic, and as his sister Anna recollected: "He would explain to me with great fervour and enthusiasm the fundamentals of Marx's theory and talk of the new horizons it opened.'

Of great importance in the formation of Lenin's Marxist outlook were the four years he spent in the city of Samara, where the Ulyanovs moved in September 1889. In summer the family lived at a farmstead near the village of Alakayevka. In the spring of 1890 Lenin was permitted to take examinations for a degree in law at the St. Petersburg University. He completed the entire course in the space of eighteen months of intensive study at home and passed with honours.

Though he subsequently practised law for a while as a barrister, he concentrated on the further study of Marxism. In Samara, he organised its first Marxist study group, to whose members he read a number of papers. It was in Samara, in 1893, that he wrote the earliest of his works that has come down to us - "New Economic Developments in Peasant Life." This is the first essay of Volume One of his "Complete Works." In Samara Lenin also made a translation, which unfortunately has not survived, of Marx' and Engels' 'Communist Manifesto." Among Samara's Marxists he quickly gained the reputation of being a capable theoretician and organiser.

I. K. Lalayants, one of the members of Lenin's group, recollected later: "Simplicity, tactfulness, a zest for life were remarkably combined in this twenty-three-year-old man with dignity, profound knowledge, ruthless logical consistency, clear judgement and precision in definitions."

In August 1893 Lenin moved to St. Petersburg, today Leningrad.

Founder of Communist Party

Lenin's arrival in St. Petersburg, capital of the Russian empire and a centre of social and political activity, initiated a new chapter in his life, one of direct effort to organise a Marxist party in Russia.

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Russia was a time of a marked upsurge in the working-class movement, the centre of which was St. Petersburg with its big Putilov, Obukhov, Semyannikov factories and other mills and plants located in the suburbs and employing thousands of workers. The main task Lenin set himself at this time was to bring to the proletariat the ideas of scientific socialism, to equip the workers with the all-powerful philosophy of Marxism, and build up an organisation of revolutionaries capable of rallying the masses and leading them in an attack on tsarism and, subsequently, capitalism. Being in close contact with the more class-conscious proletarians in St. Petersburg Lenin matured as leader of the working class.

At that time there were several Marxist study groups active in the Russian capital. They consisted of class-conscious factory workers and college students, who had only recently come to Marxism and were still unable to apply it to the practical tasks of revolutionary struggle. An outstanding theoretician and practical organiser was needed who would be able to weld them into a real fighting force. Lenin achieved this.

After his arrival in St. Petersburg Lenin established contacts with the group of Marxist students at the Technological Institute. To this group belonged Pyotr Zaporozhets, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, who was to become Chairman of the State Planning Commission after the revolution, the Nevzorov sisters, and Mikhail Silvin. It was at one of the gatherings of Marxists in the city that Lenin met Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, who was then a teacher at a Sunday school for factory workers, an acquaintance which blossomed in lifelong love.

Lenin quickly earned the respect of the group and was looked up to as an outstanding Marxist theoretician. This "arrival from the Volga" was much talked about among the "capital's Marxists" and though he was only 23 at the time, he soon came to be known as "The Old Man" for his encyclopaedic learning. "And here, in our northern plains," Krzhizhanovsky wrote later, "there appeared an unusual man, who more than any other understood the power of the weapon forged by the genius of Marx. For him a Marxist was above all a revolutionary." What Russia's Social-Democratic movement lacked most then was the ability to unite theory and practice of revolutionary struggle, to creatively apply Marxism to Russian reality. "Social-Democracy," Lenin wrote, 'existed without a working-class movement, and as a political party it was at the embryonic stage of development."

Besides studying and propagating Marxism amidst small underground groups of Social-Democratic intellectuals, Lenin also gave lectures in Marxist circles of factory workers in working-class neighbourhoods With illustrations drawn directly from the life of his listeners he explained the basic points of Marx's "Capital", presenting the subject in a way that was understandable to the workers Ivan Babushkin, one of Lenin's listeners, wrote later: "The lecturer explained the subject to us in his own words, without reading from notes; he would try to get us to disagree with him or start a dispute, and then he would egg us on, making one of us argue his point of view with another. Our lectures, therefore, were very lively and interesting, and tended to develop a habit for public speaking; this method of study was the best way of mastering the subject."

The hard core of progressive, revolutionary workers that soon emerged consisted among others, of I. V. Babushkin, the Bodrov brothers, V. A. Knyazev, N. Y. Merkulov and V. A. Shelgunov. A wide network of Marxist circles sprang up in the factory districts. The task of leading the working-class movement on to the road of open political struggle was being tackled in earnest and successfully.

One obstacle that had to be removed was liberal Narodism into which the revolutionary Narodism of the 1870s had degenerated.

Unless the influence of Narodism among the masses was overcome, there could be no thought of further success. The liberal Narodniks, who had abandoned all revolutionary struggle against tsarism in favour of a programme of minor reforms, launched violent attacks against Marxism.

Lenin, who had first criticised liberal Narodism when still in Samara, started a full-fledged campaign against it in St. Petersburg, pointing out the untenability of its views and ripping off its mask of "friends of the people". He dealt with the question in his book, published in a hectographed form in 1894, and entitled What the 'Friends of the People' Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats. It consisted of three sections, one providing a comprehensive critique of the philosophical views of the Narodniks and mainly of their leading ideologist, N. K. Mikhailovsky, the second (the original text of which has still to be found) - a critique of their economic views as most clearly expressed in the reactionary Utopian writings of S. N. Yuzhakov, and the third - a critique of their political programme and tactics as developed by S. N. Krivenko.

