peasant masses still believed that the Duma may
bestow them the right over the land. So the Bolsheviks
needed to do a lot of work to educate and win them
over.
How to act in the conditions after the defeat of
1905 revolution was an important question. Lenin said
that the Bolsheviks must change their tactics from
offensive to defensive. They must retreat. But this
retreat must be proper and in an organised way,
calmly and without panic and it must be to muster our
forces and prepare for a new offensive against the
enemy”.
This was the guideline for the Bolsheviks. They
had to work under a thick dark shadow of repression.
Yet, they used every slightest opportunity to restore
and enlarge their links with the people. They used
every forum, organisation and occasion to explain the
causes of the defeat of 1905 upsurge and the need
to prepare for a more determined, more powerful
struggle under the leadership of Proletariat to over-
throw the tsarist autocracy.
The Mensheviks hailed the Duma as a legislative
body capable of bridling tsardom. They called for an
electoral agreement with the pro -tsar Constitutional
Democratic Party and support it. But the Bolsheviks
were for utilising the Duma as a platform to
unsparingly and relentlessly expose the bourgeoisie
– the Constitutional- Democratic Party – win over the
peasants from their influence and to the side of revolu-
tion. The way the Social Democratic (Bolsheviks)
Deputies had participated in the Duma had set a best
example for how the Communists and revolutionaries
must utilise the bourgeois platforms in the interests
of people and advancing the cause of revolution.
Stolypin Reaction
The defeat of 1905 revolution had set in a period
of reaction. The tsarist govt. had dispersed the
Second Duma. The convict prisons, fortresses and
the places of exiles were made to overflow with the
revolutionaries. The revolutionaries were brutally
beaten, tormented and tortured. Stolypin, a minister
in the tsarist govt., had set up gallows everywhere in
the Country. He saw thousands of revolutionaries
executed. He brought a new agrarian law to enable
the landlords and kulaks to rob the lands of poor
peasants. Black Hundreds had let lose the terror in
the country. The mill owners became more aggressive
in their attacks against the workers. The gendarmerie,
police, tsarist agent provocateurs and Black Hundred
ruffians unleashed savage assaults against the
workers. A process of disintegration and demora-
lisation had set in among the fellow travellers of
revolution. It was more so among the intellectuals.
Fearing the persecution, many of them either
8
deserted or joined the camp of enemy. The tsarist
govt. had taken a full advantage of this situation.
The counter revolutionary offensive had reflected
in the ideological front also. Hordes of fashionable
writers sought, to “dismantle” Marxism, mock and scoff
at the idea of revolution. They extolled the treachery
and lauded sexual depravity under the guise of the
“cultural individuality”.
The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks seriously differed
on how to face the reaction. Mensheviks lost all hope
of a new tide in revolution. They renounced the
revolutionary demands and embraced liquidationism.
Lenin said, in a situation such as this, the
revolutionary parties must perfect their knowledge.
They must not run away in panic from the battle field.
True, the “counter-revolution again threw us from the
heights to which we had already climbed, down into
the valley. The proletariat had to regroup its ranks
and gather its forces anew surrounded by Stolyplin’s
gallows and the jeremiads of vekhi.” We must retreat
in a proper and orderly manner to prepare ourselves
for a more powerful and more decisive onslaught on
the enemy. He said that the Party “ will not lose heart
at the failure of the first onslaught, it will not lose its
head and will not be carried away by adventures.” He
said that a new revolutionary wave is a certainty. He
proposed that the Bolsheviks must change from the
offensive to defensive tactics and patiently work to
utilise every legal opportunity to preserve and
strengthen the party and multiply its links in countless
ways with the millions of working people.
The Stolypin’s reaction could not rule long. The
working people had learnt to live even in the conditions
of savage repression. By 1911, they were again on
the road of struggle. The strike of Lena gold mine
workers in April 1912 marked a beginning of a new
tide in the working class movement. The firing on a
peaceful demonstration of Lena workers killed or
wounded 500 workers. This had triggered a series of
protests. Thousands of workers in St.Petersburg,
Moscow and all industrial Centres came into
demonstrations, strikes and meetings to protest
against the tsarist brutal act of massacre. The tsarist
Minister arrogantly defended the Lena massacre in
Duma saying “so it was, so it will be.” It had enraged
the workers. 3,00,000 workers came into the streets
in a political protest. As Stalin said, “the Lena events
were like a hurricane which rent the whole atmosphere
of “peace” created by the Stolypin regime”. The May
Day demonstrations in 1912 were participated by
4,00,000 workers.‘The workers, peasants and soldiers
unite for a revolutionary onslaught against the tsarist
autocracy’- was the crying slogan of workers.
Earlier, the Menshevik liquidators were telling that
the revolution was doomed and there will be no new
Class Struggle