Lenin and the Problem of Marxist Peasant Revolution

248 Pages·1983·11.3 MB·English

by  Esther Kingston-Mann

Lenin and the Problem
of Marxist Peasant Revolution
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LENIN AND THE PROBLEM
OF MARXIST PEASANT
REVOLUTION
ESTHER KINGSTON-MANN
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1983
Copyright © 1983 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kingston-Mann, Esther.
Lenin and the problem of Marxist peasant revolution.
Includes index.
1. Lenin, Vladimir I1'ich, 1870-1924.
2. Peasantry—Soviet Union—History—20th century.
3. Communism—Soviet Union—History—20th century.
I. Title. HX312.L43K.56 1983 320.5'322 82-14314
ISBN 0-19-503278-0
The following journals have kindly granted permission to
include in this book articles that were first published in their
pages in somewhat different form:
Soviet Studies - "Proletarian Theory and Peasant Practice: Lenin, 1901-
1904" (October 1974): 522-39
Russian Review- "Lenin and the Challenge of Peasant Militance: From
Bloody Sunday, 1905, to the Dissolution of the First Duma," vol. 38, no.
4 (October 1979): 435-55
Journal of Peasant Studies - "A Strategy for Marxist Bourgeois Revolution:
Lenin and the Peasantry, 1907-1917," vol. 7, no. 2 (January 1980):
132-52. By permission of Frank Cass & Co., Ltd.
Russian History-"Problems of Order and Revolution: Lenin and the
Peasantry in March and April, 1917" (1979:6): 39-56.
American Historical Review - "Marxism and Russian Rural Development:
Problems of Evidence, Experience, and Culture," vol. 86, no. 4
(October 1981): 745-49.
Slavonic and East European Review- "Lenin and the Beginnings of Marxist
Peasant Revolution: July-October, 1917," vol. L, no. 121 (October
1972): 570-88.
Printing (last digit): 98765432 I
Printed in the United States of America
To my father, Echiel Kingston, who first alerted me
to problems of Marxist theory and practice.
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Preface
The questions addressed in this book have played an important role in
my own personal history, and they also form part of the experience
which I share with many students of working-class origin who attend
the university where I teach. We start, all of us, from an initial vantage
point outside the great cultural traditions which not only shaped but
also provided tools of debate and analysis for Marx, Lenin, and other
political theorists. From this position, we make our way, misunder-
standing much and being misunderstood with at least equal frequency.
Our troubled and exhilarating encounter with the ideas and structures
created by a highly educated minority of the world's population seems
to me significant on more than a personal level; it has a social and
historical resonance as well. It is no accident, as the Soviets are fond of
saying, that when I became a Russian historian I wanted more than
anything else to investigate the relationship between Marxists and a
peasantry whose culture and institutions were apparently quite alien to
the categories of Marxist analysis. Russian Marxism was, after all, a
minority perspective aimed at an urban proletarian minority. After
years of struggle, Lenin was able to transform it into an ideology which
in 1917 appealed to the peasants who comprised the overwhelming
majority of the Russian population. The cultural, political, and
economic issues which he confronted were historically specific. But for
those of us with special reasons for concern with the change process
itself, Lenin's solution carries lessons and warnings which go far beyond
the limits of the Russian situation.
Vlll PREFACE
I have many people to thank for encouragement and suggestions.
The most immediately helpful words came from Ralph Miliband, and
the earliest source of intellectual aid and comfort was Owen Lattimore.
David Hunt and Linda Gordon have provided critical support and
intellectual stimulation of a rare order during the many years of our
friendship, and Carmen Sirianni was a source of many helpful
comments. Clifford Garber, Nancy Farrell, and Jack Treanor were
invaluable as research assistants, Patricia Denault fulfilled what is every
writer's fantasy of excellence in a typist, and Tessa DeCarlo has given
me the benefit of her considerable skills as copy editor for Oxford
University Press.
Most of all, I want to thank my husband Jim Mann, who brought a
composer's sense of form and structure and an extraordinarily empathic
intelligence to the reading of a study which could not be more distant
from his own field. Without the sustaining warmth he generously
provided, this book would never have been completed.
Boston E.K.-M.
February 1983
Contents
Introduction 3
I THE TRADITION
1. The Lessons of the Marxist Classics 9
2. Populists and Marxists: The "Russian"
and "Western" Paths to Socialism 19
3. Lenin as an Orthodox Marxist 38
II PEASANT MILITANCE AND PETTY BOURGEOIS
CAPITALISM, 1901-16
4. Proletarian Theory and Peasant Practice:
Lenin, 1901-4 57
5. The Outbreak of Revolution: The Challenge
of Peasant Militance in 1905 and 1906 74
6. A Strategy for Marxist Bourgeois
Revolution, 1907-16 101
III 1917: PEASANT REVOLUTION IN THEORY
AND PRACTICE
7. Problems of Order and Revolution:
February-April 1917 131