This is Lenin's first major work and a masterly Marxist analysis of Russian reality. In it Lenin gives a vigorous defence of Marxism and shows a creative approach to questions of the theory and practice of the working-class movement. Developing a series of basic tenets of Marxist sociology and scientific communism, Lenin formulated the immediate objective of the Russian liberation movement as the overthrow of tsarist autocracy and abolition of the survivals of feudal serfdom, which would be followed by a full-scale struggle against capitalism and for the remaking of society along socialist lines. He propounded the idea of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry and other non-proletarian strata of the working masses, pointing out that this was necessary for achieving victory in the fight for democracy and socialism. Finally, Lenin argued the need - and he was Russia's first Marxist to do so - to organise a revolutionary proletarian party. This, he said, was the most urgent task of Russian Social Democracy.

Defining the prospects ahead of the revolutionary movement, Lenin wrote: "...the Russian WORKER, rising at the head of all the democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT (side by side with the proletariat of ALL COUNTRIES) along the straight road of open political struggle to THE VICTORIOUS COMMUNIST REVOLUTION".

Lenin's What the 'Friends of the People' Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats furnished a powerful weapon in the effort to organise a Marxist party; it served as the ideological platform upon which the revolutionary Social-Democrats united into one party. "When this book appeared," recalled S. I. Mickiewicz, a member of a Moscow group of Social-Democrats, "Lenin became a still more popular and recognised authority among the Marxists. The young Russian Marxist movement realised that it had found in him a political leader and an outstanding theoretician."

At the same time Lenin had to battle with the so-called legal Marxists, bourgeois intellectuals who, using "Marxist" phraseology, in reality concealed capitalism's contradictions and sought to make the working-class movement serve bourgeois interests. They discarded Marxism's basic tenet, namely the teaching on the proletarian revolution and seizure of power by the working class.

Later, in speaking of the continual struggle he had to carry on against various ideological adversaries and against deviations from Marxism's revolutionary principles, Lenin wrote in one of his private letters: "So that's my lot, one fight after another, against political stupidities, philistinism, opportunism, etc. And it has been so ever since 1893. And for this I am hated by the philistines. Still I wouldn't change this lot for a state of 'peace' with them."

Owing to the work carried out by revolutionary Social-Democracy, Marxism spread in Russia and became linked with the working- class movement. Many Russian cities, apart from the capital, now had their revolutionary Marxist organisations. Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, a leading Marxist group, with Lenin at its head, emerged which began to direct the activity of the hitherto disunited groups.

In 1895 Lenin succeeded in getting a passport and went abroad in order to establish contact with the Marxist "Emancipation of Labour" group there. Plekhanov was greatly impressed by Lenin about whom he wrote: "A young comrade has been here, who is very intelligent, well-educated and a gifted speaker. What luck to have such young people in our revolutionary movement!"

While away from Russia Lenin learned about the working-class movement in Western Europe and met two prominent Socialists of the time, Paul Lafargue and Wilhelm Liebknecht.

Back home, Lenin imparted fresh drive to the revolutionary movement among the St. Petersburg proletariat, and intensified his effort to establish a Marxist party. He founded "The League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" which by the autumn of 1895 became the leading Social-Democratic organisation in the Russian capital. For the first time in Russia an organisation was founded that wed scientific socialism and the working-class movement. Shortly afterwards, similar "Leagues" were set up elsewhere in the country.

The police had kept an eye on Lenin's League and in an early morning raid on December 9, 1895 arrested Lenin along with other leading members of the League (Vaneyev, Krzhizhanovsky and Starkov). Lenin was kept for fourteen months in solitary confinement. But, despite the grim prison conditions, he continued to direct the Marxist organisations outside, employing various secret means and relying on the help of comrades who were still at liberty, and above all Nadezhda Krupskaya. While in prison he also wrote a number of papers, including the Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party and gathered material for a fundamental study of the development of capitalism in Russia.

In February 1897 the authorities announced their verdict: Lenin and the other arrested "League" members were sentenced to exile for three years in Eastern Siberia, Before going they were allowed to spend three days with their families in St. Petersburg. They used the time in attending clandestine gatherings arranged to discuss the "League's" further programme of action. It took Lenin over a fortnight to get to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, where he waited another two months until he was finally told his destination, the backwoods village of Shushenskoye in the Minusinsk district, at the foot of the Sayan mountain range. While in Krasnoyarsk Lenin met other banished revolutionaries, made contacts, and worked in the private library of the well-known local merchant-bibliophile Yudin. In a letter to his relatives he wrote:

"Yesterday I managed to find the famous local library belonging to Yudin. I have not seen all his library by far, but in any case it is an excellent collection of books. There are, for example, complete sets of journals (the most important) from the end of the 18th century up to date. I hope I shall be able to make use of them as necessary reference material for the information I need so much for my work."

On May 8, 1897, Lenin began the life of an exile, under the never-relaxing surveillance of the police. A year later Nadezhda Krupskaya, who had also been banished for the involvement in the "League," arrived in Shushenskoye with her mother. Here she and Lenin were married, and throughout their life together she remained his loyal companion and helper, equally dedicated to the cause of the revolution.

While in exile Lenin read and wrote much, working into the early hours of the morning by the light of a kerosene lamp in the log cabin where he lived with his wife. This fact was noted in a report by the policeman assigned to keep the exile under surveillance:

"Keeps on writing all the time. Must be a writer. I have already informed the district police chief that I'm afraid no good will come of his writing."

