Part 1 (1/2)

The History of the Russian Revolution.

Leon Trotsky.

Volume One.

PREFACE.

During the .rst two months of 1917 Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little know to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not .nd another such sharp turn in history especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study.

The history of a revolution, like every other history, ought .rst of all to tell what hap-pened and how. That, however, is little enough. From the very telling it ought to become clear why it happened thus and not otherwise. Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures, nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws. The discovery of these laws is the author's task.

The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the ma.s.ses in historical events. In ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business -kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the ma.s.ses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new rgime. Whether this is good or bad we leave to the judgement of moralists. We ourselves will take the facts as they are given by the objective course of development. The history of a revolution is for us .rst of all a history of the forcible entrance of the ma.s.ses into the realm of rulers.h.i.+p over their own destiny.

In a society that is seized by revolution cla.s.ses are in con.ict. It is perfectly clear, however, that the changes introduced between the beginning and the end of a revolution in the economic bases of the society and its social substratum of cla.s.ses, are not suf.cient to explain the course of the revolution itself, which can overthrow in a short interval age-old inst.i.tutions, create new ones, and again overthrow them. The dynamic of revolutionary events is directly determined by swift, intense and pa.s.sionate changes in the psychology of ii cla.s.ses which have already formed themselves before the revolution.

The point is that society does not change its inst.i.tutions as need arises, the way a me-chanic changes his instruments. On the contrary, society actually takes the inst.i.tutions which hang upon it as given once for all. For decades the oppositional criticism is nothing more than a safety valve for ma.s.s dissatisfaction, a condition of the stability of the social structure. Such in principle, for example, was the signi.cance acquired by the social-democratic criticism. Entirely exceptional conditions, independent of the will of persons and parties, are necessary in order to tear off from discontent the fetters of conservatism, and bring the ma.s.ses to insurrection.

The swift changes of ma.s.s views and moods in an epoch of revolution thus derive, not from the .exibility and mobility of man's mind, but just the opposite, from its deep conservatism. The chronic lag of ideas and relations behind new objective conditions, right up to the moment when the latter crash over people in the form of a catastrophe, is what creates in a period of revolution that leaping movement of ideas and pa.s.sions which seems to the police mind a mere result of the activities of ”demagogues.”

The ma.s.ses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old rgime. Only the guiding layers of a cla.s.s have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events, and the approval of the ma.s.ses. The fundamental political process of the revolution thus consists in the gradual comprehension by a cla.s.s of the problems arising from the social crisis the active orientation of the ma.s.ses by a method of successive approximations. The different stages of a revolutionary process, certi.ed by a change of parties in which the more extreme always supersedes the less, express the growing pressure to the left of the ma.s.ses so long as the swing of the movement does not run into objective obstacles. When it does, there begins a reaction: disappointments of the different layers of the revolutionary cla.s.s, growth of indifferentism, and therewith a strengthening of the position of the counter-revolutionary forces. Such, at least, is the general outline of the old revolutions.

Only on the basis of a study of political processes in the ma.s.ses themselves, can we understand the role of parties and leaders, whom we least of all are inclined to ignore. They const.i.tute not an independent, but nevertheless a very important, element in the process. Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the ma.s.ses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam.

The dif.culties which stand in the way of studying the changes of ma.s.s consciousness in a revolutionary epoch are quite obvious. The oppressed cla.s.ses make history in the factories, in the barracks, in the villages, on the streets of the cities. Moreover, they are least of all accustomed to write things down. Periods of high tension in social pa.s.sions leave little room for contemplation and re.ection. All the muses even the plebeian muse of journalism, in spite of her st.u.r.dy hips have hard sledding in times of revolution. Still the historian's situation is by no means hopeless. The records are incomplete, scattered, accidental. But in the light of the events themselves these fragments often permit a guess as to the direction and rhythm of the hidden process. For better or worse, a revolutionary party bases its tactics upon a calculation of the changes of ma.s.s consciousness. The historic course of Bolshevism demonstrates that such a calculation, at least in its rough features, can be made. If it can be made by a revolutionary leader in the whirlpool of the struggle, why not by the historian afterwards?

However, the processes taking place in the consciousness of the ma.s.ses are not unrelated and independent. No matter how the idealists and the eclectics rage, consciousness is nevertheless determined by conditions. In the historic conditions which formed Russia, her economy, her cla.s.ses, her State, in the action upon her of other states, we ought to be able to .nd the premises both of the February revolution and of the October revolution which replaced it. Since the greatest enigma is the fact that a backward country was the .rst to place the proletariat in power, it behoves us to seek the solution of that enigma in the peculiarities of that backward country that is, in its differences from other countries.

The historic peculiarities of Russia and their relative weight will be characterised by us in the early chapters of this book which give a short outline of the development of Russian society and its inner forces. We venture to hope that the inevitable schematism of these chapters will not repel the reader. In the further development of the book he will meet these same forces in living action.

