ip S

fy
‘3
= \
Pef id

y
v
é®j
% a Se j ¢
fer Jeeyt
~ LZ
1
x
= a)
apee=)

LINN

PANTHEON BOOKS
New York
 Text Copyright ©1977, 1978 by Richard Appignanesi

Illustrations Copyright ©1977, 1978 by Oscar Zarate

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Con-

ventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random
House of Canada Limited, Toronto, This revised edition, as well as the
first edition, originally published in Great Britain by Writers and Readers
Publishing Cooperative

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Appignanesi, Richard.
Lenin for beginners.
1. Russia— History — Revolution, 1917-1921—Comic books, strips,
etc, 2, Russia— Politics and government—1917-1936—Comic books,
strips, etc. 3. Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich, 1870-1924—Portraits, caricatures,
etc |. Zarate, Oscar, 1942— Il. Title.
DK265.15.A66 1978 —-947.084'1'0207_——_78-20408
ISBN 0-394-73715-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

24689753
OUR THANKS TO;
OUR FRIENPS FOR THEIR HELP AND RIUS WHO
SHOWED US THE WAY.
 RUSSIAN
REVOLUTIONARY
CALENDAR
1789-94, The French Revolution, Alexander and fellow —‘Narodovoltsi
conspirators,
1812. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and
defeat. Described in Tolstoy's War and Peace 1889. Founding congress in Paris of the
(1869). Second Socialist International. Plekhanov
represents Russian Marxist Social-Democracy.
1825, The Decembrist Revolt against Tsarism.
1891-93. Famine, revival of Narodnik
1848. The Communist Manifesto by Marx and
populism, mass strikes and massacres of
Engels appears on the eve of European
workers, Lenin's first Marxist criticism of
revolution.
Narodism.
1861. Tsar Alexander || abolishes serfdom.
Rise of Narodism -or ‘peasant socialism’ 1894, Tsarist censorship allows ‘Legal’
among radical intelligentsia. Marxism. Lenin’s public activity begins.
1862-63. Formation of Narodnik under- 1895, Tsar Nicholas || begins his reign with
ground movement Zemlya i Volya inspired by massacre of strikers at Yaroslavl. Lenin’s
Chernyshevsky. activity as factory organizer cut short by
arrest and exile to Siberia till 1900.
1864. The First International founded in
London by Marx and others. 1898, Abortive first congress of Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in
1869. Nechayev, Narodnik disciple of the
Minsk.
anarchist Bakunin, prescribes terrorism.
1899. Lenin in exile attacks Social-Democratic
1870. Birth of Lenin. Franco-Prussian War.
reformism.
Marx forecasts the Russian revolution.
1871. The Paris Commune. 1900. Foundation of newspaper Iskra by
Lenin, Plekhanov and others in Geneva. Lenin
1872. End of the First International in directs the spread of underground party net-
Europe. Russian translation of Marx's Capital. work in Russia.
Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed.
1874. The Narodnik “going to the people”
1901. Veteran Narodniks, Gots, Chernov and
movement suppressed by the Tsarist police,
others, form Socialist-Revolutionary Party
(SR) engaged in terrorism.
1875-82. Period of Narodnik terrorism in-
1903. Second Congress of the RSDLP in
fluenced by Tkachev and Nechayev’s theories
of a conspiratorial party.
Brussels and London ends with the Bolshevik-
Menshevik split, Lenin resigns from Iskra,
1879. Zemlya i Volya party splits into
factions: terrorist (Narodnaya Volya) and 1904, Lenin’s new paper Vperyod, Re-
agitator (Chorny Peredel) led by Plekhanov. organization of Bolshevik party in Russia.
Birth of Trotsky and Stalin. Russo-Japanese War. Plehve assassinated by
an SR, Baku oil-workers strike.
1881. Tsar Alexander II assassinated by
Narodovoltsi. 1905. Bloody Sunday, general strike and the
1883, Formation in Switzerland by former first Russian Revolution. Formations of
workers’ Soviets in Petersburg, Moscow, etc,
Chorny Peredel-ists of first Russian Social-
and the liberal bourgeois Kadet party. Tsarism
Democratic Marxist group.
regains control but concedes a Duma
1887. Execution of Lenin’s elder brother (parliament).
 Russian dates before January 31, 1918 follow the old style (Julian) calendar. Subsequent
dates follow the new style (Gregorian) calendar, which took effect in February, 1918.

1906. Duma elections. Fourth RSDLP unity August: Kerensky toys with military dictator-
congress in Stockholm. Stolypin dissolves the ship.
first Duma in July. September: Bolsheviks gain majorities in
1907. Fifth RSDLP congress, Stolypin arrests Petrograd and Moscow Soviets,
Social-Democrat deputies and dissolves the The October revolution: Lenin leads
second Duma in June, Third Duma opens in Bolsheviks to power, Provisional Government
_ November. Lenin leaves Russia — till 1917. put under arrest. Bolsheviks organize Soviet
1908-10, The ‘Duma Question’ causes more government.
factional splits within the RSDLP, Lenin's December: peace negotiations with Germany
struggle against Bolshevik anti-Duma fraction. at Brest-Litovsk.
1912, Prague conference of the Bolshevik 1918, January: Third Congress of Soviets
party decides to take part in the fourth Duma approves dispersal of Constituent Assembly,
elections. Legal party paper Pravda organized, Germans help form counter-revolutionary
Massacre of striking workers at Lena Gold ‘White’ forces in Ukraine, Factory Councils
Mines, approve Bolshevik party's central manage-
1914, Outbreak of the First World War. ment of the economy.
Collapse of the Second International into February: Germans occupy key territories
national ‘defensists’, pacificists and inter- and threaten Petrograd,
national ‘defeatists’.
March: approval of Brest-Litovsk Peace
ms 1915, Lenin's strategy of revolutionary Treaty despite strong Left Communist
defeatism rejected by first anti-war opposition,
Zimmerwald conference.
1918-1920, Civil War: struggle against White
1916. Lenin’s position gains support on the and Allied forces, War Communism.
International Left, Strikes in Russia increase,
Rasputin murdered, 1919. Third Communist — International
founded. General defeat of revolutions
1917, The February Revolution: the Tsar is outside Russia,
ae overthrown, Dual Power ‘shared’ between
§=Soviet and the bourgeois 1920-21, Famine, anti-Bolshevik agitation,
Petrograd
he Provisional Government. strikes and peasant unrest. Inner-Party
debates led by Left Communists on trade
: February — October: Menshevik and SR unions, worker-management, expropriation,
4 leaders of the Soviet support the Provisional etc.
5 government and accept ministerial posts.
1921, March: Kronstadt uprising. At the
: April: Lenin returns to Russia. Struggle Tenth Party Congress Lenin launches the
against
Dual Power begins. New Economic Policy, a limited free market
_ May: Kerensky, an ex-SR, heads Provisional and an end to War Communism.
Government. 1922. Genoa and Rapallo conferences
- June: Kerensky pursues war against Germany, establish trade with non-Communist countries,
Lenin’s first stroke — regular work ceases.
July: popular pro-Soviet uprising fails. Lenin's ‘last struggle’ against bureaucratism
Counter-revolutionary measures by SR, and chauvinism, calls for cultural revolution,
Menshevik and Provisional Government foresees dangers of Stalinist authoritarianism.
leadership. Bolshevik party persecuted, Lenin
‘inhiding. 1924. Lenin dies,
 LENIN H A S E
ADVe
A
2M pe
e s e
FoR
SA
L
TH! ICA
INTO

uka cs
Georg L 97 1) er
;
(1885-1 x i s t p hilosoph -
an Mar
Hungari ic
and crit
 LENIN’S‘GREAT
A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY QUESTION’
AS THE ORGANIZED
EXPRESSION OF
COLLECTIVE ACTION.++
THAT WAS LENIN'S Z
STRATEGY AND THE
ESSENCE OF
POLITICAL
MARXISM.

NoT oNE MAN BUT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE MADE THE

RUSSIAN REYOLUTION, LENIN REMAINS THE GREATEST
MARXIST TACTICIAN BECAUSE HE UNDERSTOOD THIS.
In 1894, when Lenin was only 24, the
revolution seemed pretty remote. Was Lenin
a dreamer or a practical Marxist when he
asked
———$————_$_
( how must actions aimed at bringing about
the socialist system attract the masses in order
to yield serious RESULTS 7

10
the answer to this question depends directly
diate

ye

THE TSAR’S
‘WEDDING-CAKE’

ON
Sh.
WE RULE You

A pa A
nnis
Hits SY
i EE Rt
TES. +f
WE FEED 4 st
 TSARISM IS FEUDALISM
THE STATE 15 IDENTIFIED WITH RUSSIA'S ABSOLUTE ALL
POWERFUL MONARCH, THE TSAR .00
(OR CZAR-ITMEANS CAESAR’)
TSAR NICHOLAS II (1868-7918)
ee if

ab — |
But where does the ‘‘absolute power” of the Tsar come from? Since 1613, the Romanov Tsars
depend on the power of the feudal system, i.e., a small noble class which owns both the land and
peasant-serfs* ... (*serf, Latin servus=slave)

.». LANDLORDS COUNT THEIR WEALTH IN THE NUMBER. OF ‘SOULS*

THEY OWNS
 Who administers the State ?
The territory of the Tsarist Empire was HUGE, containing peoples of many different races and
languages (or 1/10 of the human race by 1870!)

The ‘modernizing’ Tsar, Peter the Great, in

THAT'S WHY I’M SETTING UP 1722 set up a career-ladder in the civil
service (with 14 rungs corresponding to
MY CHINOVNIK sysTEm 2 noble and military ranks). Chinovnik: in
Russian chin means ‘rank’ or ‘rung of a
ladder’. Chinoyniki were bureaucrats: life-
time servants of the state.

.- AND SOME ROSE

FROM POVERTY TOJOIN
PAN, THE RANKS OF THE
_ HEREDITARY

’ YES» BUT
B/ ONLY s0meE?!
-« AND WHAT'S MORE,
THE SYSTEM
CREATEP AN
EDUCATED CLASS OF
CLIMBERS ‘TOTALLY
CUT OFF FROM
 Vast peasant uprisings did occur: famous ones, led by Stenka Razin in the 17th century . . .
and Emelyan Pugachev in 1773.

On 26th Dec. 1825, army officers inspired by the Jacobin ideals of the French revolution
tried to overthrow Tsar Nicholas I. The Decembrist revolt lasted one day!

The Decembrists were not the last upper-class mavericks who asked the great question of the
19th Century...

HOW DO WE RE-JOIN
THE PEOPLE ?

a4
 The 1861 Reform
Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1853-56) led to famine and unrest in the countryside.
Tsarism faces its own big question: how can the Tsar keep the loyalty of his million-strong
army which is 90% serf?

BY A CLEVER MOVE... THE TSAR ABOLISHES SERFDOM IN1B6f2

THE U.S. CIVILWAK

W THE SAME YEAR THAT DIDN'T REALLY FREE
A CIVIL WAR BROKE OUT BLACK PEOPLE
L BETWEEN THE
ES DIS- UNITED STATE?

ANP THE ToAR'S

EMANCIPATION
DECREE HASN'T
IMPROVED
THINGS FOR US

The peasants are ‘free’ but saddled with redemption payments (mortgages and taxes) because
the Tsar has to compensate the ex-serf-owners (who keep most of the land anyway!) The
peasants blame the landlords and officials who collect the taxes, not the Tsar, rodnoi otets
(our little father’) who set them free.
45
 WHAT'S BEHIND THE 1861 REFORM ?
After 1861 capitalism developed in Russia so rapidly that in a few decades it brought about a
transformation which had taken centuries in some of the old countries of Europe.
Lenin

FREEDOM 1S
GooP FOR
BUSINESS £
By 18% THE EXPORT
SALE OF GRAIN RISES
By 140%... THE BIG
LANDOWNERS ARE.
MAKING A KILLING ®
POPULATION
IN 4897
NOBLES -
ZMILLION

MERCHANTS &
PROFESSIONALS
#00 THOUSAND

CLERGY-
350 THOUSANP

(..ONLY OUR
NUMBER
INCREASES!
URBAN
PROLETARIAT
PEASANTS - 414 MILLION
£00 MILLION

70% of ex-serfs don’t own enough land to feed their families. This landless ‘army of the
4¢ unfed’ provides a source of cheap labour for capitalist industry.
 ...The rapid development of capitalism...
The mixture of capitalist enterprise, feudalism and aristocratic privilege was strange and
contradictory. It produced typical ‘chinovnik’ capitalists like Count S.Y Witte (1849-1915)
who began as a railway manager, rose to Minister of Finance and Economy, gained the
title of ‘Count.’ He put Russia on the Gold Standard, set up banks, foreign loans, ete.

THE TRANS-
SIBERIAN EXPRESS
WAS My IDEA

Historians tell us how well capitalism was doing under Tsarism. But they forget to mention that
Western shareholders owned 90% of Russia’s mines, 50% of her chemical industry, over 40% of
her engineering plants, and 42% of her banking stock. Tsarist Russia was virtually a colony!
 THE NARODNIKS...
The Narodniks were Russia’s first revolutionary socialists. The name comes fromrnarod, ‘the
people’, i.e. the peasants. Narodniks were radical intellectuals (also known as the
Intelligentsia) who opted out of the noble and educated classes.

TUE PEASANT 15 A
NATURAL SociAList...

ONLY THE PEASANTS'AXES-AND THEIR

COMMUNAL ECONOMY - CAN SAVE RussiAl

WHAT 00 THEY BEUEVE? can serve as the basis for a uniquely Russian
peasant socialism
that the Tsar’s emancipation decree is a fraud that capitalism is an evil which Russia can
that the peasants.are a revolutionary class avoid by going directly into socialism through
that the ancient peasant commune (obshchina) a peasant revolution
 ‘Going to the people ’
The first Narodnik underground movement, 1862, Zemlya i Volya (zemlya, ‘land’ and
volya, ‘will’ or ‘freedom’) was split between the followers of Bakunin and Lavrov.

TUE PEASANTS AREA REVOLUTIONARY

FORCE READY To DESTROY THE
STATE AND REPLACE IT WITH
ANARCHIST COLLECTIVEScee
Not FIRST WE MUST PROPAGATE
SOCIALIST IDEAS AMONG THE PEOPLE,
AND EDUCATE 4 SUFFICIENT
NUMBER OF LEADERS .«-

pot. LAVROV
IKHAIL
UeUNIN
(1923 :(901 )
ARMY COLONEL»
1914-76) FRIEND AND
Ex Any OFFICER, ARANSLATOR OF,wy
BLE IN EXILE
INTERNATIONA,
ut

The Narodnik leaders inspired the khozdeniye v narod, “going to the people”, movement
In the ‘mad summer’ of 1874 thousands of well-off young people abandon their university
studies to join the people in the countryside. 1874 ends with mass arrests — and the discovery
that the peasant masses remain loyal to the Tsar. Naive? Utopian? Yes, but history had
never before seen such a mass exodus of intellectuals to the people!
 THE NARODNIKS...
The Narodniks were Russia’s first revolutionary socialists. The name comes from-narod, ‘the
people’, i.e. the peasants. Narodniks were radical intellectuals (also known as the
Intelligentsia) who opted out of the noble and educated classes.

THE PEASANT IS A
NATURAL sociALisr...
ONLY THE PEASANTS'AXES-AND THEIR
COMMUNAL ECONOMY - CAN SAVE RussiAt

be NOs SHEVA!UEVOKY
CHERNY
ALEXNEN (1828-89).
(Gaaen Ly,
AN OF

NOBLE LANN EXILE MIRED BY WARD:

prom 14? 961-83

WHAT 00 THEY BELIEVE? ea for a uniquely Russian

that the Tsar’s emancipation decree is a fraud that capitalism is an evil which Russia can
that the peasants.are a revolutionary class avoid by going directly into socialism through
that the ancient peasant commune (obshchina) a peasant revolution
 ‘Going to the people’
The first Narodnik underground movement, 1862, Zemlya i Volya (zemlya, ‘land’ and
volya, ‘will’ or ‘freedom’) was split between the followers of Bakunin and Lavrov.

TUE PEASANTS ARE A REVOLUTIONARY

FORCE READY To DESTRoy THE
STATE AND REPLACE IT WITH
ANARCHIST COLLECTIVES see
Nod FIRST WE MUST PROPAGATE
SOCIALIST IDEAS AMONG THE PEOPLE,
AND EDUCATE A SUFFICIENT
NUMBER OF LEADERS «0+
ay LAVROV
(1823-(921
aR
)
colonel '
FRIEND AND
TOR OF uarx
TeMe ROM
1870-

‘FOREROUN
JARD” p
List
CAPER

The Narodnik leaders inspired the khozdeniye v narod, “going to the people”, movement.
In the ‘mad summer’ of 1874 thousands of well-off young people abandon their university
studies to join the people in the countryside. 1874 ends with mass arrests — and the discovery
that the peasant masses remain loyal to the Tsar. Naive? Utopian? Yes, but history had
never before seen such a mass exodus of intellectuals to the people!
 The theory of narodnik terrorism
1874 teaches the ‘Lavrists’ the need for a disciplined party ...as outlined by two other Narodnik
leaders:

LAVROV IS WRONG e++TO STARTA ooo BY A SMALL

POPULAR UPRISING THE GOVERNMENT \(CONSPIRATORIAL
HAS T0 BE PARTY OF
Tkachev’s 1874 letter to DISRUPTED MILITANTS £
Lavrov’s Vperyod predicted that
‘Going to the People’ would fail.

A <a

Wy iat
ZZ eneretd
Kz 222SSss

Kelle
Litter,
Z SS
KK

LLL
LL
SSsSs
lleeXP
Lz
SONATE KK
OTIIOTITE?
SSS
SRR
Ke
zz——_SS
SSS
SS
K
e KEKE
Keron
gNEN.KKS
KEE
ice ESE

P.N. Tkachev (1844-85) a nobleman and underground revolutionary. In exile, 1873,

publishes a journal, Nabat, (The Tocsin) which advocates the seizure of power by a revolu-
tionary minority in order to implement socialist reforms through the machinery of the state.
S.G. Nechayev (1847-82) a school-teacher of working class origins and terrorist who died in
Ze prison. With Bakunin he wrote The Revolutionary Catechism.
In 1878 Vera Zasulich (1851-1919) shot and wounded Governor Trepov of St. Petersburg
who ordered the flogging of a Narodnik student. The court acquitted her, and friends smuggled
her abroad before the police could arrest her again.