In his three years in Siberia Lenin wrote more than thirty works, all of which are of great theoretical and political significance. Among them is his fundamental The Development of Capitalism in Russia, which complements Marx's analysis of the rise and the essence of capitalism. "It is interesting to note," Lenin wrote, "how far the main features of this general process in Western Europe and in Russia are identical, notwithstanding the tremendous peculiarities of the latter, in both the economic and non-economic spheres." Lenin's profound analysis of Russia's socio-economic relationships provided a firm theoretical basis upon which to develop the programme, strategy and tactics of a Marxist party. Another work by Lenin which also gained wide currency among the advanced segment of the Russian working class was pamphlet The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats, which dealt with the question of the relationship between the democratic and socialist objectives of the proletariat, and of the Russian working-class movement.

In 1898 the representatives of several Russian Social-Democratic organisations held their First Congress at which they announced the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In actual fact, however, no party was formed, since the congress adopted neither programme nor rules, and furthermore, the Social-Democratic organisations represented lacked ideological and organisational unity.

There emerged at this time within the ranks of Social-Democracy the Opportunist trend of "Economism", the Russian version of revisionism in the international socialist movement. The "Economists", followers of the ideologist of revisionism, the German Social-Democrat, F. Bernstein, maintained that the main task of the working-class movement was to wage an economic struggle (for higher pay, a shorter working day, etc.). They were against a political struggle for proletarian democracy and power and denied the need for an independent proletarian political party. Like Bernstein, they held that "the movement is everything, the final aim nothing". They said that a socialist revolution was unnecessary and demanded only that the ruling exploiting class carry out reforms and improve the conditions of workers. In other words, they called for measures that would not impinge upon capitalism's foundations. Lenin pointed out that it was vital resolutely to repulse revisionism and the "Economists". To this end he wrote the Protest by Russian Social-Democrats which 17 Marxist exiles in the Minusinsk district discussed and signed.

In conditions of ideological confusion and organisational disunity, Lenin evolved the only correct solution for Russian Social-Democracy; he drafted a plan for the establishment of a Marxist party and pointed out that it was necessary for this purpose to start a national clandestine political newspaper and through it rally the country's revolutionary Social-Democrats on the basis of the principles of Marxism.

As the end of his term of exile approached, Lenin pondered all the more intensively over the entire range of problems related to the organisation of a party. "I shall never forget one of my walks with Lenin on the banks of the broad Yenisei," Krzhizhanovsky recollected. "It was a frosty moonlit night, and the Siberian snows spread before us in an endless glittering waste. Lenin spoke with enthusiasm of his plans when he would return to Russia. He concentrated on problems of organising a central party paper, of publishing it abroad and of building up a party by means of this paper, which would represent the scaffolding, as it were, for the erection of the entire edifice of the revolutionary organisation of the proletariat."

On January 29, 1900, the term of exile came to an end. And on that very day, despite the bitter cold, Lenin and his wife and mother- in-law set off from Shushenskoye across snow-swept Siberia for the railway station of Achinsk, where they were to take the train to Ufa. Here Krupskaya was to spend the remaining year of her term of exile. Meanwhile Lenin himself, who was not permitted to live in the capital and many other cities, chose Pskov as his place of "free" residence.

Within a short time, Lenin had visited Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhni Novgorod, Ufa, Samara, Riga, Smolensk and Syzran, where he met with Social-Democrats and discussed with them his plans for starting a revolutionary Marxist paper. The police continued to keep close watch on him; a Colonel Zubatov of the gendarmerie noted that "there is nobody bigger than Ulyanov in the revolution today."

In the early years of the 20th century large-scale class battles broke out in Russia, which at once placed its proletariat in the vanguard of the international working-class movement and made the country itself the focal point of the world revolutionary process. There arose the pressing need for a working-class party that could lead the masses in the fight against tsarism and capitalism.

Lenin sought to set up a party of a new type, a party that would be different from the West-European Social-Democratic parties in which opportunism was tolerated and which, because of that, were growing increasingly reformist. In its principle, form and method, he maintained, the party of a new type should meet the requirements of the new historical epoch of socialist revolution. And he devoted all his unquenchable energy and theoretical and organisational genius to the accomplishment of this epoch-making objective.

In the summer of 1900 Lenin went to Switzerland. This was his first forced emigration. In Geneva he discussed with Plekhanov and other members of the 'Emancipation of Labour" group plans to start an all-Russia working-class paper, which, as a collective propagandist, agitator and organiser, would pave the way for the founding of a party. These talks were extremely heated for Plekhanov was arrogant and dictatorial. But an understanding was reached, though with great difficulty, on the joint publication of a newspaper to be called Iskra (Spark). The entire episode was described by Lenin in an article called How the 'Spark' Was Nearly Extinguished".

The symbolic name of the paper is explained by its motto: "The spark will kindle a flame," a quotation taken from the reply by exiled Decembrists (participants in the unsuccessful mutiny against the tsar in December 1825) to the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Iskra was published in Leipzig and Munich and later in London and Geneva.

Iskra was conceived by Lenin; he was its heart and soul, its actual editor. In the more than fifty articles he published in it, he set out a programme for forming a party and discussed questions of revolutionary theory and practice. The first issue, which came out in December 1900, carried his programme article The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement, in which he wrote: "Before us, in all its strength, towers the enemy fortress which is raining shot and shell upon us, mowing down our best fighters. We must capture this fortress, and we will capture it, if we unite all the forces of the awakening proletariat with all the forces of the Russian revolutionaries into one party which will attract all that is vital and honest in Russia. Only then will the great prophecy of the Russian worker-revolutionary, Pyotr Alexeyev, be fulfilled: 'The muscular arm of the working millions will be lifted and the yoke of despotism, guarded by the soldiers' bayonets, will be smashed to atoms!' " (These were the words with which Pyotr Alexeyev concluded his statement in court when on trial in March 1877.)

