Twice, once at a
meeting of the Bolsheviks and again at a meeting to which the Mensheviks were
also invited, Lenin reads his ten “April Theses.” He said later that week,
prefacing the version published in Pravda:
I did not arrive in
Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4,
I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat
only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.
The only thing I could do
to make things easier for myself—and for honest opponents—was to
prepare the theses in writing. I read them out, and gave the text to
Comrade Tseretelli. I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting
of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
The first thesis
addresses the policy of the revolution to the war, “…[N]ot the slightest concession to ‘revolutionary defensism’ is permissible.”
This includes the “error” of fighting only to defend the homeland, with no
thought of annexations or indemnities, as the bourgeois Provisional Government
would have it publicly – in spite of their private alignments with capitalist
interests at home and abroad.
The next four theses
address the phenomenon of dual government – power being shared between the
soviets and Provisional Government with the soviets as the junior partner –
under the heading Fraternization. Lenin sees the dual government as a
transitional phase between the bourgeois February Revolution and the
proletarian revolution that was yet to come. But the party, a small minority
even in the soviets, should not therefore with join the Mensheviks and social
democrats in support of the Provisional Government. The party’s goal should be
to transfer “the entire state power to the Soviets of
Workers’ Deputies,” not ”to return to a parliamentary republic.”
The sixth and
seventh theses call for nationalization of all lands under the soviets and
consolidation of all banks in a single state bank under the Soviet. Yet in the
eighth thesis, Lenin does not advocate immediate transfer
of ownership of the means of production to the workers, but rather only the strengthening
of the workers’ soviets.
The ninth and tenth theses set forth the political tasks of
the Bolshevik party, to include the convocation of a new revolutionary International,
one that would specifically exclude social democrats of the stripe who favored
collaboration with the Provisional Government.
Visit this
page to find the entire text of the Pravda
article and all ten theses.