The Narodniks’ political aims were not extreme — land for the people, unions,
a republic, But they turned to terrorism as the only weapon they had to achieve even the
most basic democratic reforms. a
 At a secret party congress in 1879, the question of tactics splits Zemlya i Volya into two
factions. The Narodnaya Volya (people’s Freedom or Will) applies terrorism against govern-
ment officials and even the Tsar.

WE MUST FORCE THE

TAR TO SURRENPER

AND CENSORSHIP.
PREVENT LS FROM
REACHING THE
Or,

Sofia Perovskaya (1853-81) daughter of a Tsarist general began as a teacher in a workers’

study group. A.I. Zhelyaboy (1850-81) came from an ex-serf family. S.N. Khalturin (1856-82)
a carpenter and founder of the Northern Union of Russian Workers who turned to terrorism
when this union failed. By 1884, arrests, exile and executions destroyed the small number
2b of Narodovoltsi terrorists,
The other Zemlya i Volya faction is Chorny Peredel, ‘Black Partition’, meaning equal land
distribution for the ‘Black Folk’, i.e. the peasants. Its leaders, the ex-mining student
Plekhanov and Axelrod, reject terrorism as a weapon of political reform.

WE WERE THE ..- THAT NARODNIK\ (2... AND THAT THE

FIRST TO “PEASANT INDUSTRIAL
UNPERSTAND... SOCUALISM' WAS | WORKERS MUST ACT
UTOPIAN... AS Kussl4'S KEVOLU-
—~ TIONARY +
GASSS -

#
e kn
-
Marxism™_
Russian

In 1883 this exiled trio founded the first Marxist Emancipation of Labour group in
Switzerland. But what did Marx and Engels think of Russia? 2
 MARX HAD AREAL SYMPATHY FOR THE NAROPNIKS «««

HMMM.-. FUNNY PLACE RUSSIA.

MAYBE ITCAN AYOID CAPITALISM
THERE 15 MORE THAN ONE, ROAP
TO SOCIALISM 044 Marx and Engels were in touch with three
generations of Russian revolutionaries.
Bakunin’s translation of the Communist
Manifesto was printed by Herzen’s Kolokol.
Narodniks like Chernyshevsky impressed
Marx and he (and Engels) learned
Russian. Marx even wanted to re-write Das
Kapital to include a section on Russian
economy.

But relations with the Russian exiles weren’t always smooth!

MARX EXPELS GAKUNIN FROM THE
45T SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL IN 1872.
You PIG-HEAPED PIG- HEADED YOURSELF... -YOU...
ANARCHIST £ YOU GERMANS!

20eAND | DIDN'T
EVEN LIKE
HERR MARX]
 In 1882 Marx and Engels added a preface to
Plekhanov’s new translation of the
Communist Manifesto:
“If the Russian Revolution becomes the
signal for a proletarian revolution in the
West, so that both complement each other,
the present Russian common ownership of
land (obshchina) may serve as the starting
point for a communist development.”

But after Marx’s death (1883), Engels

became impatient with Narodniks’
peasant socialism.

PEASANT RUSSIA 15 IN YES - IT SEEMS

SOCIALISM /S THE GRIP OF RusslA MUST
AN ILLUSION... JACAPITALISM E Go THROUGHA
BOYRGEO!S
REVOLUTION
FIRST

WHAT Dip ENGELS MEAN 7 as

 WHERE DID THE NARDPNIKS )1teyMADE Two BASIC
MISTAKES...

1st ‘the people’ isn’t like yeast which will rise in a single mass
2nd they thought they could ‘skip over’ capitalism — but capitalism was already there!

... AND $0 THEY FAILED «oA BOURGEOIS

To SEE THAT INA ZIG-ZAG, REVOLUTION ?
UNEVEN WAY ,TWo
REVOLUTIONS WERE
PEVELOPING -A BOURGEOIS
ONE AND A PEOPLES...

Every major revolution in western history (till 1917) has been bourgeois . . .
the English (1642-49), American (1776), French (1789), and German (1849) ..

BUT EACH SUCCEEDING REVOLUTION

INCREASED THE VANGUARD ROLE
OF THE PROLETAKIAT- - «
THAT'S TRUE. BUT CAP)TAHEM :pourEcgs eee always :

SWEEPS AWAY FELIDALISM , fonaation which aot aimee

ANP BOURGEOIS DEMOCRATIC to the bourgeoisie itself.
SIRUGGLE ACTUALLY BENEFITS
THE PROLETARIAT +o.

THAT'S WHY THE PROLETARIAT NEEDS 4 PARTY AS TOUGH AS

THE NARODOYVOLTS1... TO PUSH THE BOURGEOIS
REVOLUTION FURTHER THAN IT LIKES To Go!

And according to Engels the

1849 bourgeois revolution in
Germany might have succeeded

oo /F THE REAL
MUSCLE HAD COME
FROM PEASANTS
AND WORKERS J
at
 ...ASHORT BIOGRAPHY...
LENIN... WAS BORN VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV, APRIL 1°, 1870
AT SIMBIRSK (TODAY ULYANOVSK) A PROVINCIAL CAPITAL ON THE VOLGA

HIS FATHER ; ILYA NIKOLAEYVICH

LENIN'S MOTHER: MARIA ULYANOYV WAS...A CHINOVNIK:
ALEXANPROVNA BLANK AN INSPECTOR OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS
THE DAUGHTER OF ASURGEON PROMOTED To THE NOBLE RAVK
ANP LANDOWNER. SHE DIED OF ‘CIVIL COUNCILLOR? IN 4874...
IN 2946. J
a Bae Sas ANNA

OLGA

“Deuray
Z VLADIMIR
(7 YEARS OLD)

ui
 2-- THE ULYANOVS WERE ANORMAL, HAPPY FAMILY...
“By their social status, the founders of
modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels,
themselves belonged to the bourgeois
intelligentsia.”
Lenin

LENIN INHERITEP HIS FATHER’S “3 BROTHER A

TARTAR EYES, HIGH CHEEKIRONES| |"SASHA*
RED HAIR (AND BALDNESS)...
orn 1666 CMIEKWAMED
LIKE HI15 FATHER, HE ALSO
DIED OF BRAIN HEMORRHAGE , FROM ME, HE
*INHERITED’? SOMETHING
ELSE... ;
O

at
 Sasha... The Revolutionary
VERY SERIOUS, INTELLIGENT, QUIET... HE SEEMED A MODEL STUDENT
AT ST. PETERSBURG UNIVERSITY.--
IN 1886 — THE YEAR OF HIS FATHER'S DEATH, — SASHA WON A GOLD
MEDAL FOR HIS ZOOLOGKAL STUDY OF ANNELIP WORMS...
SOME MONTHS LATER HE PAWNED IT TO BVY DYNAMITE
WITH 5 OTHER
STUDENTS HE FORMED
THE TERRORIST
S SECTION OF THE
».WARODNAYA VOLYA
WHICH PLANNED To
ASSASSINATE TSAR
ALEXANDER I ..-

de
waa
4
me
es
\

2» THE FAMILY IN
SIMBIRSK KNEW
“| NOTHING OF THIS...
INCLUDING I6 YEAR
OLD 'YOLODYA' (AS
Ze N| LEniv WAS KivowN).
By accident, the Pertersburg police discovered the plot. Sasha was arrested, tried . . . and on
May 8, 1887 he and four comrades were hanged . . .

At his trial Sasha declared: ‘‘we are if i LAD @

encouraged to develop our intellectual
powers, but we are not allowed to use them ae Pali
for the benefit of the people.” 4 j

+--A TYPICAL) /PARTLY... BUT HE

WAROPNIK ?]/ TRIED TO COMBINE
NARODNIK BELIEFS
WITH SCIENTIFIC
MARXISM...

Just before his arrest Sasha had translated

Marx’s Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
Right (1844). Lenin’s sister, Anna (arrested
with Sasha in 1887, but later released and
banished from Petersburg) reports that
“When Volodya heard this, he immediately
sat down and read it!”

3
 LENIN IN 1887...
No onE 15 BORN A MARXIST... NOT EVEN MARX #
LENIN DIDN'T BECOME AN_\ |AHA! BUT HE TURNED To MARXISM
ACTIVE PRORNIST TILL 1893.| |To REVENGE SASHA'S DEATH,
PEDO RST THINKING 4 |RIGHT 2/ VRONGE MARXISM
OT

15 A SCIENCE ..-NOTA
SCENARIO FOR A HOLLY WOOD
SHOOT-OUT!,.

FIRST THINGS FIRST...HE FINISHED

HIS STUDIES AT SIMBIRSK AND
WON A GOLD MEDAL -JUST LIKE

TO KEEP ON STUPYING WHEN

HIS BROTHER'S BEEN
MURDERED ZI

| WHAT ELSE COULD VoLopyA) 7

2-2 AND ['’M SUPPOSED TO ACT
DO7HE WAS ONLY |7 4. AS ‘HEAD OF THE FAMILY Too &

eve AND NOT A VERY

RESPECTABLE FAmiLy
ANYMORE oe
 yy,
AUGUST 1887, LENIN ENTERS
UNIVERSITY TO STUDY LAW...

THANKS TO THE WARM

fEcoMMEDATION aeMy Pa
RMER HEADMASTER. , AY
Fe ob OR KER ENS KY*
...
) WUNIVERSIY
A DECENT FELLOW
XX Ss

BUT VOLOPYA WAS S00N MIXED VP INA STUDENT PEMONSTRATION,

ARRESTEP, AND EXPELLEP FROM THE UNIVERSITY, DEC 5, 1887!

YOU'RE UP AGAINST A
STONE WALL, YouNG MANS
Banished from Kazan, Lenin is permitted to join his sister Anna at their mother’s estate in
Kukushkino, 30 miles away. Both are now under police supervision ... and Maria Alexandroyna
arrives with the younger children to look after these two dangerous ‘criminals’ ...

Goo KNows =e
WHAT WILL BECOME
OF HIM soe
PEASANTS WOULD BECOME
a SOMEWHAT ABNORMAL,
PERHAPS you MOTHER +e-
OUGHT To TRY
FARMING,
VOLODYA

Lenin studies hard at this time — but he keeps fit! Lenin was a fine swimmer, fancy skater,
enjoyed mountain-climbing and hunting

9 (GUESS I'LL HAVE To GIVE UP CHESS «++ as

4 TCO MUCH SITTING AROUND... 7 =
v
2iB Flo
z21a
Ss
3 =| a
z ots
 In the autumn of 88, he is allowed to re-enter Kazan but not the university ... the police consider
him “an undesirable”

LENIN FREQUENTS |
Alee GROUP
Y NE.
ZEOOSE YEV
(1871-98 _

LAND ALMOST GET

MYSELF ARRESTED
me AGAIN £

‘ound up th
group. ter commits
Siberia.

LENIN TURNS TO THE WRITINGS OF THE EXILED ¢ FATHER OF

RUSSIAN MARXISM’...

PLEKHANOV 5 FIRST
“THE NAROPNAYA
VOLYA MUST
BECOME A
MARXIST PARTY...
OR REMAIN
 October 1889: the Ulyanoy family moves to Samara, a ‘backwater’ Volga town without
industry or university. But many old Narodovoltsi released from Siberia live there under
police surveillance.

VoLoPYA PUMPS THE VETERANS FOR INFORMATION ON UNDERGROUND

METHOD.

Finally in 1890 the authorities permit him to take his exams in Petersburg as an ‘external’
student (which means in ‘quarantine’). He runs through a 4 year law course in less than a year
and comes out first, 27 Nov. 1891, and still has time to translate the Communist Manifesto!

MAYBE THEY
HOPE I'LL TURN
RESPECTABLE 7

WDB
_—
LENIN WORKS FOR A TIME
AS A JUNIOR ATTORNEY
IN ZAMARA ...
BUT NOT FOR LONG...
36
 1891... 4 GREAT FAMINE swEErs across
RUSSIA - ENTIRE VILLAGES FERISHooe

BLAME GOD FOR THE BAD

HARVEST, IF YOU LIKE... BUT
CONDEMN THE T2AR IST
GOVERNMENT WHICH STILL
EXPORTS GRAIN IN SPITE OF
MASS STARVATION £7

WE OUGHT
TO ORGANIZE \{THE SAME ey
A REHEF Because Marxists acknowledge the ‘progres-
CAMPAIGNS.T sive’ role of capitalism,
P the Narodniks begin
attacking them at this time.
8

RENEGAPES {MONSTERS £
YOU ARE DEFENDERS
AND APOLO og heOF
 The first-ever translation of Marx’s Das Kapital appears in Russian by the Narodnik
economist N.F. Danielson in 1872.

NARODNIKS KNEW ABOUT MARX 's CAPITALISM IS AN EVIL

IDEAS- BLIT MNS UNDERS TOOP WHICH KUSSIA CAN WELL
M OR U5; DO WITHOUTES
“Gris 1EN TICALLY .

0 Ga
(IN
TINN

V S K Y
NAeoaroLanOik aaah h
t
Loncae xism Of oes e
( 4 0
rE
8
n
0 -4902)
a r e
a oe M c grounds in hi
a !

n e s n i ( R u s !
pa
2 Boga
tstvo
Suass i
) i n 1 8 74-
Meath

BUT THE TSARIST POLICE,TOO,ARE

INTERESTED IN MARXISM!
Like the Narodniks, the police believe capitalism (or Marx’s criticism of it) has no relevance
to Russia. Narodism is the only real danger they see!

WHO'S GOING TO MARXISTS OPPOSE

UNDERSTAND !T NAROPISM-LET 5
ANY WAY 7 ENCOURAGE
THEM £
1894: THE ORIGIN OF ‘LEGAL MARXISM"
In 1894, THE CENSOR ALLOWS THE PUBLICATION BY A RUSSIAN
MARXIST WHICH CRITICIZES NARODLSM...
In the next 5 years, Tsarist censorship
eee THE BEGINNING OF approves Marxist texts which it hopes are
“LEGAL MARXISM ~ too heavy and obscure for the public. . .

Big MISTAKE !
OUR Books
ARE DEVOURED
BY THE YOUNG...

But in a Marxist circle, St. Petersburg 1894, Lenin expresses strong doubts about Struve’s
‘new brand’ of Marxism.
 LENIN’S INTUITION ABOUT 'REFORMISM’
STRUVE SAYS: REFORMS?
,MUST
WE,AS MODERN MARXISTS REFORMS ARE ONLY
THINK OFA GRADUAL TRANSITION BM THE PREPARATORY
FROM CAPITALISM To SOUALISM , STAGE OF A
THROUGH A SERIES OF LIBERAL PROLETARIAN
REVOLUTION«+.

LENIN DOESN'T SEE (POOR CHAP!)

THATA WEAK PROLETARIAT
NEEDS THE HELP OF ASTRONG
LIBERAL BOURGEOISIE INA JOINT
STRUGGLE AGAINST TSARISM o«-

Sturve’s liberalism turned him against supporting the military suppression of

Marxism — and he ended up a Monarchist socialism in 1917!
ho
 Lenin’s closest comrad e... D
BEFORE HE ARRIVE
LENIN WAS ALREADY KNOWN IN ST. PETERSBURG
THERE IN 4893...
«+e HIS WORK, CAREFULLY
HAND -WRITTEN ,HAD BEEN
FAZED ROUND AMONG OUR
COMRADES...

NADEZHDA KONSTANTINOVNA
KRUPSKAYA (1869- £937)
In her Memoirs, Lenin's wife-to-be describes
their first encounter at a small gathering of
Marxists in the spring of '94.
“Vladimir Ilyich spoke little and was more
occupied in contemplating those present.
People who styled themselves Marxists became
uncomfortable beneath his fixed gaze ...
Someone was saying - I think it was
Shevlyagin — that it was very important to
work in the Committee for Illiteracy.
Vladimir Ilyich laughed ... “Well,” he said, “if
anyone wants to save the fatherland in the
Committee for Illiteracy, we won’t stop him,”

++» A DRY, IRONICAL, THE MASSES NEED SOMETHING

VERY RUSSIAN LAUGH... MORE THAN SPOONFULS
OF ALPHABET SOUP...
 WHO IS KRUPSKAYA ?
She came from an impoverished upper class family. Her father had been suspended from
the civil service for ‘liberalism’. At 14 she began earning her living by teaching. In 1894
she joined the first Petersburg Marxist circle and taught at working men’s evening and
‘Sunday’ schools.
After the 1917 Revolution she was Commissar for Adult Education. Krupskaya was
always a fighter for Lenin’s ideas.
Krupskaya understands the reason for his ‘laughter'
EDUCATING THE WORKERS — WHAT CAN
THAT'S WORTHY, OF COURSE BE oe 2

TURN THE STUDY -CIRCLES INTO Y BUT THE WORKERS AREN'T

REAL LABOUR ORGANIZATIONS,| YET CONSCIOUS OF
THAT'S WHAT [ THEMSELVES

How Do WE KNOW THEY AREN'T ? ¥VLADIMIR WASN'T TALKING

PERHAPS WE MARXISTS 5 ABOUT FAITH. IN THE
“TEACHERS 'SHOULD TRY
lL FARNING FROM Te WORKERS
 WHAT FACTS?
SINCE 1861, CAPITALIST PRODUCTION HAS TRANSFORMED THE
CLASS NATURE OF THE PEASANTS o+-
THEY ARE NOT A SINGLE
FEUOAL MASS
ANYMORE...

45 Po BECOME RICH 65% HAVE LITTLE 40% ARE $MALL

LANDOWNERS OR NO LANP LANPHOLDERS
THE RURAL THE RURAL THE RURAL PETTY
BOURGEOISIE
(oR A KULAKZFST RO’ R
PROLETARIAT 6 OURGEOISI,
SIE
IN RUSSIAN )

“The peasants are not united by working in them an open, obvious, single enemy in the
big enterprises; on the contrary, they are person of the capitalist. They are themselves
disunited by their small, individual farming. to a certain extent masters and proprietors.”
Unlike the workers, they do not see before
 THE ‘TWO SOULS’OF THE PEASANT:
TUE PROLETARIAN SAYS TO THE THE BOURGEOIS SAYS To THE
SMALL PEASANT? SMALL PEASANT?