The difficulties that stood in the way of publication and circulation of Iskra seemed well-nigh insuperable. However, they were overcome owing to the courage and hard work of Lenin and his comrades. The paper was smuggled into Russia and illicitly distributed there. It quickly became popular with the workers. "The finest elements in the class-conscious proletariat sided with Iskra," Lenin noted with gratification. The workers themselves attested to this fact. One letter to the editor said: "I have shown Iskra to many comrades. It's almost in shreds and yet it is precious...It tells about our cause, all about our Russian cause, which you can't price in kopecks or count in hours. When you read it, you understand why the gendarmes and the police are afraid of us workers and of the intellectuals whose lead we follow."

Iskra successfully discharged its mission. It exposed opportunism, and rallied revolutionaries around Lenin. An important contribution to the effort to found a proletarian party of a new type and develop Marxism and the teaching on the party was made by Lenin in his book What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement, which was published in Stuttgart in 1902. In it, as in Iskra, Lenin attacked revisionism, social-reformism and the "Economists," and discussed crucial questions of party structure, strategy and policy. He contended that only a party equipped with advanced Marxist theory could fulfil its role of the foremost fighter, of leader of the working class. He advanced the thesis that it was essential to propagate socialist ideas among the proletarian masses and outlined the concrete tasks facing the working class as the vanguard and leader in the movement to emancipate the toiling masses. Under Lenin's direction the Iskra editorial board drafted a party programme. Lenin himself drew up the party rules and formulated its organisational principles.

A particularly urgent question at that time, especially in view of the attitude adopted by the Bund - the General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia - was the question of the internationalist character of party structure and activity. The Bundists arrogated to themselves the role of sole spokesman for Jewish workers, and, clinging to separatism, demanded the establishment of autonomous national Social-Democratic parties that would be independent of the RSDLP and only federated with each other. Lenin condemned both anti-Semitism and Zionism pointing out that the Jewish question could be solved only together with the basic issues of the struggle for democracy and socialism. The Bund, he observed, was speculating with "the idea that the Jews form a separate nation," an idea which was Zionist, scientifically untenable and politically reactionary.

In his article Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an 'Independent Political Party'? Lenin criticised the Bundist approach. He wrote: ". . . in matters pertaining to the struggle against the autocracy, the struggle against the bourgeoisie of Russia as a whole, we must act as a single and centralised militant organisation, have behind us the whole of the proletariat, without distinction of language or nationality, a proletariat whose unity is cemented by the continual joint solution of problems of theory and practice, of tactics and organisation; and we must not set up organisations that would march separately, each along its own track; we must not weaken the force of our offensive by breaking up into numerous independent political parties; we must not introduce estrangement and isolation and then have to heal an artificially implanted disease with the aid of these notorious 'federation' plasters."

The RSDLP held its Second Congress in July-August 1903, first in Brussels, and then, because of police intervention, in London. In attendance were 43 delegates from 26 organisations. Owing to the heterogeneous composition - besides staunch Iskraites, there were outright opportunists and waverers - a bitter struggle developed at the congress, which focused on the party programme and rules. Delegates greatly admired Lenin's unflagging zeal; he chaired many of the meetings, presented reports, drafted resolutions, and discussed matters with the delegates. M. N. Lyadov, a veteran Party member and a delegate from Saratov, summed up his observations as follows: "One felt one was dealing with a real party leader."

In fierce grapples with the "Economists", Bundists and other opportunists, Lenin and the Iskraites managed to put through their programme, which set as the immediate aim the overthrow of tsarism by means of a democratic revolution and as the ultimate aim the waging of a socialist revolution, the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship and the building of socialism.

Heated arguments flared up over Lenin's report on the party rules. Lenin firmly upheld the principles of democratic centralism in party structure and activity, which would ensure party unity and discipline. "Every Party member is responsible for the Party, and the Party is responsible for everyone of its members," he emphasised. The opportunists led by Martov assailed Lenin's principles of party organisation, and proposed that party membership be open to all who wished to join, without demanding from them observance of the norms of party life and party discipline or active involvement in the work of party organisations.

The Second Congress of the RSDLP united the revolutionary Marxist organisations and set up a working-class party on the basis of the ideological, political and organisational principles worked out by Lenin.

However, at this congress two trends within the Party were revealed. One of them, a revolutionary trend, was represented by Lenin and his supporters who received a majority of votes at the elections to the leading Party bodies, and came to be called Bolsheviks. The other trend was opportunist (Mensheviks) and was headed by martov, Plekhanov, Dan Potresov and others.

The Bolsheviks had the qualities that a proletarian party of a new type should have. Addressing the meeting held in Moscow on July 13, 1973, marking the 70th Anniversary of the Second RSDLP Congress, Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, said:

"The outstanding role of this event in the history of the great struggle for the victory of the revolution and socialism is determined, if you put it in a nutshell, by the fact that at this Congress the Party of Bolsheviks was founded - our glorious Leninist Party.

"Looking back today at this past, remote but nonetheless close to us, we cannot but admire the deeds of Lenin and his comrades-in-arms who created our Party, the first party of a new type, and who led it, in defiance of hostile whirlwinds, through the barricades of 1905, to the revolution of February 1917, and from February 1917 to the victory of the Great October Revolution...

