On April 3 Lenin arrived in Russia. The leader of the Bolshevik party was amazed that he was not arrested after having returned with the help of the German authorities. Instead, representatives of the new government gave him a ceremonious welcome. Everyone, including members of his own party, was dumbfounded by Lenin's speech, which proclaimed the need to struggle for power.
The controversy about Lenin's relations with Germany during the war and the revolution continues to this day. It started in April 1917. "This method of transportation," wrote Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, a close aide of Lenin, referring to the so-called sealed train, "drew frantic howls from the infuriated bourgeoisie, with the SRs and Mensheviks joining in the chorus. Even within our party, there were very many who found this procedure unsuitable and incorrect."49
Lenin's strength lay in the fact that for him every method was correct and suitable as long as it sped the revolution's victory. It is necessary, he would teach the Bolsheviks, to know how to use "all subterfuges, ruses, and illegal means, to know how to remain silent, to conceal the truth."50 Lenin understood perfectly well that it was in the Germans' interest to help those Russian revolutionaries who favored the defeat of their own country. Ludendorff wrote after the war that revolution in Russia had always been his passionate desire. "How many times I dreamed that it might come about. ... A constant vision." This vision suddenly became real, a saving miracle. "In April and May 1917," wrote the German general, "despite our victories on the Aisne and in Champagne, only the Russian revolution saved us."51 Although Lenin's activities were not carried out with this aim in mind, the fact that the Russian revolution saved Germany from defeat in 1917 did not trouble the Bolshevik leader, who yearned for power regardless of the cost.
The April Theses, a program presented by Lenin on April 4 to RSDLP delegates attending an all-Russia conference of soviets, surprised everyone, including the Bolsheviks, by its unexpected character. Perhaps the party members would have been less surprised if they had had the chance to read Lenin's "Letters from Afar," sent from Switzerland. But Pravda had published an abridged version of the first letter and suppressed the other three altogether. The editors of Pravda, Kamenev and Stalin, had their own plan: to unite with the Mensheviks and collaborate to a certain degree with the Provisional Government. Pravda published Lenin's theses in its April 7 issue, but the next day it commented on his views in a statement by the editors: "In regard to Comrade Lenin's general scheme, we find it unacceptable in that it proceeds from the assumption that the bourgeois democratic revolution has been completed and anticipates an immediate transformation of this revolution into a socialist revolution."
One could not find a better articulation of the differences between the editors of Pravda, who had been the party's leaders in Lenin's absence, and Lenin himself. For Kamenev, Stalin, and the other Bolsheviks, Marxism was a doctrine from which deviation was not possible, whereas for Lenin there were no dogmatic truths: he was possessed by one idea—power. In the April 4 meeting at which the theses were presented, according to Bonch- Bruevich, an eyewitness, Lenin drew "sarcastic smiles" and "some chuckling" from his audience when he "stated candidly that he had had very little time and little material to base his observations on." With the exception of some brief weeks during 1905, Lenin had not been in Russia since 1900. In April 1917, en route to Petrograd, "I met only one worker on the train," the Bolshevik leader admitted. But that was good enough. "My thoughts," said he, "might be a bit theoretical, but I suggest that on the whole they are correct and correspond to the general political situation in the country."52
Lenin could have had worse luck and not run into that worker on the train. But even without him, Lenin grasped what was essential in Russia's political situation: the country had become, according to him, the freest in the world; that is, the government was weak and open to challenge.
The April Theses were both a concrete program and a Utopian one. The concrete demands were an end to the imperialist war, fraternization with the enemy, and confiscation of large landholdings and nationalization of all lands, which were then to come under the control of the local soviets. All these demands were directed toward the Provisional Government, which was, as Lenin knew, incapable of satisfying them. Consequently, it would have to be overthrown. The Utopian parts of the program—the abolition of the police, the army, and civil service; the election of officials subject to recall at any time, with salaries not to exceed those of an average worker's— these were the promises of a future government. It is true that Lenin's program was one of "unabashed radicalism" and "primitive demagogy," as Sukhanov said.53 But it took into account the two principal demands of the majority of the population—peace and land.
After the February revolution, the Petrograd Soviet began to receive numerous nakazy (mandates), expressing above all the complaints and desires of the peasants and workers. An examination of the first one hundred peasant mandates shows that they called first for the confiscation of the large landed estates and the crown lands and for their distribution to the peasantry and, second, for the prompt conclusion of a "just peace." The first one hundred mandates presented by the workers show that they were less revolutionary-minded than the peasants. The workers sought mainly the improvement of their situation (the eight-hour workday, higher wages, etc.), not a fundamental transformation. For example, 23 percent of the peasant mandates demanded peace, as opposed to only 2 percent of the workers' mandates.54
The peasants' demands for peace coincided in part with Lenin's defeatist slogans; their desires for land ran counter to the Bolshevik program. The head of the party instantly forgot the old scholastic disputes over the agrarian question which for many years had created divisions in the Social Democratic party ("municipalization," "socialization," "nationalization"). He simply appropriated the program of the SRs: land to the peasants.
April 1917 may be regarded as the birthdate of Soviet ideology. This was the first manifestation, on a scale affecting the destinies of the state, of an extremely important feature of this ideology, soon to become the dominant one: flexibility, free of all fetters, a capacity to accept instantaneously what it had previously condemned and to condemn what it had previously accepted. Related to this are two essential elements: the leader can decide to make a 180-degree turn; and the party, with some hesitation to be sure, fairly quickly will fall into line.