Our Foreign and Domestic Position and the Tasks of the Party | |
Auhtor: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | |
| Language: english Published: 1895 Genres:political, revolutionary, social historyDownloads: 273 eBook size: 261Kb Review by C. F. Hill, March 2007 Rating: (*****) Copyright: Public Domain in the U.S. Please check the copyright status in your country. | |
Summary of the Book 'Our Foreign and Domestic Position and the Tasks of the Party':
Lenin and Trotsky had seen the Russian revolution merely as the prologue to the international revolution. In isolation backward Russia was not ready for socialism. The beginning of socialism meant a higher level of productive forces than even the most developed capitalist economy. This was only possible on a world scale. In the phrase of Lenin capitalism had broken at its weakest link. But the Russian revolution was envisaged as the beginning of a series of revolutions in Europe and on a world scale that would usher in a world socialist federation.
Lenins confidence in the possibility of world revolution was justified by the convulsive events of 1918 and particularly 1919 when the ruling class itself believed that it was about to be overthrown. The only thing that saved them were the leaders of the Social Democratic Parties.
The isolation of the revolution in turn allowed the growth of a privileged bureaucratic caste in Russia itself. Gradually power was taken from the soviets and concentrated in the hands of millions of officials in the state machine the party and the army. The mass of the working class were elbowed aside and the original democratic and internationalist aspirations of the Russian revolution were suppressed.
The Gorbachev regime today despite its recent declarations on democracy is a million miles removed from the Russian revolution in the heroic period of Lenin and Trotsky. There was more democracy in the weak Russian workers state of October 1917 beset by civil war and the 21 armies of imperialism than in Russia today.
Excerpts from the Book 'Our Foreign and Domestic Position and the Tasks of the Party':
... AND THE TASKS OF THE PARTY Published in 1920 in the pamphlet: Current Questions of the Party's Present Work. Published by ...
... proprietors. Moreover, Poland lays claim to the Ukraine and Lithuania. This gives the campaign a particularly acute and stubborn ...
... this. Therefore, the importance of the Red Army's final victory despite our defeat at Warsaw, is particularly great, for it has placed Poland in a position ...
... war with their bourgeois regimes intact. They were able to stave off and delay the crisis hanging over them, but basically they so undermined their ...
... preparedness. However, if we cast a glance at the conditions in which we defeated all attempts made by the Russian counter-revolutionaries and achieved ...
... of the collapse of communism only if we had promised, with the forces of Russia alone, to transform the whole world, or had dreamed of doing so. However, ...
... important economic regions. The return of these territories is to a considerable extent responsible for the improvement now to be seen. Thanks to ...
... difficulty by using up old stocks, conditions have now set in in which we are starting to rehabilitate Russia's ruined industry, and shall be able, ...
... of one's own country. We have convinced the peasants that the proletariat provides them with better conditions of existence than the bourgeoisie did ...
... national economy, of which we have spoken, can be drawn up in the technological aspect. There can be no question of rehabilitating the national economy ...
... will be published by the time the Congress of Soviets meets. It is now our task to carry on systematic work throughout the country, in all Party ...
... been dealt with on more than one occasion nobody argues against it, but scarcely a hundredth part of what has to be done has been accomplished. ...
... Conference perhaps considerably more than we would have all liked. It is quite natural that the great transition now in progress at a time when all ...
... exist. At aIl meetings, including preliminary meetings attended by a larger number of delegates than this Conference, opinions on this question were ...
... achieve general unity on the Conference platform. It should be said that we have paid a heavy price for this. It was sad, for example, to see hours wasted ...
... taken to remove their bureaucrats, and study the experience of a house management or of a consumers' society. A most rapid functioning of the entire ...
... those delegates were elected who had been nominated by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee. ? ?[p. 408] ? [142] Peace between the ...
... incite Turkey against Soviet Russia and torpedo the talks between the two countries on the establishment of friendly relations, the Entente diplomats ...
... Lenin arrived in Petrograd during the All-Russian Conference of Bolshevik Party Workers. In his first address to the delegates, he advocated uncompromising ...
... were people who had turned away from relying on the peasants (rural poor people) of the Russian villages and countryside, and they placed their hopes ...