The Economic and Social Structure of Russia Today (Pt. 6)

47 – Towards the April Conference

The arrival of Lenin, Zinoviev, Sokolnikov, Krupskaya and other comrades was on 16 April 1917 New Style (European Gregorian calendar) that is, 3 April in the Old Style (Russian Julian Calendar). The famous theses were read by Lenin at the enlarged conference, which was previously arranged in Petrograd by the local organizations, on the 4/17 April. (The first date will always indicate date in the Russian Julian calendar, the second in the Gregorian). The latter conference was to prepare for the national one (the party’s seventh) which ran from the 24 -29 April (7 – 12 May). It is best to stick to the old chronology, so we don’t end up calling what has become known as the April conference the May conference, or the classic October Revolution the November Revolution. The gap between the two dating systems is 13 days.

We have mentioned already that the conference was already underway and the resolution on a settlement with the Mensheviks was being presented there, and there was even the proposal that the two fractions of the old Russian social democratic party should unite. In Trotski’s words: “The contrast was too cruel. To soften it, Lenin, contrary to his custom, did not subject the resolution that had already been passed (in his absence) to analysis but merely turned his back on it”.

We have described the astonishment which his unexpected speech, and the theses it recapitulated, provoked in everybody. Trotski’s demonstration that Stalin was entirely, along with almost everyone else, disowned, is as irrefutable as the story of the incredible makeover thanks to which the official historiography later on, bit by bit, would distort the entire period along with the contrast: before April and after April; leaving in the lurch, let it be understood, Kamenev and other future “trotskists”. In 1924 Stalin admitted to having shared the erroneous position of compromise with the provisional government which would “power the mill of defencism”, confessing that: “I repudiated it only in the middle of April, after I had subscribed to Lenin’s theses”. But in 1926 he would say “that is gossip” and it was just a matter of “momentary waverings: who has not had them?”. In 1930 the historiographer Jaroslavsky would be persecuted for having alluded to these waverings. Leon’s expression is most apt: the idol of prestige is a voracious monster!

Finally, in the official History it is Kamenev, Rykov, Bubnov and Nogin who are branded for holding this semi-menshevik position, and Stalin’s reaction to it, on returning from exile, is attributed to Molotov and others. We don’t attach much importance to this argument. That Stalin = Kamenev in the pre-April period is very clear. But as far as revolutionary history is concerned, all things considered, it is Kamenev, not Stalin, who has been rehabilitated. And even if the opposite were true, the analysis of the historical forces would remain the same.

We cannot go along with Trotski though when he wants to defend here an assessment he made in 1909, of the disagreement between the “two tactics”, according to which there were anti-revolutionary aspects in both the Menshevik and the Bolshevik arguments; the first of these having already emerged, while the second would only emerge in the event of revolutionary victory.

This supposedly happened in April, and it was supposedly due to Lenin that the party was “rearmed”; an expression used by Leon in 1922 which would later unleash the ire of the Stalinists. Trotski grafts on to it his theory of the inspirational leader who expresses the masses who are more revolutionary than the party, and the party which is more revolutionary than its organizational “machine”.

In these ideas lies the proof that Trotski drew close to Lenin late in the day and that the Stalinian counter-critique was in part correct, even if both camps were wrong in having people believe that Lenin, by dropping the April bombshell, was putting into effect a revision of the old theses.

We confirm the revolutionary importance of the party’s function with the proof that its theory had predicted everything, in a way that was as orthodox as it was reliable. If Lenin “rearmed” the party, the term implies there were those who were “disarming” it, proving in fact, as per our presentation, that Lenin put it back on the positions of the old contrast between “the two tactics” which Trotski wasn’t too keen on. It wasn’t that Lenin gave secret, brand new weapons to the party, rather he got it to pick up the weapons it was letting go of.

48 – Disagreement at the Conference

There was resistance to Lenin. It was not from Stalin though, who kept a low profile, but from the more ingenuous Kamenev, Rykov, Nogin, Dzerzhinsky and Angarsky among others. “The democratic revolution has not ended”. “The impetus for a social revolution should have come from the West”.

Before continuing with Lenin’s responses, which were decisive, it is necessary to give the very apt formulation which appears in Trotski’s account, when commenting on the reference to the West: “That was true. However, the mission of the provisional Government was not to complete the revolution but to reverse its course. Hence it followed that the democratic revolution could be completed only under the rule of the working class”. Here he was following the line.

