CHAPTER 10
APRIL 1917: THE RETURN OF THE HERO
The return of Lenin on April 3 was a major event for all revolutionary Russia, but
especially for Bolsheviks. An advance guard of Party leaders met his train at the RussoFinnish border, and at 11 p.m. throngs of workers and soldiers cheered his arrival in
Petrograd. He spoke to the crowd at the Finland Station and again to the overflow outside,
then rode on an armored car "preceded by [a] searchlight and accompanied by [a] band,
flags, workers' detachments, army units, and an enormous crowd of 'private' people" to
Bolshevik headquarters. En route, "Lenin 'conducted a service' at practically every streetcrossing, making new speeches to continually changing audiences … The triumph had
1
come off brilliantly, and even quite symbolically." But one prominent Bolshevik in the
capital—and probably only one—was not there to welcome Lenin: Joseph Stalin.
2
It seems likely that, instead of going to welcome Lenin, Stalin elected to attend the
scheduled meeting with Menshevik leaders about the possibility of a united front on the
3
war issue. His choice suggests that he placed greater importance on trying to promote
unity among Social Democrats than on cheering Lenin. In view of the significance of Party
unity to Stalin, his past relations with Lenin and his negative appraisal of the man, his
choice scarcely seems surprising. But we should not read too much into Stalin's apparent
absence. For one thing, his receptivity to elements of Lenin's Letters From Afar suggests
at least open-mindedness about Lenin's ideas. We also do not know whether Stalin turned
up later that night at Bolshevik headquarters to see Lenin after the meeting with the
Mensheviks concluded. In short, we simply do not know enough about Stalin's
whereabouts on the night of April 3-4, nor do we have any direct evidence of what he
thought then about Lenin's return to Russian soil. Whatever the reason for his apparent
absence from the welcoming party, Stalin would soon enough have his chance to see what
the returning leader was like—and probably he was surprised by what he found.
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2
The Lenin who burst upon Petrograd during the night of April 3 was not the same
man whom years earlier Stalin had come to regard as an unprincipled opportunist.
Instead, he was a whirlwind of revolutionary energy. This was a militant Lenin, a bracing
and inspiring Lenin, probably more like the heroic "mountain eagle" of the young Stalin's
imagination than the "ordinary mortal" who had disappointed him so greatly at
Tammerfors. Within two weeks Lenin—remarkably—would win Stalin's confidence and
support. By late April the two men seemed to be marching side by side toward the
socialist revolution.
4
Lenin laid out his aggressive revolutionary vision—known as the April Theses—in
a long speech to a Bolshevik audience in the early hours of April 4. Later that day he
spoke again, at the Tauride Palace to an assembly of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
originally convened to discuss uniting Russian Social Democracy. A summary of the
Theses appeared in Pravda three days later. Some things that Lenin said were familiar,
some were new. All of it pelted down on his listeners like a torrent of lightning bolts.
Many Bolsheviks, let alone Mensheviks, were stunned, bewildered, and even outraged by
what they heard.
5
The war, Lenin stressed, was completely "a predatory imperialist war" and could
6
be ended "only by changing the class character of the government." Socialists who
supported the war were not socialists at all but traitors to the proletariat who corrupted the
International and besmirched the very name "Socialist." International socialism as
defined by the Zimmerwald and Kienthal Conferences "was the enemy of the international
7
proletariat." A new revolutionary International was needed, he insisted, and Bolsheviks
should change their party's name to "Communist" to set themselves apart. There could be
no support whatever for the Provisional Government, of course, and no tolerance for
"revolutionary defencism"—unless the proletariat in power should have to defend itself
against imperialist assaults. He had heard, he reported, "that in Russia there is a
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3
movement towards unity, unity with the defencists. This is a betrayal of Socialism. I think
8
that it is better to stand alone ."
Lenin repeated his familiar argument that the only way out of the war—and out of
economic disaster—was socialist revolution. Russia was already "passing from the first
[bourgeois-liberal] stage of the revolution … to its second stage, which must place power
in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasantry." The "Soviets of
Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government," insisted
Lenin, "a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Laborers' and Peasants' Deputies
throughout the country" should be established, and the police, army, and bureaucracy
abolished. The people would rule, and they could "overcome their mistakes by
experience." All landed estates should be confiscated and all land nationalized. Land
redistribution should be carried out by local peasant Soviets, and large model farms
should be established. All banks in the country should be amalgamated into a single
national bank. "Social production and distribution of products" should be brought "at
once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies," though Lenin asserted that "It
is not our immediate task to 'introduce' socialism."
