Skilling 1961

Canadian Slavonic Papers
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Permanent or Uninterrupted Revolution: Lenin,

Trotsky, and their Successors on the Transition to
Socialism
H. Gordon Skilling
To cite this article: H. Gordon Skilling (1961) Permanent or Uninterrupted Revolution: Lenin,
Trotsky, and their Successors on the Transition to Socialism, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 5:1, 3-30,
DOI: 10.1080/00085006.1961.11417862
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Permanent or Uninterrupted Revolution:
Lenin, Trotsky, and their Successors
on the Transition to Socialism
H. GORDON SKILLING
LENIN ONCE URGED his followers to focus attention on "the searching

out of the forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolu-
tion."1 Nothing has proved more difficult for his successors than to
arrive at a consensus on this question. Convinced of the historic in-
evitability of the coming of socialism, Marxists have ever been much
in doubt as to the best ways to bring it about. Marxism itself provided,
not a single key, but many keys to the solution of the problem, and
has consequently generated much controversy among its adherents
concerning the proper approach to socialism. The great argument
between reform and revolution in the nineteenth century was in
essence a debate as to how to achieve socialism, with the heirs of
Marx, including Engels, finding themselves at odds on the issue. In
Russia the question of the transition to socialism produced the rival
answers of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and in particular of Lenin and
Trotsky. The founding of the Soviet state represented an extraordinary
practical success in devising a pattern of revolution. Thereafter the
question became one of determining what the Soviet experience had
signified in Marxist terms, and how this experience was to be adapted
to other countries. The Communist movement wrestled with these
points at successive sessions of the Comintern, notably the sixth and
seventh, in 1928 and 1935, and was offered various solutions in the
statements of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Dimitrov, and Mao Tse-tung.
When de facto victory was again achieved, in eastern Europe after
1945, and in China in 1949, the accomplished fact of "revolution" had
again to be correctly interpreted theoretically and conclusions drawn
concerning the future transition to socialism in other countries still
lV. I. Lenin," 'Left-Wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder," in Sochineniya
(4th ed.; Moscow, 1950), XXXI, 78. English version in Lenin, Selected Works
(2 vols.; Moscow, 1950-1), II, Part II, 421.
4 CANADIAN SLAVONIC PAPERS
non-Communist. Sharp differences of view emerged concerning such

central issues as whether the establishment of socialism could be
effected directly, or only through a prior democratic transitional stage,
and whether the course of events would differ significantly in various
countries, industrially developed or underdeveloped. Lenin's doctrine
of the "uninterrupted revolution," Trotsky's theory of "permanent revo-
lution," and the interpretations put upon these theories by their
successors left indelible marks on the thinking of Communists engaged
in these controversies, and rendered an agreed and consistent inter-
pretation of these problems as elusive as ever. Confusion and contra-
diction seemed to be the inescapable result of the attempt to apply
Marxism to the stubborn and diverse facts of the real world of nations.
For Marx himself, at least in his more theoretical writings, the
problem of the transition to socialism scarcely arose at all. This
transition was an ordained consequence of industrial development,
which would automatically create the conditions for it, including the
organization of the proletariat in a socialist movement and the cul-
mination of the class struggle in revolution. Socialism would have to
wait for the full development of capitalism, but would then come as
an unavoidable result of the forces and contradictions of mature
industrialism. Marxism thus seemed to offer a theoretical scheme of
historical development which predicted what would happen, more or
less simultaneously, in all "civilized" countries. 2 In spite of this, in the
main, dogmatic and schematic approach, Marx was none the less aware
of the necessity of considering the national circumstances of each
country and of determining in concreto the nature of the transition to
socialism in specific conditions.3 When the question was posed as to
whether the general Marxist schema applied to Russia, for instance,
Marx himself rebelled against mechanically applying it to this dis-
tinctive situation and admitted the possibility of an alternative course
of development, which might even skip the stage of capitalism alto-
gether.4 When confronted with the development of democracy in
western Europe, he was ready to admit the possibility of a democratic
approach to socialism, without a forceful revolution. 5 Much earlier,
2Friedrich Engels, Grundsiitze des Kommunismus, quoted by Solomon F.
Bloom, The World of Nations, A Study of the National Implications in the Work
of Karl Marx (New York, 1941), pp. 96--7.
3Bloom, The World of Nations, especially chapter VIII, "National Differences
and the International Revolution."
4"Letter on the Economic Development of Russia," written in 1877; text given
in Paul W. Blackstock and Bert F. Hoselitz (eds.), The Russian Menace to Europe
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Glencoe, Ill., 1952), pp. 216--18.
5Marx's speech in the Hague, in 1872, quoted in Bloom, The World of Nations,
pp.9~.
PERMANENT OR UNINTERRUPTED REVOLUTION 5
when considering the future of industrially undeveloped Germany in
1850, Marx had conceived the possibility of a rapid transition to
socialism, even in the conditions of underdeveloped capitalism,
through a "permanent revolution," 6 or as the Communist Manifesto had
put it even earlier, through a bourgeois revolution that would be the
immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution. 7 This notion, so much
out of accord with the general trend of historical materialism, and
suggesting a direct transition to socialism even before the material
conditions of capitalist development had been fully exhausted, was
pregnant with significance, then unforeseeable, for the future. 8
The crucial dilemma for Marxist theory arose from the failure of
revolution to materialize in western Europe, the very area where it
was supposed to emerge of predestined necessity. Even after 1848, as
we have seen, Marx was over-optimistic and ''un-Marxist" in his
expectation of an early proletarian revolution. It became increasingly
clear that a long transitional period, prior to the attainment of the
ultimate goal of socialism, would be necessary. Even in the Manifesto,
Marx and Engels had included a minimum programme, although the
maximum programme of socialism remained central to their strategy.
As the century wore on, a great cleavage developed among Marxists as
to the relative importance of the maximum and minimum programmes.
The moderate wing represented by Eduard Bernstein concentrated
its attention on the minimum programme of democratic reforms, and
avowedly abandoned vital concern with the "final aim of socialism,"
whereas the more radical wing of Kautsky and Luxemburg considered
reform only as a stepping-stone to revolution. The gap between the
two extremes widened and became unbridgeable by the end of the
century. 9 Marxists who neglected the ultimate end of the socialist
6"While the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the revolution to a
conclusion as quickly as possible and with the achievement at most of the above
demands [a democratic constitution and various measures directed against large
capital], it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until
all more or less possessing classes have been displaced from domination, until the
proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only
in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far
that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at
least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the prole-
tarians." "Address of the Central Council to the Communist League," Karl Marx,
Selected Works (Moscow and New York, n.d.), II, 161.
7Jbid., I, 241.
SFor the application of this doctrine of "permanent revolution" by Lenin and
Stalin, see M. Heitzman, "Events Behind the Iron Curtain," International]oumal,
IV, 4 (Autumn, 1949), 291-310.
9For a full discussion of this disintegration of Marxism, see Alfred G. Meyer,
Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Practice (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 109 ff.,
especially pp. 117-19.
revolution in favour of piecemeal reforms within capitalism, or who