Attending the All-Russian Conference of Bolshevik organizations from 24-29 April, representing 79,000 party members, were 131 delegates with decisional voting power, and a further 18 attending in a consultative capacity. Of the 79 thousand members a good 15 thousand were in the capital, Petrograd. Here we see the true dimensions of a revolutionary class party. Quite different from the vulgar festivals with head counts and contributions to party funds solicited by means of Luna Park type “attractions”!

In confirmation of Trotski’s statements, it seems that even the Kremlin doesn’t consider April very interesting either. In the Italian translation of Lenin’s Selected Works (they are now printing the complete works) of the contribution Lenin made to the April Conference, only the brief theses on the Agrarian and national questions are reported, expressive and important though they nevertheless are. Lenin’s main report on the Current Situation, which in an organic way develops the themes of the April Theses, is therefore missing. We must therefore rely on texts which summarize the speeches, and have drawn one from a popular Italian publication, and the other from a rather patchy German summary.

The topics of the conference (after the opening speech given by Lenin, which underlined the historical reach of that conference “on the conditions of the Russian revolution, but of a developing world revolution as well”) were as follows: 1) The current situation; 2) The peace conference; 3) Our attitude in the Soviets; 4) The revising of the party program; 5) The situation within the International; 6) Uniting the internationalist social democratic organizations (posthumous remnant from the organization of the conference after the one in March); 7) The agrarian question; 8) The national question; 9) The constituent assembly; 10) Organizational questions; 11) Regional reports; 12) Elections of the Central Committee. The conference had the same value as a party congress. Following Lenin’s arrival, he was charged with developing points 1, 7 and 8 on the agenda, but he only spoke on points 4 and 6, covering the attitude towards the workers’ and peasants’ soviets, supporting the resolution on the war, and on the situation in the International and the tasks of the RSDLP. He also delivered the concluding speech.

We will not follow Lenin’s entire elaboration insofar as his overall construction, developed over the course of his many interventions, is the same as in the April Theses, on which we reported and fully commented on previously. There are nevertheless some clarifications here and some very important formulations to be found.

49 – The Question of Power Again

Lenin clarifies again that in February power fell out of the hands of feudal despotism and into those of the capitalist bourgeoisie and the large landowners, represented by the Provisional Government and its men in Parliament, the Cadets and Liberals, and supported by the populists and socialist leaning opportunists. But history poses to the ruling bourgeoisie three tasks it cannot resolve: ending the war, giving land to the peasants, and dealing with the country’s economic crisis. The bourgeoisie backs the foreign imperialists in their war of plunder, as did the Tsar, in fact even more than him.

The most it can achieve is an imperialist peace, as a prelude to new wars. The capitalist bourgeoisie has no interest in nationalization of the land, not because such a measure is incompatible with capitalism, but because of the links between landowners and capitalists, via the mortgages on land obtained from the bourgeois banks. Finally, the bourgeoisie cannot conceive of and realize any measure of economic recovery which would not be at the expense of the workers in the factories and on the land.

Therefore, power must be taken from the bourgeoisie and assumed by the revolutionary proletariat, supported by the peasants.

Here we have a very evocative formulation. Faced with the usual objection that the conditions for a transition from a bourgeois social revolution to a socialist one are absent, Lenin responds: “The Soviets of workers’ peasants and soldiers deputies must take power not for the purpose of building an ordinary bourgeois republic, nor for the purpose of making a direct transition to socialism”.

In Lenin’s exposition, economic and political questions are once again brought fully into focus:

“We cannot be for “introducing” socialism – this would be the height of absurdity. We must preach [elsewhere this was translated as predict] socialism. The majority of the population in Russia are peasants, small farmers who can have no idea of socialism. We must therefore put over practical measures”.

We have said a lot about these practical socio-economic measures in various fields, and Lenin’s words firmly establish that their character is not such as to render them incompatible with capitalism. We will not repeat here what was said about the control of production and the State bank but will provide a quote which gives a definition of what the postulate ‘nationalization of the land’ means: “Nationalization of the land, though being a bourgeois measure, implies freedom for the class struggle and freedom of land tenure from all non-bourgeois adjuncts to the greatest possible degree conceivable in a capitalist society. Moreover, nationalization, representing as it does the abolition of private ownership of land, would, in effect, deal such a powerful blow to private ownership of all the means of production in general that the party of the proletariat must facilitate such a reform in every possible way”.