The chief obstacle to achieving the socialist revolution in Russia was, in Lenin's
view, the hold that the defencists had on the masses. The "proletariat is unorganized,
weak [and] lacking in class consciousness," he lamented, and the "dull, unenlightened
masses" had been "duped" by "those petty-bourgeois leaders, the so-called SocialDemocrats—Chkheidze, Tsereteli, Steklov—who lull the masses, encourage them to put
their trust in the bourgeoisie.” These "stranglers of the revolution by honeyed phrases,"
as he called the Menshevik leaders of the Petrograd Soviet, "are dragging the revolution
9
back, away from the Soviets … toward the undivided sway of the bourgeoisie." To
combat their influence, Lenin called on Bolsheviks to present to the masses "a patient,
systematic and persistent explanation of the errors" of the Provisional Government and
the Petrograd Soviet and to "preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to
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4
the Soviets." As he had years before in What Is To Be Done? Lenin urged that “We must
talk to the people without using Latin words, but simply, intelligibly."
10
The "falsity" of all
the Provisional Government's promises about its war policies had to be exposed and the
masses disabused of their sincere but misguided belief in defencism. Within the army, the
"most widespread campaign" against the imperialist war should be conducted and
fraternization organized at the front to undermine the war effort. By patiently educating
and persuading the masses, rather than by violence, Lenin assured, the Bolsheviks would
gain popular support and become a majority.
There was substantial ambiguity in Lenin's April Theses. Some of this evidently
resulted from his backpedaling away from inflammatory early oratory to more diplomatic
statements in his later speeches and in his Pravda article of April 7 summarizing the
Theses.
11
Eyewitness N. N. Sukhanov noted this softening even during Lenin's speeches
on the evening of April 3. When Lenin observed that soldiers in his audiences were
angered by his repudiation of the defense effort, he began to change his tune, saying "We
never said we had to stick our bayonets into the ground when the enemy army was ready
for battle."
12
He softened his rhetoric a bit more at the all-Bolshevik caucus by referring to
the "undoubted honesty" of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism "who accept
the war only as a necessity." He also endorsed "revolutionary defencism" in the event that
"all power be transferred to the proletariat and its ally, the poorest section of the
13
peasantry."
Similarly he toned down his attacks on Menshevik leaders. In Pravda on
April 7, Lenin merely said that Chkheidze and associates had "yielded to the influence of
the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat."
14
This was a serious
political accusation, to be sure, but personal insults and name-calling had disappeared.
He also emphasized that his Pravda article was a statement of his personal views, thus
indicating that it did not reflect Party policy.
Perhaps most significant, Lenin seems to have backed away by degrees from his
assertion in the first Letter From Afar that his goal was a socialist revolution in Russia.
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5
His Pravda statement of the Theses denied any "immediate" aim of beginning to institute
socialism, and he offered but a very sketchy notion of the social and economic changes he
was proposing.
15
Even so, he was perceived by Mensheviks and also many Bolsheviks as
rashly and unacceptably pursuing the unMarxist notion that the capitalist stage was
already finished in Russia and expecting "the immediate transformation of this revolution
into a socialist revolution."
16
Vagueness and contradiction also muddied Lenin's position on the Provisional
Government and the Soviets. When he defined the Soviets as "the only possible form of
revolutionary government" and called for the immediate transfer of state power to them, he
was implicitly calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Many Bolsheviks,
workers and soldiers would understand his remarks this way, but he shrank from openly
proposing bringing down the government. To confuse matters further, the idea of "All
Power to the Soviets" did not square well with his attacks on Soviet leaders or with the
fact, which he acknowledged, that the Soviets were controlled by "a bloc of all" the other
socialist parties, against which the Bolsheviks were but "a small minority." Lenin called
for a patient and thorough campaign to win mass support and make the Bolsheviks a
majority, but this gradualist approach contrasted with his militant tone and his demand for
the immediate transfer of state power. Finally, he was fuzzy about just where power would
be transferred. The Soviets were but local institutions, not national ones, and he did not
explain the "republic of Soviets … throughout the country" that he suggested. Lenin's
vagueness and contradictions sowed seeds of confusion in the Party. Should Bolsheviks
work to achieve the transfer of power to the Soviets at the earliest opportunity, even
though pro-government parties controlled them, or should they wait until the Bolsheviks
became a majority? How should the "transfer of power" be effected, peaceably or by
violence? And in just what form should the Soviets take power?
The April Theses were "brazenly evasive,” as a leading expert on Lenin puts it, on
one other matter—one of supreme importance, the Bolshevik grand strategy of
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revolution.