(OU ARESEMI-FROLETARIAN , YOU ARE A SMALL PROPRIETOR

50 FOLLOW THE LEAD oF A LABOURING FARMER
THE WORKERS; ITIS YOUR LABOUR ECONOMY ‘GROWS’
ONLY SALVATION. UVPER CAPITALISM AS WELL.
YOU SHOULD BE WITH THE
PROPRIETORS, NOT WITH THE
PROLETARIAT

THE SMALL.PROPRIETOR HAS T'Wo SOULS : ONE 1S A PROLETARIAN

ANP THE OTHER A ‘FRORRIETORY *SOUL «
BUT LOOK AT THE URBAN “The very conditions of their lives make the
WORKERS THEY OWN NOTHING workers capable of struggle and impel them to
BUT THEIR LABOUR POWER ++ struggle. Capital collects the workers in great
masses in big cities, uniting them, teaching
them to act in unison. At every step the
workers come face to face with their main
enemy ~ the capitalist class. In combat with
this enemy the worker becomes a socialist,
comes to realise the necessity of a complete
reconstruction of the whole of society, the
complete abolition of all poverty and
oppression.”
LENIN BECOMES A FACTORY AGITATOR
WHEW # IFINOIT EASIER
| 6TO WORK OVERTIME THAN
& ANSWER ALL YOUR
m QUESTIONSeo
 °VLADIMIR ILycH WAS INTERESTED /N THE MINUTEST DETAIL
DESCRIBING THE CONDITIONS SND LIFE OF THE WORKERS

I remember for example, how the material about the Thornton factory was collected, It was
decided that I should send for a pupilofmine named Krolikov, a sorter in that factory, who ha
previously been deported from Petersburg. I was to coll or forma ing to
a plan drawn up by Vladimir Ilyich. Krolikov arrived in a fine fur had borrowed from
someone and brought a whole exercise-book full of inforr
verbally. This data was very valuable, In fact Vladimir Ilyict €
and Apollinaria Alexandrovyna Yakubova put kerchiefs « c 2 Ou ves look like
women factory-workers, and went personally to the Thornton factory-barracks, vi oth the
single and married quarter. Conditions were most appalling. It was solely on f material
gathered in this manner that Vladimir Ilyich wrote his letters and leaflets. Examine his leaflets
addressed to the working men and women of the Thornton factory. The detail
the subject they deal with is at once apparent. And what a schooling this was fo!
working then! KRUPS KAYA MEMORIES OF LENIN’.
 Lenin meets other Marxists working in Vilna, Moscow and Kiev. He is soon known as the
Starik (the ‘old man’) and in 1895, with Martov, he founds the. . .

‘LEAGUE OF STRUGGLE FOR THE

EMANCIPATION OF THE WORKING CLASS’
a wu ¥ s

Ov
1873- 1923 He
\ (Julius Tsederbaum)
experience 0 f
i strike-action Ay
has first-hand Geos )
socialist eae Z
among Jewish rike of 1 3,00 ;
1 s st
industry in 18 9
occe atc a
Th Bialystok textile

NOTE: AT THIS TIME, MARXISTS

CALLED THEMSELVES SOCIAL -DEMOCRATS

WHAT IS SOCIAL~DEMOCRACY ?
THE PRINGH LABOUR\{ NOT EXACTLY...1T STARTED IN THE
PARTY ? PWEPEN ? 486 ols esA TED phelogic
L oO UN/ HE SOCIALIST FACTION.
Witty BRANDT: IN GERMANY...

4y
Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64), Marx’s rival In 1875, at Gotha, Lassalle’s faction and the
in Germany, borrowed the name social- ‘Eisenachers’ led by the Marxist Wilhelm
democracy from French republicanism of Liebknecht united to form the German
the 1840s. Social-Democratic Party.

Bismarck (1815-98) the Prussian ‘Iron

Chancellor’ who united Germany.
Despite Bismarck’s attempts to outlaw it,
the SDP became the fastest-growing workers’
party in the world, gaining many seats in
the German parliament.

KNX
Social-Democratic Marxism was defined by
Engels and Karl Kautsky in the Erfurt ‘model’. . .
Programme of 1891. Socialists everywhere v?
 Paris, 1889: at the founding congress of the Second Socialist International (the First,
1864-76, was led by Marx) Plekhanov is the spokesman for Russian Social-Democracy.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION WILL

TRIUMPH AS THE REVOLUTION OF THE
WORKING CLASS... OR ELSE
Not AT ALLE

..-THE INTERNATIONAL IN THE 90's

INCLUDED SOCIALISTS OF VERY
DIFFERENT
‘TENDENCIES *

In the spring of ’95, Lenin suffering from

nervous exhaustion, travels round Europe for
4 months. . . he meets Plekhanov and
Axelrod in Switzerland, Kautsky in Germany
and in Paris:

CAN YOU RUSSIANS UNDERSTAND

MARX, WHEN WE IN EUROPE HAVE
FORGOTTEN How ? =

fo
BACK AGAIN IN 57. PETERSBLIRG, LENIN STEPS UP STRIKE
AGITATION IN THE FACTORIES. BUT THE POU CLOSE
IN 42ND LENIN (5 ARRESTEP, DEC. '995
From his cell #193 Lenin continues to direct strike activities . . .

«WRITING MEFIAGES
IN MILK FROM INKSTANDS
OF BLACK BREAD... eis

In May, 1896, Lenin’s League militates in Krupskaya is arrested 8 months after Lenin.
amass strike of 30,000 workers. 20 factories Without trial, Lenin is sentenced to 3 years
across Russia are affected! exile in Siberia, 25 Feb. 1897.
St
 A WOMAN CONVICT IN CHAINS

3 ; b f 3 ‘ A.

LENIN ENDS VP_IN SHUSHENSKOE A YILLAGE IN YENISSEI PROVINCE,

KNOWN AS THE ‘SIBERIAN RIVIERA’ (BEING THE SON OF A NOBLE
OFFICIAL HAS SOME ADVANTAGES J)
KRUPSKAYA IS PERMITTED To JOIN HIM ON CONDITION THAT THEY
MARRY LEGALLY. SHE ARRIVES MAY 1898, ACCOMPANIED BY HER
MOTHER oe-

A a
oe 2 a e
Go v712 ig
POOR MARTOV ISN'T een ae
S30 LUCKY... UP THERE > mS
IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE! C3 : Pac:
aS

a The Tsarist deep-~freeze

eee ILLNESS, MADNESS, SUICIDE AND OEPRESSION ARE WORSE THAV
THE COLD . BHUSHENSKOE HAS ONLY 2 OTHER EXILES «-- BUT LENIN
PREFERS IT THAT WAYeee

cae
| EXILES BUNGHED TOGETHER
BECOME NEUROTIC IS

(20>? BR oe

He exercises, gives the peasants free legal advice ... and since he can have books mailed to him,
starts to work like a demon.- With Krupskaya, he translates Vol. 1 of Beatrice and Sidney Webb's
Industrial Democracy.
He finishes a massive analysis, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published legally (1899)
under the name V.llyin. For this work, Lenin studied 299 statistical sources in Russian, 38 in
German, French and English! 53
 ... MEANWHILE,OUTSIDE SIBERIA,

In March '98, at Minsk, a congress calling for a unified national Russian Social-Democratic
Party ends with most of the delegates arrested.

The real threat to Party unity is internal.

The reformist tendency which Lenin spotted
in Struye’s book now becomes an active,
new doctrine known as...

ECONOMISM!
WHAT IS 'ECONOMISM'?
..SO0CUAL DEMOCRATS WHO WANT JT BUT WHAT ABOUT
TO RESTRICT WORKERS TO POLITICAL Alms 7
ECONOMIC TRADE-UNION
DEMANDS (FOR HIGHER
WAGES, LE5$ WORKING

THEY HAVEN'T ANY - EXCEPT To

SUPPORT THE LIBERAL
 LENIN WRITES TO MARTOV
THE ECONOMISTS ACTUALLY +e ANI p THEY DARE
ARGUE AGAINST AN TO CALL THEM SELVES
1a tees ae WORKERS MARXISTS? rie
PARTY§

WORSE .-. THE ECONOMISTS RELY ON THE GREAT PRESTIGE OF

A LEADING GERMAN SOCIAL- DEMOCRAT,A FRIEND OF ENGELS?
MARX 1S GOING OUT OF DATE...
CAPITALISM CAN BE REFORMED AND
GRADUALLY CHANGED INTO SOCIALISM .e.

LENIN FIGHTS BACK

In a hectic 2 weeks Lenin translates Kautsky’s taken as something complete in itself,”
attack on Bernstein and writes his own Lenin wrote, “there will be nothing
reply, Protest by Russian Social-Democrats, socialist in it. . .” Lenin’s reply united many
August 1899. “If the economic struggle is confused Social-Democrats all over Russia.
s
 Lenin is released, Feb. 1900, and forms a troika (alliance) with 2 other exiles, Martov and
Potresov. Krupskaya is stuck with another year of exile in Ufa, a town in the Urals.

OUR INTELLECTUALS
ARE WEAK -MINDED,
SLOVENLY AMATEURS
-»- OUR ORGANIZATION
15 SLACK fF

WITH A FEW CRUMBS OF

THE WEDDING CAKE 7 Be

) a ee
Lenin has a plan to start an All-Party underground newspaper, ISKRA. Lenin crosses the
fe Russian frontier, July 1900.
 LENIN TAKES THE NAME FROM
ISKRA... THE DECEMBRIST SLOGAN:
“OUT OF THI5 SPARK
(ISKRA) SHALL SPRING THE
FLAME J“
BUT... THE FIRST
EDITORAL MEETING *&
IN GENEVA , ‘
AUGUST 700
oR ee IN
/: eee
TO BREAK THE
THE DEADLOCK
THE SPARK WAS NEARLY PLEKHANOV SHOULD
U,
EXTINGUISHED ? PREY HAVE TWO VOTES++
POOR STARTS

Plekhanov, the “father of Russian Marxism”, disagrees about tactics. He is suspicious (and
a little jealous) of the younger generation. During his long exile, he has lost touch with the
mass labour movement developing in Russia.
5p
WHAT'S SO IMPORTANT ABOUT A NEWSPAPER ?
Lenin remained in control of Iskra. He got round Plekhanov’s extra vote by setting up in
Munich. Lenin was determined to go ahead with an extraordinary plan: Iskra must serve
to create a Party!

ABOUT ECONOMILS™ ,
REVISIONISM ,INDIVIDUAL
TERRORISM MUST BE
CLEARED UP FIRST..."
Paes Sue a re
tgs ea te

ISKRA DISTRIBUTION = PARTY WORK!

THE TOUGH UNDERCOVER, AGENTS WHO SMUGGLE IS KRA INTO
RUSSIA ARE PERSONALLY INSTRUCTED By LENIN To ORGANIZE
AND COORDINATE AN UNDERGROUND PARTY NETWORK
IN THE FACTORIES ,S50C1A:L-DEMOCRATIC. LOCAL COMMITTEE
STUDY CIRCLES ETC, ETC, ALL OVER RUSSIA «+
 BUT RUSSIA IS BIG, TSARISM IS POWERFUL
The first issue of Iskra appears, December 1900, with the secret help of German Social-
Democrats. Copies were smuggled into Russia inside shoes, books, toys, ladies corsets,
waistcoats etc . . . But the police are alert...

++» PERHAPS ONLY @ BUT EVEN 4SINGLE copy

ONE-TENTH OF ANY. i COULD BE REPRODUCED By
ISSUE GOT THROUGH F
Krupskaya released from exile,
works as a one-woman admini-
strator of Iskra.

1926)
L. B. Krasin (1870-
exp los ive s expert,
engineer,
ni zer 1n
chief Bolshevik orga l press at
up an ill ega
Russia, sets
ee, <= x Baku.

FOR THE FIRST TIME,A LEADER IN EXILE REALLY WORKS

ag ies eae BtogPi a odlicta ed BACK HOME.
TANCE OF Ss CKBONE ©
ce MILITANT PARTY ORGANIZES Ae SHE, BACCO 6
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

GIVE US AN ORGANIZATION
OF REVOLUTIONARIES, AND
WE WILL OVERTURN RUSSIAE

LENIN SPELLS OUT HIS IPEAS ON

PARTY ORGANIZATION IN ISKRA
ARTICLES AND IN AN IMPOR TANT
BOCK: WHAT IS To BE PONE? 1902
THE SAME TITLE AS CHERNYSHEYSKY'S
FAMOUS NMARODNIK NOVEL (WRITTEN
IN PRISON, £863.)

.. I maintain (1) that no revolutionary mainly of people who are professionally

movement can be durable without a stable engaged in revolutionary activities; (4) that, in
organization of leaders which preserves an autocratic country, the more we narrow
continuity; (2) that the broader the mass the membership of such an organization .
which is spontaneously drawn into th the more difficult will it be to ‘catch’ such an
struggle ... the more urgent is the nec organization; and (5) the wider will be the
such an organization ... because the broader category of people, both from the working
the mass, the easier it is for any demagogue class and from other classes of society, who
to attract the backward sections of the mass; will have an opportunity of participating in
(3) that such an organization must consist the movement and actively working in it ee
 ..in WHAT IS TO BE DONE ? Lenin argues:
... the working class exclusively by its own
efforts is able to develop only trade-union BUT BY £903 WORKERS
consciousness ... Class political consciousness FOR
can be brought to the workers only from ee ae , CE
without, that is, only from outside the
economic struggle, from outside the sphere
of relations between workers and employers

“ og a J ee)
Mass STRIKES ALL ACROSS THE UKRAINE AND TRANS CAUCASIA, VIOLENT
CLASHES WITH THE POLICE ANP COSSACK TROOPS, BARRICADES IN MOSCOW

WORKERS THEMSELVES
HAVE SMASHED * PEACEFUL
ECONOMISM’ INTO PIECES f
we. INFACT, WHAT 1§ To BE DONE ? 15 piRECTED MAINLY
AGAINST A CONFUSEP AND DIVIPED INTELLIGENTSIA.
IT'S TRUE, LENIN SAYS SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM “CAME OUT OF THE
HEADS*OF INTELLECTUALS LIKE MARX AND ENGELS...BUT oe

OUR INTELLECTUALS
PON'T HAVE HEADS
LIKE THAT J

an organization of full-time professional I’m not saying the professionals will “think
revolutionaries must erase any distinction J for everyone” ...because professional
between workers and intellectuals. revolutionaries will come from the masses
in ever-increasing numbers! ‘3
 During this period of mass strike activity,
the majority of local Social-Democratic
committees in Russia are fused into the
Iskra network.
Constant visits from escaped prisoners,
exiles, and hundreds of letters from workers,
keep Lenin well-informed.

A ‘young eagle’ escaped from Siberia visits Lenin in London: Lev Davidovich Bronstein,
from a family of Jewish farmers in the Ukraine, union organizer in Odessa, and nicknamed
Pero (‘The Pen’). He is better known today as. . .

TROTSKY (1879-1940)

*a ae
MAN OF TALENT- NOTHING DOING E
BESIPES, |DON'T
LIKE THE WRITINGS
OF THIS “PENS...

¢7 Lenin wants to place the young ‘Pen’ on the Iskra board, but Plekhanov won’t have it!
Preparations begin in 1902 for an All-Party Congress. Iskra calls on leading S—D exiles in
Europe, agents and revolutionaries in Russia to establish a united Party with a single
programme and constitution.

Lenin is the real organizer, working flat out on reports, resolutions, speeches, leaving
nothing to chance.

VLADIMIR ILycH HELL FIRE

DEVELOPS A NERVOUS
AILMENT CALLED
“HOLY FIRE’ ¥
TREATMENT WITH

PSHINGLES: AN IVFLAMMATION
OF THE NERVE TERMINALS OF
BACK AND CHEST
,
fm i
 1903: THE 2nd CONGRESS OF THE
RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC
LABOUR PARTY
The ‘2nd’ in honour of the abortive 1898 Minsk Congress. Veteran exiles, like Plekhanov
and Zasulich, have waited 20 years for this! With tears in their eyes, the delegates sing
THE INTERNATIONAL.

The first of 37 sessions opens July 17, 1903, in a Brussels warehouse infested with lice
and rats. Plagued by spies, harassed by Belgian and Russian police, the Congress moves to
London in August,
Iskra’s leadership seems guaranteed. Out of 51 votes, Lenin has secured 33 for Iskra, thanks to
careful preparation.
Iskra’s chief rival, the ‘economist’ paper Rabochee Dyelo (Worker’s Cause) has only 3.
¢¢ The Jewish Bund has 5, and 6 remain unaligned . . .
Everything goes well — until the 22nd session. Discussion opens on definition of Party
membership, Paragraph I of the Party Rules.

LENIN PROPOSES THAT... MARTOV PROPOSES THE

... a Party member accepts the Party SAME... XCEPT?
Programme, supports the Party financially
and must belong to one of its organizations. . .
-.. a member need not belong to a Party
organization but can work under the direc-
tion of one of them...

Soe, / pet,
i oo

oS STRICT
oF MEMBERSHIP
WILL DISCOURAGE
OPPORTUNIST See.
TROSTKRY SUPPORTS MARTOV...PLEKHANOV DEFENDS LENIN. 63
 Lenin was repeating what he had already said in 1902 in his What Is To Be Done? that
the Party, as the vanguard of the proletariat, should be as organized as possible.

WHAT'S WRONG WITHAW GUTA LOOSE MEMBERSHIP UNCER

BROAD, FLEXIBLE ILLEGAL CONDITIONS 15 NONSENSE£

_ KREMER
A DING
BUNDIST

‘3
 WHAT Apour PLEKHANOV ?
(77-2 of eee T'S ONLY LOGICAL To ARGUE
W THAT DISCIPLINE Must BE
ACCEPTED BY EVERYONE IN
THE PARTY ,LEADERS ANP
MEMBERS wee

Before the Congress he drafted a party

programme which replaced Marx’s
“dictatorship of the proletariat’’ with a
weaker ‘‘power of the proletariat’”’. Lenin
made him put it back . . but now Plekhanov
defends Lenin!

“EVERY PARTY MEMBER IS RESPONSIBLE 30... WHAT'S THE

FOR THE PARTY... AND THE PARTY 15 MATTER
RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYONE OF ITS WITH MARTOV ?
MEMBERS
The 27th session...
CHECK MATE In ZMOVES F
1st move: the Bundists move to remain an
autonomous organization of Jewish workers.
Defeated by 41 votes, they walk out.
2nd move: Congress decides that Iskra is
the sole representative of the Party abroad.
Now the Economists walk out!
Martov has lost 8 votes!

With his majority, Lenin forms a Central

Committee of 3 Iskrists to operate inside
Russia. Plekhanov is voted Chairman of the
Party Council.

