ABOUT PROFESSIONAL BOLSHEVIKS-REVOLUTI ONARIES
WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
FOR BOLSHEVISM
INSIDE THE COMMUNIST AND WORKERS’ MOVEMENT
AUCPB - ВКПБ
No 4 (73 )APRIL 2009
We have repeatedly discussed questions with you on the merging of our Bolshevik party work with the workers’ and protest movement, with the struggle of the working people for their rights.
We have repeatedly discussed questions with you on the merging of our Bolshevik party work with the workers’ and protest movement, with the struggle of the working people for their rights.
But, unfortunately, the results in this area are little more than modest. Only separate organisations are aiming on a daily basis to solve this task, expanding the party ranks, understanding that two, three or five people, even with their whole self-conviction, courage and loyalty to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, to the cause of Lenin-Stalin, they cannot get behind them the thousands and tens of thousands of working people of their city or district. And indeed revolution is brought about by the masses of the working people, when millions of people rise up to the struggle. And to get them to follow can only be done by a party closely connected with them, living one life with people of labour, reflecting the root needs and aims of the working people in their everyday activity and struggle and, at the same time, pointing out the way to the working people and liberating them from exploitation and oppression.
I think that our fault lies in the absence of professionalism in our party work.
This is how Vladimir Ilyich Lenin put the question on professional revolutionaries in his outstanding work “What is To Be Done”, written at the start of the 20 century ) Autumn 1901 – February 1902) for the activity of a proletarian party in the conditions of the most brutal tsarist censorship and police brutality.
I shall cite separate extracts from his work:
“The fact is, of course, that our movement cannot be unearthed, for the very reason that it has countless thousands of roots deep down among the masses; but that is not the point at issue. As far as “deep roots” are concerned, we cannot be “unearthed” even now, despite all our amateurism, and yet we all complain, and cannot but complain, that the “organisations” are being unearthed and as a result it is impossible to maintain continuity in the movement. But since you raise the question of organisations being unearthed and persist in your opinion, I assert that it is far more difficult to unearth a dozen wise men than a hundred fools.
“As I have stated repeatedly, by “wise men”, in connection with organisation, I mean professional revolutionaries, irrespective of whether they have developed from among students or working men. I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organisation must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic state, the more we confine the membership of such an organisation to people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organisation; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.”
“In this way, and in this way alone - (here, Lenin is talking about the study of illegal material, and about its distribution, and about demonstrations and other functions of the movement) - shall we ensure that reading the illegal press, writing for it, and to some extent even distributing it, will almost cease to be secret work, for the police will soon come to realise the folly and impossibility of judicial and administrative red-tape procedure over every copy of a publication that is being distributed in the thousands. This holds not only for the press, but for every function of the movement, even for demonstrations. The active and widespread participation of the masses will not suffer; on the contrary, it will benefit by the fact that a “dozen” experienced revolutionaries, trained professionally no less than the police, will centralise all the secret aspects of the work — the drawing up of leaflets, the working out of approximate plans; and the appointing of bodies of leaders for each urban district, for each institution, etc.”
“in order to “serve” the mass movement we must have people who will devote themselves exclusively to Social-Democratic activities, and that such people must train themselves patiently and steadfastly to be professional revolutionaries.”
“Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!”
***
And that is the way Lenin puts the questions.
As we can see, the strength of a proletarian party, the strength of Bolshevism lies in its monolithic connection with masses, in the fact that Bolshevism has “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of roots deep down in the masses”
Up until today, we, as a rule have been displaying complete inability to connect our daily party work with the life of people of labour. Many of us have learned to talk by slogans and quotes. But they are completely unable to use their knowledge of Marxism-Leninism in daily reality. Its turns out that party work runs along at its own speed, and life flows along by itself. This, at the root is not true. This can only be called sectarianism. Today’s comrades believe that everything should be decided by the Central Committee, the Secretariat of the CC or, in Ukraine for example, the Buro of the CC. But indeed the result and effectiveness of party work depends not just on the skills of the leading party organs on working out the correct political line and tactics of struggle. But and to also to embody the decisions worked out, in life. And this already depends on the local party organisations, on the activity of Bolsheviks in the localities, on their connection with masses of working people, that is, with the labour collectives, learning institutions, scientific establishments, agricultural enterprises etc. Lenin writes that “scores” of revolutionaries will get down to the work of preparing leaflets, that is, the printing of leaflets, the planning of action, “the appointing of bodies of leaders for each urban district, for each factory quarter, for each learning institution, etc”.
See how Lenin puts forth the task – the Bolsheviks must have an influence in every factory, plant, learning institution and every area of the city. But for this it is necessary that a party organisation, even if only made up of a few people, has tens of sympathisers in factories, plants, mines etc. Having one or two comrades in every factory or learning institution means ten will be gathered around the town, and then hundreds of sympathisers who exert a Bolshevik influence among the workers, students, pupils and employees of various types of establishments. Is it possible to win over tens and tens of sympathisers by distributing central party newspapers like “Raboche-Krestyanska ya Pravda” or “Serp I Molot” which are produced only once a month and in small numbers? No, of course not. Every party organisation must set up the publication of leaflets that reflect the state of affairs in the town, district, region, in this or that factory, enterprise, leaflets in which the anti-peoples policies of the local authorities or factory management are exposed.