17
In the Letters From Afar Lenin had initiated a major shift away from the
strategy of Two Tactics. Instead of a revolution of the whole people to create a
"revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry," Lenin began to propose
an alliance of the proletariat with the poorest elements of the rural population. In the first
Letter From Afar, for example, Lenin urged that Bolsheviks seek to create Soviets of
agricultural workers and to organize the poorest peasants separately within the peasant
Soviets.
18
But he did not point out that he was breaking with the line of Two Tactics or
elaborate on the thinking behind this shift. Moreover, the shift was masked. Some of the
letter's language still belonged to the world of Two Tactics, as when he spoke of the need
to organize the "whole people" for the revolution, or when he counted the "scores of
millions" of the "small-peasant population" as allies of the proletariat.
19
In the April
Theses his emphasis on the rural poor as allies of the proletariat became more consistent,
but he still spoke vaguely of the masses, called for "the arming of the whole people,"
20
and
he did not make it clear that he was urging a major shift in strategy. In an article in Pravda
on April 9, Lenin likewise placed emphases on "the people" and on the need to win
majority support.
21
And in writing a pamphlet the next day he acknowledged the necessity
for broad peasant support by saying that socialism could not be introduced "in a country
of small peasants so long as the overwhelming majority of the population has not come to
realize the need for a socialist revolution."
22
Lenin was starting to break with the old
concept of "the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry," but his
rhetoric failed to convey this clearly. Quite possibly he was not yet fully clear in his own
mind about the ramifications of his new thinking.
The April Theses must have aroused mixed feelings in Stalin. On one hand,
Lenin's gradual, educative approach—winning workers to the Bolshevik colors in order to
gain a majority in the Soviets before tackling the Provisional Government—closely
resembled the approach Stalin had been urging in March. Both men looked to the Soviets
as the form of the future revolutionary government and to the coming of socialism in the
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7
near future. And Lenin's warning against adventurism matched Stalin's own stand against
premature action. On the other hand, Lenin's call for the immediate transfer of power
likely would have seemed irresponsible to Stalin. And Lenin’s attack on the Zimmerwald
and Kienthal resolutions and on the idea of Social Democrats uniting behind these
statements of anti-war principle must have perturbed him. But Stalin did not challenge
Lenin on the issue of unification. Lenin had won the round, if only because after hearing
Lenin's speeches even left Mensheviks recoiled from the idea of linking up with
Bolshevism and its wild leader. For the time being, then, the prospect for closer ties was
dead. Stalin remained desirous of a closer relationship with internationalist Mensheviks,
however, and in the weeks and months ahead he would again try to achieve it.
About Stalin's immediate reaction to Lenin's ideas we know very little. Not until
April 11, a week after Lenin presented the April Theses, did Stalin write anything for
Pravda. This article, in which Stalin evaluated two rival views on whether to support a war
loan, contains a hint of continuing disagreement with Lenin's position on Zimmerwald and
Kienthal. Stalin ridiculed a proposal by the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet
to support the loan, while he endorsed an anti-loan resolution by railway workers, pointing
out that the workers charged the Executive Committee with "betraying the International."
23
In opposing the war loan, Stalin stood on ground common to both Lenin and the Kienthal
Conference. But in favorably quoting the workers' charge that their opponents were
betraying the International, Stalin was indirectly affirming the International, which Lenin
regarded as a betrayal of socialism. In contrast to this sign of conflict with Lenin, Stalin's
article also suggests significant movement toward Lenin: the attack on the Executive
Committee (of which Stalin was himself a member) was his first criticism of the Soviet
leaders in 1917.
Another indicator of Stalin's ambivalent initial reaction to the April Theses is a very
brief comment he made on April 6 at a meeting of the Central Committee's Russian Bureau.
The record of the meeting summarizes his view: "The picture of the bridge between West
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8
and East—destruction of colonies. A sketch without facts, and therefore not satisfactory.
There are no answers about small nations."
24
It is hard to know what to make of this
statement, reported almost cryptically in the meeting record which provides no context for
Stalin's words other than that the topic of discussion was the April Theses. Because
Lenin's Theses contain nothing about the topics Stalin mentioned, there is no way to know
to what Stalin was referring, though evidently he was commenting on a particular
statement Lenin had made.
25
Perhaps he was pointing out what he regarded as an
underdeveloped element in Lenin's thinking. Because the Lenin of early 1917 had not yet
devoted attention to oppressed small nations, in sharp contrast to his concern with
Europe, Stalin's criticism may have been a fair one, especially from a man long concerned
with nationality issues and oppressed nations.
26
There is no warrant, however, for one
scholar's claim that Stalin's remarks show that he "was still groping for a way to reject
Lenin's new program."
