socialism, Russian

From the mid-19th century the ideas of socialism, such as the establishment of a classless society and public ownership, began to influence early Russian radicals. Their work inspired the Russian revolutionary Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders who eventually seized power in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Lenin's modification of traditional Marxist and Russian socialist doctrine to fit conditions prevailing in Russia became known as Marxism-Leninism, the basis of communist ideology.

Socialism in the 1860s In 1864 the radical publicist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevski published Chto delat'?/What Is to Be Done?, a political treatise that sidestepped the censorship of the day by hiding its revolutionary message in the form of a novel. Chernyshevski's ideas encouraged a generation of socialists to believe that cooperative work and radical action could force the tsarist government to introduce socialist ideas to Russia. In 1866 Dimitrij Karakozov, a member of a terrorist group led by Ishutin, attempted to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. Both Ishutin and Karakozov were arrested and executed for their actions.

Although Russian socialists in the 1860s were intellectually and sometimes physically active, their potential for revolutionary success or impact on tsarist government policy was minimal. However, their impact on the actions of future socialists and Marxists such as Lenin was enormous. Chernyshevski's work remained influential up to the 20th century, and was read by Lenin following the execution of his brother Aleksandr after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881.

Socialist activity 1870-90 Socialism in the 1870s and 1880s was more widespread, but had little long-term impact. The main activity was khozhdenie v narod, or ‘going to the people’, a means of spreading socialist ideology advocated by the Russian radical leader Petr Lavrov in his Historical Letters (1868-69). His aim was to spark rapid revolution and his work encouraged thousands of young socialists to live in peasant villages in order to get closer to the ordinary people and convert them to socialist ideas. In the short term this Populist movement failed to encourage revolution, with many of the socialists either being ignored by the peasants or arrested by the authorities. However, many were accepted and managed to persuade the peasants into expecting improvements to their lives, even if they remained loyal to tsarist rule.

Growing out of the ‘going to the people’ movement came an attempt to form a central body to coordinate radical socialist action, and in 1876 Zemlia I volia (‘Land and Freedom’) was set up in St Petersburg. Although still unable to instigate a revolution, even in a large industrial city such as St Petersburg where support for the socialists was stronger than in the rural areas, Zemlia I volia reflected the increasingly organized and unified socialism that existed in Russia by the 1870s. Centralization and strong organization were to prove crucial to the success of the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his fellow activists learned their importance, as well as other tactics of revolution, through their experience of socialism in the 1860s and 1870s.

By 1878, however, Zemlia I volia had grown despairing of reform. It changed its name to Narodnaia Voli, the ‘people's will’, and become a terrorist group aiming to overthrow the tsarist regime by assassination and disruption. The group, which was also known as the Nihilists, murdered numerous government officials between 1879 and 1881. Its campaign of violence signified a shift in the tactics of Russian socialists from the peaceful propaganda and campaigning of previous decades. In 1881 the Nihilists assassinated Alexander II in St Petersburg but failed to inspire a revolution, and within a few years the group was destroyed by concerted police and government action. Socialism lost ground in Russia in the 1880s as Alexander III took ever greater measures to suppress it.

Rebirth of Russian socialism The 1890s saw the reorganization of Russian socialists into a united group, the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries; the organization changed its name to the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRP) in 1901. Terrorists within the SRP were channelled into a ‘Fighting Detachment’, and given freedom to carry out assassinations of leading figures in the tsarist state as well as ordinary officials. The leaders of the SRP worked through a central committee to promote more peaceful political protest. Despite their success up to and including 1905, the SRP were almost destroyed after 1908 because of the success of the police and government in infiltrating the organization - even the leader of the Fighting Department, Evno Azef, came under their control.

Advent of Marxism At the same time as the Nihilists were being destroyed by the police and government in the early 1880s, a fundamental split in Russian socialism was occurring. The radical theorist Georgii Plekhanov had left Russia to go to Switzerland in self-imposed exile, where he became heavily influenced by the writings of Karl Marx and the theories of Marxism. Using Marxist ideas Plekhanov analysed the problems of the socialist movement in Russia, and concluded that Russian socialists were failing to recognize the need to organize the workers as the engine of socialist revolution. He believed that attempts to work with the peasants were doomed to fail as, according to Marxist theory, the peasants in their villages or communes were unsuited to a socialist revolution, and their social and economic structures would have to be dismantled. Plekhanov attacked the SRP and other socialist groups as narodniki, or ‘populists’, and inspired a new breed of Marxist revolutionaries to overthrow the tsarist regime with the support of the workers.

Lenin, the future Bolshevik and Soviet leader, was quick to adopt and spread the ideas of Plekhanov. He had read Marx's Das Kapital/Capital (1867-95), and used it to define his belief in the historical inevitability of a socialist revolution in Russia. Although there appears to be some contradiction between the ideas of Chernyshevski and those of Marx, Lenin was able to see that the shadowy group of professional revolutionaries lurking in the background of Chernyshevski's Chto delat'?/What Is to Be Done? could be taken to be the leaders of the proletarian revolution predicted by Marx. Indeed Chernyshevski had himself respected Marx's ideas and worked to spread them in Russia. In 1902 Lenin wrote the pamphlet What is to be done? in which he argued the need for a dedicated band of professional activists to govern party organization and spearhead the coming revolution. One of his assertions in the pamphlet was that ‘the organization must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolutionary activities as a profession’.

The Bolsheviks By 1901 two separate large scale socialist parties existed in Russia: the Social Democratic Workers' Party set up in 1898, a radical socialist or Marxist movement whose members included Lenin; and the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the Populist movement established in 1901. However, in 1903 a split occurred in the Marxist movement that was to last until 1917. Lenin pursued his idea of a cell of professional revolutionaries running the Social Democratic Workers' Party for the benefit of the general masses to the point where he split the party. He insisted that to be a full member individuals must engage in ‘participation’ in the party, while others argued for membership to be based on ‘assistance’. Although Lenin lost the vote over this issue, he managed to gain control of the party after his opponents left the congress over an unrelated matter. Lenin took the opportunity to name his new group the Bolsheviks, or ‘majority’, while his opponents, led by Plekhanov, became known as the Mensheviks, or ‘minority’. Lenin now had control over a major political force in Russia, and was able to put in place the structures that suited his ideological beliefs. In these he was influenced by the ideas and work of Russian socialists in the previous 50 years.

Despite success within his own party Lenin did not manage to make the Bolsheviks the main socialist party in Russia before 1917. The role of the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution, 1905 was minimal and the main socialist influence at this time was taken by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) boycotted the elections to the first Duma April-July 1906, but still managed to gain much influence over it as many independents followed their ideas. In the second Duma of February-June 1907 the socialists, dominated by the SRs, managed to gain 222 of the 478 seats. Although the electoral law was changed in 1907 to guarantee that the next two Dumas would be dominated by liberals and conservatives, the power of the socialists in Russia had been demonstrated during this unique exercise in democratic participation in Russia. The groups who had failed to make any significant impact before 1900 were by 1914 in an increasingly strong position to demand action and stage a revolution.