The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government | |
Auhtor: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | |
| Language: english Published: 1900 Genres:political, revolutionary, social historyDownloads: 112 eBook size: 402Kb Review by Joanna Daneman, July 2005 Rating: (***) Copyright: Public Domain in the U.S. Please check the copyright status in your country. | |
Summary of the Book 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government':
Over the next twelve years bolshevism which had begun as a faction within the Russian Social-Democratic Workers party gradually emerged as an independent party that had cut its ties with all other Russian Marxists. The process involved long and bitter arguments against Mensheviks as well as against all those who worked to reunite the factions. It involved fights over funds struggles for control of newspapers the development of rival organizations and meetings of rival groups. Disputes concerned many questions about the goals and strategies of Marxism and the role of national (rather than international) struggles within Marxism.
Since about 1905 the international socialist movement had begun also to discuss the possibility of a major war breaking out among European nations. In 1907 and 1912 members met and condemned such wars in advance pledging not to support them. Lenin had wanted to go further than that. He had urged active opposition to the war effort and a transformation of any war into a proletarian revolution. When World War I (19141918 a conflict involving most European nations as well as Russia the United States and Japan) broke out most socialist leaders in the countries involved supported the war effort. For Lenin this was proof that he and the other leaders shared no common aims or views. The break between the two schools of Marxism could not be fixed.
During World War I (191418) Lenin lived in Switzerland. He attended several conferences of radical socialists opposed to the war. He read a large amount of literature on the Marxist idea of state government and wrote a first draft for a book on the subject The State and Revolution. He also studied literature dealing with world politics of the time and wrote an important book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916. By the beginning of 1917 he had fits of depression and wrote to a close friend that he thought he would never see another revolution. This was about a month before the overthrow of the Russian czar in the winter of 1917 which marked the beginning of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Excerpts from the Book 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government':
... revolutions, the principal task of the mass of working people was to fulfil the negative or destructive work of abolishing feudalism, monarchy and ...
... on the other, are continuing their efforts to unite for the purpose of overthrowing Soviet power. In the main, however, the task of suppressing ...
... because we have only just started the transition to socialism, we have not yet done the decisive thing in this respect. The decisive ...
... to make up for lost time, we shall completely win our campaign against capital. But is not the admission that we must make up for ...
... at our disposal. The mass of saboteurs are going to work, but the best organisers and the top experts can be utilised by the state either in the old ...
... It goes without saying that this question has another side to it. The corrupting influence of high salaries - both upon the Soviet authorities ...
... at the present time is precisely the preparatory organisational work that, on the one hand, will finally consolidate our gains and that, on the other, ...
... the supply organisations under the Soviets we should have organised the population into a single co-operative society under proletarian management. ...
... of the working people's discipline, their skill, the effectiveness, the intensity of labour and its better organisation. In this ...
... socialist construction, give publicity to the successes achieved by the model communes in all their details, must study the causes of these successes, ...
... of the moment the establishment of a harmonious organisation, and the tightening of discipline.[*] Everyone now readily votes for and subscribes ...
... social, i.e., the class, reason for this instability of the revolutionary enthusiasm of the people was the weakness of the proletariat, which alone is ...
... circumstances, such as, for example, the legacy of a long and reactionary war and the forms of resistance put up by the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. ...
... their backs, their awakening to a new life, their first steps along the road which they themselves have cleared of vipers (the exploiters, the imperialists, ...
... Stages like that of October 1905, February and October 1917 are of world-historic significance. We have successfully fulfilled the ...
... be the forms and methods of control from below in order to counteract every shadow of a possibility of distorting the principles of Soviet government, ...
... the Bolsheviks (or laments over their adventurism) in July and apprehensively turns away from them at the end of October, supports them in December, ...
... tax and a property tax which would make it possible to place the main burden of taxation on the well-to-do sections of the population. At the First ...
... of the Petrograd Revolutionary Military Committee of October 26 (November 8), 1917, the newspaper continued to appear until August 1918 under various ...
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