27
It seems more significant that Stalin apparently offered no
criticism of any of the main elements of the April Theses.
It is fair to say that as of April 11, Stalin remained undecided about Lenin. With
some elements in the Letters From Afar and the April Theses, he did not concur; many
other of Lenin's arguments, however, were agreeable to him. But in the next few days
th
th
something significant happened, for on the 14 and again on the 18 Stalin authored
articles in Pravda which clearly signaled that he had joined Lenin's camp. Certainly
working closely with Lenin in the Pravda offices exposed Stalin to the vise-like grip of
Lenin's persuasive powers.
28
Stalin's shift may also be partially explained by Lenin's
acceptance or endorsement of some of Stalin's positions. But the most interesting—
indeed, surprising—thing, is that Stalin signed on with Lenin just as Lenin's rhetoric daily
became more radical and his break with past Bolshevik strategy emerged more clearly.
Lenin clarified his position on the Provisional Government in an article entitled
"The Dual Power" which appeared in Pravda on April 9. He pointed out that, alongside the
bourgeois Provisional Government, there stood an "incipient" government—the Soviets.
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9
Lenin argued that the Soviets constituted "a revolutionary dictatorship, that is, a power
directly based on revolutionary seizure, on the direct initiative of the people from below."
Should the Provisional Government be overthrown? Yes, Lenin said, "it should be
overthrown," but "it cannot be overthrown just now, because it is being kept in power by
… agreement with the Soviets … and primarily with the chief Soviet, the Petrograd Soviet."
Moreover, "it cannot be 'overthrown' in the ordinary way" because the only possible
alternative to it, the Soviets, support it. Thus, in order "to become a power the classconscious workers must win the majority to their side. As long as no violence is used
against the people," Lenin stressed, "there is no other road to power … we do not stand
for the seizure of power by a minority." It would not be "by adventurist acts," he
concluded, "but by clarifying proletarian minds, by emancipating them from the influence
of the bourgeoisie," that the Bolsheviks would come to power.
29
Though "The Dual
Power" was more explicit about how to make the revolution than anything Stalin had
written, it was essentially in line with the deliberate and patient approach he had
counseled.
The next day, April 10, Lenin took up—albeit briefly—the question of policy toward
national minorities, and here again his view was consistent with the position Stalin had
taken. The right of secession for national minorities must be asserted, he argued, while
minorities remaining within the Russian state must be assured autonomy.
30
Also on April
10, Lenin pointed out the need for "a central state power" to unite the local Soviets, be it
"the Constituent Assembly, National Assembly, or Council of Soviets—no matter by what
name you call it."
31
Common sense recommended creation of a central revolutionary
organ, but so had Stalin, several times, back in March. Whether or not Lenin's statements
on these issues owed to Stalin's criticism or suggestions, Stalin likely would have
regarded them favorably.
On April 14, at a meeting of the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee, Lenin made clear
his break with his previous thinking about revolutionary tactics. "Old Bolshevism should
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10
be discarded," he intoned, casting aside the strategy he had crafted in Two Tactics. There
should be no more talk about creating "the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and
the peasantry" for it had already been created in the form of the Soviets—and the upper
strata of the peasantry had deserted it to side with the big bourgeoisie. Landowning
peasants "are for defencism," he said, and they "may even be in favor of a monarchy."
"Going through with the [democratic] revolution under these circumstances has no
meaning." "Fine phrases about the revolutionary people" were suitable for supporters of
the bourgeoisie, "but not for the revolutionary proletariat … Revolutionary democracy is
no good at all," Lenin insisted, "it is a mere phrase. It covers up rather than lays bare the
antagonisms of class interests." The task of Bolsheviks in the new situation was to
expose conflicts between classes and ensure that the "line of the petty bourgeoisie must
be separated from that of the wage-earning proletariat." It was "laborer peasants" who
"ought to be against the imperialist war" that Lenin now expected to become the allies of
the revolutionary proletariat in achieving socialist revolution.
32
In short, the urban
proletariat and the rural poor had to join together to carry the revolution forward against
the defencist alliance of the capitalists and the petty bourgeois peasant landowners which
opposed any further revolutionary steps. A few days later in addressing the Congress of
Peasants' Deputies Lenin added that "We must arouse the 'lowest' … section of society" in
order "to strengthen and broaden the movement," and he stressed the necessity of
organizing separately "the proletarian elements … within the general peasant Soviets."
Bolsheviks had to "exert every effort to work inside these Soviets along consistent and
strictly proletarian class lines."