Here Marxist economic science is applied with maximum rigor. Bringing land under State control (in another text the term Staatseigentum, or State property, is used) means that of the three protagonists the first, the landowner, is suppressed, leaving in play the other two, the capitalist tenant and the agricultural wage laborer, to fight the class struggle. This is better than passing tenures, by definition bourgeois, directly to the small peasant farmer. But in his thesis Lenin is prepared to tolerate the latter on condition that the soviets of wage laborers on the land are organized separately (today gone, but justified how, in a social sense?), and with another advantage in view: that abolishing property in land is a major step forwards by making it possible to predict the abolition of all private property, even of capital.

50 – The New Form of Power

All of these concrete measures, necessary to get the peasant majority to move in our direction, and to get them to support the transfer of power from the provisional government (parliament, constituent assembly) to the Soviets, have nothing to do with “setting an economic foot in socialism”. However, as far as the transfer of power, as a whole, to the soviets goes, this does mean setting “one foot in socialism”, the political one. In relation to these considerations, we have sidestepped the definition of October as a bourgeois revolution conducted by the proletariat.

October must be described as a socialist revolution, not only because the proletariat is its pilot and ruling class, but because of the originality of its political and State form, which goes beyond any bourgeois republic and is the form that is appropriate in an international socialist revolution; and yet, this new form and power will not be able to initiate the socialist transformation of the economic structure in Russia, but rather in Europe.

Let’s see how this development occurs in Lenin’s words, or rather in the accounts we have of them.

“What, then, are the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat? The main flaw, the main error, in all the socialists’ arguments is that this question is put in too general a form, as the question of the transition to socialism. What we should talk about, however, are concrete steps and measures. Some of them are ripe, and some are not. We are now at a transition stage. Clearly, we have brought to the fore new forms, unlike those in bourgeois States. The Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies are a form of State which does not exist and never did exist in any country. This form represents the first steps towards socialism and is inevitable at the beginning of a socialist society. This is a fact of decisive importance. The Russian revolution has created the Soviets. No bourgeois country in the world has or can have such State institutions. No socialist revolution can be operative with any other State power than this”.

“This is a bourgeois revolution, it is therefore useless to speak of socialism,” say our opponents. But we say just the opposite: “Since the bourgeoisie cannot find a way out of the present situation, the revolution is bound to continue”. We must not confine ourselves to democratic phrases; we must make the situation clear to the masses, and indicate a number of practical measures to them, namely, they must take over the syndicates [for which read: production syndicates; a well-known example being the sugar producers syndicate] – control them through the Soviets of workers and peasants, etc. When all such measures are carried out, Russia will be standing with one foot in socialism”.

And in a passage from the resolution: “Operating as it does in one of the most backward countries of Europe amidst a vast population of small peasants, the proletariat of Russia cannot aim at immediately putting into effect socialist changes [Umgestaltung]. But it would be a grave error, and in effect even a complete desertion to the bourgeoisie, to infer from this that the working class must support the bourgeoisie, or that it must keep its activities within limits acceptable to the petty bourgeoisie, or that the proletariat must renounce its leading role in the matter of explaining to the people the urgency of taking a number of practical steps towards socialism [which go in the direction that leads to socialism] for which the time is now ripe”.

51 – The Clear Alternative

Thus taking power, overthrowing the provisional government, abolishing dualism, making the Councils the exclusive foundation of the revolutionary political State is the implacable thesis, not contradicted by the fact that the measures in themselves are not socialist, since, by constituting a decisive step forward from dying feudalism to capitalism, they are heading towards socialism

Every passage is an incitement. We have already referred to: the revolution is bound to continue. Other expressions: “If the Soviets intend to assume power, it is only for such ends [after the other measures, bringing the sugar syndicate under State control]. There is no other reason why they should do so. The alternative is: either the Soviets develop further, or they die an ignominious death as in the case of the Paris Commune. If it is a bourgeois republic that is needed, this can very well be left to the Cadets […]. The complete success of these steps is only possible by world revolution, if the revolution kills the war, if the workers of the whole world support the revolution. Taking power is, therefore, the only practical measure and the only way out”.

“But what are the Soviets to do when they assume power? Should they go over to the bourgeoisie? Our answer is – the working class will continue its class struggle”.

“It is impossible to make a direct transition to socialism. What then is the purpose of the Soviets taking power? They must take power in order to make the first concrete steps towards this transition, steps that can and should be made. In this respect fear is the worst enemy. The masses must be urged to take these steps immediately, otherwise the power of the Soviets of workers and soldiers will have no meaning and will give the people nothing”.