FA mw Seam,
a my
AW AY
—KVEKWE LAL)
FE ACG, Sry
se
eae a Ly
¥ PNY\” AX “AS Ww

Next comes the election of editors to the

Iskra board (now the central organ of the
Party). Everyone expects the re-election of
the original six. But Lenin pushes through a
new editorship of only 3: Plekhanov, Martov
and himself ...
 the BOLSHEVIK ~MENSHEVIRK split...
No? | REFUSE TO SERVE
WE HAVE NNO RIGHT 70 }\ ON SUCH A BOARP - I'M
CHANGE THE ORIGINAL NOT A SERF LE
BoARe Ss
WHAT ABOUT POTRESOV'S
FEELINGS ? IT'S NOT
FAIRE

WE ARE NOT HERE

TO CONSIPER.
FEELINGS!
The Iskra debate drags on for 9 bitter sessions, splitting the Party into pro-Lenin
Bolsheviks (‘majority’) and Mensheviks (‘minority’).

The Congress ends with everyone exhausted, depressed, and only 4 out of 24 items on the
agenda decided!
 THE SPLIT: SOME NEGATIVE ASPECTS
LENIN DIP NoT :
BELIEVE THE SPLIT AND INVITES
WAS SIGNIFICANT ZASULICH,
(AT FIRST) OR THAT AXELROD, ANP »-
IT WOULD LAST... PoTRESOY To
BUT... 500N AFTER REJOIN
THE CONGRESS (SKRA
PLEKHANOV CHANGES fe :
HIS MIND se.

Swe RANK -AND-FILE

THE BIG NAMES OF WORKERS ARE
THE 2NP : \ CONFUSED BY
INTERNATIONAL, = THE SPUT.0.
KAUTSKyY , LUXEMBURG [$ IT WORTH
BEPEL,SIPE WITH SPLITTINGINTO
TRE MENSHEVIKS. we ENEMY CAMPS?
peeel
THE OLD MAN' MUST STOP
HIS QUARREL WITH
THE CENTRAL MARToV AND REJOIN
COMMITTEE IN ISKRA!
RUSSIA (WHICH [5
BOLSHEVIK) WANTSA
COMPROMISE WITH
THE MENSHEVIKS,
GM.
KRZHIZHANOVSKY
LENIN WANTS TO TURN THE
PARTY INTO A MONSTROUS
FACTORY, AN ORGANIZATION
ISKRA LauncHes (OF COGS ANDWHEELS...
ATTACKS AGAINST
LENIN...

AXELROD
LAs dd. \)
> SOME POSITIVE ASPECTS
LENIN RESIGNS IN
DISGUS Tees THE MOST
TALENTED WRITERS ¥
AND INTELLECTUALS
ARE ON THE
MENSHEVIK SIDE +0.
BuT LENIN STARTS
HIS OWN BOLSHEVIK
PAPER, VPERYOD,
PEC. IFO4 WITH.»
see AND THE REAL REVOLUTIONARY
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MENSHEVISM

BIG DIFFERENCES
CAN GROW FROM
LITTLE ONES «1+

BUT EVEN
“CONCILIATORY *
BOLSHEVIK
COMMITTEE-MEN
ARE FINALLY WON
OvER LENIN
REBUILDS AN
UNDERGROVNP
BOLSHEVIK NETwoRK| & -B-KRAGIN
(1870-1926) aoe/AMENEV
136)
IN RUSSIA.
++» ONLY AN VNDISCIPLINED
INTELLECTUAL « WHAT COMES
SO HARD TO THE BOURGEOIS
Gers INDOF | INTELLECTUAL - ORGANIZATION-
eerie $eoy |2 EASILY ACQUIRED
oe NB |BY THEPROLETARIAT
VSATION “5 | BECAUSE OF THEIR
FACTORY
EXPERIENCE « é
MEANWHILE.» >| _.
 War
between
Russia and =<
Japan...
The Russo-Japanese War, Feb. 1904 — Sept. =
1905, was an imperialist scramble for
colonies in Manchuria, China and Korea.
Britain wants a weak Russia in the Far East
and backs Japan. France has imperial
ambitions and finances the Tsar.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION...

t+» OVER A BILLION

IN GOLD RAISED ON THE
PARIS STOCK EXCHANGE
PAYS FOR THE WARE
WITH FRENCH CAPITAL ,| CAN BRE
BUILD THE TRANS-SIBERIAN
BESIDES ,ANICE LITTLE
WAR WILL DISCOURAGE
REVOLUTION ©

(18
46-4904)
HVE
 Rural unemployment runs to 10 million.
Famines occur in 1895-6, 97 and 1901.
Land rent doubles and export of grain
goes on at higher profit. The Tsar‘s “little
war” will end in defeat.
Writing in Vperyod, 14 Jan. 1905, Lenin
predicts a revolution!

+ EVERY STEP BRINGS US

NEARER To A GREAT NEW
WAR, THE PEOPLE'S WAR
AGAINST ABSOLUTISM , THE WAR
OF THE PROLETARIAT FoR
LONG LIVE FREEDOM F
THE ARMY J
The elements of bourgeois
revolution
Except for the very rich, every sector of society is dissatisfied by 1905. The shortage of
domestic capital blocks the up-and-coming merchants, Kulaks, industrialists and profes-
sionals.

The liberal bourgeoisie organizes a party of parliamentary opposition to Tsarism in 1905: the
Constitutional Democrats (known as ‘Kadets’ from their initials kah-deh)

THIS WAR 15 ECONOMIC

NONSENSE
«0+
BUT DEFEAT WILL FORCE
CONCESSIONS FROM THE
TARE
Narodism revives among the Intelligentsia as the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (known as
‘SRs’) in 1901 . . . a terrorist elite which hopes to lead a single party of workers, peasants
and urban petty-bourgeois.
The secret police (Okhrana) planted their
agents in all revolutionary parties including
2 Gors (8) the Bolshevik. Yevno Azef, the SR leader,
A was an Okhrana agent recruited with
Minister Plehve’s approval. In July 1904
Plehve was killed in an SR bomb plot
engineered by Azef himself!

~ A
CATHERINE, ESHKOVEKAY
Ce 4 BRE SHKO-&
(eR)

PRS ARE ONLY LIBERALS ARMED

WITH BOMBS ! REFORMISTS AND
TERRORISTS ARE TWO SIDES OF THE
SAME COIN - NEITHER HAVE ANY
FAITH IN THE MASSES L

Colonel S.V. Zubatov (1864-1917), chief of Moscow Security Police, organi

controlled trade unions designed to keep out revolutionaries. But the workers used these
Zubatovy ‘unions’ to organize strikes in 1902-03. The police have to play along — even
paying relief money! 7?
 POLICE SOCIALISM BACKFIRES
The Zubatoy agent, ex-prison chaplain Father George Gapon found himself at the head of
a big strike, Jan. 9, 1905, started by the Putilov Engineering workers.
Gapon organizes the workers’ demands . . .

MENSHEYIK INFILTRATORS
ZUCCEEP IN ADDING POLITICAL
DEMANDS To GAPON'S
ECONOMIC ONES ese
LANB FOR THE
PEASANTS
‘Bloody Sunday’ Jan 9,1905
Gapon leads a procession of 200 thousand Petersburg workers to the Tsar’s Winter Palace.
The troops have orders to fire on the petitioners — and a thousand people are cut down.
Gapon’s anger sums up the popular feeling . . .
WE NO LONGER HAVE
m A TSAR ! wes

112 Industrial towns and 10 railway lines declare a General Strike! On June 14th the
battleship Potemkin mutinies and sails under the red flag for 11 days

REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN »-.

 TRUST THE WORKERS!
Gapon escapes and arrives in Geneva, spring of 1905. Lenin is only Social-Democrat exile
eager to talk to him. Why?

eee BECAUSE ANYONE THAT CLOSE

To THE WORKING MASSES |
WORTH MEETING!

STUDY M4RX, LITTLE FATHER

OR YOU'LL ENDUP DEAD!

The Bolshevik Central Committee in St. Petersburg warns Lenin that Gapon is “‘a shady
character” (in fact, Gapon was executed by SRs as a police traitor in 1906.)

. . .‘Zubatovism’ did socialism a great favour by legalizing the working-class movement. By

imitating a Social-Democratic movement, Zubatov unwittingly helped to create a real basis
for it. The striking workers have gone far beyond Gapon, towards an armed uprising of
the people! Our Bolshevik Central Committee in Russia failed to see this in time. And so,
Menshevik agitators have taken the lead!
 BUT WHAT ARE THE MENSHEVIKS
LEADERS PREPARED FOR?
THE LEAPERS IN EXILE DEFINE THEIR POSITION ATA GENEVA PARTY
CONFERENCE , APRIL 1905.

THE WORKERS ARE OUR TASK 13 TO GIVE THE LIBERALS

SPLIT AND CAN DO COURAGE ... BUT ON NO ACCOUNT
NOTHING... ONLY MUST WE FRIGHTEN THEM BY
THE ORGANIZED MAKING PROLETARIAN DEMANDS...
LIBERAL BOURGEOISIE
CAN CONFRONT
TFARISM
4. "SUOULP THE BOURGEOIS
REVOLUTION SUCCEED IN SETTING
UP A PARLIA MENT, WE SHOULD NOT
SHARE POWER BUT REMAIN A

How CAN YoU WIN-IF You’'RE AIMING NOT To?

>
on
eS wood

ym
ima?

“How can you count on the liberal bourgeoisie? Their struggle for liberty will be half-
hearted. Their property, status and class interests are tied up with the existing social order.
Therefore, they will seek a constitutional compromise which will not overthrow Tsarism
or prevent it from crushing the peasant-proletarian movement!”
af
 The Bolshevik 3rd
Congress of the RSDLP...
TWO RESOLUTIONS ON PARTY ACTION GO THROUGH...

To PREPARE COMBAT TO CARRY THE DEMOCRATIC —

ORGANIZATIONS REVOLUTIONARY ALLIANCE OF
FOR ARMED THE PROLETARIAT AND PEASANTS
INSURRECTION +++ INTO A PROVISIONAL
GOVERNMENTe««

HARSKY
A.V: eA rn,PHILosePHER MILITANT
Chae DM PROPA GANDIST:
ok SHEVIK

Reports are heard on the size and kind of Bolshevik membership (12 thousand, 60%
$z proletarian, 17 Party cells in the Petersburg factories, etc.)
The trouble starts when Lenin and Bogdanov propose a resolution to admit a majority of
workers on each local committee . . .

/'D MAKE IT COMPULSORY OTHERWIZE THE LEGAL

To HAVE 8 WORKERS TO r
¢ LABOUR MOVEMENT WILL
EVERY Z INTELLECTUALS DEVELOP WITHOUT USee-

Lenin is booed, attacked, and What Is To Be Done? is quoted against him.

LENIN!S PROPOSAL |S
v
ees: IT WILL DILUTE THE REVOLUTIONARY
CLARITY OF THE BOLSHEVIK PARTY £
/MPRACTICAL £
AM | SUPPOSED To SIT HERE AND
BELIEVE THAT NC WORKERS
ARE FIT TOBE COMMITTEE
MEMBERS 22

Lenin is outvoted! Why? Because the local committee-men (komitetchiki) are loyal to the
concept of an illegal underground Party. But Lenin foresees that the partial success of the
revolution may result in a need to work legally, above ground.
33
Frightened by the strikes, mutinies and uprisings, the Tsar offers the bourgeoisie an Imperial
Duma (parliament). But it’ ich votingf ich - and it fools no one!
en in October the Bolshevik printers in Moscow go on strike (demanding the same pay for.
punctuation marks as for letters!) The strike spreads into ...

The bi tG ] Strik
in labour history!
e e !

ey 1)
HOWEVER ... the bourgeois nature of the revolution is clear: The liberal Kadet party,
professionals and industrialists support the strike. Employers give their strikers half or full pay ...
... the revolution is limited to the collision between the capitalist forces of production and an
outmoded Tsarist administration ... and limited to a minimum programme of democratic goals (a
republic,economic reforms, separation of church and state, land reforms, etc.)

WHAT ABouT AMAXIMGU/4

PROGRAMME 7
THAT'S SOCIALISM, Say
COMRADE!

“Phe degree of Russia’s economic development (an objective condition), and the degree of class-
consciousness and organization of the broad masses of the proletariat (a subjective condition
inseparably bound up with the objective condition) make he immediate and complete
emancipation of the working class impossible.” Lenin
 ...Proletarian Democracy: >>
On Oct. 13th the Soviet (it means ‘Council’) of Workers’ Representatives of St. Petersburg is
founded. By whom? By worker-delegates elected on the basis of one for every 500 workers.
The Soviet is genuinely proletarian: its Menshevik affiliation is strong. But neither Mensheviks,
SRs nor Bolsheviks control it.

EVERY BRANCH OF INDUSTRY, THE SOVIET 15 NOW THE

TRADE ANP PUPLIC SERVICE IN PARLIAMENT OF STRIKING
420 TOWNS I$ PARALYZED oe WORKERS WITH THE POWER
TO KEEP THINGS GOING 2
TSARISM 1$ UP
AGAINST THE WALL!

< Za

\
\ NS
 THE SOVIET...
The Soviet lasts only 50 days. But it advances the example of workers’ democracy far
beyond the Paris Commune of 1871.

THE SOVIET ISA

RIVAL GOVERNMENT
POWER - WHICH /N THE FACTORIES WE
THREATENS TO DISPLACE START MAKING OUR WHAT'S IT
TSARISM ALTOGETHER £ OWN WEAPONS «-- SAY ABOUT
THE MARXIST
Xi
SOVIETS IN OTHER LEADERS 3
TOWNS ANP AMONG THE ;
PEASANTS SPRING UP
SPONTANEOUSLYvee , kM yyESTA. oe
4
THE ONLY PAPER«e+e
EXCEPT FOR ONE
[\ PRINTEP BY
GOVERNMENT
TROOPS «

SD

HOO)
AY

Strikes are always important because by their withdrawal of labour the workers recognize their
power. But a general strike means total withdrawal, which makes it necessary for workers
themselves to organize the continuity of society, and this experience provides a first real
recognition of workers’ self-government.
3}
 THE EXILES RETURN AND PREPARE FOR
COMBAT UNITY...
Trotsky arrives in Russia disguised
as an eye patient and is helped Parvus, with Trotsky, runs the
by Krassin. Menshevik paper Nachalo.
Krasin and Bogdanov want to
Parvus (A.L.Helfand 1869-1924)
negotiate Party unity with the
Mensheviks. Lenin agrees to a a Russian exile active on the
joint unifying 4th Congress.
German SDP left. He ends up a
right-wing supporter of Germany
during the First World War.

I)

WlUTMN N NtyyhyANY
{iy
AyAy
\ Ath
MYT
{|LUT
MU My Mi
Atty ))rsIAQ
Sey
Ry
|ee

1) )
ys),
Yul
 Trotsky (alias “Yanovsky) leads the
Mensheviks and is appointed Chairman of
the Soviet Executive Committee. Martov
is the only other Menshevik leader in Russia

HMMM), THAT TROTSKY - HE'S

MORE OF A BOLSHEVIK THAN
HE REALIZES£
E

Lenin is delayed in Stockholm and errives

(disguised as ‘Karpov’) after the Sovet is
set up. With Maxim Gorky and Litvinov,
he edits the Bolshevik paper Novaya Zhizn
(New Life).

Lenin is unhappy about the progress of the “Go to the youth, gentlemen! That is the only
Combat Committee which he now heads: _ remedy! Otherwise ~ I give you my word for
“There’s been talk about bombs for over 6 _it- you will be left with ‘learned’ memoranda,
months — yet not one has been made!” plans, charts, schemes, and magnificent
recipes, but without an organization, without
a living cause...”
wr
 LENIN VERSUS TROSTRY ...OPPOSING »—>
Trotsky’s concept of perman
. . . the people (proletariat and peasants) are ... if the rev n depends on the prole-
the decisive force which will topple Tsarism. ariat, why shouldn’t it keep i
r ho: ut i

If this democratic revolution succeeds, we But only the proletariat in power, as the
can begin to pass to the socialist revolution. leading class, can finally emancipate the
We stand for uninterrupted revolution. peasants through socialism

AT
(|

AER
 VIEWS ON ‘BOURGEOIS' REVOLUTION
Proletarian revolution in a backward
country like Russia cannot succeed on its
own without the support of international
revolutions in more advanced countries.

FINALLY, YES ...BUT IN

IN THE MEANTIME

... a bourgeois revolution, backed by a resolute

proletariat/peasant alliance, might introduce
nationalization of the land as a basis for
industrial progress. But nationalization doesn’t
mean socialism or even equal land tenure.

THAT'S TRUE, BUT +». Trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution and

Lenin’s uninterrupted revolution are based on
Marx ...

While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to

bring the revolution to a conclusion as quickly
as possible ... it is our task to make the
revolution permanent, until all more or less
possessing classes have been displaced from
domination, until the proletariat has
conquered state power, and the association of
the proletarians, not only in one country but
in all the dominant countries of the world,
has advanced so far that competition among
the proletarians of these countries has ceased
and that at least the decisive productive forces
are concentrated in the hands of the
proletarians.
Marx, Address to the Communist League, 1850.
The development of capitalism proceeds
extremely unevenly in different countries.
From this it follows irrefutably that socialism
cannot achieve victory simultaneously in all
a
countries, It will achieve victory first in one
or several countries, while the others will
for some time remain bourgeois or pre-
bourgeois.
1a
 LENIN’'S VISION OF WORKERS’ POWER...
IN STOCKHOLM, BEFORE ARRIVING BACK IN RUSSIA, LENIN
WROTE AN OPEN LETTER*T0 NOVAYA ZHIZN:
LENIN'S IMPORTANT LETTER WAS NOTPRINTED By THE PAPER!
OUR PETERSBURG BOLSHEVIKS \| \/.. D0.NOT ATTEMPT To LIMIT
ARE WRONG IF THEY TRY To OVIET TO OUR PARTY
FORCE THE SOVIETS TO ACCEPT ||| MEMBERS «2. THE SOVIETS MUST
OUR PARTY PROGRAMME AND RECRUIT NON-FARTY WORKERS,
OUR LEADERSHIP. SAILORS, SOLDIERS, PEASANTS,
AND BOURGEOIS INTELLECTUALS,

LET THE SOVIET UNITE THESEN | ...THE eae ISN'T JUSTA \_|
MIXED DEMOCRATIC ‘STRIKE COMMITTEE. IT ISA
ELEMENTS «+. OTHERWISE » PROVISIONAL
od 4 labs
THE REVOLUTION WILL FAILJ GOVERNM)

IT IS THE FUTURE FORM OF WORKERS’

DEMOCRACY!
yeyWAS ALONE IN SEEING THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF THE
qZ
 :
Why did the 1905 revolution fail?
When the workers in Moscow and Petersburg continued to strike in November for an 8-hour
day, the big employers withdrew their support — and so did liberals, like Milyukoy and Struve.