thought in terms of a limited revolution of a bourgeois nature, were
regarded by the "revolutionary" Marxists as having involved them-
selves in a fundamental heresy. For the revolutionaries, the direct
transition to socialism, at least in western Europe, was on the imme-
diate agenda. Democratic reforms were only desirable to the degree
that they advanced the cause of the final proletarian or socialist
revolution. In all subsequent disputations within Marxist ranks the
concept of a deviation eventually labelled as "right-wing," "oppor-
tunist," or "reformist" was to weigh heavily in the discussion of the
correct transition to socialism.
No doubt exists as to where Lenin stood on this question as applied
to the developed countries of western Europe where he, like most
Marxists, expected the revolution to occur. For Lenin the touchstone
of orthodoxy was the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat,"
regarded by him as a sine qua non of any transition to socialism. 10
This concept proclaimed the right of the proletariat, and its vanguard
party, to lead the revolution and to rule the new state, and clearly
implied that the forthcoming revolution, at least in the west, would be
a proletarian and socialist one.
The Russian Marxists, including Lenin, had to face the same
question as the western European Marxists as to the relative im-
portance of minimum and maximum objectives. In absolutist Russia,
however, such minimum aims as freedom of speech and association, or
a democratic republic, took on added significance and were also
complicated by the additional question arising out of the fundamental
Marxist assumption concerning the periodization of historical develop-
ment. In 1905, at the time of the first revolution, Russia was still a
predominantly agricultural country, with capitalism developed only
to a modest degree. But in what stage of history-feudal or capitalist-
was contemporary Russia? Would the forthcoming revolution be a
bourgeois, or a proletarian, revolution? Did Russia have to pass through
a capitalist phase, or could it be skipped?11
As is well known, some Russian Marxists, such as the Mensheviks,
and in particular Plekhanov, assumed that socialism would come to
Russia only after the full development of capitalism, and that the
immediate need was a democratic transformation through a revolution
lOLenin, "The State and Revolution," Sochineniya, XXV, 384-5; Selected Works,
II, Part I, 233-4.
HThe debate is fully described by E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution,
1917-1923 (New York, 1951), I, chapters I, u, and m.
that would be primarily "bourgeois" in scope and direction. 12 Others,
such as Lenin, the "impatient" Marxists, as Plamenatz has called them,
envisaged a swifter transition to socialism. 18 Lenin applied Marx's
theory of the "permanent revolution" to Russian conditions not unlike
those of Germany of 1850, and renamed it the "uninterrupted revolu-
tion": "from the democratic revolution we shall at once, and just in
accordance with the measure of our strength, the strength of the
class-conscious and organized proletariat, begin to pass to the socialist
revolution. We stand for uninterrupted revolution. We shall not stop
halfway."14 As early as 1898 Lenin had argued the close connection
between the democratic and socialist tasks of the organized proletariat,
and the necessity of pursuing both the immediate goals of liberty and
economic improvements, and the ultimate goal of socialism. 15 The first
programme of Russian social democracy, drafted in 1903, while setting
forth extensive immediate demands of a democratic and reforming
character, had made clear the final target of socialism and, at Lenin's
insistence, had laid stress on the "dictatorship of the proletariat."16
Only after the defeat of the 1905 uprising, regarded by Lenin as an
-abortive "bourgeois democratic'' revolution, did he, in his Two Tactics
of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, elaborate the idea
of the "uninterrupted revolution" which was to influence so greatly
future Communist doctrine and strategy.U
Lenin's theory is too well known to require more than the briefest
summary. What lay immediately ahead for Russia was a democratic
revolution, called forth by the urgent problems of a backward,
absolutist state. It was absurd to think of avoiding capitalist develop-
ment, or skipping over it. The revolution would be "bourgeois in its
economic and social content."18 It would not "go beyond the limits
of the bourgeois, i.e. capitalist, social and economic system."19 This
was the minimum programme of social democracy; the maximum pro-
12George Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism (New York, 1937),

p. 49, and n. 31.
18John Plamenatz, German Marxism and Russian Communism (London, etc.,
1954), p. 221.
14Lenin "The Attitude of Social-Democracy toward the Peasant Movement,"
Sochineniya, IX, 213; Selected Works, I, Part II, 160. See also Plamenatz, German
Marxism and Russian Communism, pp. 127-35,227-40.
15Lenin, "The Tasks of the Russian Social-democrats," Sochineniya, II, 299-326;
Selected Works, I, Part I, 177-99.
l6Sochineniya, VI, 1, passim, especially pp. 13, 34-5.
17Jbid., IX, 1-119; Selected Works, I, Part II, 11-151.
lBLenin, Sochineniya, IX, 91; Selected Works, I, Part II, 117.
19Lenin, Sochineniya, IX, 33; Selected Works, I, Part II, 47.
gramme, a socialist revolution, could not immediately be achieved. 20

However, unlike Marx, who had envisaged the petty bourgeoisie as
leading the revolution and becoming the ultimate holder of power,
Lenin assigned the leadership to the proletariat, and predicted the
emergence of a system of rule based on proletariat and peasantry. Far
from remaining aloof from the bourgeois revolution, the proletariat
should take an active part in it and fight to carry it to its completion.
"While recognising the incontestably bourgeois character of the revolu-
tion, which cannot directly go beyond the bounds of a merely demo-
cratic revolution, our slogan pushes forward this particular revolution
and strives to mould it into forms most advantageous to the proletariat;
consequently, it strives for the utmost utilisation of the democratic
revolution for a most successful further struggle of the proletariat
for socialism.''21 The immediate result would be, not a dictatorship
of the proletariat, but "the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of
the proletariat and peasantry.''22 This democratic revolution would,
however, as he later put it, "grow over into" a socialist revolution.
A complete victory of the present revolution will be the end of the demo-
cratic revolution and the beginning of a decisive struggle for the socialist
revolution. The realisation of the demands of the present-day peasantry, the
complete rout of the reaction, the conquest of a democratic republic, will
mark the end of the revolutionism of the bourgeoisie and even of the
petty-bourgeoisie-it will be the beginning of a real proletarian struggle for
socialism. The more complete the democratic revolution will be, the
sooner, the wider, the purer, and the more resolutely will this new struggle
develop. The slogan, "democratic" dictatorship, expresses , precisely the
historically limited character of the present revolution and the necessity
of a new struggle on the basis of a new order, for the complete emancipation
of the working class from all oppression and all exploitation. 23
After the complete victory of the (democratic) revolution, Lenin went

on, with unconsciously prophetic insight, "we shall 'substitute' (per-
haps amidst the terrible wailing of some future Martynovs) for the
slogan, the democratic dictatorship, the slogan, the socialist dictator-
ship of the proletariat, i.e. complete socialist revolution.''
Some Czech Marxists referred later to this doctrine as that of "an
indirect socialist revolution," avoiding not only the "right-wing" con-
ception of a bourgeois revolution led by the bourgeoisie, but also the
20Lenin, Sochineniya, IX, 13-15; Selected Works, I, Part II, 23-5.

23Lenin, Sochineniya, IX, 109; Selected Works, I, Part II, 139-40.
"leftist" conception of "the skipping of the democratic stage of the
revolution and the undelayed carrying through of a socialist revolu-
tion."24 Developed largely with reference to Russian conditions,
Lenin's theory did not replace, in his mind, the idea of a "direct"
transition to socialism and the proletarian dictatorship in the developed
capitalist countries. None the less it made clear that the transition to
socialism would not always follow the course suggested by the uni-
versal Marxist law of historical evolution, and for Russia at least it
pointed to a new and swifter way to socialism. It soon became clear
that Lenin's doctrine could be applied to countries of even less in-
dustrial growth than Russia, especially the colonial and semi-colonial
lands of Asia. 25 The Leninist theory of imperialism reinforced this
possibility by making the revolution a global process, embracing the
underdeveloped and dependent countries, and suggesting the possi-
bility of its beginning in a single, even a weak, link of the chain of
world imperialism. 26 At the same time Lenin's theory of national
self-determination, conceived with particular reference to multi-
national Russia, was also relevant to the subjugated colonies of Asia,
whose liberation could be regarded as a part of the bourgeois demo-
cratic revolution. 27 These elements combined to offer, in countries
where capitalism was immature or did not even exist at all, an
accelerated, two-stage approach to the socialist revolution. 28
Although from the perspective of post-1917 events, Lenin's theory
of the uninterrupted revolution seemed to shorten the period of
bourgeois and democratic transition and to facilitate a more im-
mediate and direct passage to socialism than had previously ever
oeen envisaged by Marxists, at the time it was considered by some,
even more impatient Marxists, as too moderate and cautious, laying
great stress on the necessity of a bourgeois democratic revolution and
casting doubt on the possibility of an immediate transition to socialism.
Such was the view of Trotsky, then a Menshevik, who, seeking to draw
his own conclusions from the abortive revolt of 1905, evolved the
theory of "permanent revolution" which in some ways strikingly re-
24J. Houska and K. Kara, Otazky lidove demokracie [Questions of People's
Democracy] (Prague, 1955), pp. 18, 45.
25Heitzman, "Events Behind the Iron Curtain," pp. 292-3.
26Lenin, "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism," Selected Works, I,
Part II, 433-568. See comments by Alfred G. Meyer, Leninism (Cambridge, 1957),
PP· 252-4.
27Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination," Sochineniya, XX, 404;
Selected Works, I, Part II, 362.
28The "dialectics of backwardness," or the law of combined development, is
well discussed by Meyer, Leninism, pp. 266-7.
sembled the conclusions drawn independently by Lenin. 29 Trotsky's

