When the Russian Revolution broke out in early 1917, Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov – better known as Lenin – the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP, was exiled in Zurich, Switzerland. As the first reports arrived of these extraordinary events, Lenin’s excitement was coupled with exasperation that he himself was separated from them by thousands of miles. “I am beside myself that I cannot go to Scandinavia!!” he complained bitterly, in a letter to his friend Inessa Armand. “I will not forgive myself for not risking the journey in 1915!
Immediately after hearing abou the revolution, Lenin resolved to return to Russia and play a part in the events to come. Over the next weeks followed urgent correspondences between Switzerland and other Bolshevik exiles and those running the Bolshevik centre in Petrograd, as Lenin prepared to join them. Even before his arrival on the scene he was providing analysis of the situation in the party newspaper Pravda (Letters from Afar) and outlining revolutionary tactics: “...the struggle against imperialism, as before revolutionary propaganda, agitation and struggle with the aim of an international proletarian revolution and the conquest of power by the ‘Soviets of Workers’ Deputies’ (and not the Cadet swindlers).”
In the final days of March, Lenin along with other Socialists in in Switzerland embarked on the dangerous journey to Scandinavia via war-torn Germany. As soon as he arrived at Petrograd’s Finland station on 3rd April, he gave a speech to his fellow Bolsheviks denouncing the provisional government and calling for international socialist revolution.
The party centre he found in Russia’s capital was completely at odds with the revolutionary vanguard which would lead the October insurrection little more than six months later.
Lenin wasted no time in taking his comrades to task, criticising the mechanistic approach of Kamenev to the ‘bourgeois revolution’ before reading his famous ‘April Theses’ on the tasks of the Russian proletariat the day after his arrival in Petrograd. Lenin alone among the Bolsheviks at that stage recognised that only the Russian working class had the potential to carry through the revolution.
On the basis of Lenin’s formulations, the Bolsheviks grew exponentially from being a tiny minority to winning the majority of the Soviets and leading the Revolution itself.
The April Theses were first announced in a speech in two meetings on 16 April 1917 (4 April according to the old Russian Calendar). They were subsequently published in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. In the Theses, Lenin
- Condemns the Provisional Government as bourgeois and urges "no support" for it, as "the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear". He condemns World War I as a "predatory imperialist war" and the "revolutionary defensism" of foreign social democrat parties, calling for revolutionary defeatism.
- Asserts that Russia 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 the poorest sections of the peasants".
- Recognises that the Bolsheviks are a minority in most of the soviets against a "block of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Social-Cadets and the Socialist Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee (Chkheidze, Tsereteli, etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat".
- Calls for a parliamentary republic not to be established and calls this a "retrograde step". He calls for "a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom".
- Calls for "abolition of the police, the army, and the bureaucracy" and for "the salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker".
- Calls for "The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies", "confiscation of all landed estates", and "nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines, according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies and for the public account."
- Calls for "the immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies". States that "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 of Workers' Deputies".
- Lists "party tasks" as "Immediate convocation of a party congress", "alteration of the party programme, mainly: (1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war, (2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a 'commune state', amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme, and change of the Party's name". Lenin notes that "instead of 'Social Democracy', whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the 'defencists' and the vacillating 'Kautskyites'), we must call ourselves the Communist Party". The name change would dissociate the Bolsheviks from the social democratic parties of Europe supporting participation of their nation in World War I. Lenin first developed this point in his 1915 pamphlet "Socialism and War", when he first called the pro-war social-democrats "social chauvinists".
- Calls for a new "revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the 'Center'". This later became the Communist International (Third International) which was formed in 1919.
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mokey family vent very angy
My sister is getting divorced from a real BIG piece of shit and she wanted my parents to go to court with her today. My mom who doesnt work and never really worked her entire life complained "do we have to go?" YOU DO NOT WORK ANYMORE, YOU NEVER REALLY DID, YOU DO NOTHING ALL DAY, YOUR CHILD NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT AND YOU'RE COMPLAINING YOU DUMB FUCKING ******. JUST GO YOU SELFISH PIECE OF SHIT.
I'm really disappointed in this woman, she keeps digging through my mail and lately she's been bugging me about how much I get paid. The idea that she gets to sit around, overmedicate and complain all day while I juggle working, taking care of my own family and picking up all the pieces caused by the way my sister and I grew up- with the idea she wants to use me as a piggy bank makes me so fucking mad.
I've been thinking about it more and more and any instance of responsibility this woman ever had thrust on her she just either didn't do it, did it half assed or fought it the entire way. UNLESS it benefitted her directly.
I'm thinking about this time my sister who was like six wanted to go see a friend. And they left to the friends house, but problem is my sister is six and didn't know the address. Instead of driving home and calling the kids mom like an adult, my mom a lady in her 30s freaked the fucked out, screamed, insulted and ranted at my sister calling her stupid and catastrophizing about everything. Reflectively she was very cruel to my sister but left me alone mostly because I avoided her and kept unpleasant things away from her.
My mom is mentally ill and has gone on medication after we left the house but there was never an apology for the stupid shit she was always pulling on us as kids. The probable over-medication has destroyed her brain so there will always just be this hanging thread.
My dad is a maga chud idiot and I used to think he was the idiot in the relationship but honestly they deserve eachother.
They've had such horrible childhoods, they're broken people themselves, it all makes sense. But I don't think that invalidates my anger. I want to escape them completely but that feels wrong too.
I'm going to do one better than them, they're old and can't change anymore but I can. I'm going to go to therapy in order to protect my relationships.
When I see my friends who went through real shit, dodged all of the horrible things that life threw at them, made it through the otherside and found success--- but have this useless lump significant other mooching off them, smoking weed all day and not trying to improve their situation it reminds me of my mom and it makes me mad.
I know it's none of my business but they ALL have this person in their lives and I feel like I overinvest in it because of my mom. I feel like overinvest in my friends in general because I can't invest in my family for anything, I just get disappointed and reminded why it didnt work out in the first place.
I need to go to therapy because there has to be a better way to frame this stuff.
Families. Cant live with them... and then you try to go to the other side of the planet and you meet someone and they show you what a really fucked up family is.
not opsec family drama and violence
My partner's brother-in-law got his dog to kill my father-in-law's pet sheep last night and I had to help my father-in-law burry it this morning and point out to him that it wasn't an accident.
Lmao why is this happening?
animal cruelty
My sisters ex intentionally blinded and broke her dogs legs. Im ready for this dude to die.
Capitalism breeds psychopaths. In a just society people with the capacity to do this sort of thing would be noticed and reeducated. They might not ever learn real empathy but they would learn self preservation and we would have the wall ready and waiting for them if they didn't. I really think that there are some people who are a threat to the rest of humanity and we should protect ourselves against them like we would against a rabid dog. In a socialist society its easy to do this under the label of "anti-revolutionaryism." The thing about my situation is that my sister in law is a crafty piece of work who had everyone but my partner fooled up until recently. I'm sure she would have been able to infiltrate the party and build a protective cocoon of corruption. Its people like her that give me doubts in the revolution's permanent success and make me understand and even supportive of the (over?)zealousness of the cultural revolution and other purges. I'd like to think that if I was caught up in an anti-revolutionary action and put in a gulag I would have the strength to say "I understand why this must be done and I accept if you must purge us all for the good of the revolution."