33
The war had brought the capitalists and the petty
bourgeois peasants together, and Lenin no longer counted the latter as a revolutionary
force. He was drawing a class line in the black earth.
Because concern not to split off petty bourgeois allies of the proletariat from the
revolutionary forces had been a major factor behind Stalin's earlier calls for caution and
gradualism, we might expect that Lenin's readiness to split off petty bourgeois elements
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11
would arouse his strong opposition. But, to the contrary, Stalin was in Lenin's camp even
before Lenin addressed the Petersburg Committee. On the morning of the fourteenth,
Pravda carried an article in which Stalin called upon "the peasants, upon the peasant poor
of all Russia, to take their cause into their own hands," form revolutionary committees,
seize landed estates at once, and "cultivate the land in an organized manner." The "main
forces of our revolution," he wrote, "are the workers and the poor peasants," and as the
revolution grows "the so-called 'progressive elements' who are progressive in word but
reactionary in deed, will inevitably 'split off' from it. It would be reactionary utopianism,"
Stalin argued, "to retard this beneficial process of purging the revolution of unnecessary
'elements.'" Anticipating remarks by Lenin later in the day, Stalin declared that continuing
to wait for a constituent assembly to decide the land issue was "not the policy of the
revolutionary proletariat."
34
Between April 8 and 13 Lenin had been writing a pamphlet to
spell out his more radical line, and, being close by Lenin in the Pravda offices they shared,
Stalin evidently had been won over by Lenin's arguments during these days.
35
The scope of Lenin's new influence over Stalin was not limited to the land issue
but reached far beyond it. Its extent may be gauged by an editorial Stalin wrote for the
April 18 edition of Pravda. The war had become unbearable to the peoples of Europe, he
said, and they "are already rising up against the bellicose bourgeoisie." Strikes and
demonstrations across the continent and "mass fraternization on the battle fronts—these
are the first harbingers of the socialist revolution that is brewing." Before closing with
hearty hurrahs of "Workers of All Countries, Unite!" and "Hail the Socialist Revolution!"
Stalin called for "the birth of a new revolutionary International." Here is evidence of a
veritable sea change in his thinking, from endorsing Zimmerwald and Kienthal a few weeks
earlier to seconding Lenin's demand for a new Socialist International. The impetus for this
change obviously came from Lenin. Stalin had insufficient familiarity with the situation in
Europe, and nothing in his previous writings suggests an interest in European affairs. The
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12
idea that Europe was ablaze with revolutionary fervor had to have come from the recently
returned émigré.
As Stalin moved toward Lenin, Lenin continued to inch toward Stalin. On April 22,
as the Petrograd City Conference of Bolsheviks neared its end, Lenin announced that "I
am decidedly in favor of placing on our tickets" in the capital city's municipal elections
"the names of Mensheviks who are breaking with chauvinism."
36
Lenin was referring to
those on the internationalist left wing of the Menshevik Party who opposed the war loan.
37
Though he stressed that "This is no bloc" and that there were other issues to consider in
drawing up a common program, Lenin's newfound willingness to take steps toward closer
relations with those on the Menshevik left who opposed defencism was a significant
change. It was a step toward the position Stalin had occupied at the end of March—and
which Lenin at that time had vigorously opposed.
38
The development of closer political relations between Stalin and Lenin became
particularly evident at the Seventh Party Conference, which convened in Petrograd on
April 24. The issue of uniting Bolsheviks with other anti-defencist, internationalist Social
Democrats was a touchstone. Long a goal of Stalin, unity now was described by Lenin as
a necessity. He authored one resolution which affirmed that "closer relations and unity
with groups and trends that have adopted a real internationalist stand are necessary on
the basis of a definite break" with defencism. Another resolution, on the Soviets, called for
efforts "to weld together our Party's proletarian internationalist groups within the
39
Soviets." The substance of these resolutions, particularly the wording of the second one,
suggests Stalin's influence: the conception of the Party as a body containing different
internationalist groups that need to be united is essentially contrary to Lenin's longstanding effort to define his Bolsheviks as a separate party, but it is in line with Stalin's
equally long-standing effort to bring different groups together within a broader Social
Democratic party based on principle.
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13
Cooperation between the two men was evident also in the discussion of the
nationalities issue at the Conference. Previous Bolshevik policy, crafted as a weapon
against tsarism, recognized the right to self-determination of national groups that wished
to break away from the Russian Empire.
40
On the few occasions when Lenin mentioned
the national question in his published wartime works, he adhered to this line.
41
But with
the fall of the tsarist regime, the situation changed, and Stalin, in his articles on nationality
problems in March, went beyond the old policy. In addition to championing the right of
self-determination, he argued that national groups that could "remain within the framework
of the integral state" should be guaranteed "political autonomy … for regions which have a
specific national composition."