THIS STRIKE IS A
CRIME AGAINST
THE REVOLUTION ¥ J----79

In fact, withdrawal of democratic bourgeois support began on Oct. 30th when the clever
Count Witte convinced the Tsar to declare amnesty, a constitution and a Duma (parliament) . . .

WITH LIMITED \( WHO WANTS A CONSTITUTION /{SOCIALISTS MUST

VOTING FOR WRAPPED UP_IN COSSACK BOYCOTT THIS
WORKERS To, wuips 72 COUNTER —
OFPeourse./ REVOLUTIONARY.

A. 2
" "y DuMA!

Sele
ae Ne
la | i,

Att,
TROSTKY AND THE ENTIRE
PETERSBURG SOVIET EXECUTIVE
ARE ARRESTED DEc.16. =
?
 ..THE ARMY STILL
(.. THE WORKERS OF
THE KRASNAYA THE BOLSHEVIK-LED [7
PRESNYA DISTRICT UPRISING.
RESIST BRAVELY... MOSCOW
(MATCH FOR LONG - r
RANGE ARTILLERY 6

THE STRIKE WAS WE SHOULD HAVE EXPLAINED TO

UNTIMELY. THE THE MASSES THAT IT WAS
WORKERS SHOULD NOT | IMPOSSIBLE TO CONFINE THINGS
HAVE TAKEN TO ARMS | TOA PEACEFUL STRIKE ANP THAT
A FEARLESS ANP RELENTLESS
ARMED FIGHT WAS NECESSARY,
OBEYS THE TSAR...
«+e ACROSS RUSSIA ,FIRING
SQUADS, COURT MARTIALS, MAS!
FLOGGINGS AND ARRESTS
FINISH THE REVOLUTION,
JANUARY 1906 «
TROSTKY AND FARVUS GET LIF
SENTENCES IN SIBERIA (BUT
SOON ESCAPE )«

1905 has proven 3 things

1
a transfer of state power to the bourgeoisie
3
the experience of 1905 proves that the
cannot happen peacefully, as the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are organs of
Menshevik leaders hoped direct mass struggle. It was not some
theory, not appeals on the part of someone,
tactics invented by someone, not party
9 doctrine, but the force of circumstances
that led these non-party mass organs to
the Menshevik leaders have proven realize the need for an uprising .
themselves anti-revolutionary . . . but the However . . . it is also true that Soviets are
rank-and-file Menshevik workers and not sufficient for organizing the immediate
Bolsheviks in the Soviet were united by the fighting force, for organizing an uprising in
armed uprising. the narrowest sense of the word.
 Lenin attended the 4th and Sth Unity Congresses, only leaving Russia finally in 1907.
One moonlit December night, Lenin set off across the frozen Finnish channel 2 miles to a
ship headed for Stockholm . . the ice began cracking — like the RSDLP Party itself!

WHAT A STUPIP WAY

TO DIE tee

4th ALL~PARTY CONGRESS IN

STOCKHOLM. April 4—25, 1906
zi ————

see ATTENDED BY BUNDISTS - ~

BOLSHEVIKS <« MENSHEVIKS-LATVIAN

ol
>
= IN THE MARCH 1906 ELECTIONS To THE
= DUMA ,THE KAPETS GAIN 152 SEATS, AND
THE TRUDOVIKS (‘A NEW PEASANT LABOUR PARTY) GAIN J4«

HE MENSHEVIKS WHo HAVE 19 SEATS FROPOSE ~ as

AN ALLIANCE WITH THE KADETS
~ENIN ARGUES FOR A'LEFT-BLOC WITH
SRs ANP TRUDOVIKS
—a

OTHER BOLSHEVIKS DEMAND A BOYCOTT OF THE PUMA cee

—

eee BUT LENIN SURPRISES THEM BY aya

OTING FO: R PAR TICI ZATION
VOTING — =~ 3
> —— ——— >

qe
 5th CONGRESS IN LONDON,
April 30—May 19, 1907

AT THIS LAST BIG UNITY. CONGRESS LENIN REGAINS

A MAJORITY ON THE RSDLP CENTRAL ComMm!TIEE

INTHE 1907 2nd DUMA THE RSOLP HAs

65 SEATS INCLUDING 18 BOLSHEVIKS
BUT THE BOLSHEVIKS FACTION OF
*BOYCOTTISTS* CONTINUE To ATTACK LENIN

THE ’DUMA QUESTION’ SPLITS UP THE RSDLP...

pe THE DARK, BITTER YEARS 1906 -44 NEARLY DESTROY THE PARTY...
%
 THE STOLYPIN REGIME 1906-1911
3 JUNE 1907
STOLYPIN DISSOLVES BOTH THE
45T AND 2.NP DUMAS DECREES NEW
ot ELECTION LAWS .THIS MEANS
THE PEASANTS VOTE IS CUT BY
HALF, WORKERS’ By ONE-THIRD.
50 THE 32RD DUMA |S PACKED
WITH CONSERVATIVE BOURGEOIS
AND LANDOWNERS «.-.

PA. STOLYPIN (4862-19711)

MEW MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR
AFTER WITTE (AND LIKE PLEAVE,
ASSASSINATED IN A “DOUBLE
AGENT‘ PLOT)...

TIMATISndTAthat the
dema
ppeacitits r
Reo
carry out
deputies either from
or resign
TO HELL WITH THIS l directives
COMIC -OPERA DUMA ¢ EITHER —
OR ELSE
TOWARDS A'MIDDLE CLASS’ DEMOCRACY
STOLYPIN’S MASTERPIECE + WE HAVE No CHOICE BUT
AGRARIAN REFORMS WHICH To WORK INSIDE THIS
OUTLIVE HIM Duma pigsty £
+ THE VILLAGE COMMUNE
(OBSHCHINA) [5 ABOLISHED -
BETWEEN 1907-16 OVER 6 MILLION
PEASANT FAMILIES BECOME
INDIVIDUAL LANDOWNERS.
STOLYPIN 'S REFORM$ ARE DESIGNED
TO CREATE A CONSERVATIVE ,
PROPERTY-MINDED CLASS OF KULAKS
WHO WILL SUPPORT THE STATE..-

?
PARRTTYeV!aIeTEof the :
nter
1909: spli led by Fle’yh
anov which
iks enin
er at
ve:es f ly with L
Meopnserhat
co e
Liquidators
cenit the

Cy
LET'S GO
STRAIGHT£
 ats mo

A QUESTION OF ILLEGAL FINANCES

Full-time Party members got an average worker’s wage (30 rubles a month or less). Where
did the Party finances come from? From ‘angels’ — rich sympathizers like ‘Auntie’ Kalmykova
who financed Iskra or the textile tycoon S. T. Morozov, a pro-Bolshevik said to have
committed suicide after 1905. Morozov’s nephew, N. P. Schmidt (financed Novaya Zhizn) was
tortured and murdered by the police, but he left his estate to the Bolsheviks.

Still more finances were urgently needed. So Lenin goes ahead with expropriations, or ‘exes’,
armed robberies of banks.

25 June 1907, Bolshevik agents led by Kamo (S.A. Ter-Petrossian, 1882-1922) raid the Tiflis
Treasury and get away with 341,000 rubles.

ri
ite

My}

NINA
SSN
SN)=
Be eee pesy ASR Nie ama ha
aces

THE 'EXPROPRIATIONS’ SCANDAL...

Both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks criticize Lenin at the Stockholm and London Congresses.

WE CONDEMWN THESE LENIN SAYS NOTHING .»-HE

SCANDALOUS “EXES*>-- ONLY CHUCKLES W/TH
A SOMEWHAT CRYPTIC
EXPRESSION +«-

One of the chief organizers of the ‘exes’ at the 1907 London Congress . .

STALIN
Born Joseph Djugashvili (1879-1953) the seminary student, a Bolshevik since 1904,
son of a poor Georgian shoemaker, ex- arrested and exiled to Siberia six times, rises
to the Bolshevik Central Committee 1912. dot
 The Intra ~Party Struggle
Bogdanov’s claim as ideological defender of
THE CAPRI SCHOOL ARE FISHING
‘pure’ Bolshevism is backed by his new
philosophy, Empiriomonism, based on Mach
and neo-Kantianism, already adopted by the IN POLLUTED WATERS... RELIGION,
revisionist Marxists in Germany and Austria. METAPHYSICS , REVISIONISM ..-
Fideism attracts Gorky and Lunacharsky. PRAGGING EVERY KIND OF FAP.
In 1909, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and other
AND FASHION INTO
ultra-leftists organize an Otzovisty (Recallist) MARXISM++»
school at Gorky’s villa on Capri.

FIDEISM: ATTEMPT TO EMPIRIO-CRITICISM:P0SITIVIST

RESCUE RELIGION AND , PHILOSOPHY FOUNDED BY ERNST MACH
AYSTICISM FOR THE BENEFIT’ (4838-4946) - RICHARD AVENARIU5 (4843-4616)
OF SOCIALISM ATTEMPTS T° COMBINE PHYSICS WI
RESTRICT SCIENTIFIC
PSYCHOLOGY AND
vr} THEORY © DESCRIPTIONS OF SENSE-DATA
extends to philosophy...
Lenin launches his counter-attack, And at an editorial conference of the
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism in 1908. Bolshevik paper Proletarii, in Paris, 1909,
Lenin expels Bogdanov from the Party.

Bogdanov was not active in the 1917

Revolution: but he founded the Proletcult
movement. His experiments in blood-trans-
fusion led to his death.

Ow,

~ \
mh
\\ : /
*))
QD io
«:
~tt_=,
Ny
n)

:
SS)

aval

NEO-KANTIANISM: REVISIONISM:15 NEO-KANTIANISM

KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY IS APPLIED Tb SOCIALISM -
RELATIVE, LIMITED AND BERNSTEIN: "THE MOVEMENT (5 =
CONDITIONED BY THE MINP EVERYTHING ,THE ULTIMATE AM 1S NOTHING ded
 The dark night of exile life...
After the failure of 1905, despair, apathy, illness, poverty, suicide, madness and police spies
haunt the exiles. The terrible darkness is summed up by the Lafargues’ double suicide (Marx’s
daughter and son-in-law) in 1911. Lenin attends their funeral in Paris.

—.—
Sw.

ata

(MAY NOT LIVE TO

SEE THE REVOLUTION
e+.

G.Y. ZINOVIEV
(4883 - 4936) THEORETICIAN AND
BOLSHEVIK LOYAL To LENIN, ELECTED
To CENTRAL COMMITTEE IN 1907.

IN 1942, WITH ZINOVIEV ANP KAMENEV, LENIN ESTABLISHES A

SCHOOL FOR UNDERGROUND PARTY WORKERS ATLONGJUMEAU
Aor OUTSIPE FARIS ove
LENIN INVITES INESSA ARMAND, A BoLsHEViK MILITANT, Te
LECTURE AT THE SCHOOL.1T SEEMS LENIN HAS FALLEN IN LOVE +»
Inessa Armand, born Elizabeth De
Herbenville, 1875, of French theatre folk
settled in Russia. She married a textile
manufacturer and had 5 children. Became a
radical feminist and Bolshevik organizer,
twice arrested in 1905 and 1907, and escaped
from Siberia. Member of the Soviet
Executive Committee, 1917. She died in
1920 of typhus in the North Caucasus,

aeSS
Cc
sd.
Te
SSSSY Inessa’s death was a deep personal tragedy
[Zz
DRY
for Lenin.
(ZZ

LLONTA! (1872 S962)

EXANDRA Ko! RA Le
TER OFA THARIST GENE!
NIST, COMMI55
SfeoRe IN A947-
Aor
 1912...the Bolsheviks revive
£9- 30,L992 , THE
ATA CONFERENCE HELD IN PRAGUE, JANUARY
BOLSHEVIK ‘HARDS* RALLY ROUND LENIN «e+
pee!

~*~
SS

= &
eee
Do YX
S

$)

yMs oy! Na ARIN

geno" Re oy
WSF B yuk
(1888-1938) parents are Moscow school-
(1885-1919) from a poor Nizhni-Novgorod
artisan family, pharmacist, militant organizer teachers, chief Bolshevik theorist, student
working illegally since 1903, arrested 5 times, organizer. Future Politburo member, head
future first President of the Soviet Republic. of the Comintern, and for 3 years co-leader
with Stalin of the Communist Party.

(1878-1918) Bolshevik since 1903, Party

organizer in Georgia. One of the 26 People’s
Commissars of Baku. Executed by the
British Expeditionary Forces in 1918.

OUR TOUGHEST
UNDERGROUND
ORGANIZERS ARE
ALL YOUNG MEN...
406
THE BOLSHEVIKS ORGANIZE A’LEGAL* DAILY PRAVDA (TRUTH) IN
51. PETERSBURG «©PRAVDA HAS To CHANGE ITS NAME 8 TIMES 0.

OFFICES RAIPED,

FINES ARE JMPOSEP,

COPIES CONFISATED...

V.M.MoLoTov yy >
(Born 1890) son of a Kirov village shop- :
clerk, Bolshevik since 1906, secretary of > ra foes cater OF
Pravda editorial board. Future USSR OCRKERS Go on
Minister for Foreign Affairs. READING ITER

July 1912, Lenin moves party headquarters

to Cracow, Poland, to direct Pravda and the
4th Duma elections . . .
... only 6 Bolsheviks re-enter the Duma
(Noy.28). But, because of Stolypin’s
undemocratic reforms, this represents 88% of
the workers’ electors, while the 7 Mensheviks
represent only 11%.

6000 miners in the Lena goldfields (Siberia)

strike...
4 April 1912, the police massacre 500 strikers
which sparks off protest strikes across
Russia...
 +::ON JUNE 28,4914,
SERBIAN NATIONALISTS
ASSASSINATE THE
AUSTRIAN ARCHDUKE
FRANZ FERDINAND ANP
HIS WIFE AT SARAVEJO.».

Who — or rather, what — is the puppet-

master?

The first 14-odd years of the 20th century

were marked by imperialist, colony-grabbing
wars: the Spanish-American War 1898, the
Boer War 1899-1902, the Russo-Japanese
War 1905, the Italo-Turkish War 1911-12,
the Balkan Wars 1912-13, etc.

This un-declared ‘cold war’ between rival

imperialist nations finally becomes red hot
in 1914!

:
 : (Wl sce ees See ee
LENIN 15 ARRESTED AS AN ENEMY AL/EN IN POL ISH
AUSTRIA, AUGUST Fh
THE OUTBREAK OF WARK
IS NO SURPRISE -

Victor Adler, leading Austrian Social-

Democrat, secures his release from prison,
and Lenin takes refuge in neutral Switzerland
on the 23rd August.
 IMPOSSIBLE f THIS
MUST BE A FORGERY?!

GERMAN SOCIALISTS
MUST DEFEND THEIR,

WE SUPPORT A DEFENSIVE
WAR AGAINST GERMAN

Like Plekhanoy, socialist leaders in Germany, France, Belgium etc., became ‘defensists’ and
supporters of ‘patriotic war’. Others, like Trotsky, Martoy, Axelrod, remained faithful to the
struggle for international peace.
Gustav Noske (1868-1946) a right-wing German Social-Democrat, later organized the sup-
pression of the German workers’ revolution in 1918-21 and his officers murdered the founders
of the German Communist Party, Luxemburg and Liebknecht.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was expelled from the Italian Socialist Party for his pro-war
Ijo views. In 1919 he organized Fascism.
socialist 2nd International

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) were left-wing German
Social-Democrats.

Delegates from 25 nations, at the 1907 Stuttgart International Congress and again at the
1912 Basle Congress, had accepted ‘Red Rosa’s resolution:
1) to prevent war by any means
2) or if they could not prevent it, to turn the crisis caused by war into a revolution
Only one leader in the 2nd International lived up to the second pledge — Lenin! ")
 PEACEFUL SOCIALISM?
"PHILOSOPHERS HAVE ONLY INTERPRETED THE WORLD IN VARIOUS
WAYS. THE POINT 15 TO CHANGE IT.°
XI th THESIS ON FEUERBACH Kari MARX 1844

a ae ee LLY? A
: a.MarpaiTis
PEACE PU a L
H MUSEU

aD

Gi «RM
=
a
»
MARX'S FAMOUS XI th THESIS But the 2nd International operated in a
I$ THE ESSENCE OF peaceful period of European history (1889-
1914). Many socialists b thinking that
PROLE TARIAN PHILOSOPHY+.) ||‘revolution’ wasnolonger
theitimmediate
business . . . and they began to interpret Marx
-.IT CALLS FOR “in various ways” (economism, reformism,
ACTION NOT revisionism etc.) . . .
nie FORGETTING THAT ITS
THE WORLD THEY MUST
CHANGE -NoT MARX
 On the consequences of peaceful socialism
The West entered a phase of ‘peaceful’
preparations for the changes to come.
Socialist parties, basically proletarian, were
formed everywhere, and learned to use
bourgeois parliamentarism and to found their
own daily press, their educational institutions,
their trade unions and their cooperative
societies .. .
The dialectics of history were such that the
theoretical victory of Marxism compélled its
enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists.
Liberalism, rotten within, tried to revive itself
in the form of socialist opportunism . . . They
cravenly preached ‘social peace’ (i.e., peace
with the slave-owners), renunciation of the
class struggle, etc. They had very many
adherents among socialist members of
parliament, various officials of the working-
class movement, and the ‘sympathising’
intelligentsia.
Lenin, Pravda No.50, 1913
On the 30th anniversary of Marx’s death

LENIN ‘PEACEFULLY? AT WORK nw ss

THE BERNE LIBRARY, SWITZERLAND If

...WRITES IMPERIALISM, THE

HIGHEST STAGE OF
CAPITALISM, 1715-26

+. THE “PEACEFUL?”
FHASE IS OVER £ “3
 WHY IS
IMPERIALISM THE
‘HIGHEST STAGE’
OF CAPITALISM ?
Marx studied capitalism in its early stage of free competition and world-market expansion.
But, around 1900, the struggle to dominate the world-market increases . . . and ‘free enterprise’
capitalism.turns into monopoly capitalism.

