1917

A brief note by Lenin on Blancism, written in early 1917.

A brief note by Lenin on his April Theses.

(1) Economic debacle is imminent. Therefore removal of the bourgeoisie is a mistake.

(This is the conclusion of the bourgeoisie. The more imminent the debacle, the more essential is it that the bourgeoisie be removed.)

(2) Proletariat is unorganised, weak, lacking class-consciousness.

Capitalist newspapers like Rech and Novoye Vremya have published articles attacking our passage through Germany and insinuating that the new arrivals were aiding the German imperialists. Izvestia of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies reprints in full the report published in yesterday’s Pravda which was presented to the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies on the very first day after our arrival. In addition to the report, Izvestia publishes the resolution of the Executive Committee, which it gives in the following words:

First published in Russian in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany II. Published in Volksrecht No. 81, April 18 (5), 1917. Signed: N. Lenin.

This article was a report to the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet made by Lenin the day after his arrival in Petrograd on April 17 (4), 1917, on behalf of the emigrants who returned from Switzerland together with him.

The question of chief interest, now, to the governments and the peoples of the world is, What will be the influence of the Russian Revolution on the War? Will it bring peace nearer? Or will the revolutionary enthusiasm of the people swing towards a more vigorous prosecution of the war?

This letter was written in mid-March as Lenin was preparing to travel to Russia. In it he appealed to Russian war prisoners in Germany and Austria to return to Russia in order to support the revolution agasint the ruling classes.

Lenin’s two-and-a-half-hour lecture consisted of two parts. In the first, Lenin surveyed the historical conditions which could, and did, produce such a “miracle” as the collapse of the tsarist monarchy in a matter of eight days. The most important of these was the “great rebellion” of 1905–07, so vilely denounced by the Guchkovs and Milyukovs, the present masters of the situation, who are moved to admiration by the “glorious revolution” of 1917. But had the really profound Revolution of 1905 not “ploughed up the ground”, had it not exposed to view all the parties and classes in action, had it not exposed the tsarist clique in all its barbarism and savagery, the swift victory of 1917 would not have been possible.

On 21 March 1917 (3 April according to the new calendar), the first of Lenin's Letters from afar was published in Pravda, which was at that time edited by Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev. In these letters Lenin outlined the main characteristics of the Russian revolution and laid the basis for the political reorientation of the Bolshevik party. This was the political basis for the coming to power of the Bolsheviks only 7 months later.

Comrade workers,

The prediction of the socialists who have remained faithful to socialism and have not succumbed to the savage and beastly war hysteria has proved correct. The first revolution, caused by the world-wide predatory war among the capitalists of various countries, has broken out. The imperialist war, that is, a war for the capitalist division of spoils, for the strangling of weak nations, has begun to turn into civil war, that is, a war of the workers against the capitalists, of the toilers and the oppressed against their oppressors, against tsars and kings, landowners and capitalists, a war for mankind’s complete liberation from wars, from poverty of the masses, from oppression of man by man!