Let us translate this speech, repeated ad infinitum, into simple terms. In a backward, feudal setting, fully capitalistic measures have the value of steps towards socialism. In the specific setting of Russia and of the imperialist world war, the bourgeoisie will never take decisive steps towards total capitalism, of a radical subversion of feudalism. Do we have to allow a semi-bourgeois republic, ever exposed to a feudal counter-revolution, to live? Never. The proletariat and the communist party must take power and cut the bourgeoisie out if it is to fully enact those totally capitalist measures. And it is through taking such drastic steps that Russia will set one foot – the political not economic one, say we – in socialism.

52 – One Foot then the Other

As regards propaganda even a Lenin can use imagery that is somewhat pedestrian. We will be slavishly modest in our adherence to it, and with these two feet we will occupy ourselves for a while.

First of all, repeating again that what we have available are reports and fragments that are not necessarily in the correct order and on which we have imposed our own ordering of the questions, we will point out that the ‘lecture notes’ of Stalinist stamp which we sometimes draw on bring the passage we have quoted to a close by removing the image of the foot, and replacing it with these shameless words: And these measures, once put into effect, will transport Russia immediately onto the terrain of socialism!

Of course, no matter how hard we try we will never get hold of those minutes from 1917. But they aren’t necessary to enable us once again to brand as a lie such popularizing by a Stalinist source.

Let us look at another passage from Lenin based on feet: “This measure [the second one: the first as we know is nationalization of agricultural land; now comes the Soviet’s control of large-scale production, over the Sugar Syndicate, the Coal Syndicate, the Metal Syndicate, etc., over the banks, and a fairer, progressive tax on incomes and properties], since big capital remains […] is not socialism – it is a transitional measure, but the carrying out of such measures together with the existence of the Soviets will bring about a situation in which Russia will have one foot in socialism – we say one foot because the peasant majority controls the other part of the country’s economy”.

The first of the two feet therefore refers to the proletariat in industry, the second refers directly to the small peasant farmers. The first is in socialism the second is not. The first stands there in a political sense because it got there thanks to two conditions: the taking of power by the Soviets, and the proletarian State’s control over big industry, over heavy industry. Now this, as we will fully come to see later in the present treatise, is also a political condition: be it of control over what remains of the big capital in private hands, for taking the big factories under State control, or for their Staatseigentum. It is a socialist political condition because heavy industry assures, to whoever in power who has it, the weapons of class war and of civil war when faced with internal and external counterrevolution. It is not, on the other hand, a socialist economic condition, since economically it is still a case of private company subjected to State control, or later on of company as State property. An economic condition of “State capitalism” is one in which the company, wage-paying, commercial, monetary system remains on its feet; a condition which beyond being political would also be a socialist economic one, would exist from the moment that mercantilism and the profit-making of the individual company had become redundant, and with them the wage system.

So the foot in Lenin’s expression, even allowing it is not among his most elevated, placed in socialism by Russia is due to a step made in the urban-industrial-proletarian sector alone: this step consists of the power used by the workers against the bourgeoisie and in their governing role with respect to the ‘common people’ and peasantry, which in its turn consists of having adopted the measure of removing the control of banks, insurance, industrial trusts and so on from the bourgeoisie.

The foot that remains in capitalism is the rural-agrarian one, where it wasn’t possible to put in place in 1917 (and nor was it in place in 1955) a consignment of fully State capitalist measures. The nationalization or the bringing under State control of the land is not State capitalism either, because private capitalism, big and small, can be associated with it. According to Marx, the land is not capital either in the historical or economic fields. More about this fundamental assumption can be found in our series on the agrarian question, on which Lenin is orthodoxy personified. Capital here consists of the productive instruments of the agricultural business, the stock, living and dead, fixed and circulating. A full capitalism on the land would have transformed all the peasant farmers into wage earners of the big companies, and from being private it would have become State after the latter had expropriated and confiscated all the agrarian enterprises, the agrarian business capital, and all of the stock.

So, nationalizing the land assures us of “the support of the peasant majority”, but it does not create any basis for socialism in agriculture. One merely accomplishes one side of the bourgeois agrarian revolution, that of freeing the small peasant farmer from feudal servitude and from a part of the unearned income due to the landed proprietor; one part, because the State, be it bourgeois or proletarian, will necessarily have to impose taxes that are on a par with those the titular owner of the land paid, if not with all the revenue that he enjoyed.

