THE MAKING OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: REVOLUTIONARIES, WORKERS, AND THE MARXIAN THEORY OF REVOLUTION

According to the prevailing view of the Russian Revolution in Western scholarship, Leon Trotsky's theoretical contribution to Marxism and the Russian Revolution was his theory of permanent revolution. The Revolution of 1917 confirmed his, and not Lenin's, theory of revolution. Lenin, albeit from 1905 opposed to Trotsky's theory, came over to it in April 1917.;No thorough study has been carried out that focuses specifically on the theories of revolution proposed by the Mensheviks, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Thus the question arises whether the evidence supports the commonly accepted viewpoint.;This study examines Lenin's April Theses in order to determine whether they constituted a break with or were a continuation of pre-1917 Leninism. It explores whether Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution was actually adopted by the Bolshevik Party; whether the latter, including Stalin, based itself on Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution from 1917 to 1924; and whether Trotsky in 1917 accepted the Leninist view of the nature of the organization of the party. Moreover, it attempts to reconstruct the Marxian theory of revolution. This study as a whole, therefore, investigates the application of the Marxian theory of revolution in Russia. It seeks to determine the extent to which the theory of revolution adopted by the Bolshevik Party in late 1924 constituted a Marxian program for making the revolution permanent.;An analysis of the theory of permanent revolution in Marx's and Engels' Weltanschauung and the Menshevik theory of revolution suggests that Marx and Engels developed a program for making the proletarian revolution while the Mensheviks turned Marxism into a theory for making the bourgeois revolution. Marx and Engels were aiming to make the revolution permanent. The Mensheviks, on the other hand, proposed to halt the revolution at its bourgeois stage for an exceedingly long period. The proletarian revolution was not really a stage in the permanent revolution, but a separate revolution coming after the action of capitalism had converted the majority of the population into workers.;The evidence suggests that the Mensheviks increasingly lost the support of the Petrograd and Moscow workers in 1917 because they had no program for making the revolution permanent. The workers, however, were pushed into making a permanent revolution. Having created in embryo a revolutionary new organization of society in the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, the Red Guard, the factory committees, and the institutions of workers' control over production, the workers forced the revolution to unfold as a proletarian revolution. The Bolshevik Party came to power on the wave of this transition of power from the Provisional Government completely into the hands of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.;Lenin's April Theses played a significant role in the making of the October Revolution. They did not, however, overthrow his pre-1917 theory of revolution, but accentuated one part of it. The February Revolution enabled Lenin to bring forward to the center of his theory of revolution the program of revolution he had set forth in 1905.;A textual analysis of Lenin's Collected Works suggests that he did not accept Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Lenin and Trotsky seem to have proposed different programs of revolution in 1917.;The evidence compels the conclusion that Marx's and Engels' program of permanent revolution did not really contradict Stalin's theory of socialism in one country. In fact, Stalin's theory of socialism in one country. In fact, Stalin's theory of socialism in one country seems to have been a rather adroit attempt to substantiate, defend, and develop Marx's and Engels' theory of permanent revolution.