April Theses

Origin and drafting

Lenin arrived in Petrograd on the evening and night of 3 (16) April 1917. At the meeting of 4 April he delivered his report on his own behalf and with reservations about insufficient preparation, so he prepared the theses in writing, read them out and handed the text to Tsereteli, reading them twice very slowly: first to a meeting of Bolsheviks and then to a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. An initial draft sketch is dated 3 (16) April 1917.

According to Russian Wikipedia, Lenin first announced the theses at a gathering of Bolsheviks at the Kshesinskaya mansion on the night of 3-4 April, where according to Sukhanov the speech made a strong impression but astonished listeners rather than winning support. Russian Wikipedia and the Russian Historical Society add that on 4 (17) April at the Tauride Palace he read the full report 'On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution' to Bolsheviks attending the All-Russian Conference of Soviets and, at a joint meeting with the Mensheviks, met sharp objections from them. Britannica describes the same presentation differently, as made first to a gathering of Social Democrats and then to a Bolshevik committee, both of which immediately rejected it, so the two accounts are attributed to their respective sources rather than merged.

Publication and Kamenev's objection

The text was published in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda on 7 (20) April 1917 as Lenin's article 'The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution' (Pravda No. 26, signed N. Lenin), printed despite the resistance of its editorial board and under Lenin's pressure. The next day Kamenev published 'Our Differences' in Pravda attacking their 'disintegrating influence', insisting the theses expressed exclusively Lenin's 'personal opinion' and calling his general scheme unacceptable because it treated the bourgeois-democratic revolution as finished and expected its immediate transformation into socialist revolution.

Britannica says Pravda 'carefully noted that they were Lenin's personal ideas', while Russian Wikipedia attributes that caveat to Kamenev's follow-up article, so the two accounts should be attributed to their respective sources rather than treated as identical.

Intra-party resistance

The Petrograd Bolshevik leadership received the theses 'with amazement and hostility'. At the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) on 6 (19) April 1917 Zinoviev, Shlyapnikov and Kamenev spoke against them; Kamenev declared Russia was not ripe for socialist revolution and warned that if adopted the party would become a group of communist propagandists. The same day's vote of the Petersburg Bolshevik committee was 2 for, 13 against, one abstention. Lenin himself acknowledged that both the theses and his report 'evoked disagreements among the Bolsheviks themselves and within the Pravda editorial board'.

Bolshevik leaders returning from exile, such as Kamenev, argued a more moderate line: that Russian involvement in the war could be justified and that there should be cooperation with the liberals in the Provisional Government. Stalin, who had initially supported cooperation, changed position on reading the theses and spoke for the programme at the Bolshevik city meeting in Petrograd.

Reversal and adoption

Lenin persisted, and within a short time won support from most party organisations. The theses were approved on 6 (19) April at the general meeting of Bolsheviks of the Petrograd district, 9 (22) April at the Narva district, and 10 (23) April at the Vasileostrovsky and Second City districts and others. Stalin spoke in support on 11 (24) April. The Petrograd city conference of Bolsheviks met on 14-22 April (27 April-5 May) 1917; on the basis of Lenin's report on the current situation and of the April Theses it drew up its resolutions on the war and on the attitude to the Provisional Government, and adopted the theses as the basis of its work. Some time later local party organisations also approved them.

After sharp discussion at the VII All-Russian (April) Conference of the RSDLP(b) (24-29 April), with 133 delegates with decisive vote and 18 with consultative vote, the April Theses received the support of the majority of delegates from the localities and formed the basis of the policy of the entire party. The policy met sharp rejection both from liberal circles and from the Mensheviks.

Effects and assessment

The April Theses influenced the July Days and the October Revolution in the following months and are identified with Leninism. Although some Bolsheviks still had reservations, the concepts became very popular among the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, who unsuccessfully tried to force the Soviet to take power in July, and only in October did Lenin's party begin implementing the programme and seize power from the Provisional Government in the name of the Soviets.

Russian Wikipedia assesses the theses as in effect formulating the foundations of Leninism. They became the Bolsheviks' programme of action in the pre-October period, served as the ideological basis for communist activity after the taking of power and for the justification of their system in the USSR, and the study of the April Theses was an important part of ideological education in Soviet times.

Concrete programmatic content and method

The agrarian thesis shifted the weight of emphasis to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers' Deputies, provided for confiscation of all landed estates and nationalisation of all land to be disposed of by local Soviets, and set up model farms of 100 to 300 dessiatines on large estates. The bank thesis provided for immediate union of all banks into a single national bank under the control of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies.

Although the theses recognised that the party was a minority in most Soviets, they set the task of patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of the defencist majority, 'so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience', while preaching the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets, and they called for organising the most widespread campaign for this view in the army at the front, including fraternisation.

Plekhanov's paper Yedinstvo called Lenin's speech 'raving', and Mr Goldenberg charged that Lenin 'has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy'. Lenin answered in the published commentary by noting that neither his theses nor his speech contained the phrase, and attacking the distortions of Plekhanov, Goldenberg and their like. The Russian Wikipedia source list preserves Plekhanov's polemical article 'On Lenin's Theses and on How Ravings Can Sometimes Be Interesting'.

Distinctions

From a parliamentary republic. The fifth thesis explicitly rejected establishing a parliamentary republic, calling a return from the Soviets of Workers' Deputies to a parliamentary republic 'a retrograde step'. It counterposed a republic of Soviets of Workers', Agricultural Labourers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, with abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy, all officials elective and displaceable at any time and paid no more than the average wage of a competent worker; a footnote replaced the standing army by arming of the whole people.

From the April Crisis. The April Crisis was a separate April 1917 event that broke out over Russia's foreign-policy goals and the dual-power arrangement, after Foreign Minister Milyukov's note of 18 April declaring Russia's right to Constantinople and the Dardanelles. The note was printed on 20 April and mass demonstrations and street violence forced Milyukov and War Minister Guchkov to resign. The April Crisis left the Bolsheviks as the only major Socialist party not affiliated with the Provisional Government and increased their popularity, so the theses and the April Crisis should not be conflated.

From defencism. The Socialist parties dominating the Petrograd Soviet interpreted February as a bourgeois revolution, held that it was appropriate for the bourgeoisie to hold power, submitted to the Provisional Government's rule and agreed to cooperate with and advise it in the interests of workers and soldiers. Lenin viewed the two bodies as institutions of classes locked in class struggle and held that they could not indefinitely coexist, and on that basis urged the Bolsheviks to withdraw support from the Provisional Government, call for immediate withdrawal from World War I and distribute land among the peasantry. That is the point at which the theses broke with 'revolutionary defencism'.