42
His evident purpose was to provide national minorities
with an attractive alternative to secession so that they might elect to remain within "the
integral state" of Russia. At the Seventh Party Conference, he again advocated autonomy
as an option to secession for national minorities, and he openly expressed the desire that
his home region, Transcaucasia, would not exercise its right to secede.
barely touched on the nationality question since returning to Russia,
44
43
Lenin, who had
vigorously
seconded Stalin regarding the right to self-determination, but avoided mentioning
autonomy. Instead, he defended a minority's "freedom to unite" with Russia.
45
Nonetheless, the resolution on the national question, which is attributed to Lenin,
46
endorsed "broad regional autonomy" in language and with arguments closely resembling
Stalin's, indicating at least his influence over the writing of the document.
At the Conference Stalin also advanced a new reason why the Party must endorse
the right of peoples to national self-determination. Rejecting arguments that all
nationalistic movements were reactionary, he pointed to the Irish fight against British
domination as an example of "a democratic movement which is striking a blow at
imperialism." "We must support every movement directed against imperialism," Stalin
claimed, "inasmuch as Social Democrats are steering for a socialist revolution, [we] must
support revolutionary movements of the peoples against imperialism." It was important to
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14
understand, he stressed, that "we must create a rear for the vanguard of the socialist
revolution in the form of the peoples who are rising against national oppression—and in
this case we shall build a bridge between West and East and shall indeed be steering for
the world socialist revolution."
47
On April 6 Stalin had criticized Lenin for not presenting
an adequate picture of a bridge between West and East. Now he offered his own picture of
how that bridge should be built. Stalin's idea of supporting anti-imperialist national
movements regardless of their class character, and of guaranteeing the right of national
self-determination as a bona fide of socialism's anti-imperialist credentials, was an
innovative contribution to Bolshevik revolutionary strategy which would have important
applications in the future.
Of all the issues debated at the Conference, the one with the greatest immediate
importance was whether the Petrograd Soviet controlled, or could control, the Provisional
Government. Underlying this question were deeper issues of whether the Soviet had any
power and whether its current leadership was revolutionary. In his Letters From Afar,
Lenin had advocated that the Soviet supervise the government. In late March Stalin had
adopted Lenin's position. Since then, however, both men had come to believe that the
Petrograd Soviet was no longer revolutionary. Accordingly, on April 24 Lenin attacked the
notion of control, pointing out that "Control without power is an empty phrase" and that
the Soviet failed to exercise power.
48
Agreeing, Stalin lent strong support. The Soviet, he
said, had tried to set a revolutionary agenda but achieved no results, as the government
evaded the desires of the Soviet. Now the Provisional Government was on the attack,
setting the agenda, and the retreating Soviet followed the lead of the government. In this
situation, Stalin said it was "just idle talk" to suggest that "the Soviet controls the
government."
49
The two men spoke with one voice.
Stalin' s new closeness with Lenin contributed in some measure to his being
elected to the Party Central Committee as the Seventh Party Conference concluded on
April 29. In a discussion of the candidates, no one spoke against Stalin, and Lenin offered
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15
a brief endorsement. Considering that the Conference record shows that the delegates
"were in no mood to accept direction from Lenin or anyone else" during the proceedings
and that they elected one Central Committee member who was not recommended by
Lenin, it is easy to overestimate the importance of Lenin's words on behalf of Stalin.
50
The
fact that Stalin received the third highest number of votes signifies that his service since
returning from exile had won respect from his fellow Bolsheviks for his abilities and for his
stands on important issues. The man who had been turned down for membership by the
Russian Bureau upon returning from exile had come a long way in the intervening six
weeks and had earned his colleagues' confidence in him as a leader.
Despite the enhanced status he had achieved and the policy role he played at the
Seventh Party Conference, Stalin seems to have regarded its decisions with less than full
enthusiasm. On May 6 he told readers of Soldatskaya Pravda (a popular Bolshevik paper
aimed at soldiers) that the Conference had been convened to provide "clear and distinct
answers" to several important questions—the war, food shortages, the land issue, the
Provisional Government, and the need for Party unity. Then he asked, "Has the
conference justified our hopes? Has it given clear and distinct answers?" Readers should
"study the decisions of the Conference," Stalin concluded, and "judge for themselves."
