Lenin: From war to revolution

For Lenin, this was an imperialist war: the rich capitalists were fighting each other for greater shares of the world’s wealth. And were forcing workers to do the fighting for them. Lenin said: “Picture to yourselves a slaveowner who has owned 100 slaves warring against a slaveowner who owned 200 slaves for a more ‘just’ distribution of slaves.”

The workers of Britain, France, Russia and Germany should not take sides with their ‘own’ capitalists, but should unite against the imperialist war. They should turn it from a capitalist war for profit into a war of all the workers against the capitalists. Lenin raised his famous slogans: “The main enemy is at home.” “Turn the imperialist war into a civil war.”

But the French socialists, the British Labour Party, the Russian Mensheviks, all backed the war in the name of loyalty to “their own fatherland”. Even amongst the tiny number of anti-war Socialists, few supported Lenin’s slogans. At best they called for an immediate democratic peace, thinking that the idea of turning war into a civil war against the capitalists was extreme.

Even the great German socialists – the most important and respected socialist party in the world at the time – supported this imperialist war. The German Socialist Party had been cruel to the Socialist (Second) International, which was committed on paper to ‘use the economic and political crisis created by war to rouse the masses and hasten the downfall of capitalist rule’. But now they betrayed their principles and the whole idea of workers’ internationalism.

Only one socialist party stood out against the war from the start: the Russian Bolsheviks. In the first months of war there is always a strong mood of patriotism and nationalism. But when thousands of families are shattered, when their sons are being sent home in body bags, when the costs of war are being felt in long bread queues and even longer hours of work? the mood begins to change.

The flag waving and enthusiasm for the war evaporated in Russia. Unrest simmered in factories, on the land and in the army itself. By February 1917 it burst into the open, dragging down the Russian monarchy for good.

The February Revolution began with thousands of women workers in the textile factories walking out on strike, demanding bread. They sent flying pickets to the massive metal factories, calling their brothers out in support. The call for bread was soon drowned out by a cry for an end to the war. The army raised their guns against the crowds, but many soldiers wavered under the pressure of the masses. Unable to depend on the army to protect him, the Tsar resigned.

A new provisional government was set up, composed of capitalist ministers who were joined by representatives of the moderate socialists (Mensheviks). But this was not the only power in the land. The workers set up soviets: councils of delegates from the factories and the barracks. These bodies were more democratic than any parliament. The workers’ and soldiers’ delegates could be recalled at any time, and so closely reflected the needs of the mass of people.

Lenin rushed back to Russia from Switzerland. A delegation of moderate socialists met him at the railway station expecting him to back the new government. He brushed them aside with contempt. To their astonishment he made a fiery speech declaring that the revolution was not over, denouncing the government, demanding that they end the war immediately, and calling for the workers’ soviets to take power themselves.

Even longstanding Bolsheviks thought Lenin had finally gone mad. But he convinced the party to adopt his point of view. For it was clear: workers and soldiers were losing confidence in the Provisional Government – it refused to hand the land to the peasants, the factories to the workers, and refused to pull Russia out of the war. The workers of one factory proclaimed that “the only power in the country must be the soviets of workers’, soldiers’ and peasant deputies, which we will defend with our lives.’

By June the Bolsheviks slogan “All power to the soviets” was eagerly taken up by tens of thousands of demonstrating workers. But the majority still trusted the Government.

A failed uprising took place in July against the advice of Lenin and Bolshevik leaders, who warned that the masses were not yet ready to support the soviets taking power. The Bolsheviks were once again driven underground. The royalists were not happy either. An extreme right wing plot emerged from within the army, who marched under Kornilov in an attempt to overthrow the Provisional Government and put the tsar back on the throne.

The government panicked and hesitated, because the capitalists were far from hostile to the idea of a military coup. But the Bolsheviks didn’t hesitate. They came out of hiding and fought Kornilov arms in hand, calling on the workers and their soviets to boycott all Kornilov’s troop movements and stop him using the railways and the telegraphs. The coup plot collapsed. The Bolsheviks’ whole approach to the right-wing coup had been a brilliant success.

The Bolsheviks hated the Provisional Government, but they fought alongside the workers and peasants who still supported the Provisional Government, to stop General Kornilov from overthrowing it. This policy – the united front – was crucial to the Bolsheviks’ eventual victory, and was a fundamental part of Lenin’s politics. They fought hand in hand with the government supporters, in order to gain the trust of the mass of workers and peasants, and lead them to a new revolution that would overthrow the capitalists altogether.

Finally, the majority of soviet delegates across Russia were convinced of the need to take power themselves. On 24 and 25 October, under the leadership of Bolsheviks like Leon Trotsky, armed workers loyal to the soviets took over the railway stations, food stores, telephone exchanges, post offices and power stations.

The insurrection was swift and decisive with surprisingly little bloodshed. At a Congress of Russian soviets the next day the revolution was greeted with wild enthusiasm. Lenin took the platform and declared simply: “We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.” The new Soviet Government gave land to the peasants, brought in workers’ control of the factories, took away the private property of the rich and brought in new laws to help free women, lesbians, gays and oppressed nationalities.

It was run entirely as a working class democracy – nothing like the bureaucratic dictatorships that disgrace the name of socialism in countries like China, Serbia and North Korea today. The Bolsheviks did not set up a one-party state but governed jointly at first with another party (the “Left SR’s”). Other parties were banned only when they took up arms against the workers revolution.

Nor was Lenin a dictator, whose every word was obeyed. On the crucial question of signing an immediate peace treaty with Germany, Lenin was outvoted and remained in a minority until he eventually persuaded the party and Russian government to pull out of the war (in Treaty of Brest Litovsk in 1918).

When the armies of 14 different capitalist states invaded Russia and helped arm pro-Tsarist “White Armies”, the Soviet Republic fought back, organising a Red Army and finally crushing the Whites. The world’s first workers’ state had survived, but at an enormous cost. Russia was an isolated and backward country that had been devastated by years of war against those that fought to restore capitalism. Lenin recognised the need to make a painful but necessary retreat. His “New Economic Policy” involved a temporary encouragement of private capitalism in agriculture in order to repair the damage as quickly as possible and stop the peasants from sabotaging food production. But Lenin never believed this would be a way of creating socialism. He always realised it was a retreat that would have to be brought to an end.