Lessons of the Revolution

An important article written by Lenin to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1905. It was written on October 30, 1910 and was published in the Rabochaya Gazeta issue No. 1, on the same date. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 19 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

Although Russia could not complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution it had entered the stage of imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th century, it preserved the remnants of feudal serfdom under the private ownership of large landowners and the regime of Tsarist dictatorship, and the country was to host to numerous sharp social and class contradictions.

The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 had destroyed the country’s economy, deepened the misery of the people, and intensified the already sharp contradictions. As a result, the first bourgeois-democratic revolution led by the proletariat broke out in Russia in 1905 and dealt a heavy blow to the Tsarist dictatorship. The revolution lasted until 1907 but was suppressed and ended in failure. Lenin argued that the revolution had taught the Russian people great lessons of history. On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the first bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905, it was important to try to clarify these lessons. To this end, he wrote this commemorative article. Lenin clarified the historical significance of the 1905 revolution as the first blow dealt by the proletariat to the Tsarist dictatorship and the first glimpse of freedom for the Russian people. It taught the people many lessons and taught them to use common struggles to achieve their political demands. It was a training in struggles for them. Lenin summed up three main lessons of the Revolution: (1) The first and main lesson is that only the revolutionary struggle of the masses can bring about worth-while improvements in the lives of the workers and in the administration of the state. No “sympathy” for the workers on the part of educated people, no struggle of lone terrorists, however heroic, could do anything to undermine the tsarist autocracy and the omnipotence of the capitalists. This could be achieved only by the struggle of the workers themselves, only by the combined struggle of millions. (2) It is not enough to undermine and restrict the power of the tsar. It must be destroyed. Until the tsarist regime is destroyed concessions won from the tsar will never be lasting. The tsar made concessions when the tide of the revolutionary offensive was rising. When it ebbed, he took them all back. Only the Winning of a democratic republic, the overthrow of the tsarist regime, the passage of power into the hands of the people, can deliver Russia from the violence, and tyranny of officialdom. (3) This lesson consists in our having seen how the various classes of the Russian people act. Prior to 1905 many thought that the whole people aspired to freedom in the same way and wanted the same freedom; at least the great majority had no clear understanding of the fact that the different classes of the Russian people had different views on the struggle for freedom and were not striving for the same freedom. The revolution dispelled the mist. At the end of 1905, then later during the First and Second Dumas, all classes of Russian society came out openly. The factory workers, the industrial proletariat, waged a most resolute and strenuous struggle against the autocracy. In combat with its enemy the worker becomes a socialist, comes to realize the necessity of a complete reconstruction of the whole of society, the complete abolition of all poverty and all oppression. The peasants too during the revolution went into action against the landlords and against the government, but their struggle was much weaker. The peasants fought less persistently, more disconnectedly, with less political understanding, they have nowhere to seek salvation except in an alliance with the urban workers for joint struggle. The bourgeois liberals too took part in the revolution, i.e., the liberal landlords, industrialists, lawyers, professors, etc. They constitute the party of “people’s freedom” (the Constitutional-Democrats or Cadets). They promised the people a whole lot of things and made a lot of noise about freedom in their newspapers. They held out a promise of gaining freedom by “peaceful means”, they condemned the revolutionary struggle of the workers and peasants. When the revolution came to the point of a pitched battle with the Tsar, i.e., the 1905 December uprising, the liberals in a body basely betrayed the freedom of the people and recoiled from the struggle. The tsarist autocracy took advantage of this betrayal of the people’s freedom by the liberals, took advantage of the ignorance of the peasants, who to a large extent argued the liberals, and defeated the insurgent workers. There will be no freedom in Russia as long as the broad masses of the people believe in the liberals, believe in the possibility of “peace” with the tsarist regime and stand aloof from the revolutionary struggle of the workers. No power on earth can hold back the advent of freedom in Russia when the mass of the urban proletariat rises in struggle, brushes aside the wavering and treacherous liberals, and enlists under its banner the rural laborers and impoverished peasantry. Lenin argued that in the present society, where the tsarist dictatorship and the serfs had regrouped and returned, the people had suffered more brutal destruction, but the Russian people were not the same as before 1905. He was convinced that the Russian proletariat would rise up in the struggle against the tsarist dictatorship and would come back to lead the people in the revolution and lead them to victory, as guaranteed by the entire economic situation in Russia and the entire experience of the revolutionary years.