"Our party has proved to be equal to the task. It succeeded in paving hitherto unknown ways from capitalism to socialism. It succeeded, having won the boundless confidence of the working class, and all the working people, in creating a developed socialist society, a state of the whole people, bringing the world's largest country onto the high road of communist construction."

For Soviet Communists, Lenin and those who fought and won victories together with him have always been and will remain an inspiring ideal. After Lenin's death, it has become a tradition, when party membership cards are exchanged, to put Lenin's name on card No. 1. This is not merely a symbolic act but an expression of the Soviet Communist Party's loyalty to the ideas of Leninism and its readiness to devote all its strength to the cause of carrying out Lenin's behests.

The Second RSDLP Congress marked a turning point in the Russian and the international working-class movement. In his report The Second Congress of the RSDLP and its Historic Significance at the meeting commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Congress, M.A. Suslov, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, said that "the emergence of the Bolshevik Party was an event of epoch-making significance ushering in a new stage in the development of the Russian and the world working-class movement and marking a decisive turn from the old Social-Democratic parties to a proletarian party of a new type on an international scale." For the first time in history the working class had an organisation which was able, in the new historical conditions, in an epoch of great social upheavals and revolutions, to direct its struggle for social emancipation, for the triumph of communist ideals.

The proletarian party of a new type is Lenin's great legacy to the world revolutionary movement and the builders of socialism and communism.

Shortly after the congress the Mensheviks engineered what Martov called "an uprising against Leninism". They engaged in direct divisive tactics and obstructed the carrying out of the congress decisions. Lenin exposed the schismatic, anti-party doings of the Mensheviks, including Trotsky, who opposed Lenin's ideas on party organisation and sided with the Mensheviks. In his One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, which was published in Geneva in 1904, Lenin analysed the work of the Second Congress, criticised Menshevik opportunism with regard to Party structure and developed his teaching on the proletarian party of a new type.

According to Lenin the proletarian party is the supreme form of working class organisation, the vanguard and leader of the working class, which, as a union of persons having the same convictions, comprises class-conscious workers dedicated to the communist cause and the best representatives of other segments of the working masses. In all its work it is guided by Marxism, which gives a scientific explanation of the laws of social development, and which shows the surest road to emancipation of the working people from social and national oppression and to socialism and communism. Firmly adhering to the Marxist method and teaching, it develops revolutionary theory and creatively applies it in its work.

As the organised detachment of the working class, the party draws its strength from its ideological and organisational unity, from the joint resolve and action of all party organisations and members. It is built on the principles of democratic centralism, which imply inner-party democracy, the active involvement of members in party affairs and collective leadership, on the one hand, and on the other, centralised structure, direction of party activity from one single centre, conscious and strict discipline that is binding on all members, and the subordination of the minority to the majority and of the lower organisations to the higher.

The proletarian party of a new type is profoundly internationalist in ideology and activity. Lenin's party emerged and developed as a party of genuine proletarian internationalists, integrating within its ranks advanced proletarians of every nationality. From its inception, the Bolshevik Party has been a part of the international working-class movement.

Lenin pointed out that a salient feature of this new proletarian party, an indispensable condition for its further development and successful carrying out of the tasks before it, is the maintenance of close ties with the entire working class and with the toiling masses generally. He emphasised that the Communist Party must be truly communist in action as well as in name And this, he said. depends both on the party's composition and on ''the men that lead it, and the content of its actions and its political tactics. Only this latter determines whether we really have before us a political party of the proletariat."

In developing his theory about a proletarian party of a new type and in founding such a party, Lenin rendered an invaluable service to the world working class. The Party he founded, the Bolshevik Communist Party has become a model for Marxists in all lands. The history of the Communist and Workers Parties of different countries convincingly demonstrates that they derive their strength from their adherence to Lenin's ideological and organisational principles and the Leninist norms of party life.

Strategist of Class Battles

The popular revolution whose inevitable approach Lenin had many times noted in his writings, broke out on January 9, 1905, in St. Petersburg. on that day - which has come to be known as the Bloody Sunday - a peaceful demonstration of factory workers was fired on by tsarist troops. The incident deeply shocked the nation. and marked the beginning of revolutionary unrest in the country that lasted for more than two years.

As soon as Lenin, then in political emigration in Geneva, learned what had happened in the Russian capital, he wrote a series of articles beginning with Revolution in Russia. In them he discussed the substance and motive forces of this revolution, which proved to be the first popular bourgeois-democratic revolution in the epoch of imperialism. Besides defining Bolshevik strategy and tactics, he attacked Menshevist opportunism, exposed the conciliatory attitude of bourgeois liberalism which was seeking to make a deal with tsarism, and demonstrated the inconsistency of the ideological platform and the adventurism of the activities of the petty-bourgeois party of "Socialist Revolutionaries" (the SR's). Lenin's ideas and programme concerning Bolshevik action in the conditions of revolution were reflected in the decisions of the RSDLP's Third Congress held in London in the spring of 1905. As some delegates noted, Lenin was the "heart and brain of the congress". Pursuing their divisive tactics, the Mensheviks declined to attend and held a parallel conference in Geneva.

Shortly after the congress, Lenin wrote his Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution in which he analysed the main difference between the decisions of the Bolshevik congress and of the Menshevik conference, and summing up the experience of struggle showed the correctness of the Bolshevik line. For Bolsheviks this book provided a guide to action; the Bolshevik V.V. Adoratsky, commenting on its significance, said: "We all felt that the interests of the development of the revolution could not have been upheld more correctly, more consistently and with greater talent than was done by Vladimir Ilyich."