51
By asking—and not answering—questions, Stalin was both raising questions in readers'
minds about the Conference and declining to endorse its decisions. He was certainly
capable of expressing support for the Conference had he wished to do so. Evidently,
then, he did not want to report favorably on the resolutions of the Conference, but his
technique permits no firm conclusion about which of the Conference's answers he found
unclear. However, the fact that Soldatskaya Pravda was the organ of the Bolshevik Military
Organization, which was controlled by militants,
52
suggests that he thought that
Conference had not been sufficiently radical.
April 1917 was a month of adjustment for both Lenin and Stalin. Lenin had already
initiated his shift from the strategy of a broad democratic people's revolution that he had
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set forth in Two Tactics to a strategy aiming at a socialist revolution of the urban and rural
proletariats, but he still needed to resolve conflicts in his thinking, expunge lingering
traces of Two Tactics, and adapt his positions to the reality he found after returning to
Russia. Stalin faced a similar challenge, as he learned the elements of Lenin's new
strategy only piecemeal and had to weigh the merit of each new element against the
established wisdom of Two Tactics. Once the full dimensions and logic of Lenin's new
strategy were clear, Stalin shifted his ground quite quickly. In making his break with past
thinking, perhaps the most persuasive argument was the behavior of the leaders of the
Petrograd Soviet themselves. Especially through their support of the war and their failure
to press forward in the land question, they demonstrated that they were not the
revolutionaries Stalin had expected but, rather, as Lenin charged, servants of the
capitalists. It was they who made Stalin's early position untenable. Having once been
concerned not to alienate them, Stalin realized that this concern was a brake on
revolutionary action. Lenin's arguments helped Stalin recognize this, while offering him a
definite revolutionary goal—socialism—and a class-based tactic for achieving it. Lenin's
rejuvenated revolutionary dynamism doubtless rekindled Stalin’s own militance. But it
was not a naïve faith in Lenin that moved Stalin toward the Party leader, rather the forceful
evidence of events which persuaded him that Lenin's analysis was correct.
Stalin was perhaps attracted by one other quality of Lenin's new thinking. Years
before meeting the Bolshevik founder, the young Stalin had admired Lenin's What Is To Be
Done? It became a credo for him. A central aspect of Lenin's early book was the idea that
the true Marxist revolutionaries were surrounded by enemies who, though they often
seemed to be friends, were in fact carriers of the corrupting ideology of the bourgeoisie.
To reach the revolutionary goal, the true Marxists had to band together, hold hands, and
follow a narrow path of strict and disciplined class consciousness through the swamp of
bourgeois-liberal seduction and betrayal. Lenin's April Theses smacked of this outlook.
He preached that the presumable allies of the revolution—Mensheviks, peasant socialist
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parties, and the smallholding peasants themselves—were in fact petty-bourgeois
corrupters and betrayers of the revolution. They had joined with the capitalist overlords in
defense of the war and against pressing the revolution forward, and their leaders—using
"honeyed phrases"— insidiously spread bourgeois influence among the workers. It may
be that Lenin's insistence on splitting off false revolutionary elements and his demand that
a strictly class conscious line be followed in navigating through the bourgeois shoals
struck a responsive chord in Stalin and reminded him of what had first attracted him to
Lenin so many years before.
1
Sukhanov, 1:274-75.
2
On the evidence for Stalin's absence see Slusser, 49-52. Since Slusser wrote, one source
has appeared which places Stalin among Lenin's initial greeters (Molotov Remembers, 93),
but Molotov is hardly convincing on this point.
3
This is Slusser's conclusion (Stalin in October, 52).
4
Cf. Slusser, 64, who maintains that Stalin became a "staunch Leninist" during this period.
5
No precise texts of Lenin's speeches on April 3 and 4 have been published; probably
none exist of these presumably extemporaneous remarks. Lenin set forth his April Theses
(and responded to early critics) on April 7 in Pravda (LCW, 24:21-26). Extensive but
incomplete notes of Lenin's remarks by a participant in the all-Bolshevik meeting can be
found in V. I. Lenin, The Revolution of 1917. Book I (New York, 1929), 95-103 (this volume is
the twentieth in an edition of Lenin's collected works based on the third Russian edition);
see also PSS, 31:103-112. Sukhanov, an eyewitness, offered an approximation of Lenin's
words upon arriving at the Finland Station and sketches of his speeches on April 4
(Russian Revolution, 1:273-88). Notes Lenin made on or shortly after April 4 for a speech
or article defending the Theses (LCW, 24:32-33) suggest the tone of some of his remarks
and are in line with Sukhanov's recollections of the April 4 speeches; I have quoted some
of the language used in these notes as examples of the apparent tone of Lenin's speeches
on April 3-4. All quotations are from Lenin's Pravda article of April 7, except where
otherwise indicated. All emphases are in the originals. Slusser, 53-58, offers an insightful
account of Lenin's thinking, as do Rabinowitch, Prelude, 36-42, and Service, Lenin, 2:15560, among others.
