Revolutionary Defencism
혁명적 수호주의
A political line adopted by the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary majority in the Russian soviets and Provisional Government after the February Revolution of 1917, holding that Russia should conditionally continue its participation in the First World War in order to defend the revolution. It redefined the war as a democratic defensive war rather than an imperialist war of conquest, demanding 'peace without annexations' while rejecting a separate peace with Germany. The line collided head-on with Lenin's revolutionary defeatism, which sought to turn the war into an engine of revolution. Irakli Tsereteli was its chief theoretician and spokesman.
In depth
Background
When war broke out in 1914, most European socialist parties abandoned their pre-war anti-militarist internationalism and rallied to support their respective governments: a position termed 'social patriotism'. In Russia, Georgi Plekhanov was its most prominent advocate. Against them, internationalists led by Vladimir Lenin organised the anti-war Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences. Some went further, advocating 'revolutionary defeatism': the view that socialists should work for their own government's defeat so as to convert the imperialist war into civil war.
The February Revolution transformed this landscape. The overthrow of the Tsar persuaded many Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who had previously been Zimmerwaldists that the political calculus had changed. Autocracy was gone; now the revolution itself needed defending. Tsereteli, Fyodor Dan, Avram Gots and others argued that a German victory would strangle the young revolution, and that a defensive war by a revolutionary Russia was therefore legitimate.
Clash with Lenin: 'There is such a party!'
On 4 June 1917 (Old Style), at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the collision between revolutionary defencism and Bolshevik revolutionary defeatism crystallised into a single historic moment. Tsereteli declared from the rostrum that there was no party in Russia prepared to take power alone. Lenin rose from his seat and retorted: 'There is such a party!' This brief exchange dramatised the fundamental fault line of the 1917 Russian Revolution: whether the war was to be a shield for the revolution or a lever for it.
Decline and Legacy
The failed June Offensive and the Kornilov Affair rapidly eroded the political credibility of revolutionary defencism. Overwhelmed by popular war-weariness and the Bolsheviks' simple slogan of 'immediate peace', the position suffered irreversible defeat with the October Revolution.
Revolutionary defencism endures as a classic case study in the structural dilemma of revolution and war: revolutionaries who were internationalist opponents of war before 1914 found themselves advocating its continuation once they had a revolution of their own to defend, a pattern that would recur in later revolutionary situations.
Related people
Related historical events
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) Comprehensive account of the defencist/internationalist schism in European socialism during WWI, including the specific Russian variant of revolutionary defencism after February 1917, its main proponents (Tsereteli, Dan, Gots), and its relationship to the Zimmerwald movement.
- Marxists Internet Archive Lenin's 'The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution' (1917), the defining contemporary critique of revolutionary defencism. Lenin identifies three trends (social-chauvinists, 'Centre', and true internationalists), places Tsereteli and Chkheidze in the 'Centre', and argues that revolutionary defencism is internationalist in word but defencist in deed.
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian Wikipedia article on 'Oborontsy' (Defencists), situating revolutionary defencism within the broader defencist current in Russian politics during WWI.