In this book and in other writings Lenin developed the Marxist theory of revolution, drawing the important conclusion that in the context of social development the working class possessed a power far greater than its numerical strength would suggest. He elaborated the idea of proletarian hegemony in revolution and defined the relationship between democratic and socialist revolutions. Under imperialism, which is characterised by acute antagonisms between labour and capital, with the bourgeoisie joining the reactionaries, Lenin pointed out, it is the working class that stands forth as the most consistent fighter for democracy. Proletarian hegemony ensures the full victory of democratic revolution, while holding out the prospect of its development into a socialist one. The chief ally of the working class in a democratic revolution is the peasantry that seeks to abolish landlordism and all survivals of feudal serfdom. Not the bourgeoisie's advent to power, but the institution of a revolutionary democratic authority - the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry - creates conditions for the full victory of a democratic revolution and paves the way for the immediate transition to the struggle for socialism. In this connection Lenin praised the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, the Soviets of Soldiers' Deputies and the Peasant Revolutionary Committees which the people set up in the course of the first Russian revolution. He described the Soviets as the embryo of genuine people's power.

Already in those early days, Lenin advanced what was in effect the idea of a united democratic front, a "Left-bloc policy" in the movement against tsarism and all reactionary forces. He said that it was necessary to achieve "the unification of all the genuinely revolutionary forces, of all the forces that are already operating in a revolutionary fashion." In a letter entitled Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, Lenin pointed out that not only workers but seamen, soldiers, peasants, revolutionary bourgeois intellectuals, office employees, in short, "every group of the population" prepared to strive for a democratic programme, for the betterment of the life of all the working masses, should be represented in the Soviets.

"We," Lenin wrote, "are not afraid of so broad and mixed a composition - indeed, we want it, for unless the proletariat and the peasantry unite and unless the Social-Democrats and revolutionary democrats form a fighting alliance, the great Russian revolution cannot be fully successful. It will be a temporary alliance that is to fulfil clearly defined immediate practical tasks, while the more important interests of the socialist proletariat, its fundamental interests and ultimate goals, will be steadfastly upheld by the independent and consistently principled Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party...The essential thing is that the main, purely proletarian body of the provisional revolutionary government should be strong."

Lenin considered the ''Left-bloc policy" an important question of principle. Whether in a revolution or in parliamentary struggle it means class demarcation of the proletariat from all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties in order to achieve socialist aims; joint action by the working class and non-proletarian segments of the working masses and the petty bourgeoisie; the right and the duty of the Marxist proletarian party to guide the petty-bourgeois democratic parties; and proletarian hegemony in the struggle waged by the entire revolutionary democracy against autocracy and the vacillating counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. In the democratic movement, Lenin emphasised. it is necessary for the proletarian party to adopt this policy.

Lenin attached great significance to the work carried on by the proletariat and its party among the younger generation, and to their effort to draw the youth into the revolutionary movement led by the working class. In his articles The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth and The Student Movement and the Present Political Situation, he urged revolutionary Social-Democrats and Communists to take an active part in the youth and student movement, to propagate within it the ideas of scientific socialism, to combat the influence of Right-wing and "Leftist'' adventurists, to rally it around the working class, and to secure joint action by the working-class and student youth. Contact with the proletariat, he observed, helps to develop healthy revolutionary spirit among the student youth. Only under the guidance of the working class will the student movement acquire determination and consistency.

Meanwhile in the specific conditions obtaining during the 1905 revolution Lenin maintained that only a popular nationwide armed uprising could depose the tsar and crush the resistance of tsarism's bureaucratic police machine. He analysed and argued the need for such forms of struggle as mass political strike and political demonstration and examined the relationship between strike and armed uprising.

The Mensheviks believed that in Russia too, as during earlier bourgeois revolutions in Western Europe, revolution should be directed by the bourgeoisie and should lead to the victory of the bourgeoisie. They spurned the idea of proletarian hegemony and denied the peasantry its revolutionary role. They were opposed to an armed uprising, which, they said, would alienate the bourgeoisie from revolution.

Equally fallacious was the approach taken by Trotsky, who, as Lenin said, ''abandoned Menshevism in 1904, returned to the Mensheviks in 1905 and merely flaunted ultra-revolutionary phrases."

With borrowings from the German Social-Democrat Parvus, Trotsky put together his so-called "theory of permanent revolution". The term "permanent revolution" was used by Marx and Engels when they attacked the idea of subordinating the working-class movement to the bourgeoisie in a bourgeois-democratic revolution and emphasised that the proletariat should advance beyond a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois democracy. Trotsky's "theory", however, had nothing at all in common with this, and, as he himself had admitted, it fundamentally differed from Lenin's thesis on developing the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one.

In Trotsky's writings, "permanency" does not mean the phased development of revolution, it means the simultaneous tackling of all the political tasks confronting the proletariat. He maintained that the proletariat must at once depose tsarist autocracy, establish its own dictatorship, effect democratic reforms, remake society along socialist lines, ensure the victory of the revolution on a national scale, and promote it on an international plane. And, like the Mensheviks, he denied the peasantry's revolutionary role and the need for a worker-peasant alliance and rejected proletarian hegemony.

In place of painstaking effort to win the masses over to revolution, Trotsky was in effect calling for haphazard, unorganised and unprepared riots.

