The Dilemmas of Lenin. Tariq Ali
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he was very attached, had died of typhoid at the age of nineteen, after which Lenin had put all else to the side and spent the summer of 1891 with his mother in Samara. In Europe in 1895, he met the elders of Russian Marxism: Plekhanov and Axelrod in Switzerland, Paul Lafargue (Marx’s son-in-law) in Paris and Wilhelm Liebknecht in Berlin. The meetings with the Russians were amicable. Lenin was a diligent student and listened happily on this occasion to Plekhanov, who was equally happy to be admired by this young man and impressed by his intensity.
The strike waves of 1896–97 reinforced Lenin’s view that the creation of a unified all-Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) could not be left to the future. In order to prepare for this task, Social Democrats had to agree and present a coherent set of ideas and organisational plans. The tsarist police had other ideas. Martov and Lenin were arrested in 1897 and sentenced to three years of exile in Siberia. The First Congress of the RSDLP took place in Minsk in 1898. Lenin had added a brief appendix to his pamphlet The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats. Haunted by the fate of his brother, who had been betrayed by two weak-minded recruits, Lenin insisted that in Russia, the Social Democrats would need to work underground, create false identities and rely on other forms of deception in order to defend the organisation:
Without a strengthening and development of revolutionary discipline, organisation and underground activity, struggle against the government is impossible. And underground activity demands above all that groups and individuals specialise in different aspects of work and that the job of co-ordination be assigned to the central group of the League of Struggle, with as few members as possible.
Theoretically, the coming revolution would be based on the growing strength of the proletariat, aided by the quickening pace of capitalist development and therefore bourgeois democratic in character. Its main task would be the complete abolition of the landed estates on which the autocracy rested. This would clear the space for untrammelled capitalist development which would increase the size and weight of the proletariat, thus bringing it face to face with its enemy. And this enemy was not particular individuals, however repugnant their behaviour, but the entire capitalist class. A democratic revolution was crucial in order to create legal and other structures that permitted freedom of association and a press that allowed the workers and their organisations the political space to perceive their own strength.
In 1900, soon after they had served their term in Siberia, it was agreed by their colleagues that Lenin and A. N. Potresov should go abroad for a summit with Plekhanov, Axelrod and Zasulich to discuss the future plans of the movement and the launching of a Marxist newspaper – Iskra (Spark) – in exile to promote their views. Martov would stay on in Russia, for the time being, in order to organise Social Democratic groups. The discussions in Switzerland with the Old Guard initially went well: Lenin supported them politically against some of their younger opponents in exile, whose views on the party’s programme were at loggerheads with those of Plekhanov and Axelrod. As Lenin would soon discover, Plekhanov brooked no opposition on theoretical and organisational questions and was becoming more and more cranky as time went by.
Soon after his meeting with the ‘Father of Russian Marxism’, Lenin wrote an unusual text: How the ‘Spark’ Was Nearly Extinguished. Unusual in the sense that it reads like a diary, a form that he usually disliked. That he was excited and slightly nervous at the thought of winning over the grandees of Russian Marxism to support Iskra is not a surprise, but as he listened to them in turn, his nervousness evaporated. First stop was Zurich, where he found a charming Paul Axelrod: ‘The conversation was as between friends who had not seen each other for a long time; we spoke about anything and everything, in no particular order.’ In Geneva he was warned by another exile to be cautious – since a split in the union of exiles abroad, Plekhanov was in a particularly paranoid state of mind. Lenin described the meeting as a disaster:
My conversation with him did indeed show that he really was suspicious, distrustful, and … I tried to observe caution and avoided all ‘sore’ points, but the constant restraint that I had to place on myself could not but greatly affect my mood. From time to time little ‘frictions’ arose in the form of sharp retorts on the part of Plekhanov to any remark that might even in the least degree cool down or soothe the passions that had been aroused (by the split). There was also ‘friction’ over questions concerning the tactics of the magazine, Plekhanov throughout displaying complete intolerance, an inability or an unwillingness to understand other people’s arguments, and, to employ the correct term, insincerity.
The meeting between the ‘older’ and ‘younger’ generations reached a crisis point when Plekhanov accused Lenin and his comrades in St Petersburg of being too conciliatory to their opponents. When Lenin suggested that the new paper should be open to debate and discussion, the older man could not control his rage and
refused to listen to our arguments. He displayed a hatred towards ‘the Union-Abroad people’ that bordered on the indecent (suspecting them of espionage, accusing them of being swindlers and rogues, and asserting that he would not hesitate to ‘shoot’ such ‘traitors’, etc.) … It became evident that he and we were becoming increasingly disgruntled on the character of a manifesto.
The first meeting of the Emancipation of Labour Group, 1879.
After a few days of cooling down and an agreement of sorts on the first editorial, the entire Emancipation of Labour Group except for Martov – the three elders, Lenin and Potresov (Arsenyev) – met as a conference. An early item on the agenda was the attitude that should be taken to the Jewish Bund, a Social Democratic organisation for Jewish workers that was far more familiar with the everyday concerns and needs of Jewish workers and their families than any other organisation in the tsarist lands. Plekhanov now threw an anti-Semitic tantrum that deeply shocked Lenin:
Plekhanov displayed extreme intolerance (towards the Bund) and openly declared it to be an organisation of exploiters who exploit the Russians and not a Social-Democratic organisation. He said that our aim was to eject this Bund from the Party, that the Jews are all chauvinists and nationalists, that a Russian party should be Russian and should not render itself into ‘captivity’ to the ‘brood of vipers’, etc. None of our objections to these indecent speeches had any result and Plekhanov stuck to his ideas to the full, saying that we simply did not know enough about the Jews, that we had no real experience in dealing with Jews.
Georgy Plekhanov: From early anti-
Semitism to national chauvinism
during the First World War.
It was agreed to delay a discussion on this subject till the next conference; but on other matters too, Plekhanov’s attitude struck Lenin ‘as being particularly repellent’ and showing ‘clearly enough that normal relations did not exist between him and us’. The idea for starting a new paper had originated with Lenin and Martov in St Petersburg at one of the meetings of their new organisation.
Since it would have to be published abroad, it was suggested that they try and get the veterans on board. Plekhanov refused to accept that a handful of young whippersnappers freshly arrived from Russia were going to edit the paper. His ego, always heading in a stratospheric direction, was hurt. He refused to write the ‘declaration’ or to collaborate in its production, but carried on sniping and ‘casually threw in a venomous, malicious, remark’, describing Lenin as a ‘careerist’ and so on. Plekhanov won the battle to maintain control, leaving behind a residue of bitterness and resentment. Lenin summarised the situation thus:
As soon as we found ourselves alone, after leaving the steamer, we broke out into a flood of angry expressions. Our pent-up feelings got the better of us; the charged atmosphere burst into a storm. Up and down our little village we paced far into the night; it was quite dark, there was a rumbling of thunder, and constant flashes of lightning rent the air. We walked along, bursting with indignation. I remember that Arsenyev began by declaring that as far as he was concerned his personal relations with Plekhanov were broken off once and for all, never to be restored. He would maintain business relations with him,