6
LCW, 24:32-33.
7
Sukhanov, 1:284.
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8
Lenin, Revolution of 1917, 103. After Lenin's speech to the combined audience of
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Menshevik leader Tsereteli expressed the hope that
reconciliation of the two Social Democratic factions would be possible. Lenin shouted
back, "Never!" (Service, Lenin, 2:166, citing a memoir by N. A. Uglanov.)
9
LCW, 24:32-33.
10
Lenin, Revolution of 1917, 98.
11
Noted also by Service, Lenin, 2:167.
12
Sukhanov, 1:276-77.
13
Lenin, Revolution of 1917, 95.
14
LCW, 24:22.
15
See also PSS, 31:109-110.
16
Kamenev, in Pravda on April 8, quoted in Rabinowitch, Prelude, 41. Marx had taught that
societies advance by passing through a sequence of necessary stages of historical
development; accordingly, the prevailing wisdom was that agrarian Russia, just emerging
from tsarist feudalism, would have to experience a prolonged period of bourgeois rule and
capitalist industrialization before becoming ready for socialism.
17
Service, Lenin, 2:156.
18
LCW, 23:307. See also Service, Lenin, 2:145-46.
19
LCW, 23:307; there is similar language in the second letter, LCW, 3:319.
20
LCW, 24:23.
21
LCW, 24:38-41.
22
LCW, 24:73.
23
SW, 3:34-35. Emphases in the original.
24
Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii v aprele 1917 g. Aprel'skii krizis (Moscow, 1958), 1516.
25
Stalin was not noting merely an omission in Lenin's arguments; rather, he was criticizing
a specific "picture" Lenin had offered. There is no such picture, however, in anything
Lenin is known to have written on or before April 6. Probably, then, Stalin was referring to
an element in one of Lenin's April 4 speeches.
26
SW, 3:17-21, 25-30.
27
Slusser, 59; Tucker, Stalin, 167, claims that Stalin “was still fighting against the ‘April
Theses’ at Kamenev’s side.”
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28
As Slusser argues (ibid., 62).
29
LCW, 24:38-41. Emphases in the original.
30
LCW, 24:71. For Stalin's views, see his March 1917 articles on nationality questions in
SW, 3:17-21 and 25-30; the issue is discussed later in this chapter.
31
LCW, 24:107.
32
LCW, 24:148-49.
33
LCW, 24:167-70 (emphases in the original).
34
SW, 3:36-38. For Lenin's dismissal of the idea of a constituent assembly, see LCW,
24:149-50.
35
LCW, 24:42-54. Slusser, 61, also believes that Lenin inspired Stalin's shift.
36
LCW, 24:157-58.
37
Lenin made this clear in an article on April 25 when he distinguished Iurii Martov from
other Mensheviks for his opposition to the war loan (LCW, 24:223).
38
Van Ree ("Stalin's Bolshevism," 53, n. 37) argues that in two marginal notations Stalin
made in books in the 1920s Stalin alluded to an inconsistency between Lenin's earlier
public opposition to any deals with "defencists" and his subsequently entering into them.
Stalin's reference is not clear, but perhaps it was to this electoral cooperation.
39
LCW, 24:294-96 (emphasis added); see also RDCPSU, 1:219-20, 222-23.
40
See the resolution of a September 1913 Central Committee meeting in RDCPSU, 1:18182.
41
LCW, 21:105-6, 22: 137-40 and 151-56.
42
SW, 3:17-21 and 25-30 (the quotation is from pp. 29-30).
43
Stalin's remarks are at SW, 3:52-60.
44
After briefly mentioning the nationality question on April 10, Lenin did not show any
more interest in it prior to the Conference. Even in an article on April 23 in which he
discussed a wide range of political issues as trivial as the color of flags, he failed to take
up the nationalities problem (LCW, 24:96-106).
45
LCW, 24:297-301.
46
LCW, 24:302-3.
47
SW, 3:59-60.
48
LCW, 24:231.
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49
SW, 3:51-2. Van Ree ("Stalin's Bolshevism," 53, n. 37) has discovered two notations
written by Stalin in the margins of 1920s books indicating his keen awareness of Lenin's
inconsistency on this point.
50
See the discussion in Slusser, 81-87, from which the quotation is taken. Nonetheless,
Slusser sees Lenin's endorsement as a command.
51
SW, 3:67-69.
52
Rabinowitch, Prelude, 50-52.
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