Confusing the aims of the two - democratic and socialist - phases of revolution, Trotsky advanced the formally "Leftist" but actually opportunistic, adventuristic slogan of "No tsar, but a workers' government". As Lenin said, "Trotsky's major mistake is that he ignores the bourgeois character of the revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution," and "...he has never been able to form any definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution." Later, speaking ironically of Trotsky's "original" theory, Lenin remarked that "life has been bypassing this splendid theory".

With every month, in 1905, the revolution in Russia gained momentum. By autumn, the class struggle had reached an acute stage. The nationwide political strike in October forced the tsar to issue a manifesto hypocritically proclaiming certain political liberties and announcing the formation of a parliamentary body with legislative functions - the State Duma.

Only now could Lenin safely return home from "hateful emigration." On November 8, 1905 he arrived in St. Petersburg. With characteristic vigour he directed the activities of both the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committees, preparations for an armed uprising, and the work of the editors of the newspapers Vperyod, Novaya Zhizn and Proletary. He gathered around Novaya Zhizn (New Life), the first legal Bolshevik paper which had close ties with party organisations and revolutionary workers, the party's best writers including M.S. Olminsky, V.V. Vorovsky, A.V. Lunacharsky and V.D. Bonch-Bruyevich; Maxim Gorky, father of proletarian literature, also wrote for the paper.

The culmination of the revolution was the December armed uprising in Moscow. However, the odds were too great. The Moscow uprising was not supported by similar revolutionary actions in other cities, and it was quashed. A period of decline of the revolutionary movement set in, though there was fierce rearguard fighting.

The Fourth (Unity) Congress of the RSDLP, which both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks attended, was held in Stockholm in April 1906. Against fierce attacks by the Mensheviks, Lenin upheld the Bolshevik tactics in the revolution and elaborated upon its prospects. In his report on the agrarian question he argued that it was imperative to confiscate the landed estates and nationalise the land. This, he pointed out. accorded with the peasantry's aspirations and the interests of the development of the revolution.

In the late summer of 1906 intensified police persecution forced Lenin once again to go abroad, this time to Finland.

In the spring of 1907 the RSDLP held in London its Fifth Congress to discuss questions concerning the Party's attitude to bourgeois parties, tactics in the State Duma and relations between the proletarian party and the trade unions. Gorky, who was present at this congress, has left the following vivid portrait of Lenin as orator and as the tribune of the revolution. "Lenin," wrote Gorky. "did not try to invent fine phrases. He set things forth word by word, revealing each in its precise meaning, and with amazing ease. It is very difficult to convey the unusual impression he made.

"His arm outstretched and slightly raised, he seemed to weigh every word in his open palm, winnowing away his opponents' fine talk and replacing it with weighty arguments, demonstrating the right and the duty of the working class to take its own way rather than follow, or even accompany the liberal bourgeoisie. All this was unaccustomed, and it was said not as though coming from him, Lenin, but as the dictate of history. There was a monolithic completeness, directness and force in his speech, and his entire figure as he stood on the rostrum produced the impression of a classical statue with everything that was needed and not one unnecessary detail, not one embellishment. Indeed, if there were any, they could not be seen, being as natural as the two eyes in one's face or the five fingers on one's hand...His speech always produced the physical sensation of incontestable truth.''

For a number of reasons, both objective and subjective, the first Russian revolution failed. However. it was of colossal significance in that it had schooled the proletariat and the masses generally in the class struggle. Later Lenin called it the dress rehearsal for the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917.

Having held out in the face of the revolutionary onslaught, tsarism now sought revenge. What Lenin called the hellishly difficult years of reaction began. Revolutionaries, and above all, Bolsheviks, were subjected to cruel reprisals. Hundreds were executed and thousands more were imprisoned or exiled or sentenced to penal servitude. Lenin had to flee Russia; in December 1907, dodging police sleuths, he walked, at great risk, across the as yet thin ice of the Gulf of Finland towards a place where a steamer was to pick him up and take him to Stockholm. Nadezhda Krupskaya soon joined him, and together they left for Geneva to begin a second period in emigration that was to last for almost ten years. After a year in Switzerland, in late 1908 they moved to Paris. "It was difficult for us, after the revolution, to get used to life in emigration again," Krupskaya recollected later.

Here is an account of their stay in Geneva provided by a Swiss Social-Democratic leader:

"The year is 1908. Lenin and his wife have just returned to Geneva and are living at 61, rue des Maraichers. The furniture of this tiny two-room flat consisted of two iron bedsteads, a rickety table covered with piles of magazines and brochures, a few kitchen utensils, three stools, and that was the lot.

"One day I arrived at the rue des Maraichers...to find Comrade Lenin helping his wife with the housework...

"When his wife was not at home Comrade Lenin would go and have a meal for 80 centimes in a small restaurant on the rue de Carouge, run by a Russian emigre.

"...The political refugee Ulyanov, a man of remarkable intelligence, could speak and write German, English and French fluently.

"...He was a frequent visitor to the University library and the Lecture Society."

Interesting too is the recollection of Pal Petrovski, a young Hungarian worker employed at a garments factory in Paris, who attended gatherings of Russian emigre Social-Democrats. He wrote:

"I visited them for the first time in 1908. There were about thirty people, most of them workers, gathered in the premises of a club for Russian emigres. They were sitting round a table listening carefully to a simply-dressed man with a gingery beard.

"'That's Vladimir Ilyich,' they explained to me.

"I had never seen Ilyich before. At the first glance there was nothing particularly striking about him. His clothes and small pointed beard were just the same as those worn by many French workers at that time. He would have not attracted anyone's attention in a factory or on the street. But here among the Russian emigres it was obvious at once that Vladimir Ilyich was a leader. He was the person to whom everyone put their questions, from whom everyone expected an answer to difficult problems, who explained everything. He was always the centre of attention and was an acknowledged leader. You could see this immediately because all the members of the circle treated him with great affection and respect."