views were set forth in Itogi i perspektivy (The Balance and the
Prospects), a book written in prison and destined to be little read at
that time but later to become the subject of bitter controversy.30
Like Lenin, Trotsky forecast a revolution that would be bourgeois
or democratic in its essential character, but would be led by the only
revolutionary class, the proletariat, with the peasantry as its main,
although unreliable, ally. Like Lenin, Trotsky felt that the revolution
would not stop with its bourgeois phase but would swiftly move on
to a proletarian stage. Rejecting explicitly the notion of a "dictator-
ship of the proletariat and peasantry," Trotsky proclaimed the neces-
sity of "political supremacy" or "hegemony" of the proletariat, and
identified this as the dictatorship of the proletariat. 31 Nor would the
proletariat feel itself limited by the democratic objectives of the early
stage of the revolution, but would overstep the bounds separating
the minimum and maximum programme. 32 "Whatever may be the
banner under which the proletariat will find itself in possession of
power, it will be compelled to enter the road of socialist policy."33
Trotsky denied that the prerequisites of socialism did not yet exist
in Russia, and argued that the growth of industry, and especially of
an organized and conscious proletariat, was already sufficient to pre-
pare the grounds for the conquest of political power by the pro-
letariat.34 Moreover, the economic interpretation of history did not
mean that the establishment of workers' power was dependent on a
certain degree of capitalist development, and did not exclude the
possibility, in a backward country with a lesser degree of develop-
ment, that the proletariat might reach power sooner than in a highly
developed capitalist state. 35 In an article written during the very
29The similarity between Lenin and Trotsky on this point is stressed by Meyer,
Leninism, pp. 140-4; Plamenatz, German Marxism and Russian Communism, pp.
283-7; and Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, I, 53-63.
30It was published under thW. title in a collection of essays by Trotsky, N(J$ha
revolyutsiya (St. Petersburg, 1906?), pp. 224-86. An incomplete English version
is given in L. Trotsky, Our Revolution (New York, 1918), under the title "Pros-
pects of a Labor Dictatorship," pp. 65-146. References are given to both. A full
summary is given by Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, Trotsky: 1879-1921
(New York and London, 1954), pp. 149-63.
31Nasha revolyutsiya, pp. 249-51, 253 (Our Revolution, pp. 92-3, 95-6, 100-1).
32N(J$ha revolyutsiya, p. 258 (Our Revolution, pp. 109-10).
33N(J$ha revolyutsiya, p. 275 (Our Revolution, p. 132).
34N(J$ha revolyutsiya, p. 259 ff., especially p. 271 (Our Revolution, p. 113 ff.,
especially p. 124 ) .
35N(J$ha revolyutsiya, pp. 245, 247 (Our Revolution, pp. 84-5, 89-90).
course of the revolution, Trotsky summed up his concept of the
permanent revolution:
Our liberal bourgeoisie comes forward as counter-revolutionary even
before the revolutionary climax. In every critical moment, our intellectual
democracy only demonstrates its impotence. The peasantry in its entirety
represents an elemental rebellion. It can be put at the service of the
revolution only by the force that takes into its own hand the state power.
There remains the proletariat.
The terrible power of resistance, demonstrated by absolutism, intensifies
all the more the development of our revolution, reaching a proportion un-
known in history. Overcoming the mighty resistance of the autocratic state
and the deliberate inertness of the bourgeoisie, the working class of Russia
has developed into an organized militant force such as was not known in
the past. There is not a stage in the bourgeois revolution on which this
militant force, driven forward by the iron logic of class interests, could come
to rest. The uninterrupted revolution becomes a law of class self-defence
for the proletariat.
The vanguard position of the working class in the revolutionary struggle;
the direct connection between it and the revolutionary village; the spell
by which it conquers the army-all this pushes it inevitably to power. The
complete victory of the revolution means the victory of the proletariat.
But this victory in turn signifies the further uninterruptedness of the
revolution. The proletariat realizes the fundamental tasks of democracy,
and the logic of its immediate struggle for the safeguarding of political
domination places before it at a certain moment purely socialist problems.
Between the minimum and maximum program a revolutionary continuity
is established. This is not one "blow", not one day or a month, it is a whole
historical epoch. It would be absurd to calculate its duration in advance. 36
Trotsky thus propounded a theory of historical development which,
like Lenin's, accepted the possibility of the merging or "telescoping,"
of two revolutions, the bourgeois and the proletarian, and thus the
36From "Social Democracy and Revolution," published in Nachalo (November,
1905 ), given in Na8ha revolyutsiya, pp. 168-73. Partial quotations from this are
given in The Permanent Revolution (New York, 1931), pp. 31, 67, in which
Trotsky interprets his earlier position as follows: "The perspective of the dictator-
ship of the proletariat consequently grows here, precisely out of the bourgeois-
democratic revolution. . . . That is just why the revolution is called permanent
(uninterrupted). But the dictatorship of the proletariat does not come after the
completion of the democratic revolution . . . it would simply be impossible in
Russia, for in a backward country the numerically weak proletariat cannot attain
power if the tasks of the peasantry have been solved during the preceding stage.
No, the dictatorship of the proletariat appeared probable and even inevitable on
the basis of the bourgeois revolution precisely because there was no other power
and no other way to solve the tasks of the agrarian revolution. But this alone opens
up the perspective of the democratic revolution growing over into a socialist
revolution" ( p. 31).
feasibility, in areas of underdeveloped capitalism, of a swifter transi-

tion to socialism, even swifter than that envisaged by Lenin's concept
of "growing into."37 To that extent Trotsky's view could fairly be
regarded as being, in the Marxist lexicon, somewhat to "the left" of
Lenin's already "leftist" position. Like Lenin, however, Trotsky fore-
saw a revolution on a world scale, with the revolution in developed
western Europe coming to the aid of that in Russia, and the pro-
letariat in that area acting as the main ally of the weaker Russian
working class.38 The differences between the two men, although slight,
were regarded by both, and by their contemporaries, as genuine ones,
but were later magnified out of all proportion, in Stalin's exegesis of
Leninism, when the "permanent revolution" was raised by him to the
level of the "master-heresy" of Communism. 39 It then came to be
regarded as a deviation to the "left" as dangerous as the deviation to
the "right" against which Lenin had trained his main fire. 40
The actual course of Russian history in 1917 did not follow the
theoretical forecasts of either Lenin or Trotsky. The first revolution
in February could be regarded, from a Marxist viewpoint, as a
bourgeois democratic one, but certainly not one in which the workers
enjoyed the leading role. Indeed, under the system of dual power, the
Provisional Government was paralleled by the soviets, which were
considered by Lenin as at least an incipient form of "dictatorship of
proletariat and peasantry"41 but which, contrary to previous theorizing,
were following, rather than leading, the bourgeois government. More-
over, Lenin was then not really concerned with "theoretical classifica-
tion," with trying to fit the revolution into the "Procrustean bed of
a narrowly-conceived 'theory,' " as he put it before his return to
Russia,42 and was much more anxious to "take cognisance of living
37See Meyer, Leninism, p. 143.
38Note in particular Nasha revolyutsiya, pp. 278, 285-6 (Our Revolution, pp.
136-7, 144). See Meyer, Leninism, p. 144 for Lenin's views.
39Deutscher's phrase, in The Prophet Unarmed, Trotsky: 1921-1929 (London,
New York, and Toronto, 1959), p. 157. For Lenin's contemporary criticism of
Trotsky's views of the permanent revolution, see Sochineniya, XXI, 381-2.
40See below, p. 28 ff.
41Note his use of this term in, for instance, "On the Dual Power," and "The
Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution," Sochineniya, XXIV, 19 and 40
(Selected Works, II, Part I, 20, 28-9). Lenin wavered, however, between the use
of this term, and that of "dictatorshiP, of the proletariat and poorer peasantry."
See, for instance, "Letters from Afar,' and "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the
Present Revolution," Sochineniya, XXIII, 301, 321, and XXIV, 4 (trans. in Emile
Burns, A Handbook of Marxism [New York, 1935], pp. 769-70, 780, 785).
42Lenin, "Letters from Afar," Sochineniya, XXIII, 321.
live, of the true facts of reality," rather than to "continue clinging to
the theory of yesterday," as he argued immediately after his return. 43
As early as April, he was calling for a transition from the first to a
second stage of revolution, although not yet appealing for an im-
mediate seizure of power by the proletariat alone. 44 Such a swift
transition to the socialist phase caught the Bolsheviks in Russia off
base, since none had conceived of this as an immediate possibility. 45
Within three months after his return, Lenin introduced the slogan of
a socialist revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat, supported
by the poorer peasantry, a slogan which obviously went beyond the
worker-peasant dictatorship envisaged in Two Tactics of Social Demo-
cracy. By October, Lenin and Trotsky were at one on strategy and
tactics, and had won over the majority of the Bolshevik leaders to the
idea of an armed uprising for the founding of a proletarian state.
Hence the actual seizure of power, in the name of the proletariat and
poor peasantry, and a dictatorship of these classes, seemed to approxi-
mate more closely Trotsky's concept of "permanent revolution" than
Lenin's earlier vision of the growth of the bourgeois democratic
revolution into a socialist revolution, 46 and to resemble the direct
transition to socialism which Lenin had forecast for the highly de-
veloped capitalist countries.
After the successful revolution, Lenin had to defend himself against
the Marxists on at least two counts: on the one hand against the
"rightist" view that Russia had not been ripe for a socialist revolution,
and on the other hand, against the "leftists" abroad, who wished to
emulate the Russian advance towards immediate proletarian revolution
in the west without regard for their own specific conditions. Against
the "rightist" view Lenin insisted that, whereas a bourgeois revolution
had been the necessary first stage in Russia, an early transition
to a socialist revolution was equally in order. In a phrase later to be
quoted and re-quoted, Lenin declared: "To attempt to raise an
artificial Chinese wall between the first and second [revolutions],
to separate them by anything else than the degree of preparedness of
the proletariat and the degree of its unity with the poor peasants, is
43Lenin, "Letter on Tactics," Sochineniya, XXIV, 26 (Collected Works of Lenin,
XX, 121).
44See the sources cited in n. 41, and in n. 43.
45Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, I, 78-84; Stanley W. Page, Lenin
and World Revolution (New York, 1959), chapter III.
46See Trotsky's views on this and an alleged statement by Lenin, to this effect,
in Leon Trotsky, My Life (New York, 1930), pp. 332, 535, 537.
to seriously distort Marxism ... to substitute liberalism in its stead.''4 7