In Kiev, Mr Chernovetsky, the Mayor, the city administration raised the fares for city rail transport 4 times: from 50 kopeeks to 4 gryvna. And how do the working people of Kiev respond? – They keep quiet. And the bourgeoisie need just that – so everyone stays silent. The Kiev organisation of the AUCPB prepared and printed a leaflet of protest against this rise in fares and called upon the working people to rise up to the struggle for their rights (the leaflet was published in Raboche-Krestyanska ya Pravda No12, 2008). But the quantity of leaflets printed was very small – in all only 100 copies. And in Kiev there are about 50 underground railways stations. In order to hand out on average 100 leaflets at every station we would need to print no less than 5 thousand leaflets. Only then could we start talking about some kind of Bolshevik influence on the people of Kiev.
And in this plan, an example has been shown to us by “Trudovaya Kharkovshina”. In “RKP” No1 the leaflet by our Kharkov comrades has been published under the title “Enough of putting up with bourgeois disorder and destruction of the people!”. In this leaflet an analysis is given on the state of affairs at enterprises of Kharkov and the region, and it shows how the bourgeoisie is mercilessly closing down enterprises and throwing tens of thousands of working people onto the streets without any means of existence. And “Trudovaya Kharkovshina” appeals to the workers and working people with calls such as “Death to capitalism!”, “Long live the impending socialist revolution!” and calling on them to rise up to the struggle for their rights. It is good that the Kharkov organisation of the AUCPB, and the editorial of the newspaper “Raboche-Krestyanska ya Pravda” have for a long time set up cooperation with comrades from “Trudovaya Kharkovshina”. But indeed such an analysis of the state of affairs needs to be done in every region, every major industrial centre, every town, city and village. And this is the task of the party organisers of the Central Committee and local party organisations of the AUCPB. But our comrades from Lugansk, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozh, Kherson, Simferopolya and others are staying silent, as if no mass closures of enterprises and establishments is taking place and that thousands and thousands of people are being left without jobs and a means to existence.
The most important task of each local organisation is to set up the systematic production of leaflets reflecting the state of affairs in the localities and calling on the working people to rise up to the struggle for their rights. But this needs to be learned and to find young people who work on computers and can produce good quality leaflets.
In general, the task of every Bolshevik, of every professional revolutionary is to constantly study, to study Marxism-Leninism and most importantly, the skills to utilise the knowledge gained in daily practical activity and raise our common culture (in this connection we remember the words of V.I. Lenin when he said “a person may only become a communist only when he has enriched his memory with knowledge of all that wealth which has been gathered by humanity”, to learn the art and skill of working with people and attracting them over to our side, to our Bolshevik side (90% of the inhabitants of Ukraine exist on miserly kopeeks and are struggling to survive; we Bolsheviks live and exist in such conditions too on low pensions, wages, student grants and do not know how to go to the masses?!) to master the art of public speaking and carrying out propaganda work etc., etc.
For leaders and secretaries of party organisations and organisers of the CC, it is very important to have the skills in selecting the right people and place those Bolsheviks in those areas of work where they can demonstrate their skills most effectively. Some may be good at distributing Bolshevik press, some good at writing articles into newspapers, some – good at photography, others good at publishing leaflets, or working on computers, skilled at using the Internet and from there gathering information and critically analysing it, etc.
I would like to once again remind every CC partorg that your primary task is the forming of party structures in the localities. Many CC partorgs for many years have not recruited any comrades into the party. And this means they are simply not working with people in the given direction, have let this question slip or simply let it all go, which is inadmissible for a Bolshevik. Without any growth in the party ranks (not for the sake of membership growth alone and noone wants just a formal growth in membership because that is even more harmful) we cannot solve the tasks set forth by our party and will simply be unable to influence the masses with our Bolshevik influence.
Obviously, the rank of professional revolutionary also means that he is maintained by the party and carries out only and exclusively party work. But our party does not have such a luxury. But separate comrades do carry on only party work existing on their own pension, others have to earn extra over and above, but a large number of Bolsheviks work in order to maintain their families and Bolshevik work has to be done in their own free time.
But in any case, a Bolshevik has to always remain a Bolshevik, to correspond to his high rank of belonging to the vanguard of the proletariat, with the determination and selflessness to fulfil voluntarily the party responsibilities given to him – that is, to always remain a revolutionary, a fighter for the rights of the working people.
Another very important task for every Bolshevik and more so for every leader (secretary of a party organisation, party organiser of the CC and high-standing leaders) is in the attracting of young people over to our Bolshevik activity and to the struggle along with the training up of suitable replacements. Without the youth, we cannot guarantee gains in the movement. Namely the combining of living experience and knowledge of the senior comrades with youthful energy and ardour and make the flames of the impending socialist revolution which will sweep from the face of the earth rotten to the core imperialism.
Every one of us, every Bolshevik must understand that preparing the party and masses for revolution is not the result of some kind of spur of the moment upsurge, but that Bolshevik work lasts for years, that this is a lengthy struggle together with the working people for their rights, for their liberation. Only in such work and in such struggle does a Bolshevik become hardened, strengthen his character and forge out of himself a true revolutionary:
“it has to take years to turn oneself into a true revolutionary” (Lenin)
***
The situation in Ukraine is hardening. The closure of enterprises, the appearance of thousands and millions of newly unemployed people, the hikes in prices and tariffs on the most vital necessities for the lives of working people, all of this will inevitably lead to a growth in the struggle of the working people for their rights.
Our duty and most important duty of every Bolshevik, every party organisation is to take active part in this struggle, to be its vanguard, to raise the working class and working people of Ukraine up to the struggle for liberation from exploitation and oppression.
It is namely in such a struggle that one can become a true professional revolutionary and bring closer the implementing of the tasks standing in front of our party – to achieve the overthrowing of the power of capital, the revival of Soviet power and socialism and the revival of our great Soviet Motherland.
A. MAEVSKY
10 January 2009,
KIEV