The Russian revolution of 1917 shook the world. For the first time in history, the oppressed and exploited majority wrested power from the parasitic minority and held it.
But that was only the beginning. In power, the workers and peasants not only had to sweep away the old world of landlords and capitalists, but begin constructing a new socialist order in its place. Exhausted and shattered by four years of imperialist slaughter, peasant Russia hardly presented ideal conditions for doing that. At the same time, internally and externally, all the capitalist bandits of the world were ranging against it, preparing to seize back what they had lost.
How was socialism to be built amidst famine, illiteracy, and the chaos of impending civil war? How, with a shattered and exhausted army, could the workers' state survive the intrigues of the counter-revolutionaries? And how, most importantly, was it to cling on until the workers of the world could come to their aid?
It was to these problems that Lenin turned his attention in The Immediate tasks of the Soviet government.
Brest-Litovsk
With a gun to their head, the Bolsheviks were forced to cede 40 percent of Russia’s industrial capacity / Image: public domain
In March 1918, the newborn workers' state finally pulled itself out of the First World War. But peace came at a great price.
Inside the Bolshevik party, Lenin waged a sharp struggle against the ‘Left Communists’ who demanded that the soviet power should immediately launch itself into a revolutionary war against German Imperialism. He saw that the army was on the brink of collapse and that, given the ruined state of the country, they had no other choice but to retreat: to ‘lose space in order to gain time’.
With a gun to their head, the Bolsheviks were forced to cede 40 percent of Russia’s industrial capacity, 45 percent of its fuel resources, 70 percent of its metal industry and 55 percent of its agricultural production.
In spite of the bloody payment exacted, the enormous pressure on the workers' state temporarily eased.
Catastrophe
The challenges facing the ‘Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic’ (RSFSR), as it was then known, were immense. Capitalism had not broken down where it was strongest and most developed but at its weakest link. Russia was enormously rich in raw materials but, outside little oases of industrialisation in the cities, the rest of the country was composed of a scattered network of peasant proprietors who made up 82 percent of the population. Linking these together were only 0.4 km of railway track for every 100 sq. km of land.
These meagre resources had been strained to the verge of collapse by the catastrophe into which the ruling class had plunged the country. Inflation, hunger, the breakdown of the rail network, the disintegration of the army: all the accumulated crises which had laid the basis for the revolution still awaited solution. To aggravate all of these problems, the bourgeoisie and their hangers on were using any means necessary to undermine and paralyse the workers state. For example, when Trotsky attempted to enter the ministry of foreign affairs, the civil service locked themselves in, resigned when the locks were forced, and allowed the foreign minister to escape with the secret treaties.
In the long run, only revolution in the West could break the Soviet Republic’s isolation. But the revolutions which would topple the Austro-Hungarian and German dynasties had not yet matured.
Up against the wall, the Bolsheviks in power had to begin reconstruction, digging in in preparation for the rising of the world revolution.
Immediate tasks
In The Immediate tasks of the Soviet Government, written in April 1918, Lenin lays out how to best use the fleeting breathing space won with the Brest peace to address the numerous crises facing the beleaguered and embattled workers’ state.
For the first few months of the revolution, the uprising swept all before it. On their own initiative, the peasants seized the land, the workers took control of the factories, and the red guards crushed the demoralised resistance put up by Kerensky and Kaledin. The bourgeoisie had been disarmed and power and production was in the grip of the toilers.
But, as Lenin explains, with the exploiters beaten back, the workers were faced with the infinitely more difficult spadework of organising their conquests and laying the foundation for a new society. Aside from the brief experiment of the Paris commune, this was pioneering work. In the bourgeois revolutions of the past, the masses participated only in breaking down the feudal barriers in the way of the spontaneous and anarchic development of capitalism. In the socialist revolution, however, as Lenin wrote:
“[T]he principal task of the proletariat, and of the poor peasants which it leads, is the positive or constructive work of setting up an extremely intricate and delicate system of new organisational relationships extending to the planned production and distribution of the goods required for the existence of tens of millions of people."
Anarchy vs. discipline
A new discipline was necessary; not the discipline imposed from above by a minority of slave owners through their police, but the revolutionary, class discipline of the majority / Image: public domain
The first step towards this was administration. Before the soviets could begin to plan society, they needed to restore the systems of control, accounting, communication and transport which had entirely broken down as a result of the war and revolution.
