Leon Trotsky: 1905

Leon Trotsky: 1905: CHAPTER 4 -- The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution
impel the democratic bourgeoisie -- which, as often happens, had made itself scarce at the most crucial
moment -- to take this historic and heroic action. The situation which resulted was quite correctly
described by a contemporary writer in the following terms: "A de facto republic was established in
Vienna, but unfortunately, no one saw this . . ." From the events of 1848-49, Lassalle drew the
unshakable conviction that "no struggle in Europe can be successful unless, from the very start, it
declares itself to be purely socialist; no struggle into which social questions enter merely as an obscure
element, and where they are present only in the background; no struggle which outwardly is waged under
the banner of national resurgence or bourgeois republicanism, can ever again be successful."
In the revolution whose beginning history will identify with the year 1905, the proletariat stepped
forward for the first time under its own banner in the name of its own objectives. Yet at the same time
there can be no doubt that no revolution in the past has absorbed such a mass of popular energy while
yielding such minimal positive results as the Russian revolution has done up to the present. We are far
from wanting to prophesy the events of the coming weeks or months. But one thing is clear to us: victory
is possible only along the path mapped out by Lassalle in 1849. There can be no return from the class
struggle to the unity of a bourgeois nation. The "lack of results" of the Russian revolution is only the
temporary reflection of its pro found social character. In this bourgeois revolution without a
revolutionary bourgeoisie, the proletariat is driven, by the internal progress of events, towards hegemony
over the peasantry and to the struggle for state power. The first wave of the Russian revolution was
smashed by the dull-wittedness of the muzhik, who, at home in his village, hoping to seize a bit of land,
fought the squire, but who, having donned a soldier's uniform, fired upon the worker. All the events of
the revolution of :905 can be viewed as a series of ruthless object lessons by means of which history
drums into the peasant's skull a consciousness of his local land hunger and the central problem of state
power. The preconditions for revolutionary victory are forged in the historic school of harsh conflicts and
cruel defeats.
Marx wrote in 1852,
Bourgeois revolutions storm swiftly from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo
each other; men and things seem set in sparkling brilliance; ecstasy is the everyday spirit;
but they are short-lived; soon they have attained their zenith, and a long crapulent
depression lays hold of society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its
storm-and-stress period. On the other hand, proletarian revolutions . . . criticize themselves
constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the
apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the
inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their
adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more
gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own
aims, until a situation has been created in which all turning back is impossible, and the con
ditions themselves cry Out:
Hic Rhodus, his scalta!
(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)
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