None the less, he was willing to admit that the "bourgeois" revolution
had been prolonged even after 1917, especially in the country: "a
general peasant revolution is still a bourgeois revolution, and ... with-
out a series of transitions, transitional stages, it cannot be transformed
into a socialist revolution in a backward country.''48
Lenin shared the optimistic view of the "leftists" concerning the
imminence of a proletarian revolution in the developed west, and
argued strongly for the application of "the general and main principles"
of Communism, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat, and Soviet
power, in all cases, and the transplanting of Soviet experience, in all
important respects, to other lands. 49 None the less, more than they,
Lenin recognized the need to win allies for the proletariat, and to
adopt a flexible tactic of compromise, taking account of the diversity
of conditions in each country. 50 It was in this connection that he used
the phrase cited in the first sentence of this article, concerning "the
forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolution." With
his customary adroitness, Lenin depicted his own radical and revo-
lutionary approach as the correct one, midway between the mistaken
extremes to left and right.
When the Comintern, at the Second Congress in 1920, came to
a detailed definition of the strategy and tactics of world revolution,
much less diversity was acknowledged than in Lenin's "Left-wing
Communism."51 The revolution in Russia-relatively backward and
underdeveloped-was now proclaimed as the model, not only for
industrialized western Europe, but also for the less developed world
of Asia, and the fundamental idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat
was asserted as the sacred doctrine for the entire world. In the
47Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky," Sochineniya,

XXVIII, 277 (Selected Works, II, Part II, 114. Immediately preceding these words,
Lenin wrote: "The course taken by the revolution has confirmed the correctness of
our reasoning. First, with the 'whole' of the peasantry against the monarchy, against
the landlords, against the medieval regime ( and to that extent, the revolution
remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, with the poor peasants, with
the semiproletarians, with all the exploited, against capitalism, including the rural
rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent the revolution becomes a
socialist one. To attempt to raise an artificial Chinese Wall. . . ." Sochineniya,
XXVIII, 276--7.
48Sochineniya, XXVIII, 281 (Selected Works, II, Part II, 119).
49Lenin, "'Left-wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder," Sochineniya, XXXI,
5-6, 72--3 (Selected Works, II, Part II, 341-2, 421-2).
50Sochineniya, XXXI, 71-3 (Selected Works, II, Part II, 419-21).
51See Blueprint for World Conquest (Washington and Chicago, 1946), for the
Comintem documents of 1920 and 1928.
advanced countries, the possibility of an even swifter transition, with-
out the "general democratic" or "bourgeois democratic" stage was
clearly implied. 52 In the colonial world, the necessity of a first stage
which would involve bourgeois reforms, such as division of the land,
was noted, but ultimate salvation was foreseen only in a proletarian
revolution, aided by the proletariat of the developed countries,
especially those under Soviet rule. Although the need to support
national liberation movements in Asia was proclaimed, and temporary
agreements or alliances with them were condoned, it was also urged
that under proletarian leadership bourgeois democratic tendencies
in these movements should be resisted, and soviets of workers and
peasants be formed. 53 The original Marxist differentiation between
the various stages of historical development, as well as between the
developed and undeveloped countries, was thus almost completely
extinguished, and a more or less uniform pattern of revolution for
countries at all stages of capitalist maturity was devised.
Lenin, caught between the necessity of justifying the Russian revo-
lution as a distinctive historical case, and his desire to treat it as a
model for the future, was more flexible and ambivalent in his applica-
tion of historical materialism. In interpreting the past and forecasting
the future, just before his death, Lenin was critical of those Marxists
who, having "observed a definite path of development of capitalism
and bourgeois democracy in Western Europe" were "completely un-
able to grasp . . . that that path can be taken as a model mutatw
mutandw, only with certain corrections (entirely insignificant cor-
rections from the point of view of the general course of world history)."
He was affronted by the notion that Russia had not attained the
necessary level of productive development for socialism, or that
"variations of the customary historical order of events are imper-
missible or impossible." Russia, standing "on the borderline between
civilised countries and countries which were for the first time brought
definitely into the orbit of civilisation by this war, that is, all the
Oriental, non-European countries" was "bound to reveal certain peculi-
arities, which, while of course following the general line of world
52Ibid., p. 139.
53[bid., pp. 123-5, 129-31. Cf. a somewhat different interpretation by Stanley
W. Page, Lenin and World Revolution (New York, 1959), pp. 174-9. Actually the
theses incorporated not only Lenin's views, but also the somewhat contradictory
views of the Indian, Roy, who was more strongly opposed to proletarian support
of national movements, so that it is impossible to derive a clear-cut theoretical
formulation from the congress documents. See Conrad Brandt, Stalin's Failure in
China, 1924-1927 (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 3-5.
development, distinguish her revolution from all previous revolutions

in West European countries, and which introduce certain partly novel
features in its transposition to the counu·ies of the East." In turn, he
argued, "subsequent revolutions in Eastern countries, which possess
vastly more numerous populations, and are distinguished by a vastly
greater diversity of social conditions, will undoubtedly display even
greater peculiarities than the Russian revolution."54
It fell to Stalin to codify Lenin's theoretical comments on revo-
lution as a holy writ binding on revolutionaries everywhere. Forcing
the events of 1917 into the strait-jacket of the Leninist theory of
1905 in a manner far more Procrustean than that of Lenin him-
self, Stalin defined the first stage, from 1903 to February 1917, as
a bourgeois democratic revolution, led by the proletariat, and
hence embodying "the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of
proletariat and peasantry," and described the period from February
to October as the stage of the passing, in a relatively short time,
of the bourgeois into the proletarian revolution, and representing
"the dictatorship of the proletariat and poorest peasantry."55 Accord-
ing to Stalin, Lenin, after February, had deliberately abandoned the
Two Tactics theory of a dictatorship of proletariat and peasantry in
favour of a new theory of a dictatorship of proletariat and poor
peasantry. 56 This, in turn, soon evolved into the theory of proletarian
dictatorship. In a phrase later to be often quoted, Stalm spoke of the
"hegemony of the proletariat" in the first stage as "the embryo of, and
the transition stage to, the dictatorship of the proletariat."57 Quoting
Lenin again and again, in particular on the transition from one to
another revolution, Stalin made this his central theme, and referred
to the two revolutions "as two links in the same chain, as a single and
integral picture of the Russian revolution," not separated (in Lenin's
picturesque phrase) by a "Chinese wall" of "many decades." 58 Again
echoing Lenin, Stalin spoke of the many bourgeois democratic tasks
to be performed in the completion of the bourgeois revolution even
after October, and of an "'odd' interweaving of the direct Socialist
tasks of the dictatorship [of the proletariat] with the task of com-
54 Lenin, Our Revolution," Sochineniya, XXXIII, 436-9 (Selected W arks, VI,
508-12).
55See J. Stalin, ProblemY of Lenini.lm (Moscow, 1940), pp. 38-45, 5~0,
175-86.
56Jbid., pp. 187-92.
57Jbid., p. 41. '
5BJbid., p. 22. Apart from quotations from Lenin's Two Tactics, Stalin made
repeated use of other statements, such as that from Lenin's reply to Kautsky
quoted above in n. 47. See, for instance, Problems of Lenini.lm, pp. 24, 182.
pleting the bourgeois revolution." 59 Stalin also made much of the fact
that Lenin's theory admitted the possibility of a revolution, and the
victory of socialism, not in the more advanced, but in the less
developed countries, with capitalism preserved for the time being
in the former. 60 All in all, Stalin's theological formulation of Leninism
brought the orthodox view closer than ever to the doctrine of a single,
uninterrupted revolution applicable in all countries, whether de-
veloped or undeveloped, and erased almost any remaining differences
between this and Trotsky's doctrine of permanent revolution.
None the less the exposition of Lenin's theory was coupled with
a violent onslaught on the heresy ascribed to Trotsky. As is well known,
many issues other than theoretical were involved in the Stalin-Trotsky
controversy in the twenties. 61 On the question of "permanent revo-
lution" the differences were not as great as alleged by the two con-
testants themselves. In Stalin's view, the only correct embodiment of
the Marxist theory of permanent revolution was the Leninist doctrine
of the passing of the bourgeois democratic revolution into the socialist
revolution. 62 Trotsky was assaulted mainly on the grounds of the
alleged difference between Lenin and Trotsky on the international
aspects of revolution, especially the former's belief in the possibility
of socialism in one country, an aspect of the debate well known to
students of Marxism. 63 The concept of permanent or uninterrupted
revolution had, however, from the beginning, both in Lenin's and in
Trotsky's formulations, its internal aspects, relating to the transition
to the proletarian revolution and the role of the peasantry as an ally
of the workers. Striving desperately to prove his own orthodoxy and
the dissimilarity between his views and those of Trotsky and Lenin,
Stalin charged the "permanentists" with neglecting the role of the
peasantry in the revolution, and with wanting to "begin at once" with
69Jbid., pp. 178-9. At another time, Stalin quoted a statement of Lenin's in
1921 assailing Kautsky and others who were 'incapable of understanding this
relation between the bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian-socialist revolu-
tions. . . . The first grows into the second. The second, in passing, solves the
problems of the first. The second consolidates the work of the first. Struggle, and
struggle alone, decides how far the second shall succeed in outgrowing the first.
The Soviet system is indeed one of the most graphic corroborations, or manifesta-
tions, of this growing of the one revolution into the other." Lenin, "On the Fourth
Anniversary of the October Revolution," Sochineniya, XXXIII, 32 ( Selected
Works, VI, 503).
60Stalin, Problems of Leninism, pp. 20--1, 94-5, 114-15.
61 For a full discussion, see Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed, Trotsky:
1921-1929.
62Stalin, Problems of Leninism, pp. 122-3. .
63For this see Stalin, Problems of Leninism, pp. 26--8, 88-101, 152-63.
the establishment of proletarian power, rather than to "crown" the

