several thousands of workers had participated in the
funeral processions and meetings of striking workers.
By 1903, the strikes became wide spread and gained
a greater momentum. The Social Democrats, guided
by Lenin, were fully active in the strikes as activists,
organisers and leaders. They worked tirelessly to lend
a political and revolutionary character to the struggle.
A powerful peasant movement had erupted in
Ukraine and Volga region. The peasants had burnt
down several mansions of landlords and seized their
crops. They punished the most atrocious landlords
and their Officials. The Army had stepped into the
scene, shot down many. Yet, the peasant
revolutionary movement did not stop. The students
too moved into struggle in a massive way. The Army’s
brutal actions and jails failed to deter them. The
students of all the Universities too began a general
strike to protest against the Govt’s repressive policy.
Even the liberal bourgeois-landlord classes came
into action. They pretended to criticise the police
“excesses” on students only to win the students to
their side and divert them from the path of struggle.
The tsarist govt., on its part, thought that the
methods of repression alone are not enough. It added
the methods of allurement and diversion in its armoury.
It encouraged the formation of bogus workers unions
under the shadow of police intelligence to make the
suppression of workers easy.
At this time, the absence of centralised and united
party of the proletariat was very much felt. The local
party organisations, groups and circles were badly
divided. Those who were preaching against the need
of a party were no less in number. The tsarist govt.
exploited this situation to intensify the repression. It
arrested and sent many top leaders into exile to
frustrate the emergence of a proletarian party. How
to clear the ground for the Party was most important
and urgent question before Lenin at the time.
Lenin said: “Before we can unite and in order that
we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite
line of demarcation.” He spelt out his concrete plan in
his renowned write- up “Where to Begin?” He further
elaborated it in his celebrated work, What is To Be
Done?” Explaining the nature of the Party, he said
that the Party must consist of a) a close circle of regular
cadres of leading party workers, chiefly professional
revolutionaries who are free from all occupations
except party work and possessing the necessary
minimum of theoretical knowledge, practical
experience, organisational practice and the art of
combating and eluding the tsarist police; b) a broad
network of local party organisations and large number
of party members enjoying the sympathy and support
of hundreds and thousands of working people. He
further said that “no revolutionary movement can
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endure without a stable organisation of leaders that
maintain continuity.”
The economists were on their toes to criticise
Lenin. They preached that we must strive for a better
law, confine to the economic struggles and must not
break our heads to lead the political struggles and to
prepare the proletariat for a revolution. It was
thoroughly a reformist concept.
Here, how to build a Party is directly and
inseparably linked to the question whether one wants
to bring a fundamental change in the society or seek
to reform it. The concrete conditions, the paths of
achieving the revolution may differ from Country to
Country. But the essential and inescapable question
remains the same for all the Communists in the world:
What sort of Party is needed?
Lenin proposed that the proletariat must lead the
revolution in Russia. It must unite all the revolutionary
classes basing on the firm worker-peasant alliance
and lead them first to overthrow the feudal classes
and tsarist autocracy from power and then go for a
Socialist Revolution by revolutionary means. So, he
wanted that the Proletarian Party must be a revolu-
tionary party fully dedicated to the cause of people
and revolution. Lenin had put best of his energies-
mental and physical and successfully too to develop
a party with such qualities.
However, he encountered the forces which
opposed and sought to weaken the proletarian
leadership of revolution; those who underplayed the
peasant question and the need of a united front, and
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