WHAT IS MONOPOLY CAPITALISM ?

Essentially, it is a link-up between high A struggle develops between the supra- or
finance, big industry and the national multi-national monopolies to control the
government. world-market.

More and more, the national economy is But since the world has already been divided
directed by the monopoly system which up by the imperial Great Powers, the rival
controls large holdings of shares. monopolists struggle to re-partition the world
— to ‘muscle in’.
Stocks, shares and state loans increase the
amount and power of surplus-capital. Therefore . . .

This surplus-capital is exported beyond the The economic disparity between rival
national borders as investments and loans to monopolists — and the uneven development
‘backward’ countries. of rival capitalist nations — make imperialist
wars inevitable

“The European and world war has the clearly defined character of a bourgeois, imperialist and
dynastic war. A struggle for markets and for freedom to look foreign countries, a striving to
suppress the revolutionary movement of the proletariat and democracy in the individual
countries, a desire to deceive, disunite, and slaughter the proletarians of all countries by setting
the wage slaves of one nation against those of another so as to benefit the bourgeoisie — these
are the only real content and significance of the war.”
4
 sek ateA aah e 2 sianbem Sar Wasa Rea cS ti Anthea in ig

w wt yu rw ge WW “ we we We wig of
’ C2?¥?
sat Q: Q x oyof ut,

SSP TSA pegs

Ser 1Q yt) SD Ww Oy Mie Mitp iy
Om at off Me >

Mg <<
RYO
oh AYBY.

J oy AL HEARS
0! Oo3 xa Sh %
4 oy
SS
> D5 OF
& SE LATEDpe
ys cs,
iO ot}
aly ys

EMP, ee "|

VICTOR
REA
BRITAIN
JOSEPH 2 I5ER
WILHELASL
pani
T5ARMUO
TIMARU IIT
ITALY
AURIS "GERMANY ||” RUSS

WeULP WE HAVE WARS, IF WE

DIDN'T HAVE KINGS 7

[ee ! BECAUSE
\ GEO!S IMPERIALISM

BUT THERE IS ONE REAL HOPE...

As capitalism enters its ‘highest stage’, so too the proletariat approaches its highest stage . . -
which is REVOLUTION!
Lenin’s economic theory of imperialism is a guide to immediate action because it shows that
world war and revolution are dialectically related. That’s Lenin’s great lesson . . ,
 HOW'S THE
WAR 'DOING’?
WAR 15 THE ULTIMATE, AND PEADLIEST CONTEST
RETWEEN COMPETITIVE SORANP NAMES?...

IS THIS A WAR.
OR AN ADVERTISING
CAMPAIGN BETWEEN
RIVAL ARMS 217
MANUFACTURER? oe

THE WAR HAS ARMED WORKERS

EITHER T0 KILL EACH OTHER IN
THE INTERESTS OF THE BOURGEOISIE -
OR 70 SMASH THE STATE £

ue TURN THE WAR INTO CIVIL WAR!... AND THE

 TUERE 15 NO QUESTION OF
WORKERS ‘WINNING’ THIS WAR».
we. THE TWo SIPES ARE © BOTH WORSE?
1 SOCIALISTS MUST WORK FOR THE
PEFEAT CEALL THEIR OWN
COUNTRIES £

FIRST STEP IS REVOLUTIONARY DEFEATISM...

 WHAT IS
"REVOLUTIONARY
DEFEATISM’ ?
War identifies the State with Society ~
Revolution identifies the class war within
society...
In time of war, everyone has to identify with the State . . .everyone, no matter from what class,
has to defend the State, the ‘Fatherland’.
To go against your government is ‘defeatism’ — it is reason against the State!
But is your country in danger? or the ruling class? The ruling class alone controls the State and
identifies all of society with its own class interests.
Are the workers defending their own interests, their own state, their own class in the front-line
trenches?
Workers of all countries can only gain from the defeat of all their ‘own’ countries.
. Defeat makes it easier to turn the world war into civil war between hostile classes
my = and into a world-wide revolution!
 LENIN’'S UPHILL
STRUGGLE 1915-1917
On Sept. 5th, 1915, a conference of 38 anti-war socialists meets at Zimmerwald, a Swiss
village.
Lenin’s theses on revolutionary defeatism and civil war gain only left-wing minority support.
But the Conference majority doesn’t want to break with the International. Trotsky’s proposal,
“peace without victors or vanquished”, is adopted as the Zimmerwald Manifesto by the
French, German, Italian and Menshevik majority, May 1915.
For Lenin, pacifism and defence of the Fatherland are equally betrayals of the class struggle.

At the next anti-war conference at Kienthal, April 1916, support for Lenin increases. By
1917 Lenin has attracted a growing number of non-Russian followers who will act as members
of the 3rd Communist International!

AND THE BOLSHEVIKS ?

On August 8th, 1914, both Menshevik and Bolshevik RSDLP deputies in the Duma abstained
from voting for the war budget (which is passed anyway by the rest of the Duma).

But Lenin’s defeatism policy seems “hard to swallow” and was not accepted by the Bolshevik
Central Committee — including even the loyal Kamenev.

The arrest and Siberian exile of 5 Bolshevik deputies and other leaders disrupts the Party
organization. But rank-and-file Bolshevik workers organize an increasing number of anti-war
strikes between 1915-17.

In 1915 the first mass ‘defeatist’ surrenders occur at the front. The sailors of the Baltic
fleet mutiny. By 1917 some 15 million workers and peasants are in uniform . . . a
revolutionary tidal wave!
 THE TSAR’S "WEDDING-CAKE’
FALLS TO BITS...
NICKIE DEAR, Do
AS OUR FRIEND‘
SAYS oe

The Tsar and Tsarina’s ‘friend’ is Grigori

Rasputin (1871-1916) Siberian peasant
monk, horse-thief and charlatan. He uses
hypnotism to control the Tsarevich’s
haemophiliac attacks of bleeding.

The Tsarina’s blind faith in the shrewd miracle-

man gives him great power to interfere at the
Imperial Court.
Generals, nobles and politicians talk openly now of a coup d’etat as approved by French
and British diplomats.

ONLY A MILITARY"
DICTATORSHIP, Y
CAN SAVE US NOW;

tia
SARISM HAS ONLY
Reet 10 WEEKS LEFT.
M21
 FEBRUARY 1917...IN THE STREETS, »>

INTERNATIONAL
WOMEN 5 DAY
a ne
FEBRUARY 23rd, +00 YRaA ORE ATA HS

AXPABCTRYETH _
FEBRUARY 24th. | aie yt v5
000 as =(
- “©,Ay,
“4

FEBRUARY
28 th
the Tsar’s Ministers arrested
and the Schlusselt

Tzvestiia

ro Rnptan hee
THE PEOPLE OVERTHROW TSARISM...

>

= Og Marr
as ry
of glk
ooh
a
-
 BUT WHO HAS THE POWER ?
1M DOING THIS FOR YYWHO'S GOING TO
THE GooD OF RUSSIA! \ GUARANTEE MAY
SAFETY? Yd Batt ape
DAMN LATE LS

Ad ‘ M.V. Rodzianko, President of

March 2nd the Tsar abdicates a the Duma, a big landlord and
By order of the Soviet he is liberal monarchist failed to
arrested March 8th. The Tsar arrange a deal between the Grand
and his family were executed e Duke and the conservatives back
July 15, 1918. in January.

March 3rd the Tsar’s brother,

Grand Duke Mikhail, also
abdicates!

FORCING US
TO CREATE at
Bid) \COVERNMENT*-1/(
GOVERNMENT
ilyukov is Foreign Affairs
e+
ONYOU
WE COUNT.
Minister in the newly formed TO RUN THING 5+ p
Provisional Government made WITH OUR,
up of Kadets and liberal land- SUPPORT «
owners.

N.S. Chkheidze, a Menshevik

Duma delegate, is elected
Chairman of the Petrograd
Soviet, March 12th.
 THE PEOPLE MAY Go
Too FAR!

V.M. Chernov, a leader of the

SR Party and Soviet delegate
accepts a cabinet post in the
Provisional Government, May
4th.

A.F. Kerensky, lawyer, SR

leader and Trudovik deputy in
the 1912 4th Duma, elected
EVERYONE'S BUSY vice-chairman of the Soviet.
March 3rd he becomes Minister
ABDICATING... of Justice in the Provisional
INCLUDING THE Government, later War Minister,
SOCALIST LEADERS and finally head of government,
OF THE SOVIETS

THE FEBRUARY
REVOLUTION
CONTAINS THE
SEEDS OF A
BOURGEOIS
COUNTER-
REVOLUTION L

The bourgeoisie who hate the revolution

have been dragged into it by the hair! But the
‘moderate’ socialists cling to the dogmatic
belief that the revolution must be bourgeois.
However, the Soviet leaders cannot support a
bourgeois government without going against
the will of a revolutionary majority, against
the fact that a workers’ republic already
exists!
 HOW DID 'DUAL POWER’ ARISE?
SOLDIERS’ DELEGATES INTHE DUMA (TAURIPE PALACE) WHERE
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT AND THE SOVIET BOTH MZET-
: a {

YES... BUT WHO

AFTER ALL, REPRESENTS
SOLDIERS ARE
PEASANTS * YOU IN THE
IN UNIFORM,

i
’ Mainly) the petty-bourgeois
u socialist SR partyJ
| — the largest in the Soviet — which has
f| attracted masses of peasants, shopkeepers,
B) professionals, landowners, officers and
even some generals!

‘An attitude of unreasoning trust in the

capitalists . . .characterizes the politics of the
popular masses in Russia at the present
moment; this is the fruit that has grown with
revolutionary rapidity on the social and
economic soil of the most petty-bourgeois of
all European countries. This is the class basis
for the ‘agreement’ between the provisional
government and the Soviet. . ?
To MAKE THINGS WORSE ,THE BOLSHEVIK LEADERSHIP 15
DISUNIFIED AND CONFUSEP «.
KAMENEV y STALIN

MARCH 12th KAMENEV, MLURANOYV (FORMER PUMA DEPUTY)

AND STALIN, BACK FROM SIBERIA, RESUME THE
EDITORSHIP OF PRAYDA.

WHAT DOES THAT

IDIOT KAMENEYV THINK F
HE'S DOING ?

s2R
 Lenin in Zurich...
During the war Zurich was a refuge for pacificists, spies, deserters, black-market racketeers
. . .
and a new, bizarre art-form named DADA . . .

OWE groure ALWAYS TRY

ADICAL A
nee eee : 7-26 MARCH, LENIN WRITES
SLETTERS FROM
AFAR oe.
The proletariat . . . if it wants to uphold the
gains of the present revolution and proceed
further, to win peace, bread and freedom,
must ‘smash’, to use Marx’s expression, the
bourgeois ‘ready-made’ state machine and
substitute a new one for it by merging the
police force, the army and the bureaucracy
with the entire armed people . . .
from the 3rd Letter (but only the 1st was
published by Pravda!)
 Wn
KCGy , Mh How Do WE GETOUT
Ak wil my C
Ny) a
OF THIS
a By, CUCKOO
g e
INFERNAL
-CLO.
beg

~77'o nA i Fl i i My ,\
\ y sill]
:
a ‘a I | \%
HA
de LLED denna Re
Gi DA !

WAR«es AND WE CAN ae

-. WHO AGREE f )\ ALL OUR ATTEN TION JO Th
WESTERN FRONTS 4

oy om

| | »~
SYNX Y

March 27th: Lenin and 32 Bolsh

other exiles followed iin the next few months.
THE FINLAND STATION...APRIL 3rd 1917
Lenin arrives at the ‘Tsar’s station’ in the Vyborg district and is met by the Petrograd Soviet
leaders and thousands of Bolshevik workers and soldiers . . .

7KSeda
Ri. bte/)||
PANY J
WHAT'S THIS RUBBISH
you'VE BEEN WRITING IN
...and that same evening zi
Lenin’s “‘thunder-like speech”
shocks SRs, Mensheviks and
leven loyal Bolsheviks

WE DON'T NEED
BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY...
ALL POWER To
THE SOVIETS 7
 On April 4th Lenin presents his ideas to the Party Conference. This is one of the most
important documents of the revolution:

_THE APR
sot
chs IL
a

1
_.. the new government of Milyukov and Co. pursues an imperialist war owing to its capitalist
nature. On our part, not the slightest concession to ‘revolutionary defensism’ is permissible. ..

2
... the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution — which owing to the
insufficient class-consciousness and organization of the proletariat, placed power in the hands
of the bourgeoisie — to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the
proletariat and poorest sections of the peasants. . .
3
No support for the provisional government . . . an end to the impermissible, illusion-breeding
‘demand’ that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist
government...

4
The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Worker’s Deputies are the only possible
form of revulutionary government . . our task is (so long as we are in the minority) to present
132 a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation adapted to the practical needs of the masses . .
 5
. .. to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a
retrograde step . . .
Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. The Salaries of all officials . . . not to
exceed the average wage of a competent worker.

Confiscation of all landed estates.

Nationalization of all lands in the country . . .The organization of separate Soviets of Deputies
of Poor Peasants, The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates . . . -

7
The immediate amalgamation of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the
institution of control over it by the Soviet . .

8
It is not our immediate task to ‘introduce’ socialism, but only to bring social production and
the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets. . .

ON APRIL 8th THE PETERSBURG BOLSHEVIK COMMITTEE

REJECTS LENIN'S APRIL THESES BY 12 VOTES TOZ.
(AND THE S0VIET ANP PUMA LEADERS ARE DELIGHTED! )
LENIN HAD NO SUPPORT FROM
THE BOLSHEVIK LEADERSHIP.+.0

LENIN'S ALL
WASHED uPL
HE WILL BE - IF HE DOESN'T
CALM DOWN
 LENIN STRUGGLES TO CONVINCE THE
‘OLD BOLSHEVIKS’...
LENIN 'S SUPCPEN COMPLETE BREAK W/TH THE ACCEPTEP
DOCTRINE OF BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION CONFUSED THE
“OLD GUARD’...
LENIN'S THESES ARE .-- PERPLEXING!
HOW CAN HE SAY THE BOURGEOIS
REVOLUTION IS COMPLETED 72
IT HASN'T EVEN STARTED ON THE
MINIMUM PROGRAMME ...-

WHERE ARE
'S FACTS 7

Lenin patiently Do YOU REALLY BELIEVE

THAT THIS POWER FROM
explains... THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE
1. The passing of state power from one class HANDED OVER To THE
to another is the first, the principal, the basic
sign of a revolution, both in the strictly
BOURGEOISIE 7
scientific and in the practical political
meaning of that term.
2. The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship
of the proletariat and peasants has already
become a reality in the Russian revolution . . .
it is a power directly based on revolutionary
seizure, on the direct initiative of the people
from below, and not on a law enacted by a
134 centralized state power.
 AND PATIENTLY EXPLAIN...
In the next few months, Lenin regained total party support, while Bolshevik militants went on
“patiently explaining” his ideas to the workers . . .
—.

PARTY MEMBERSHIP WENT LENIN-AND ONLY LENIN-

UP FROM 24,000 IN FEBRUARY To| COULD RE-ARM THE
240,000 BYJULy!? PARTY IDEOLOGICALLY!

Trotsky arrives May 17th, joins Lenin, and is

SVERDLOV elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee in
Head of the Party Centre Secretariat which August.
has to cope with the huge increase.
 THE GLOGAN OF FETTY
BOURGEOIS SOCIALISM J
The provisional government is under pressure
from the Allies to continue the war. With the
support of ‘defensist’ SR and Menshevik
leaders in the Soviet, Kerensky orders a
Russian offensive in Galicia, June 16th.

By 1917 the army is disintegrating (with

nearly 8 million dead or wounded) and
between June-October, 2 million soldiers
desert .

“a

returning to their villages

quicken the decline of SR support among the
peasants
 THE PEOPLE ARE
4007: BEHINP
Us!

7
Ne,
DS
AS
WN
ar
aS
Wns
ARUERTNS

li ;
1.G.T serete ::
g ng
ht-wt-inwi
rijegh Georgt 95
$
In Kerensky
af Minister
government

A
Tsereteli, SR and other Mensheviks organize a mass demonstration to prove that Bolshevism
has no popular support. But the 400,000 workers who march through Petrograd, June 18,
1918, come out for Bolshevism! Maxim Gorky reports a complete triumph for Bolshevism
in Novaya Zhizn.

.-MEANWHILE, KEEP EXPLAINING...

What is required of us is the ability to explain
to the masses that the social and political NONE OF US WOULD BE ABLE
character of the war is determined not by the To DO IT AT ONCE WITHOUT
‘good will’ of individuals or groups, or even of
ste, but by the position OF ihe class which \ COMMITTING ERRORS Ei
conducts the war, by the class policy of which
the war is a continuation by the ties of
capital, which is the dominant economic force
in modern society, by the imperialist
character of modern capitalism, by Russia’s
dependence in finance, banking and
diplomacy upon Britain, France, and so on.
To explain this skilfully in a way the people
would understand is not easy . . .
 THE JULY DAYS...
In April, Lenin had to overcome the reluctant Petrograd machine-gun regiment want an
‘Old Bolsheviks’. But by July he faces the immediate armed uprising . . .
revolutionary impatience of the ‘leftists’.
Leaders of the Bolshevik Military _.. but Lenin says ‘Not yet!’
Organization, Kronstadt sailors and the

THE PEOPLE MUST CONVINCE THEMSELVES

THAT THERE ARE NO ALTERNATIVES
To BOLSHEVIK POLICY... WE PON'T
WANT A BLANQUIST PUTSCH!

On July 4th another half-million demonstrators are in the streets, believing that SR-
Menshevik leaders of the Soviet can be forced to take power

TAKE POWER, YOU JONOFABITCH,) WE RESOLUTELY KEFUSE

WHEN IT'S GIVEN TO You! f
THE LAST THING CHERNOV
&CO.WANT JISTHE 5 OVW/ET
POWER WHICH THE MASSES
ARE TRYING TO HAND THEM£
 Once the July Movement begins, the Bolsheviks cannot refuse to join it. “Better to suffer
defeat with the masses than remain neutral!”