From Russia, meanwhile, came news about the brutalities of reaction and of pessimism and confusion, especially among the intellectuals. The Mensheviks were panic-stricken and cried: "They should not have taken up arms." They now tried to adapt to tsarism by liquidating the revolutionary proletarian party and replacing it by a legal, in effect, non-party organisation - for which they came to be known as the Liquidators.

Lenin described the Bolshevik approach as follows: "We knew how to work during the long years preceding the revolution. Not for nothing do they say we are as hard as rock. The Social-Democrats have built a proletarian party which will not be disheartened by the failure of the first armed onslaught, will not lose its head, nor be carried away by adventures. That party is marching to socialism, without tying itself or its future to the outcome of any particular period of bourgeois revolutions. That is precisely why it is also free of the weaker aspects of bourgeois revolutions. And this proletarian party is marching to victory." Belief in the ultimate victory of the revolution, coupled with an unflagging effort to win this victory, and political realism and optimism were ever characteristic of Lenin.

At this juncture Lenin believed that the main task was to preserve and consolidate the illegal proletarian party in Russia, to uphold the principles of Marxism and the party's programme and strategy, and to sum up the experience of the 1905-07 revolution. Lenin directed party conferences, Central Committee plenary meetings and a meeting of the enlarged editorial board of the newspaper Proletary held to chart the party line. He was the moving spirit behind the RSDLP's central organ Sotsial-Demokrat which began to be published underground from February 1908. To teach theory to party workers, in 1911 Lenin organised at Longjumeau, outside Paris, a party school, where he gave more than fifty lectures.

He battled not only against the Menshevik Liquidators but also against the "Left-wing" opportunists, the "Otzovists," so called because they demanded that the Social Democrats recall - otozvat in Russian - their deputies from the State Duma. The "Otzovists" held that the party should renounce all legal forms of activity; this, if carried out, would mean renouncing ties with the masses. And finally Lenin exposed the double-cross stand of Trotsky, who while declaring that he was with neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks, actually helped the Liquidators. "Trotsky," wrote Lenin, "follows in the wake of the Mensheviks, taking cover behind particularly sonorous phrases." And further: "Trotsky's particular task is to conceal liquidationism by throwing dust in the eyes of the workers." Of Trotsky's anti-party doings, Lenin wrote: "Trotsky behaves like a despicable careerist and factionalist... He pays lip-service to the Party and behaves worse than any other of the factionalists." And: "Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism...Trotsky unites all to whom ideological decay is dear."

Lenin's Materialism and Empiro-Criticism, which appeared in 1909, played an exceptionally important role in routing the "Liquidators" and "Otzovists" ideologically, and in further developing Marxist philosophical thought. It provided a critical analysis of bourgeois idealist philosophy and revisionist concepts. On the basis of the latest achievements and discoveries in the natural sciences, Lenin examined the main questions of dialectical materialism, showed that matter is an objective reality, which is inexhaustible, multiple in form and motion, and analysed various aspects of the theory of reflection and of the theory of cognition. Of particular importance is what Lenin said about the relationship between social being and social consciousness and the class and gnosiological roots of various philosophies.

In the years that followed Lenin continued to devote great attention to philosophical problems. For a book on materialist dialectics which he had planned to write, he amassed a wealth of material which was later published under the title Philosophical Notebooks (and which made up one whole volume in his Collected Works). Though he did not finish writing the book, the various notes and remarks are of tremendous significance and demonstrate the fundamental contribution Lenin had made to the further development of Marxist dialectics and to the deepening of our understanding of the laws and categories of Marxist philosophy. It should be noted here that Lenin's contribution to Marxist philosophy is found not only in these two works, but in many other writings in which he elaborated upon the key precepts of dialectical and historical materialism and sociology and displayed an ability to apply dialectics to social analysis, party policy and the working-class struggle.

The agrarian question was always one of Lenin's major concerns. Many of his works deal with agrarian problems under capitalism, and the role of the peasants in the working people's movement against social oppression.

He showed that capitalism meant ruin for a majority of the rural population and that only a socialist transformation of society could bring genuine freedom, well-being and cultural advance to the peasantry. He pointed out that the vital interests of the working class and working peasantry were identical, and proved that their firm unity was essential in the struggle for democracy. Lenin also explained that such a struggle could be successful only provided that the working class led the peasantry, a class which was disunited and vacillating because it consisted of working people who were also private owners, and whose social position was that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

In 1908 Lenin wrote his Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-07. On the basis of the experience of that revolution, Lenin proved the necessity of confiscating big private landed estates and nationalising all land, and the importance of these measures for involving the peasants in the struggle against tsarist autocracy and feudal survivals and for turning the bourgeois democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.

Lenin believed that nationalisation of land would make it possible to create an agrarian system that would he very flexible from the standpoint of the transition to socialism and provide the best opportunities for the proletarian state to effect the transition to socialism in agriculture. He pointed out, however, that in countries where the survivals of feudalism were not very pronouned and the traditional attachment of the peasants to private property was relatively strong, agrarian transformations could be carried out without nationalisation of all land.

Lenin never lost faith in the early advent of revolution, even in the darkest days of tsarist reaction. His optimism was fully confirmed when a new upsurge of the revolutionary movement took place in late 1910. The Sixth All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP was held in Prague in January 1912 under Lenin's direction. It was attended also by a gr