53 – Further Steps Taken by the Two Feet

Lenin’s constant aspiration was for the rural proletariat to prevail over the small farmer: and the latter remains as such whether he owns property, enjoys the use of it, or becomes in the end a State tenant. Anticipating what we will be saying later, clearly it is not easy, even in the most developed countries, to achieve an agriculture that is based entirely on wage labor, which is what you have when rural families do not directly consume the product of their own labor in kind. Only from this rung could one contemplate stepping up to an agrarian State capitalism, and say: sure, we are not in socialism, but we have placed one foot on the step that leads to it. Lenin will take up this idea in his 1921 pamphlet on the tax in kind about which we are going to speak at length.

Let us suppose, with the boyards and large landed proprietors of the bourgeois variety gone (‘Landlords’, latifundists), that agrarian entrepreneurs (Kulaks in Russia) had despoiled all the small peasant farmers and were conducting agriculture entirely with wage laborers. A step up the ladder to private capitalism in the countryside would then have been made, and it could be said: if we bring all the capital of the Kulaks, at least of the major ones, under State control, we will enter the phase of State capitalism and place the other foot (on the understanding that the wage earners in industry and on the land are still in possession of all power) in socialism.

What actually happened in Russia then? The Kulaks were more than expropriated, they were liquidated. Their capital didn’t pass to the State but was divided into two parts: the big cooperative companies, which are not State entities, have one part, and the other part, split up into many small portions, is divided among the peasant farmers of said companies, who therefore become half-wage earners, half direct producers, with part of the direct product consumed and the rest sold. This solution replaced the quantitative diffusion of genuine State companies, which cultivate a relatively small amount of land. This didn’t mark a transition from private to State capitalism, but rather the lingering on of a form that is half small-scale local production, that is, below the level of capitalism, whereas it does not rise above it insofar as it is a rural “labor co-operative” because, with its income and expenditure, it has the potential to become a large company that is no longer small and localized, but one that is still private and not a State one.

Let us put it another way. The small peasant farmer under a bourgeois regime differs from the feudal serf because he is free from personal servitude as regards his labor and product. He synthesizes in himself (Marx, Lenin) three figures: he is a landed proprietor, because all of the small parcel of land that he works is his; he is a capitalist because the working capital is his; he is a worker because all of the labor in the field is provided by himself and his family.

Let us nationalize the land without passing from small to big companies: the figure of the proprietor vanishes, and there remains in the small producer the two figures of the small capitalist and the worker (analogy: the artisan, the small worker tenant, or sharecropper).

Let us move on to the big capitalist company: the small peasant farmers have their land and capital expropriated: there remains the third figure of wage laborers in enterprises which have been concentrated into large units.

And so on to the Russian Kolkhoz. The small peasant has become, for around half of his labor (power) time, a wage earner and collective capitalist (to him is paid a quota of wages and a quota of profits in a system that is very complicated, as we will see) and for the other half he has become a small-holder again: he has a house, reserve capital, and spends the other part of his labor (power) time on his small plot.

Leaving aside the two minority parts, that are the big State companies and the small peasant families who are not yet Kolkhosian, it remains the fact that most workers on the land in Russia are still tied to forms of small production, with all the social and economic consequences that follow. The second foot has remained on terrain that is not only not socialist, but is actually pre-capitalist.

54 – Wrong Moves by the First Foot

Undoubtedly after the violent crises which we are going to discuss – the struggles to conquer power, to stifle the war, to annihilate the counterrevolution – industry started to become on the one hand entirely, or almost entirely, State controlled, and on the other, to assume a quantitatively much greater weight in the social economy of Russia. In those cases where this remained associated with the political power in the hands of the Russian proletariat, and with the general movement of the world revolutionary proletariat, the foot Lenin referred to would be even more firmly planted in socialism even if the body was still outside it, remaining in a mercantile and State capitalist setting.

Unfortunately, the grip on the other political base would become loosened. The Russian State fully participated in a war between imperialist States as the ally of one (either…) of the two imperialist groups. The Russian proletariat no longer has a governing role with respect to the class of peasant farmers, even Kolkhozian ones, to whom equal legal status was given under the political constitution of 1936. Its political movement is no longer linked to the international program of armed revolution and dictatorship, and the Communist International has been dismantled. The second condition has been demolished bit by bit, and the physical expression of this fact has been the persecutions of the left opposition and the “purges” which have decimated its ranks.

Under these conditions State capitalism persists, the domination of largescale industry remains, but the socialist character of the achievement of these “measures” has been lost, and we are on the same level as the State capitalism of Germany and other countries (which Lenin illustrates in the 1921 pamphlet we cited).