Until then, Lenin had argued that the left power to the counter-revolution by
parties should agree to an immediate peaceful summoning Cossacks to Petrograd, disarming
seizure of power by the Soviets while there and disbanding revolutionary regiments and
was still time. workers, approving and tolerating acts of
But on 3 and 4 July, the SR-Menshevik violence against Bolsheviks, introducing the
leadership of the Soviet virtually handed over death penalty at the front, etc

The Pravda o re wrecked, hundreds of Bolsheviks arrested, including Kamenev and

Trotsky. Lenin is accused in the press of being a ‘German agent’. Lenin hides out in the
Razliv marshes where he continues writing . . .
 ell

/ THE OVERTUROW OF THE

BOURGEOISIE CAN BE ACHIEVED
ONLY BY THE FROLETARIAT
BECOMING THE RULING
CLASS#.. -—
—
* this is the essence of
and Revolution, and it
for the political rule of the pro

| Can the proletariat develop its

political independence ?
Capitali of years ago, The merchants, who
exchanged Jence as a capitalist class in opposition toa
1ew, expanding
altural

But the ty producers

class. Why? Bec ause the | the me,
ani also education. C
administrative elite
that, the proletariat
In time, t orking class develops defensive organs — such as trade unions. But the collapse
in 1914, of the German SDP labour party was proof that it co 1ot deal with a real state
Mo isis because it was not prepared for organizing all of society, for administering it
 Socialism does not s
proletarian cla
managing itself
The proletaria
only if it achie

ws DICTATORSHIP
THE PROLETARIAT ‘15
ONLY ANOTHER NAME
FOR A WORKERS’
STATE !
 KERENSKY GETS COLD FEET...
The German armies advance and on 21st August 1917 they capture Riga, an important
harbour of the pro-Bolshevik fleet.

SS Vitssas
Goopl! THE GERMANS SHOULD
TAKE FETROGRAD Too£

President of the Duma Rodzianko expresses

a wish of the bourgeoisie — to be rid of the
Soviet!

GET KORNILOY'S
<.AND IF NOT THE TO IMPOSE MARTIAL LAW
GERMANS ,THEN (MAYBE)
A MILI TARY-TAKE-OVER 7? LET ME RID RUSSIA
OF THE REDS ANP
ALL THOSE DAMN

Boris Savinkovy, a leading SR

Bessa wow Pitte Ministek of militant and Governor-General
the Provisional Government, toys of Petrograd is in league with
with a ‘Napoleonic’ plot to seize Kerensky and Kornilov.
Petrograd. yy

3 General L.G. Kornilov, appointed

4, |Supreme Commander by Kerensky,
EE heads the ‘Putsch’ against the
Petrograd Soviet, August 27-30.

At the last minute Kerensky gets cold feet — thanks to the assistance of the Bolshevik
and abandons the plot. Kornilov’s military party . . . which was still being suppressed and
uprising was defeated in a few days by the persecuted by the government!
workers and soldiers of the Petrograd Soviet
142
After Kornilov’s defeat, Lenin tries once more leaders in the hope of setting up a workers’
to reach agreement with the SR- Menshevik democracy peacefully.

But they reject Lenin’s offer and still support Kerensky’s government.

Meanwhile the mass popular shift towards Bolshevism increases . . .

ON SEPT. 24TH THE BOLSHEVIKS

WIN 350 SEATS OUT OF 710 IN
THE Moscow MUNICIPAL
ELECTIONS és
# BOLSHEVIKS GAIN THE
MAJORITY IN THE SOVIETS
OF FETROGRAD, TASHKENT,
KAZAN, REVAL, KALUGA, ETC.

cted
eiesoviet:
‘P. NO! © Mose

October 10th
The Bolshevik Central Committee
declares for an armed insurrec-
tion,

October 18th
Zinoviev and Kamenev publish
an open letter in Gorky’s paper
opposing the insurrection!
October 20th
The Bolshevik Military Revolu-
tionary Committee prepares . . .

October 24th
Kerensky issues orders for the

143
 THE OCTOBER 25th
On the night of the 24th Lenin arrives at
Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny WE SYNCHRONIZED THE SEIZURE
Institute (a former girls’ school) and at 2a.m. OF POWER WITH THE OPENING OF
of the 25th operations begin THE 2ND SOVIET CONGRESS ON,

Red Guards occupy all key points — railways,

bridges, telegraph, telephone and electricity
installations

j The attack on the Winter Palace, headquarters

of Kerensky’s government.
ppecejaczested weet | THANKS To COMRADE
a =.ahy’ TROSTRYCASUALTIE
ESonyyS INg
ae
mn \ TROSTKY?
— —_ ul

PETROGRAD. BUT IN
! Moscow...

In Moscow, the Menshevik and SR leaders of the City Duma organized a ‘White Guard’ which
ruthlessly massacres workers, It took six days of bitter street-fighting before the Bolsheviks
win, on Noy, 2. WS
‘WE SHALL NOW PROCEED TO CONSTRUCT |
ZA THE SOCIALIST ORDER...’
REAM banann, qinaabaOnney

Lenin’s first words to the Congress of Soviets

on Oct. 26th (or Nov. 8th new style calendar).

The first Socialist government in the world!

The Congress elects a new Executive of the All-Russia Soviets consisting of 102 members:
62 Bolsheviks, the rest Mensheviks, SRs and others. The first Soviet of People’s Commissars
146 was composed solely of 15 Bolsheviks with Lenin as Chairman.
 On the morning of the 26th the Soviet abolishes the private ownership of land,
but affirms the peasant’s right to occupy ‘and work his new holding.

THE BOLSHEVIKS HAVE STOLEN yutin, Commissar of

£ Agriculture.
OUR PROGRAMME

TALKED ABOUT |BREAK WITH OUR

IT. WE'LL PUT IT, |OWN PROGRAMME
INTO PRACTICE. | CF LAND
NATIONALIZATION 7

Will the peasantry act in the spirit of our to have tne firm assurance that there. will be
programme or in that of the $ It is of no more landlords and that they can set about
little importance: the main thing is for them _ organizing their own lives

THE REAL PROCLEM

IS-WILL WE BE LEFT IN
PEACE TO PEVELoF
SOCIALISM 7

The first steps towards a direct producers’

democracy, according to Lenin, do not seem
so extreme today. He did not contemplate the
total nationalization of heavy industry, but
rather an effective workers’ control and the
growing partipation of the socialist state in a
mixed economy in which capitalists would
retain some place.

V.A.ANTONOV OVSEYENKO
COMMISSAR OF. WAR
we
 THE BREST~LITOVSK PEACE TREATY
October 27th Lenin issues an appeal on radio calling for an immediate armistice. But in the
December peace talks, the Germans demand 215 thousand square kilometres of territory
(which contain 20 million people!) and 3,000 million gold rubles!

TROTSKY LEADS THE SECOND

ROUNP OF TALKS IN JANUAR®™..-

WE CAN'T CARRY ON FIGHTING -

BUT WE CAN'T ACCEPT THESE
OBSCENE PEACE TERMS EITHER!
OUR AIM SHOLLD BEA
REVOLUTIONARY WAR AGAINST
GERMAN IMPERIALISM£

Bukharin leads a strong ‘left’ opposition to

peace which believes that continued war will
encourage the outbreak of a workers’
revolution in Germany.

But SUPPOSE THE GERMAN

REVOLUTION DOESN'T
OCCUR SOON?
WE 'te ENDBoe
uP iyLVEN
WORSE+7

international scale by accepting the possibility

of defeat of that revolution in one’s own
country is . . . unwise and un-Marxist!
Lenin was in the minority again! But his realism proved only too correct! The Germans
advance on Feb. 18th, occupy the Ukraine and threaten Petrograd itself.

UKRAINE 15 RuUssiA's
BREAP- BASKET. WE'LL STARVE

Hichhors,
@ Field-Marshal

white.
Ukrainian!

--- BREAD, PEACE ANP

LAND HAVE BEEN LosT
THROUGH HES/ITATIONS

Russia was forced to accept peace, March

3rd 1918, but the German occupation lasted
another 9 months till November. Meanwhile
‘White’ counter-revolutionary armies were
created with German help in the Ukraine,
the Don and Kuban areas. So begins the
White counter-revolution which it will take
3 years to defeat!
 In June 1918 Menshevik leaders proclaim an
Penal petocavic . 3 independent republic in Georgia — and call
ry Oo in German and Turkish troops “to defend
GOVERNMENT... its borders’’.
.-. 50 WHATS WRONG WITH
STRUGGLING AGAINST | IF you HAVE THE SUPPORT OF
THE PEOPLE.» WHY Do You
NEEP THE GERMANS AD WHITE
TSARIST GENERALS ?

Some facts about the Bolshevik ‘seizure of

power’...
Anti-Bolshevik propaganda has always claimed that Lenin merely ‘seized power’, that October
was a coup d’etat, a conspiracy led by an undemocratic minority, etc. But the faets are that,
throughout the summer of 1917 and after, popular support was shifting rapidly towards
Bolshevism, and this was expressed democratically in the urban and Soviet elections across
Russia.
The general elections to the new Constituent Assembly gave these results on December 30,
1918:
Kadets and other bourgeois parties 4,600,000 (13%)
SRs 20,900,000 (58%)
Mensheviks 1,700,000 ( 4%)
Bolsheviks 9,023,963 (25%)

The majority had, in fact, voted for a revolutionary democracy. But what did the main
parties really stand for, by 1918?

Kadets
The party of the big bourgeoisie, even before October, was in favour of the military
suppression of the Soviets, and by December had gone over to the ‘White’ pro-monarchist
officers.

SRs
The party was split into opposed, irreconcilable factions. But it presented itself in the elections
as the single “party of the peasants”. The Right SRs, under Kerensky, Chernov, etc.
had already engaged in anti-Soviet conspiracies. The Left SRs decided to support the October
revolution only after its success. For a time, Left SRs participated in the government as
($e commissars and Soviet executives. But they attempted to seize power in July-August, 1918.
 Mensheviks
Half their vote came from the nationalist, right-wing base in the Caucasus which was non-
proletarian. However, at the Menshevik Central Committee Congress, October 17-21, 1918,
the leadership recognized that the Bolshevik revolution had been both necessary and popularly
supported!

Bolsheviks
Their vote represents the crucial nerve centre of the revolution — the proletariat and over
half the army and navy (i.e. peasants in uniform).

ONLY A LUNATIC CAN \ ... AND WE WEREN'T LUNATIC ENOUGH

IMAGINE THAT THE 70 PLACE THE FATE OF THE REVOLUTION,
KAPET, MENSHEVIK OR BIN THE HANDS OF THe ASSEMBLY £
ADERS WERE
SpEMOCATION. ON JAN.18th L948, SOVIET
WORKERS ANO SOLPIERS DISSOLVE
THE AZDBENIBLY...WITHOUT FUSS.
LOR SENSATION.

scOW
of the Mosc
arin head
Bureau.
 The civil war...and the
‘undemocratic democrats!
. AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIKS
ALL METHODS ARE Goobl

+. THE BOLSHEVIK
VERMIN MUST BE
DROWNED IN BLooD!

Gorky’s own words in Novaya Zhizn, Oct. 28, 1917. But, like Plekhanov, he never engaged
in hostile actions against Bolshevism. During the Civil War, Gorky rallied again to the
support of the Soviet

l]ra! \S PLEKHANOV AND

GORKy ONLY
TALKED... BUT
WE ACTED!

Co ig
} lo BRESKHOVE!
Only a few of the many anti-Bolshevik leaders. These people began as liberals, one-time
Marxists, veteran Narodniks, terrorists,founders of the SR Party and Mensheviks. They all
supported a counter-revolutionary dictatorship backed by British, US and French military
{§2 intervention and conspired actively with ‘White’ generals to overthrow the Soviet.
 The ‘civil war’ was, in fact, a class war which in 3% years left the entire country in
ruins. Middle class resistance to the Soviets came from petty-bourgeois socialists,
technicians, officials and military staff.
Why didn’t the socialists cooperate with the proletarian revolution — and save Russia
from calamity?

The SR-Menshevik ideologists wanted a bourgeois capitalist republic in which they

would constitute the administrative elite.

9 Mistakenly, they believed that the Bolsheviks had merely ‘seized power’ which they could
‘seize back’.

‘They could not believe that the proletariat, a class with ‘no history’, no experience of
government, was the legitimate, democratic force of the revolution.

THE LEADING 'WHITE’ GENERALS, 1918-1920

The ‘White’ counter-revolution, from the start, had to rely on the non-democratic support of
the old Tsarist general staff. RAL
Mi K
oeNeRAL
é NIKIAL ReKOLcHA \ . put? Nv
A.D! eo pray

»sEMYONOY
ATA @ENERAL NN. YUDENICH
Denikin, Cammander-in-Chief of all South Russia, was appointed Dictator of Russia by a
joint Allied and White conference at Jassy, Rumania, Nov. 1918, Kolchak was proclaimed
Supreme Ruler by an Allied -supported White government in Omsk, Siberia, Dec. 1918.
Dutov led a Cossack army in the South Urals; and Generals Alexeyev, Krasnoy and
Korniloy led other Cossacks in the Ukraine, Don and Kuban regions. Semyonoy led White
forces on the Manchuria border and supported Japanese intervention. Yudenich prepared
an attack in 1919 on Petrograd with British and Finnish support. Wrangel organized the last
White army in the Crimea, 1920. 453
 THE ALLIED INTERVENTION »-
Churchill, British Secretary of War in 1918, was the chief instigator of Allied military
intervention. British Prime Minister Lloyd George was nervous that Bolshevism might ‘infect’
British workers. Clemenceau, French War Minister, wanted a quick military victory over
Bolshevism. US President Wilson preferred diplomacy and blockades. Czech troops were
promised by Benes in exchange for Allied recognition of Czechoslovakia’s independence.
Pilsudski, military dictator of Poland, invaded Russia with French help in 1920.
 IN THE 'CIVIL WAR’...
The Allies refused to recognize the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and preferred to support a ‘White’
government which would continue the war. Moreover, the Bolsheviks struck a mortal blow
against Allied imperialism when, on Jan. 28, 1918, they cancelled Russia’s national debt
(80,000,000,000 gold rubles or two-thirds the total national wealth!) which meant no re-
payment of foreign loans!

Gum 1 5AR IST KUSSIA 1914

MVCN FURTHEST ADVANCE
OF ANTI + BOLSHEVIK
FORCES 1948 £9

Denikin, Krasnov etc. 1918-19 6 French and British 1918

British, US and Whites 1918-19 7. Yudenich and allies 1919
Czech Legions and Whites 1918 8, Kolchak 1919-20
Cossacks 1918 9. Wrangel 1920
VPwene
British and Turks 1918 10. Pilsudski 1920 IS
 ‘Against the Bolsheviks

rn, assassiD
kiills
a y , an ototheherr SRSE rog™
ame d e Pet
on the s pre esi ident of th
ky,
MS. Urits
Cheka.

IT'S NO GOOD TL AMENTING

WHI ES EM
THE L? PLOY
THAT METHOD AGAINST
S
“UNLAWFU
ENT OF
THE LAWFUL GOVERNM MUST
THE SOVIETS... WEyves £
OEF END ovRsel

The Military Revolutionary Committee of the

Petrograd Soviet, which planned the October
revolution, was reorganized on 7/20 Dec.
1917 as ‘the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission’ (Cheka for short) for ‘combating
counter-revolution and sabotage’, under the
156 presidency of Dzerzhinsky. White ‘ Protective Corps’ shoot
 all methods are good’
ee

The Civil War, 1918-20, was a time of great

chaos, and estimates of Cheka executions
vary from 12 to 50 thousand. But even the
highest figure does not compare to the
* ferocity of the White Terror for instance,
in Finland alone, the number of workers
executed by the Whites approaches 100,000!

... THAT'S 4 OF THE

ENTIRE ° FINNISH
PROLETARIAT EL

OF CIVIL WAR BUT IN ONLY

TWO MONTHS - IN APRIL -
down Red Guards, 1918 MAY OF £918 2
 The Third
Communist
International
Lenin expected that the October revolution
would act as a ‘fuse’, a ‘pilot-light’ for
revolutions in other, more advanced countries
of the world. Russia was the pioneer — but
she needed the help of a world socialist
revolution to overcome the gigantic
difficulties caused by the Civil War.

©... BUT NO OTHER COUNTRY

MANAGED To KEPEAT
RUSSIA'S PROLETARIAN
VICTORY fy,

Xt id

1
BURG CHT
ROSA Lune iEBKNE
iw q

4
144. \ SEPABCTEYET Ik AR erin:
°
es
65 lehe die itSnternalto
ee Tal The 3rd Communist International was
established March 2-6, 1919, during the
darkest days of the Civil War. Its members
didn’t do very well! Bela Kun led the
—_ i Hungarian Soviet Republic which lasted
Vive LA tS NTERNATI March-August 1919. Luxemburg and
LL Liebknecht were murdered January 1919

LING LIVE THE [fri INTERN

during the Berlin workers’ uprising. Eisner,
the socialist premier of Bavaria’s ‘Red
Republic’, 1918-19, was assassinated
Noske’s ‘White’ army suppressed the soviets
in Bavaria, Bremen, Kiel and Berlin. In
Italy, Gramsci’s attempt to create a
socialist ‘United Front’ againt Fascism
failed. Dimitrov, Bulgarian Communist
leader, escaped the savage destruction of
the Party in 1923. DeLeon, USA Socialist
Party leader, founded the Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW) in 1905. The IWW,
called ‘Wobblies’ because of their anti-war
stand, were brutally persecuted in 1919

The international revolutionary movement

achieved one thing — it helped to weaken
and defeat the intervention of the capitalist
countries against Soviet Russia
 ‘from the outside’,
e to combat the

IN 494F, A REGULAR Y
ARMY HAP CEASEP ¢
To Exist! é
y (COMMANPERS HAD Te
BE FOUNP AMONG
INEXPERIENCED
COMMUNIST WORKERS s
ANP SOLPIERS!
MMW WE COULDN'T HAVE
Bl FORMED AN ARMY OF
! A MILLION MEN BY
| 4949... /E THE MASSES |]
HADN'T SUPPORTED YZ
rc USS ae :
y,
TRUE
aa
WON .. —

53°ee
Bu T THE REVOL
TA
T1
\
ry
Qe Ess
 War communism...
By 1919, the Allied blockade of Russia is total — nothing can get in or out. The Whites
occupy the ports, 60% of railways and the key regions of industrial and grain production.
Millions are threatened with starvation! War Communism, in the spring of 1918, is designed
to meet this emergency in two ways:
1, _ increasing nationalization of industry (at much faster pace than Lenin believes wise)
2. _encouraging poor peasants to assist the proletariat in confiscating grain hoarded by
better-off Kulaks.