work of the revolution with this. He proceeded: "Consequently, Lenin
fought the adherents of 'permanent' revolution, not over the question
of 'uninterruptedness', for he himself maintained the point of view
of uninterrupted revolution, but because they underestimated the role
of the peasantry, which is an enormous reserve force for the pro-
letariat, because they failed to understand the idea of the hegemony
of the proletariat."64 Although the imputation of Trotsky's neglect of
the peasantry has little grounding in fact, it served as an additional
weapon in the duel for power. Taking advantage of the subtle original
shades of difference between Lenin and Trotsky on the forthcoming
Russian revolution, Stalin elevated this distinction into a dogma of
orthodoxy in the interpretation of future revolution. Henceforward
to advocate a direct transition to socialism without a prior democratic
transitional stage was fraught with danger.
Throughout the twenties the Communist International continued to
pursue the dream of immediate proletarian revolution, without success.
Until 1928 no essential change in strategy was made. The target was
a proletarian dictatorship; the tactical means was a united front of
the working class, either formed from below, without the social demo-
cratic leaders, or from above, with their approval. Transitional stages
were not regarded as important. For a brief time after 1922 the idea
of a workers' government, or, in such areas as the Balkans, Czecho-
slovakia, or Poland, a government of workers and poorer peasants,
with Communist participation, was accepted as tactically permissible,
even operating within the framework of capitalism, but such a
formation was sharply distinguished from a dictatorship of the pro-
letariat. It was not even treated as "a historically inevitable transition
stage towards the dictatorship," although it could become "an im-
portant starting-point for the fight for such a dictatorship."65 Even
this idea of a possible transition stage to the proletarian revolution
was short-lived, and was dropped in 1924.
In China the concept of a united front took the strange form of
Communist support for the democratic revolution through the medium
of close alliance with the Kuomintang, extending even to individual
Communist membership in it. This was paralleled by opposition to
the formation of peasant soviets. Even after the successive betrayals
of the alliance by Chiang Kai-shek and by the left-wing Wang Ching-
64Ibid., p. 25; see also p. 88 ff.

65See Jane Degras (ed.), The Communist International, 1919-1943, Documents
(London, 1956), pp. 425-7; F. Borkenau, The Communist International (London,
1938), pp. 231,236,257.
wei, Stalin continued to argue against Communist withdrawal from
the Kuomintang, and against the forming of soviets in the countryside.
In 1926 and 1927 he applied to China all the Leninist concepts of the
uninterrupted revolution: the bourgeois-democratic character of the
revolution, the hegemony of the proletariat, and the objective of
"something in the nature of a dictatorship of the proletariat and
peasantry," "transitional to non-capitalist, or, more exactly, a socialist
development of China."66 The complexity of applying this Russian
theory to Chinese conditions was well illustrated by the ultimate total
failure, in 1927, of Stalin's recipe for that country. 67
The meeting of the Communist International in 1928, the Sixth
Congress, came at the end of a decade marked by the failure of
the world revolution to materialize in industrialized Europe, and by
the recent fiasco of Soviet policy in China. This lack of success, and
the increasing concentration on the building of socialism in the Soviet
Union did not lead to the abandonment of the ultimate revolutionary
perspective, but encouraged a more realistic consideration of the alter-
native approaches to this goal. The programme adopted at the Con-
gress, while proclaiming the belief in the approaching universal revo-
lution and establishing the target as a world dictatorship of the pro-
letariat in the form of "Soviet democracy," recognized that the un-
evenness of capitalist development rendered probable the coming of
socialism first in one or several countries and that the existence of
"a variety of types of capitalism" indicated the coming of the pro-
letariat to power by "a multiplicity of ways and degrees of rapidity."68
Three main types of revolution and a fourth subordinate one were
distinguished. In only one category, highly-developed capitalism such
as in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, would there be
a direct passage to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other cate-
gories the countries would have to pass through "certain transition
stages leading to the dictatorship of the proletariat." Stalin himself
argued against the view that there would be only two types of country,
capitalist and colonial, and contended that a further distinction must
66Stalin, "The Prospects of the Revolution in China," Sochineniya, VIII ( 1926),
357-74, especially p. 366 (Works, VIII, 373-91, especially p. 382). See also
Stalin, "The Revolution in China and the Tasks of the Comintern," Sochineniya,
IX (1927), 282-312 (Works, IX, 288-318).
67These events have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere and will not be dealt
with here except in the context of events after 1928. See Brandt, Stalin's Failure
in China, 1924-1927 and B. I. Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the Rise of
Mao (Cambridge, 1951).
68Full text of programme given in Burns, A Handbook of Marxism, p. 963 ff.,
and in Blueprint for World Conquest, p. 147 ff. For the above quotations, see the
former, p. 1010.
be made between the countries of high, and those of medium, develop-

ment of capitalism, including in the latter such countries as Poland
or Rumania (the programme referred also to Spain, Hungary, and the
Balkans), where there were feudal survivals and hence a special kind
of agrarian problem, and where the petty bourgeoisie, especially the
peasantry, would have an important part to play. In such countries
of medium development, there would be, on the way to the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat, "certain intermediate stages in the form,
say, of a dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry."69 The pro-
gramme itself discriminated even more finely, declaring that in some
of these there would be a more or less rapid development from a
bourgeois democratic to a socialist revolution, and that in others,
where there were many "bourgeois democratic tasks" to be performed
and where the agrarian revolution would have a large role, there
would be a slower transition through a "democratic dictatorship of
proletariat and peasantry."70
In the third category of "colonial or semi-colonial" countries, such
as China and India, the transition to the proletarian dictatorship
could occur only through "a series of preparatory stages" and "a whole
period of transformation of bourgeois democratic revolution into a
socialist revolution." The principal tasks would be to fight against
feudalism and imperialism, to carry through an agrarian revolution,
and to solve the national question. Through a long period of struggle
the dictatorship of proletariat and peasantry would be transformed
into a dictatorship of the proletariat; under the hegemony of the pro-
letariat, the bourgeois democratic revolution would "grow into a
proletarian revolution." 71 In such countries, the stage of capitalist
development might be skipped altogether. In an even more backward
category, such as parts of Africa, where no, or hardly any, proletariat,
existed, the development of peasant soviets, with the aid of existing
proletarian dictatorships elsewhere, might serve as the means of
effecting a direct approach to socialism. 72
The programme indicated a somewhat more realistic approach to
the problem of the transition to socialism, especially in countries where
capitalism was not fully developed. This was, however, more than
counterbalanced by the emphasis laid, especially in Stalin's later
speeches before the central committee, on the international applica-
bility of the Soviet pattern of revolution, and on the Soviet form of
69Sochineniya, XI, 155-6 (Works, XI, pp. 162-3).

