4. Since our revolutionary forces are not numerous, the party will have to have (as long as there is absolutism) a strictly conspiratorial character. 134 These theories of Russian Marxism and militancy can certainly be identified in Leninist policy. Most notably was Lenin’s pamphlet, What is to be Done? (1902), which outlined the Bolshevik party’s ability to arrest its own members if necessary, a precursor to the Terror and the creation of the VCheKa. ‘Trimming the fat’ of the Bolshevik party, so to speak, created the centralised vanguard Lenin desired; this centralised nature being one of the fundamental disputes that led to the Bolshevik/Menshevik split in 1903. Isreal Getzler discussed in his 1996 article, Lenin’s Conception of Revolution as Civil War , Lenin’s theory in regards to the fallout of the total collapse of Tsarism. In such an event, Lenin theorised a full-scale civil war between the bourgeoisies and the proletariat. Lenin theorised a further second civil war, in which the state would change hands and eliminate the revolutionary government; ultimately the proletariat would be defeated during this second war, primarily on economic grounds, left alone to battle against the liberal bourgeoisies, rich and middling peasants. 135 In short, Lenin was prepared for civil war and his doctrine emphasised this; Bolshevism, Leninism and to extent the Soviet State, were not born out of pure Marxist theory but from a radical and violent chapter of Russian history with Lenin instilling this violent conspiratorial neo-Populist tendency on his followers: “It was not Marxism that made Lenin a
134 idem. p. 337. 135 Isreal Getzler, “Lenin’s Conception of Revolution as Civil War” in The Slavonic and East European Review , 74.3, (Jul., 1996), pp. 464-472, pp. 464-466.
59
Made with FlippingBook HTML5