Lenin said: “In conditions of crisis, shortage, loss of cattle, the peasant must give his
produce on credit to the Soviet power for the sake of a large-scale industry which has
not yet given him a thing!”

THE SPECTRE OF FAMINE AND MUTINY

But 3 years is a long time to test the patience of workers and peasants literally dying of
hunger! British secret service agents, Menshevik and SR agitators provoke strikes in 1919.
Serious peasant uprisings occur in 1920-21. One of these was led by Makhno in the Ukraine.
Makhno was a partisan leader who fought the Whites, 1918-20, and tried to set up an
independent anarchist federation in the Gulyai-Polye region. His refusal to merge with the
Red Army led to his defeat in August 1921

a
+»sA BUNH oF ARMED
KULAKS ON
7
 The Kronstadt sailors mutiny...
The Kronstadt Soviet, a strong island fortress with 15,000 men, demanded immediate
reforms of War Communism. Their revolt, March 5-18, 1921, reflects the peasant origins of
the Kronstadt sailors and the influence of SR and anarchist agitators. Action had to be
immediate, before the ice melted and the sailors could move their battleships against
Petrograd. The situation is settled by cannons and troops brought over the ice by Tukhachevsky.

AN IMMEDIATE STer Te += THE ESTABLISHMENT OF

GRAIN REQUISITIONS... A FREE MARKET. FOR.
PEASANTS £

while Lenin tries to meet the

demands of the peasants...
If the sailors had waited, most of their ‘peasant demands’ would have been satisfied by
the N.E.P. — New Economic Policy — which Lenin put forward at the Tenth Congress of the
Communist Party, 8-16 March, 1921.

"It was the war and the ruin that forced us into ‘War Communism’. It was not, and could
not be, a policy that corresponded to the economic tasks of the proletariat. It was a
makeshift. The correct policy of the proletariat exercising its dictatorship in a small-
peasant country is to obtain grain in exchange for the manufactured goods the peasant
needs.

We know that so long as there is no revolution in other countries, only agre¢ment with the
peasantry can save the socialist revolution in Russia.”

The N.E.P, put a stop to grain requisitions. It instituted free trade in grain, concessions to
foreign capitalists, tolerance towards small traders, artisans and even small-scale industries. /63
 N.E.P. or the'peasant
Brest~Litovsk’...
The N.E.P. was, in Lenin’s words, the economic equivalent of the Brest-Litovsk
peace treaty . .. and it was opposed by the ‘Left Communists’ who had also resisted
peace in 1918. In 1921, they defended the radical measures of War Communism, just
as in 1918 they had argued for an all-out revolutionary war.

BUKHARIN FHLIAPNIKOV, COMMISSAR oF LABOUR KOLLONTA!

ws. CONTINUE THE WE OPPOSE ANY

OFFENSIVE AGAINST RE- IN TROPUCTION
CAPITAL WITH MORE OF CAPITALIST
NATIONALIZATION - METHODS OF Fa
MORE PROPUCTION +
EXPROPRIATIONS la tape UNIONS SHOULD
ASSUME THE DIRECT
ECONOMIC
MANAGEMENT, oF
PRODUCTION F

The N.E.P., which Lenin defined as ‘State Capitalism’, was not a return to ‘capitalism’,
Lenin had always envisaged the temporary co-existence of private property and communist
property. “... you must first attempt to build small bridges which shall lead a land
of small peasant holdings through State Capitalism to Socialism. Otherwise you will never
lead tens of millions of people to Communism.”
M4
 Lenin was bitterly criticized for introducing factory piece-work and the assembly-line
system known as ‘Taylorism’ (the scientific management of industry devised by the U.S.
engineer FW. Taylor and used by Ford.)

|Output of an assembly-line worker being

|studied in Gastyev’s Bio-Mechanic
|Laboratory, circa 1920

“Lenin wants to turn people into machines

Exactly the same sation, made by ‘od back in 1903, reveals the intellectual’s
fear of factory discipline and the underes mation of industrial labour as the basic force of
social progress.

15
 LENIN’S LAST STRUGGLE
Weakened by the 1918 assassination attempt, overworked, afflicted with constant
migraines, Lenin’s health began to decline. In May, 1922, he suffers a stroke which
leaves him partly paralyzed and unable to speak or write. By sheer will power, he managed
to return to work in October.

LIKE A CHILD, VLADIMIR ILYICH HAD TO RE=

LEARN HOW TO ARTICLILATE SOUNDS
ANP WRITE WITH
HIS LEFT HAND...

WE BADLY NEED
A CULTURAL
REVOLUTIONfF

2°
In his last writings, again and again, Lenin hammers home the need for mass education
as the basis for popular self-administration. For this reason, Lenin emphasized the
importance of workers’ and peasants’ cooperatives as schools of self-management
“Strictly speaking, there is ‘only’ one thing we have left to do and that is to make our
people so ‘enlightened’ that they understand all the advantages of everybody participating in
the work of the cooperatives, and organize this participation. ‘Only’ that. There are
now no other devices needed to advance socialism. But to achieve this ‘only’, there must be a
veritable revolution — the entire people must go through a period of cultural
development.”
LENIN, ON COOPERATION, 4-6 January 1923
 Lenin was aware that BUREAUCRACY was a
danger in a rural, backward workers’ state:

“We shall be fighting the evils of bureaucracy

for many years to come, and whoever thinks
otherwise is playing demagogue and cheating,
because overcoming the evils of bureaucracy
requires hundreds. of measures, wholesale
literacy, culture and participation . . .”

CARTOON FROM THE SOVIET

MAGAZINE KROKODIL (1965)
SATIRIZING BUREAUCRACY

Lenin also demanded that steps be taken to protect non-Russians in the Soviet Union
from any bullying by ‘‘Great-Russian chauyinists”

. that really Russian man, the Great-Ru: ian chauvinist, is in substance a

rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat Phere is no doubt that
the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet or sovietized workers will drown in that
tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk .. .””

OQuR EUROPEAN . PROFESSORS 3 STULL

ARGUE THAT REVOLUTION INA
BACK WARD COUNTRY CONTRADICTS
MARX'S IDEAS ++. THE IDIOTS I
BUT ASIA WILL TEACH
\ THEM A LESSONS

- Lenin’s hopes for international revolution, after 1919, were focussed on the colonized
nations of the ‘Third World’, especially Eastern ones with predominantly peasant populations. /6*
 Lenin’s 'Last Testament’...
When Lenin died, 21 January 1924, the Russian revolution lost its greatest Marxist . . .
Lenin has left a record of his thoughts on the men capable of succeeding him. He
dictated this ‘Testament’ on 25 December 1922 and 4 January 1923.

THE ABILITY To SEE 9TRAIGHT

WITHOUT OVERLOOKING THE
TWISTS, TURNS AND ZIGZAGS OF
REALITY... THAT 15 WHAT
MARXISM TEACHES!
Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, has concentrated enormous power in his
hands, and I am not sure he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution ., .
Stalin is too rude, and this fault, entirely supportable in relation to us Communists,
becomes insupportable in the office of General Secretary. Therefore I propose to the
comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint to it another
man who in all respects differs from Stalin only in superiority — namely, more patient, more
loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc.

... Comrade Trotsky is distinguished Bukharin . ..may be considered the favourite

not only by his exceptional ability of the whole Party. But his theoretical
personally, he is, to be sure, the most able views can only with the greatest
man in the present Central Committee —but _reservations be regarded as fully Marxist, for
also by his too far-reaching self-confidence there is something scholastic in him. (He
and a disposition to be far too much attrac- never has learned, and I think never fully
ted by the purely administrative side of understood, tne dialectic.)
affairs.

SRT
. the October episode of Zinoviev and
Kameney was not, of course, accidental, but
it ought as little to be used against them as
168 the ‘non-Bolshevism’ of Trotsky.
 A 'MONUMENT’
FOR LENIN ?

pau F MoNUMENTS
ONLY ATTRACT 1
PIGEONS £
COMRADE LENIN WAS
NOT AFRAID OF
ACKNOWLEDGING
HIS MISTAKES

apart
Stalin+ $Fspeaking
celebratat

Cold War hostility towards Russia and the errors of Stalinism have built
up a false image of Lenin. Readers who want to make up their own minds,
without prejudice, should consider the following assessment of Lenin
very carefully

“When he was still alive, Lenin was not regarded as a source of authority
even if he possessed considerable personal authority. The latter derived from
the rational force of the arguments with which he defended his opinions and
political choices; from the prestige he had won by his past successes nor
was his authority ever considered indisputable. On the contrary, he always
encountered disagreement, resistance or opposition even within the ruling
group of the Bolshevik Party. He was the recognized ‘head’ of the Party,
but it was permissible to disagree with him and, when it was thought
necessary, other comrades were allowed and even expected to oppose his
will. He was ‘head’ because he managed to convince and draw into struggle
even wavering and reluctant people, not because he had the right to reject
or silence opponents. Convinced of the need for firm Party discipline, he
never tried to place his opponents under a discipline to which he was not
himself subject. Nor did he seek to obtain within the Party a formal pre-
eminence which would enable him to escape the control of the majority
in any sphere of decisions.” VALENTINO GERRATAKA
 Tips for further reading

BOOKS ON LENIN
Readers who wish to consult other books on Lenin and the Russian revolution should
be warned. There are no impartial studies of Lenin! It is never true (especially in this
area of history) that ‘facts speak for themselves’. Facts are always interpreted; and
readers should be on their guard.

E.H. Carr, THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION John Reed, TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE
(3 volumes), Penguin, London/MacMillan, WORLD, Penguin, London/International
New York. A standard political history. Publishing Co., New York. Vivid eye-witness
account by an American journalist. A classic,
Tony Cliff, LENIN (2 volumes and the 3rd
due May, 1978), Pluto Press, London/Urizen, Victor Serge, YEAR ONE OF THE RUSSIAN ~
New York. Less a biography than a political REVOLUTION, Allen Lane, London.
study of Lenin as Party builder and leader. Essential reading — includes excellent notes.
Excellent, full of facts and figures. Serge’s MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONARY,
Oxford U.P., is also valuable, as well as other
Isaac Deutscher, LENIN’S CHILDHOOD, works by this author.
Oxford University Press. Readers might also
consult Deutscher’s standard biography of M.N. Sukhanov, THE RUSSIAN
Trotsky. REVOLUTION: A PERSONAL RECORD,
Methuen, London. Interesting account by a
Ernest Fischer and F. Marek, LENIN IN HIS Menshevik participant.
OWN WORDS, Allen Lane, London/Seabury
Press, New York. Short, very useful and Leon Trotsky, HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN
should be read with Fischer's MARX IN HIS REVOLUTION, Pluto Press, London/
OWN WORDS. University of Michigan Press. Also Trotsky’s
1905, Penguin, London. Indispensable books,
Louis Fischer, THE LIFE OF LENIN, Harper although Trotsky underplays the role of the
and Row, New York. A standard biography. Bolshevik Party.
Maxim Gorky, GORKY AND LENIN Franco Venturi, ROOTS OF REVOLUTION,
LETTERS, REMINISCENCES, ARTICLES, Grosset and Dunlap, New York. Valuable
Central Books, London. work on the Russian revolutionary movement
from 1850 to 1881.
N’S. Krupskaya, MEMORIES OF LENIN,
Lawrence and Wishart, London/International Edmund Wilson, TO THE FINLAND
Publishing Co., New York. STATION, Doubleday, New York/MacMillan.
Sympathetic account of the radical tradition
Moshe Lewin, LENIN’S LAST STRUGGLE, in European political thought, with chapters
Pluto Press, London. Lenin's final struggle on Marx, Lassalle, Lenin, ete.
against rising bureaucracy and Stalin's power.
B.D. Wolfe, THREE WHO MADE A i
Georg Lukacs, LENIN, New Left Books, REVOLUTION, Penguin, London/Dial, New
London, Short, packed with important ideas York, Combined biographies of Lenin, :
— but difficult. Trotsky and Stalin, ending on the eve of
1917. Ultimately hostile to Lenin ~ but far
A.V, Lunacharsky, REVOLUTIONARY better than David Shub’s LENIN (Penguin) or
SILHOUETTES, Central Books, London. Robert Conquest’s recent LENIN (Fontana).
M.N. Pokrovskii, RUSSIA IN WORLD
HISTORY, University of Michigan Press. A
basic work by a Bolshevik scholar.
 BOOKS BY LENIN
LENIN SHOULD BE STUDIED..-
IN THE SAME WAY AS,HE
STUDIED MARx/

GEORG Lukacs

Nearly everything Lenin wrote was directed towards party practice. His writings refer to
Specific events, to changing situations which affected the development of a revolutionary
Marxist party. That's why it is so important, when passages from Lenin are quoted
out of context, to know when and why they were originally written.

Lenin is never ‘purely’ theoretical. Nevertheless, he is, as Lukacs says, ‘‘the greatest thinker
to have been produced by the revolutionary working-class movement since Marx’”.
“ Lenin’s COMPLETE WORKS in 45 volumes are available from Lawrence and Wishart,
sotee London and International Publishers Co., New York. Selected Works in 1 or 3 volumes and a
variety of writings in pamphlets are published by Progress Publishers, Moscow. The latter are
low-priced and readily available.
Below is a list of Lenin's work quoted or used in our text (in chronolgocial order) plus others
= which might be consulted, LCW = Lenin's Complete Works, followed by the volume number,
Page references and title. The asterisk (*) means that the work is published in pamphlet or
paperback.

LCW 1/159-60. WHAT THE ‘FRIENDS OF LCW 1/335-507. THE ECONOMIC

THE PEOPLE’ ARE AND HOW THEY CONTENT OF NARODISM AND THE
FIGHT THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS,®* 1894 CRITICISM OF IT IN MR. STRUVE'S
BOOKS, 1895
ie LCW 17/119-28, THE PEASANT REFORM
AND THE PROLETARIAN-PEASANT LCW 11/389-95. THE POLITICAL
REVOLUTION, 1911. SITUATION AND THE TASKS OF THE
WORKING CLASS, 1906,
_ THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN
RUSSIA,* 1899. LCW 16/296-304, THE LESSONS OF THE
> REVOLUTION, 1910,
_ WHAT IS TO BE DONE?®, 1902.
LCW 7/203-425. ONE STEP FORWARD,
"ALLIANCE OF THE WORKING CLASS TWO STEPS BACK,* 1904.
AND THE PEASANTRY (LENIN’S
 _ LECTURE ON THE 1905 REVOLUTION.*
_ TWO TACTICS OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
IN THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION,"
1905. 5
oR LCW 30/253-75. THE CONSTITUENT
LCW 10/9-24. LETTER TO NOVAYA ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS AND THE
ZHIZN, 1905. DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT,
1919. :
AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL- -
DEMOCRACY IN THE 1ST RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION 1906-7."
TO THE RURAL POOR,* 1903.
LCW 27/238. THE IMMEDIATE TASES O
THE LAND QUESTION AND THE FIGHT THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT.*
FOR FREEDOM,* 1906.
LCW 32/165-271. TENTH CONGRESS OF %
LCW 10/317-82. REPORT ON THE UNITY THE RCP (B), MARCH 1921. F
CONGRESS OF THE RSDLP, 1906.

MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM, *

1908. LEFT-WING COMMUNISM: AN
ON DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM/ON INFANTILE DISORDER,* 1920. ON -
Serie HISTORICAL MATERIALISM (BOTH IN TRADE UNIONS, ON WORKERS’
: “MARX/ENGELS/LENIN” SELECTED CONTROL AND THE NATIONALIZATI
WORKS).* OF INDUSTRY (SELECTED WORKS).* ae

COLLAPSE OF THE SECOND LCW 33/367-75. ON COOPERATION, 1923

INTERNATIONAL, 1915.* OPPORTUNISM LCW 29/97-140. DRAFT PROGRAMME OF
_AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE 2ND THE RCP(B), 1919. LCW 36/605-11. THE ~ A
¢ INTERNATIONAL.* QUESTION OF NATIONALITIESOR
SOCIALISM AND WAR, 1915.* ‘AUTONOMIZATION’, 1922. ADDRESS
THE 2ND ALL-RUSSIAN CONGRESS OF
ih IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN COMMUNIST ORGANIZATIONS OF THE
* SOCIALISM.* PEOPLE OF THE EAST, 1919.°ON
CULTURE AND CULTURAL
IMPERIALISM, THE HIGHEST STAGE OF REVOLUTION (SELECTED WORKS).*
CAPITALISM, 1915-16.*

LCW 24/38-41. THE DUAL POWER.

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION

IN RUSSIA.*

LETTERS FROM AFAR,” 1917.

THE APRIL THESES,* 1917. :
_ LETTERS ON TACTICS,* 1917.

LCW 25/215. THREE CRISES, JULY 1917

AND LCW 24/ 63.
STATE AND REVOLUTION, 1917.* THE
IMPENDING CATASTROPHE AND HOW QUOTATION ON PAGE 474
TO AVOID IT.* CAN THE BOLSHEVIKS
VALENTINO GERRATANA re
“STALIN, LENIN AND LENINISM’
NEW BEET REVIEW, #2,
 “About the Author and Artist
4

Appignanesi is a novelist, poet, and art historian born in Mon-

da, in 1940 and currently living in London. He received a
.D. in theSocial HistoryofArt from the University of Sussex, and is
e of the founding members and directors of the Writers and Readers
ishing Cooperative.

Zarate is a Latin American illustrator and designer, born in 1942

and now also living in London. He has been the art director of several
_ advertising agencies in Buenos Aires, and has also designed and illus-
trated three children’s books. His posters and cover designs have won
_ numerous prizes in Europe and Argentina.
‘Lenin.
$9°95 eet
Be

FOR BEGINNERS
f
Tsars and peasants, Bloody Sunday and War Communism, Rasputin
and Kerensky, Narodniks and Bolsheviks,: exiles and commis-
sars.. With a cast of thousands, Lenin for Beginners brings one of
the major revolutionary figures of this century within any reader's
grasp.
This zany documentary comic strip is the
perfect introduction to Lenin's writings g
and a wonderful take-off point for any-
body who wants to plunge into. the tumul-
tuous history of the Russian Revolution.
Like its Companion volume, Marx for
Beginners, it’s accurate, under- AQW
standable, and. very, very funny.

Cover design by Louise Fili

Pantheon Books, New York
A Pantheon Documentary Comic Book

So 379 PRINTED INUSA, \0-394-73715-6 4

‘