The revolution Lenin wanted, and that October gave us, was therefore socialist because it firmly planted the proletarian-political foot in socialism.

And there the second socio-economic foot would have alighted if the international proletarian revolution had come to the rescue. Maybe only after that even advanced countries like Germany and the United States will see largescale agrarian State capitalism as a transitional form. And it would have entered it with its whole body by initiating the uprooting of autonomous individual enterprises of the wage-earner and of mercantile monetary distribution, in city and country in parallel.

But although the feudal counter-revolution in Russia, backed by the bourgeoisie of the time, had been defeated, capitalist counter-revolution would triumph in the world.

Not only was the second foot not planted in the terrain of socialism therefore, but the first one was withdrawn from it. Today, or since about thirty years ago in fact, both are outside it.

Not only is Russia not a socialist society, but it isn’t even a socialist republic. What does remain socialist however, in the light of revolutionary history, is the October Revolution, and Lenin’s monolithic, farsighted construction of Russia’s road ahead.

55 – The Difficult post-April Maneuver

Lenin had only just won the hard battle to rid the Bolshevik party of any residual tolerance for the bourgeois government and defencism when he found himself faced with a self-styled leftwing objection: you have said it is necessary to take power; very well then; let us then go back to illegality and preparing for an imminent insurrection.

Lenin’s report on tactical developments, according to the scheme of the April the Fourth Theses, was as subtle as it was exhaustive.

We, he said, are only a minority: we mustn’t let our guard down. Due to revolutionary euphoria, many workers in good faith have relapsed into defencism, even in the cities. Until concrete economic measures are put in place, the peasants will not be with us. If in the international revolution we want to preserve the new Council form, we cannot attack the Soviet just because the greater part of it follows not us but the opportunist friends of the bourgeois provisional government.

Said Lenin: Some may ask: Have we not retreated? We were advocating the conversion of the imperialist war into a civil war, and here we are talking about peaceful not armed action during the transition to Soviet power. Well, he explained, we are currently in a transitional period in which Milyukov and Guchkov have not yet resorted to violence: and we need, therefore, to make prolonged and patient class propaganda. If we were to speak of civil war now, we would not be Marxists but Blanquists. Our policy is bound, in the immediate future, to lead to the unmasking of the bourgeois government, and especially its Menshevik accomplices (evidently at that time Lenin did not insist on this in public statements). But in Lenin’s construction the future phase of civil war is a precisely defined certainty. The Bolsheviks would discuss it at length in the months that followed, putting a brake on action again in July, and being subjected to persecutions and provocation as a result. Finally in October they would accept the challenge.

Trotski put it well when he said the party needed time to rearm, so that militants and the advanced part of the masses could get their bearings; only after that, when history had signaled the right moment, would it give battle, and win.

This powerful ensemble of decisions emerged from Lenin’s contributions to the work program, which had been prepared against the background of the previous not very good one. Having got on to the point about unification with the social-democratic internationalists (by which Kamenev and Stalin meant, in March, bringing back almost all the Mensheviks), the conference, following Lenin’s line, condemned any agreement with the Russian and foreign social democrats or with any opportunism whatsoever and formulated the watchword of the Communist International.

We have thus expanded at length on the tasks that Lenin stated had to be carried out as regards the political situation at this crucial turning point, and also as regards the agrarian question. Meriting further attention is the question of the nationalities; a very serious one under the empire of the tsar, which was defined as a mosaic of a hundred peoples.

The next (fifth) congress at the end of July would signal the passage from the phase of peaceful struggle to the new armed insurrection: but the historical and theoretical line will be the clear elaborations of the April conference; and among the 32 people who formed the October Committee, the same names would appear as on April 14. Stalin was called for the first time to the central committee: Trotski was still absent and not part of the Bolshevik organization. According to Trotski, Lenin and Stalin apart, out of all those elected to this Central Committee only Sverdlov died of natural causes, and all the others were subsequently executed or unofficially suppressed.

It is maybe at the April conference that the cardinal points of the Russian Revolution shone through with their greatest intensity: the break with the semi anti-tsarist bourgeoisie, the break with the social opportunists, the break with the war, the linking up with the revolutionary movement and the struggle for the State of the proletarian dictatorship, in all countries.

Points formidably advanced, right from the opening statement in which Lenin states that we are not at the historical turning point of socialist transformation in Russia alone.