This work will not rely in any degree upon personal recollections. The circ.u.mstance that the author was a partic.i.p.ant in the events does not free him from the obligation to base his exposition upon historically veri.ed doc.u.ments. The author speaks of himself, in so far as that is demanded by the course of events, in the third person. And that is not a mere literary form: the subjective tone, inevitable in autobiographies or memoirs, is not permissible in a work of history.

However, the fact that the author did partic.i.p.ate in the struggle naturally makes easier his understanding, not only of the psychology of the forces in action, both individual and collective, but also of the inner connection of events. This advantage will give positive results only if one condition is observed: that he does not rely upon the testimony of his own memory either in trivial details or in important matters, either in questions of fact or questions of motive and mood. The author believes that in so far as in him lies he has ful.lled this condition.

There remains the question of the political position of the author, who stands as a his-torian upon the same viewpoint upon which he stood as a partic.i.p.ant in the events. The reader, of course, is not obliged to share the political views of the author, which the latter on his side has no reason to conceal. But the reader does have the right to demand that a his-torical work should not be the defence of a political position, but an internally well-founded portrayal of the actual process of the revolution. A historical work only then completely ful.ls the mission when events unfold upon its pages in their full natural necessity.

For this, is it necessary to have the so-called historian's ”impartiality”? n.o.body has yet clearly explained what this impartiality consists of. The often quoted words of Clmenceau that it is necessary to take a revolution ”en bloc,” as a whole are at the best a clever evasion. How can you take as a whole a thing whose essence consists in a split? Clmenceaus apho-rism was dictated partly by shame for his too resolute ancestors, partly by embarra.s.sment before their shades.

One of the reactionary and therefore fas.h.i.+onable historians in contemporary France, L. Madelin, slandering in his drawing-room fas.h.i.+on the great revolution that is, the birth of his own nation a.s.serts that ”the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, and behold at the same time the besiegers and the besieged”: only in this way, it seems, can he achieve a ”conciliatory justice.” However, the words of Madelin himself testify that if he climbs out on the wall dividing the two camps, it is only in the character of a reconnoiterer for the reaction. It is well that he is concerned only with war camps of the past: in a time of revolution standing on the wall involves great danger. Moreover, in times of alarm the priests of ”conciliatory justice” are usually found sitting on the inside of four walls waiting to see which side will win.

The serious and critical reader will not want a treacherous impartiality, which offers him a cup of conciliation with a well-settled poison of reactionary hate at the bottom, but a sci-enti.c conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies open and undisguised seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their movement. That is the only possible historic objec-tivism, and moreover it is amply suf.cient, for it is veri.ed and attested not by the good intentions of the historian, for which only he himself can vouch, but the natural laws re-vealed by him of the historic process itself.

The sources of this book are innumerable periodical publications, newspapers and jour-nals, memoirs, reports, and other material, partly in ma.n.u.script, but the greater part pub-lished by the Inst.i.tute of the History of the Revolution in Moscow and Leningrad. We have considered its super.uous to make reference in the text to particular publications, since that would only bother the reader. Among the books which have the character of collec-tive historical works we have particularly used the two-volume Essays on the History of the October Revolution (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927). Written by different authors, the var-ious parts of this book are unequal in value, but they contain at any rate abundant factual material.

The dates in our book are everywhere indicated according to the old style that is, they are 13 days behind the international and the present Soviet calendar. The author felt obliged to use the calendar which was in use at the time of the revolution. It would have been no labour of course to translate the dates into the new style. But this operation in removing one dif.culty would have created others more essential. The overthrow of the monarchy has gone into history as the February revolution; according to the Western calendar, how-ever, it occurred in March. The armed demonstration against the imperialist policy of the Provisional Government has gone into history under the name of the ”April Days,” whereas according to the Western calendar it happened in May. Not to mention other intervening events and dates, we remark only that the October revolution happened according to Euro-pean reckoning in November. The calendar itself, we see, is tinted by the events, and the historian cannot handle revolutionary chronology by mere arithmetic. The reader will be kind enough to remember that before overthrowing the Byzantine calendar, the revolution had to overthrow the inst.i.tutions that clung to it.

L. TROTSKY.

Prinkipo November 14, 1930.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE FOR VOLUME.

ONE.

1774.

Pugatchev Rebellion of Cossacks and peasants.

1825.

Dekabrist (Decembrist) uprising against czarism led by liberal of.cers.

1848.

The Communist Manifesto published by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The foun-dation of revolutionary socialism or communism 1861.

Peasant Reform; abolition of serfdom in Russia.

1864.

”The International” (.rst international organisation of socialist workers) established by Marx and others.

1871.

The Paris Commune.

1882.

Plekhanov publishes .rst pamphlet introducing Marxian socialism into Russia.

1905.

The Revolution of 1905 in Russia. First organisation of soviets by Russian workers.

(January 9) ”b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday”: workers led by Father Gapon and carrying a pet.i.tion to the czar [Nicholas II], are mowed down by the czar's troops.

vii 1914.

(August 1) World War begins. Germany declares war against Russia.

(November 4) Bolshevik deputies in the State Duma arrested and sent to Siberia 1915.