70Bums, A Handbook of Marxism, pp. 1011.
71Ibid., pp. 1012-15.
72[bid.
state as obligatory for the proletarian dictatorship in all countries. 73
The differences between the several categories related, not to the
ultimate goal, but, at the most, to the means of achieving it. Even
in this respect, the variations were still minimal. Russia, the model
of a successful proletarian revolution, was placed in category no. 2,
not no. 1. The pattern for Poland and other countries in this category
was thus explicitly that of Russia in 1917, when the distinction between
the two stages of revolution was in fact reduced to a minimum, if not
entirely obliterated, by the swift advance to socialism. The ambiva-
lence in Lenin's thought between his recognition of the need for an
indirect approach to revolution through various stages, and his hope
for an uninterrupted progression from one stage to another, was thus
duplicated in the 1928 programme, at least for all except the most
backward countries of the second, and of the third, category.
China was regarded as the classic example of a colonial land of the
third category, for which Lenin's concept of two stages of revolution
was peculiarly appropriate. The Comintern programme, as well as the
documents of the congress of the Communist Party of China, which
met simultaneously in Moscow, conceived of the Chinese revolution
as a bourgeois democratic revolution, the main content of which was
the agrarian problem, and the main tasks of which were the over-
coming of feudalism and imperialism. The Kuomintang, once re-
garded, during the united front period, as a bloc of progressive
classes (either four: workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, and bour-
geoisie; or three, after the defection of the bourgeoisie) was now
denounced as entirely reactionary ("landlord-warlord-bourgeois").
War against it, and against the national bourgeoisie, was declared.
Victory would lead to the establishment of a "democratic dictatorship
of the proletariat and peasantry," in the form of soviets, with the
proletariat in the position of hegemony. In due course, this revolution
would grow over into a socialist revolution, and a dictatorship of the
proletariat would be established. 74 During the ensuing decade this
73Stalin, Sochineniya, XI, 151 (Works, XI, 158). See also Sochineniya, XI,
141 ff., 203-4 (Works, XI, 147 :If., 212-13).
74For the resolution of the Sixth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, see
Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz, and John K. Fairbank, A Documentary
History of Chinese Communism (Cambridge, 1952), p. 127 ff. See also Schwartz,
Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, pp. 109-15, 122-3. Most of the concepts
employed had been used by Stalin and the Comintern in the earlier period of
co-operation with the Kuomintang. See n. 66 above. The notion of "permanent
revolution" was rejected by the resolution, but it was declared that "the demo-
cratic dictatorship of workers and peasants in the form of Soviet rule will be the
starting-point of transformation to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Only the
struggle, the strength, the solidarity and organizational strength of the proletariat
forecast of the future Chinese revolution remained unchanged, and

was acceptable to the new Chinese Communist leader, Mao Tse-tung,
whose orthodoxy in theory remained intact even when in practice his
entire effort was devoted to the leadership of a peasant revolution
through the medium of guerilla warfare. 75
Chinese Communist policy had already become an important issue
in the intra-party conflict in Russia between Stalin and Trotsky.
Although Trotsky had paid little attention to Chinese affairs until 1927
and the Opposition had not advocated a break with the Kuomintang
by the Chinese Communists, Stalin's support of the Kuomintang
became one of the chief bases of Trotsky's attack on him. Stalin in
return accused Trotsky of neglecting the possibility, and the desira-
bility, of temporary alliances with the national bourgeoisie in the early
stage of a colonial revolution. The Comintern programme represented
a rejection of Trotsky's concept of the permanent revolution with
reference to China, on the familiar ground that he had neglected the
peasant problem in China as in Russia, and proposed to skip over the
bourgeois democratic phase of the revolution. 76
The Sixth Congress policy and Trotsky's demotion from the party
leadership stimulated him to make a severe critique of the Comintern
analysis, especially in its international aspects, in a work written in
Alma Ata in 1928. 77 Rejecting the idea of "a democratic dictatorship
of the workers and peasants" in China, he urged the necessity of a
struggle against the whole bourgeoisie, including its nationalist ele-
ments, and argued the possibility of a direct transition to a dictatorship
of the proletariat, and an uninterrupted development towards social-
ism.78 He condemned the earlier Stalinist policy of close co-operation
with the Kuomintang, and the Comintern endorsement of temporary
agreements with the bourgeoisie. Drawing an analogy with Russia
and only the comparative ratio of class strength can decide when the bourgeois-
democratic stage of the revolution will end, and how it will be transformed into
the process of socialist revolution of the proletariat." Brandt et al., A Documentary
History of Chinese Communism, p. 133.
75See Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, pp. 189, 191, and
passim; also Charles B. McLane, Soviet Policy and the Chinese Communists,
1931-1946 (New York, 1958), pp. 27-8.
76Schwartz, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, pp. 112-13. For a fuller
discussion, see Brandt, Stalin's Failure in China, 1924-1927, pp. 11-13, 16, 79,
154 ff. For Stalin's views, see his speeches in 1926 and 1927, cited in n. 66, and
his speech of August 1, 1927, Sochineniya, X, 10-36 (Works, X, 10-39).
77Leon Trotsky, "The Draft Program of the Communist International, A
Criticism of Fundamentals," The Third International After Lenin (New York,
1936).
7BJbid., especially pp. 180-96, 206--12.
herself, which, in October, according to him, might be said to have
skipped over the bourgeois democratic stage by solving the agrarian
problem after, not before, the proletarian revolution, Trotsky cleverly
cited Lenin's words in 1917 on the obsolescence of the old 1905
strategy, and on the novelties of Russian development and of future
evolution in the Orient. 79 China, although not an economically de-
veloped capitalist country, and although its proletariat was small in
numbers, might none the less be considered "ripened politically for
the proletarian dictatorship."80
After his expulsion from Russia, Trotsky, in a polemic against his
former supporter, Radek, developed at greater length a defence of
this theory of "permanent revolution" and its historical role. 81 Defending
his position in 1905 on the "permanency of revolutionary development"
between the democratic and the socialist revolutions, he rejected the
various charges that he had ignored the bourgeois democratic phase,
or the role of the peasantry, and insisted, through many quotations
from Lenin, that the differences between him and Lenin had not been
so great, and in late 1917, with Lenin's adoption of the policy of
immediate proletarian revolution, had disappeared altogether. 82 The
main difference, he admitted, had related to the idea of the "dictator-
ship of proletariat and peasantry," a concept which Trotsky had not
been able to embrace, except in the sense of a peasant-supported
proletarian dictatorship. The application of this concept to China was
a betrayal of Marxism, in his view, and was used as a cloak for the
policy of supporting the Kuomintang. 83 The idea was even less suitable
for China than for Russia. His own conception of a revolution passing
directly from a bourgeois stage into a socialist stage, of a permanent
or uninterrupted revolution, was, however, applicable. He denied that
this involved a "leap'' over certain necessary historic stages, but argued
it was rather a "growing over" from one stage to another. 84 At the same
79Jbid., pp. 193-4, 207. For the quotation on the Orient, seep. 17.
SOJbid., P· 208.
SlTrotsky, The Permanent Revolution. This book was written in 1930, and
included a preface by Trotsky for the American edition. An excellent summary of
the doctrine of "permanent revolution" is given in the final chapter (written in
1929), pp. 151-7.
B2Jbid., pp. 11-19, 40 ff., 98-101.
83Jbid., pp. 153-4, xlvi.
84Quoting Radek, Trotsky replied: "The bourgeois revolution will pass directly
over into a socialist revolution-but this is precisely the theory of the growing into
and not of skipping over. ..." Ibid., p. 80. See also p. xxxix-xl: "No, I proceeded
precisely from the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution and arrived
at the conclusion that the profundity of the agrarian crisis can raise to power the
proletariat of backward Russia. Yes, these are just the ideas that I defended on the
24 CAN ADIAN SLAVONIC PAPERS
time he regarded as nonsense the idea that stages can never be

