Nothing symbolized the German SPD more than the multitude of newspapers that helped propagate its message. By the outbreak of war in 1914 the German party owned more than eighty newspapers. But publishing an illegal newspaper in Russia presented a formidable, almost insuperable obstacle for local organizations. Rabochaia mysl (Worker Thought) in Petersburg and Rabochaia gazeta (Worker News) in Saratov were admirable efforts, but they were of poor technical quality, appeared irregularly and were subject to police repression. Lenin was therefore not the only one calling for a nationwide party newspaper that would point to ‘the common reasons for the oppression of the workers, to the political system and the necessity of struggle against it’.34
Iskra also had a specific role to play in Lenin’s scheme to create a national party structure. The challenge that faced the new konspiratsiia underground was different in essence from the one that had faced the old-style conspiratorial underground. In the old underground a central group strove to create local offshoots, whereas in the Social Democratic underground isolated local groups were trying to find their way to achieve central coordination. In exile Lenin had worked out an ingenious scheme for using a national underground newspaper such as Iskra to meet this challenge. Iskra could not be the official party newspaper, not yet anyway, because there existed no official party institutions of any kind. To erect a national party authority you needed relatively homogeneous local committees – but to obtain homogeneous committees, you needed a common party authority. How to escape from this vicious circle? Here’s how: begin with the creation of an all-Russian political news paper, published abroad, since the difficulty and risks of publishing it in Russia were too great. At first this newspaper would admittedly be the product of a self-appointed and unauthorized group but it would have the undeniable virtue of actually existing, of actually coming out regularly, many times a year, with at least adequate technical quality.
This newspaper would then make an appeal to the local committees in Russia to become integral partners in its creation (through providing factual material and reports) and distribution. Thus, for the first time, the committees would be working together on a national project. The organization needed to transport the news papers would be the embryo of a national organization of professional revolutionaries that linked centre and localities. Furthermore, this newspaper would create programmatic unity by preaching a consistent line to which the various committees could adhere. The politically oriented agitation of the newspaper would also strengthen nationwide unity, since political issues tended more than economic grievances to be common, national ones. If all went well, the virtual authority claimed by the newspaper would create enough practical and programmatic unity among the scattered local committees that their representatives could come together and act effectively to create an actual authority. The newspaper, hitherto a private affair, could then become the sanctioned, legitimate voice of a genuinely functioning set of central institutions.
Such was Lenin’s ambitious plan. In the meantime Iskra was already helping to make Social Democracy a political factor on the national scale simply by propagating a unified, all-Russian message. Iskra portrayed the situation in Russia as seen through the prism of Lenin’s heroic scenario. The autocracy was on the verge of collapse. All sections of society were thoroughly disgusted with the clumsy monster. The workers, the peasants, the entrepreneurs, the nationalities, even many landowners – all had turned against the tsar. Discontent was turning into protest and protest into action, and the main impulse for the growing intensity of the revolutionary crisis was the mass actions of the workers. Their heroic protest, not just against capitalists but directly against tsarist despotism, was galvanizing the rest of society into a reali zation that the autocracy could be overthrown. And once this realization took hold, the autocracy’s days were numbered.
The same heroic picture of Russia in crisis permeates the pages of What Is to Be Done? (1902), later described by Lenin as a compendium of the Iskra outlook. The book is filled with nuts-and-bolts organizational strategies but what gives life to these prosaic arguments is the poetry of the exalted mission imposed by history on the Russian konspiratsiia underground. What Is to Be Done? portrays the Russian workers as so eager to fight that they continually outstrip the capacity of the Social Democrats to provide the requisite knowledge and organization. The workers continually push forth leaders from their own ranks – leaders who are able to inspire their fellows to undertake the noble task of freeing Russia from shameful despotism. As a result the workers as a class are on the move and they are galvanizing all of Russian society.
Lenin’s own inspiration in What Is to Be Done? is the mighty German Social Democratic party, whose example is invoked much more often and more concretely than is the example of the earlier Russian conspiratorial underground. Lenin assured his readers that the empirically worked-out application of the SPD model to Russian conditions – the threads strategy – was perfectly workable, if the praktiki would only hone their own professional skills. All that was necessary was to combine tight konspiratsiia at one level with a looser and more open type of organization at levels closer to the workers. Both ends of the threads thrown out by the underground would be protected. Secrecy would insulate the local party institutions from the police, while the supportive worker milieu would insulate activists directly in contact with workers.
One of the most famous quotes from What Is to Be Done? is the cry: ‘give us an organization of revolutionaries – and we will turn Russia around!’ This is often taken as a clarion call for a conspiratorial underground: ‘Forget about the unreliable workers and concentrate on conspirators recruited from the intelligentsia.’ But when Lenin’s statement is read in its immediate context it reveals itself as one more manifestation of Lenin’s unrepentant confidence in his heroic scenario. Lenin’s actual argument is: even back in 1895 the workers were so militant that the weak link in the chain was we ourselves, the Social Democrats. We failed in our job of providing the organization needed to make worker protest effective. How much more true today, when everybody can see the workers are on the move against tsarist absolutism! No wonder Lenin informed the sceptics: ‘You brag about your practicality and you don’t see (a fact known to any Russian praktik) what miracles for the revolutionary cause can be brought about not only by a [local Social Democratic] circle but by a lone individual.’35
What Is to Be Done? focuses on the underground’s role in the epic national struggle against the tsar that Lenin saw in his mind’s eye. But What Is to Be Done? is only one part of Lenin’s output during his years with Iskra (1900–1903). He also wrote scores of articles for Iskra and other publications, plus a seventy-page pamphlet entitled To the Village Poor (An explanation for the peasants of what the Social Democrats want). Because this overlooked pamphlet is one of the few pieces Lenin wrote exclusively for a non-party audience, it can be recommended as a very accessible presentation of Lenin’s heroic scenario. If To the Village Poor were as well-known as What Is to Be Done? the heart of Lenin’s vision would be much better understood than it is.