Trotsky describes the prevailing disorganisation in The internal and external tasks of the Soviet power:
“There is unemployment and hunger in the country because not everything is where it ought to be. There are factories which are manufacturing things we have no need of and also, contrariwise, factories which are manufacturing necessities but which lack the materials required, these being elsewhere. In the Republic there are masses of unemployed, hungry and ill-clothed people while at the same time we are discovering in the quartermasters’ stores huge supplies of cloth, canvas and soldiers’ clothing. Sometimes immense stocks of food come to light which we knew nothing of.”
This chaos was exacerbated by the revolution itself, which liquidated the discipline of the old order. Theft, embezzlement, drunkenness, and even banditry were encouraged by the deposed capitalists and landlords.
A new discipline was necessary; not the discipline imposed from above by a minority of slave owners through their police, but the revolutionary, class discipline of the majority, taking responsibility for the efficient organisation of society through the framework of the soviets.
As Lenin wrote:
“Every factory, every village is a producers’ and consumers’ commune, whose right and duty it is to apply the general Soviet laws in their own way and in their own way to solve the problem of accounting in the production and distribution of goods. Under capitalism, this was the ‘private affair’ of the individual capitalist, landowner or kulak. Under the Soviet system, it is not a private affair, but a most important affair of state.”
In simple terms, this meant slogans like, “Keep regular and honest accounts of money, manage economically, do not be lazy, do not steal, observe the strictest labour discipline”.
Up to this point, it had been enough to check the counter-revolution by appealing to the initiative of the masses from below. But the new problems posed before Soviet Russia required something else: strict, centralised discipline. To resolve the burning problems like the shattered railways, for instance, Lenin advocated one man management by representatives, appointed by the soviets, who could carry out its will with strict discipline.
As Lenin summarised: “We must learn to combine the “public meeting” democracy of the working people—turbulent, surging, overflowing its banks like a spring flood—with iron discipline, with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the Soviet leader, while at work.”
All this meant forging a new revolutionary order out of the chaos: settling down from the carnival of the first months of the revolution, pulling together under the authority of the elected soviet leadership, and commencing the immense task of economic restoration.
Learning to lead
Whereas the bourgeoisie has had centuries to master the art of ruling, the organs of the revolutionary masses, the soviets, had held power for just half a year and were made up of classes purposely held in slavery and ignorance. They did not yet know how to run society for themselves.
Lenin gave an illuminating example of this in a speech to the All-Russian Soviet Executive Committee. Recalling a conversation with a worker, he asked:
“You would like your factory to be confiscated? Very well, we have blank forms for a decree ready… But tell us: have you learned how to take over production and have you calculated what you will produce? Do you know the connection between what you are producing and the Russian and international market? Whereupon it turns out that they have not learnt this yet.”
This required months, even years of patient education and practical experience. This could only be learnt by making use of the old specialists and managers employed by the capitalists. Revolutionary will in and of itself was not enough. The elected workers councils urgently required technical knowledge: agronomists, engineers, and in the army, experienced officers.
Immediate Tasks is a testament to Lenin’s sober-minded approach to the tactics of socialist revolution in power / Image: public domain
Overwhelmingly, these experts were, owing to their class position, sympathetic to the old regime. Many of them had been sabouteurs. But, as Lenin wrote, “[we must] make use of the bourgeois specialists for the purpose of replowing the soil so that no bourgeoisie can grow on it.”
Under the direct political control of the soviets, the skills of these technicians could be set to work in the interests of the majority. Simultaneously, their know-how could be used to train up the workers themselves.
In order to do this, however, these specialists demanded high pay. This was, of course, a retreat from the principles of equality on which the revolutionaries had based themselves. But this was necessary, and made up one in a series of compromises forced upon the early workers’ regime by its isolation and devastation.
Towards socialism
Immediate Tasks is a testament to Lenin’s sober-minded approach to the tactics of socialist revolution in power.
Against the romantic flights of fancy of his ‘left wing’ critics, he understood that it was not so simple as burning everything to the ground and waking up to communism the next day. Though the workers had seized control in one country, the capitalist class had certainly not been defeated. The class struggle continued: on an international scale, and inside Russia, where the deposed rulers fought with the vigour of despair.
With unswerving hard work, the Russian workers could begin the socialist construction, but they could only do so with the bricks inherited from the old system. The task was to preserve the workers' state from the claws of capitalist restoration, until they could muster their forces in assisting the next, mighty surge of the world proletarian revolution, which was then gestating in Germany.
As Lenin explained in July 1918:
“When we came to power, our task… was to retain that power, that torch of socialism, so that it might scatter as many sparks as possible to add to the growing flames of socialist revolution.”