"skipped," and asserted that "theoretically 'inevitable' stages can be
compressed into nothing by the dynamics of development, especially
during revolutions ... ,"85 There were differences between developed
and underdeveloped countries, but not in respect to the possibility of a
proletarian dictatorship. After all, Russia had been a backward country
when such a dictatorship was established. The same could happen, in
somewhat different form, in other lands, such as India, or China.
Indeed, in underdeveloped countries the proletariat might be able to
come to power "on the basis of a national democratic revolution,
sooner than the proletariat of an advanced country on the basis of a
purely socialist revolution." 86
Thus did Trotsky and Stalin do battle over the future of socialism
in China and other backward countries, each claiming the mantle of
Lenin, and depicting his own forecast of the future as the orthodox
Marxist view. 87 The subtle, and to some extent mainly semantic,
differences between Lenin and Trotsky on the directness or indirect-
ness of the transition to socialism were magnified by the Stalinist
faction to represent, on the part of Trotsky, a gross deviation from the
correct Leninist view, thus giving a new warning to those Communists
eve of the 1905 revolution. These are just the ideas that alone expressed the
characterization of the revolution as a 'permanent' one, that is, an uninterrupted
one, that is, a revolution that passes over directly from the bourgeois stage into the
socialist. To express the same ideas, Lenin later used the excellent expression of
the bourgeois revolution-'growing into' the socialist. The conception of the grow-
ing into was contrasted by Stalin, after the event ( in 1924 ) , to the permanent
revolution as a direct leap from the realm of autocracy into the realm of socialism.
The unfortunate 'theoretician' did not even take the trouble to reflect, if it is
simply a matter of a leap, what the permanency of the revolution means!" See also
pp. 67-8.
B5Jbid., pp. 105, 107.
86Jbid., p. 124. "Under the conditions of the imperialist age, the national
democratic revolution can be carried through to a victorious end only when the
social and political relationships of the country are mature for putting the prole-
tariat in power, as the leader of the masses of the people" ( pp. 126-7). "When
and under what conditions a colonial country becomes ripe for the real revolu-
tionary solution of its agrarian and its national problems, cannot be foretold. But
in any case, we can assert today with full certainty that not only China, but also
India, will attain genuine popular democracy, that is, workers' and peasants'
democracy, only through the dictatorship of the proletariat. On that road, many
stages, steps and phases can still arise .... But what there will not be, what there
cannot be, is a genuine democratic dictatorship that is not the dictatorship of the
proletariat" ( p. 127). "Backward countries under certain conditions, can arrive
at the dictatorship of the proletariat sooner than the advanced countries, but they
come later than the latter to socialism" ( p. 155).
8 7Cf. Brandt, Stalin's Failure in China, 1924-1927, pp. 16-17.
who did not correctly distinguish the "permanent" from the "unin-
terrupted" revolution.
Hitler's rise to power in Germany contradicted Communist prog-
nostications on the coming of socialism in a highly industrialized
country, in this case, in the very country on which their hopes, since
Lenin's time, had centred. The dilemma in which Communists found
themselves concerning the correct approach to socialism was thus
intensified. Defensive measures were urgently needed, as well as a
plan for ultimately renewing the offensive for achieving socialism. The
solution was evidently not to be found in the various formulae set forth
in 1928, which had not permitted the Communist parties to work out
flexible tactics adapted to the national circumstances of each country
at a par~icular stage, and had encouraged the adoption of "universal
cut-and-dried schemes" and "ready-made recipes," and "bare imitation,
simple copying" of the Soviet Union. 88 This in tum had isolated the
working class from its "natural allies" and hence brought about its
defeat.
It was at the Seventh Congress that the slogans of "the united front"
and of "the people's front" were adopted, as "transitional slogans"
designed to win over the masses. This tactic conceded the possibility
of a government of the people's front, including Communists, which
would be directed primarily defensively against Fascism and reaction,
but which would carry through revolutionary policies, thus making
possible a transition to the ultimate proletarian revolution. Denying
that this was a "turn to the Right," Dimitrov rapped the sectarians on
the "Left," who were afraid of a united front and of democratic slogans,
and who attempted "to leap over difficult stages." He also warned
against the "right opportunists," who entertained "legalist illusions."89
Fifteen years ago Lenin called upon us to focus all our attention on "search-
ing out forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolution". It may
be that in a number of countries the united front government will prove to
SBGeorgi Dimitrov, Selected Speeches and Articles (London, 1951), pp. 123,
128, 143. These words were spoken at the Seventh Congress of the Communist
International in 1935 and this theme runs through all Dimitrov's addresses at the
congress. See also pp. 112-13, 117-20, 127-8, 142-3. For the full proceedings, see
VII Congress of the Communist International (Moscow, 1939).
89Dimitrov referred to earlier controversies at the Fourth and Fifth Congresses
of the Comintern on the subject of a "workers' " or "workers' and peasants' "
government, and attacked both the rightist view that such a government should
keep within the framework of bourgeois democracy and not carry out revolutionary
demands, and the leftist view that a united front with the social democrats, even
the left-wing, was unacceptable and that a workers' government could come only
after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by armed insurrection. Selected Speeches
and Articles, pp. 94-7.
be one of the most important transitional forms. "Left" doctrinaires have

always avoided this precept of Lenin's. Like the limited propagandists that
they were, they spoke only of "aims", without ever worrying about "forms
of transition". The Right opportunists, on the other hand, have tried to
establish a special "democratic intermediate stage" lying between the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat, for
the purpose of instilling into the workers the illusion of a peaceful parlia-
mentary passage from the one dictatorship to the other. This fictitious
"intermediate stage" they have also called "transitional form", and even
quoted Lenin's words! But this piece of swindling was not difficult to expose:
for Lenin spoke of the form of transition and approach to the "proletarian
revolution", that is, to the overthrow of the bourgeois dictatorship, and
not of some transitional form between the bourgeois and the proletarian
dictatorship."OO
Seeking to break away from previous sectarian thinking, Dimitrov
rejected both the idea that the united front was an "indispensable
stage," and the opposite belief that there could be no immediate stages
on the road to proletarian dictatorship. He did not exclude the
possibility of a direct transition from Fascism to a proletarian dictator-
ship, if conditions were favourable, nor, in a country where a "bour-
geois democratic revolution" was developing, a transition to "the
government of the democratic dictatorship of the working class and
the peasantry." None the less, although Dimitrov was emphasizing
"immediate tasks" rather than "ultimate aims" and suggesting alterna-
tive roads ahead, it is quite clear that he had not in any way forgotten
the latter. "In history," he reminded his listeners, "great revolutions
have grown out of small movements for the defence of the elementary
rights of the working class."91 The ultimate "necessity of the revolu-
tionary overthrow of the rule of the bourgeoisie and the establishment
of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of Soviets" must he
declared "be recognized."92 In the immediate perspective, however,
Dimitrov was introducing into Communist theory the notion of a
transition to socialism through preliminary stages, even in the indus-
trialized lands of western Europe. Lenin's doctrine of an indirect
approach to socialism, devised for less developed countries, more or
less abandoned in 1917 for Russia, and revived in 1928, was applied
to the mature capitalist west.
The Seventh Congress, obsessed with the danger of Fascism in
90Jbid., pp. 97-8.

DlJbid., p. 131.
92Jbid., pp. 109-10. See also H. Gordon Skilling, "People's Democracy: The
Proletarian Dictatorship and the Czechoslovak Path to Socialism," The American
Slavic and East European Review, X, 2 (April, 1951), 106-7.
Europe, paid little or no attention to Asia. In the same year, however,
the Communist Party of China developed its own parallel policy of
a united and people's front, and thereafter proceeded to formulate,
apparently independently, a policy substantially identical to that
advocated for China by Russia. 93 The fullest exposition of Chinese
Communist thinking was given by Mao Tse-tung in 1939 and 1940,
especially in "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist
Party," and "On New Democracy."94 This "Chinese" form of Marixism,
as Mao once called it, borrowed from Lenin and Stalin the notion of
the two distinct stages of the future Chinese revolution, terming the
one, democratic, the other, socialist. The first stage would produce,
said Mao, "democracy of the Chinese type, a new and special type-
New Democracy."95 It would represent a bourgeois democratic revolu-
tion, but one of a new type; it would be part, not of a world-wide
bourgeois democratic revolution, designed to establish bourgeois
democracy, but of a world-wide socialist revolution, enjoying the aid
and the inspiration of the Soviet Union, and designed to clear the way
for ultimate socialism. The main tasks of the first stage, however, would
be "national" and "democratic," directed against colonialism and
feudalism. This would result in the establishment of a democratic
republic, under the joint dictatorship of all anti-imperialist and anti-
feudal classes, led by the proletariat. The revolutionary classes would
comprise the proletariat ("the basic motive force of the Chinese
revolution," "the leader"); the peasantry ("the principal force of the
Chinese revolution"); the petty bourgeoisie, including intellectuals and
students, small merchants, and craftsmen; the national bourgeoisie
(the middle bourgeoisie opposed to imperialism); and even some of
the "comprador" bourgeoisie and the landlord class. 96
The time was not yet ripe for socialism, declared Mao. It would take
a while for the New Democracy to prepare the way for the second
socialist stage. That was, however, the ultimate goal. "To complete
China's bourgeois-democratic revolution (the new-democratic revolu-
tion) and to prepare to transform it into a socialist revolution when
all the necessary conditions are present-that is the sum total of the
great and glorious revolutionary task of the Communist Party of
China."97 Equally erroneous, he said, were the views that the first
93McLane, Soviet Policy and the Chinese Communists, 1931-1946, pp. 9 H.,
78-9.
94Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works (New York, 1954), III, 72-101, 106-56.
95fbid., p. 109.
96fbid., pp. 88 H., 94-5, 137-8.
91Ibid., pp. 100-1.
democratic phase was enough, or that it would be itseH socialist. The

period of new democracy would represent only the "minimum" pro-
gramme of the party; socialism would remain the "maximum"
programme. The two revolutions were, however, intimately connected:
"The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the social-
ist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable trend of the
democratic revolution."9s
In spite of this close linking of the two revolutions, in a manner
reminiscent of Lenin, Mao was especially sharp in repudiating the
proponents of "the theory of a single revolution":
... the purely fanciful notion of "accomplishing both the political revolution
and the social revolution at one stroke"; they do not understand that our
revolution is divided into stages, that we can only proceed from one revolu-
tion to the other, and that there is no such thing as "accomplishing both at
one stroke". Such a point of view mixes up the steps to be taken in the
revolution and reduces the efforts directed towards the present task, and is
very harmful. It is correct, and fits in with the Marxist theory of revolution
development, to say that, of the two revolutionary stages, the first provides
the conditions for the second and that the two must be consecutive without
allowing any stage of bourgeois dictatorship to intervene. But if it is asserted
that the democratic revolution has no definite task of its own and need not
await its proper occasion, but its task can be merged with another task-
e.g. the socialist task that can only be carried out at some other time-and
that both tasks can be accomplished simultaneously; then this is the theory
of "accomplishing both at one stroke", a utopian view rejected by true
revolutionaries. 99
The New Democracy was, as Mao explicitly declared, a model to be
adopted by "revolutions in colonial and semi-colonial countries during
a given historical period"; neither a dictatorship of the bourgeosie nor
of the proletariat was suitable. Although he did not directly refer to
Trotsky, Mao, in rejecting the idea of a "single" revolution, was siding
with Stalin in a debate already "won" by Stalin. Although Mao did not
use the phrase of the "growing" of one revolution into the other, his
theses were fully in accord with the views expressed by Lenin in 1905.
The Maoist concept of the transition, in spite of a new terminology
and certain distinctive notes, was in the main not original, nor did it
break with the scheme set forth by Stalin in the twenties. 100 It was
9Blbid., p. 101.
99Ibid., p. 130.
lOOMao's lack of originality is stressed by McLane, Soviet Policy and the Chinese
Communists, pp. 142, 261-2; Brandt, Schwartz, and Fairbank, A Documentary
History of Chinese Communism, pp. 212-22; Benjamin Schwartz, "China and the
Soviet Theory of People's Democracy," Problems of Communism, III, 5 (Sept.-Oct.,
1954), 12.
indeed possible to cite Stalin's theoretical statements (although Mao
did not do so to any great extent) to support most of his basic proposi-
tions. In many ways, too, the Maoist thesis resembled the people's
front phase of Comintern strategy and echoed many of Dimitrov's
formulations, especially in its emphasis on the Chinese character of
the revolutionary strategy and tactics to be followed. Mao's concept
of the class composition of the people's front was somewhat wider than
his predecessors', including, as we have seen, the national bourgeoisie,
and assigning a more important role to the peasantry. Even these ideas
were not without parallel in the thought of Lenin and Stalin. This
Maoist doctrine, however, was proclaimed in China at a time
(1939-40) when in Europe the people's front had been abandoned
and the Comintern line had switched back, temporarily as it turned
out, to the more rigid concept of a purely proletarian revolution. The
Maoist policy was therefore quite out of line with then current
Comintern policy but pointed the way to future postwar policy in
Eastern Europe.
At the beginning of World War II, therefore, the long-standing
controversy on the "approach" to the socialist revolution had not by
any means been permanently settled. Torn between the desire for the
speediest achievement of socialism, and the awareness of the necessity
of transitional stages to prepare the way for ultimate victory, Com-
munists had wavered between the theories of a direct or an indirect
transition to socialism. By 1939 they had accommodated themselves,
both in Europe and in Asia, to the indirect approach to socialism,
through successive stages. This had not excluded, even in the back-
ward countries of Asia, a very swift passage to the final goal, on the
lines of Lenin's uninterrupted revolution. Nor did it prevent, with the
outbreak of war, the reversion to the sectarian policy of seeking an
immediate proletarian revolution, without an intervening democratic
stage. When, after the involvement of the Soviet Union in 1941, the
indirect coalition strategy was once again resumed, it is not surprising
that many Communists were confused, not knowing whether orthodoxy
permitted such a gradual advance to socialism, or required a direct
movement forward to a proletarian dictatorship. 101
This confusion was in large part the legacy of the Stalin-Trotsky
lOlSee M. Rakosi, "The Path of Our People's Democracy," Nova mysl, VI, 5
(1952), 387-8. A version of this article, under the same title, published in Russian
in Kommunist, XXIX, 21 (November, 1952), omitted Rakosi's reference to this
confusion. See also a somewhat similar admission by Klement Gottwald, in a
speech on April 8, 1945, first published in Gottwald, Spisy [Works], XII (Prague,
1955), 15-16. .
controversy, which prevented any identification between the "uninter-

rupted" and the "permanent" revolutions. Differences between Lenin
and Trotsky, real enough at the outset, had been reduced, by later
events and subsequent interpretation, to the vanishing point. None the
less, the polemic between Stalin and Trotsky, with its exaggeration of
the original differences between "permanent" and "uninterrupted"
revolutions, continued to exert its influence, serving as a criterion of
orthodox and unorthodox, and rendering all the more difficult, and
indeed dangerous, the task of interpreting Marxism in a given time and
place. The inherent compulsion of the polemic produced that strange
ambivalence in Communist thinking, namely, that a direct transition
to socialism in any country other than the highly developed capitalist
lands was condemned, while a very rapid transition from a democratic
to a socialist stage, was regarded as orthodox Leninism. Equally con-
demned were the views to the "Left," predicting a direct advance to
socialism in countries of lesser industrial development, or to the
"Right," forecasting a long period of "democratic" revolution in any
country. It was within this ambiguous context that Communists, after
1945, had once again to try to reach an agreed and lasting consensus
for the road ahead. Even as late as 1960, such a consensus had not been
achieved, and the shadows of Lenin and Trotsky, and of subsequent
disputants, continue to fall across the pages of Soviet theory. 102
102See H. Gordon Skilling, "'People's Democracy' in Soviet Theory," Soviet
Studies, III, 1 and 2 (July and October, 1951), pp. 1fh33, 131-49; and "People's
Democracy and the Socialist Revolution, A Case Study in Soviet Scholarship,"
Soviet Studies, XII, 3 and 4 (January and April, 1961), pp. 241-62.
University of Toronto

Skilling 1961

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Canadian Slavonic Papers

ISSN: 0008-5006 (Print) 2375-2475 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcsp20

Permanent or Uninterrupted Revolution: Lenin,

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LENIN ONCE URGED his followers to focus attention on "the searching

non-Communist. Sharp differences of view emerged concerning such

revolution in favour of piecemeal reforms within capitalism, or who

12George Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism (New York, 1937),

gramme, a socialist revolution, could not immediately be achieved. 20

After the complete victory of the (democratic) revolution, Lenin went

20Lenin, Sochineniya, IX, 13-15; Selected Works, I, Part II, 23-5.

sembled the conclusions drawn independently by Lenin. 29 Trotsky's

feasibility, in areas of underdeveloped capitalism, of a swifter transi-

to seriously distort Marxism ... to substitute liberalism in its stead.''4 7

47Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky," Sochineniya,

development, distinguish her revolution from all previous revolutions

the establishment of proletarian power, rather than to "crown" the

64Ibid., p. 25; see also p. 88 ff.

be made between the countries of high, and those of medium, develop-

69Sochineniya, XI, 155-6 (Works, XI, pp. 162-3).

forecast of the future Chinese revolution remained unchanged, and

time he regarded as nonsense the idea that stages can never be

be one of the most important transitional forms. "Left" doctrinaires have

90Jbid., pp. 97-8.

democratic phase was enough, or that it would be itseH socialist. The

controversy, which prevented any identification between the "uninter-

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