Let the fatal blow, an example of days to come,
Make you tremble, nephews of kings!
Let it train you, force you, finally,
The crown of the Autocratic People to honor!
(Songs of the First French Revolution).
Je ne suis ni le courtisan, ni le modérateur, ni le tribun, ni le défenseur du peuple! Je suis peuple moi-même! (Robespierre).
Levez-vous donc, peuple souverain! (Marat).
When in the Politics Aristotle criticized Plato’s sketches of the ideal polis (“Republic”) and the construction of the “Socratic project” (“Laws”), the main thing that displeased him, and was unbearable for him, is that his great teacher based his “verbal constructions” of the polis to be drawn or constructed on a single, unified guiding principle. For Kallipolis it is the principle of philosopher-rulers (or at times one philosopher-king), for Eunomopolis it is laws. The unity of the basic principle in Plato is inseparably connected with the unity of this or that state. “It is clear,” Aristotle gives his verdict, “that a state with ever-increasing unity would cease to be a state. For by its very nature the state appears to be a kind of multitude.” .And further: “The root error of Socrates’ project should be seen in the incorrectness of its basic premise. The point is that we should demand relative, not absolute unity of both the family and the state. If this unity goes too far, the state itself will be destroyed.”
The Soviet state was quite a Platonic state, and analogies can be offered (in the order of intellectual scholē, of course) many: there is a philosopher tsar (more precisely, even two philosopher tsars, and even more precisely, the party as a collective philosopher tsar with a contemplative or possessor of the supreme knowledge of eternal truths at its head), unchanging political and intellectual principles (the smart world of Marxism-Leninism, or “Soviet ideology”), the Night Assembly, and the guards. It is not difficult to say which polis—Callipolis or Eunomopolis—the USSR resembles to a greater extent; certainly, the strongest image of philosopher-kings demands deciding the case in favor of the ideal polis from the Republic; but the equally strong image of the “noble tyrant” (gennaios turannos), who is the “chief legislator,” may derive to the polis from the Laws. However, the laws did not determine the life of the USSR, but were themselves created and determined by the party, quite like in the ideal polis of the Republic, where, as we know, there were no rules, algorithms, norms, set above the ruling philosophers, and all “power” decisions were made by philosopher-kings situationally. But what is more important is the “single guiding principle” itself, which determined everything else in the life of the state—the system, regime, structure, laws. By the single guiding principle is meant the supreme, openly and solemnly proclaimed, like Plato’s principle of the Good (Unity), principle of a particular state, not necessarily actually existing or having existed, which determines all major (form of the state, regime, etc.) and ultimately minor attributes. “And if anyone asks,” says Stalin, “how is it that you have nothing eternal? Today one thing, and tomorrow another. How shall we live?” One cannot help but recall an ironic passage about Stalin from Raymond Aron’s The Opium of Intellectuals: “Emperors have often been poets or thinkers, but for the first time the emperor reigns as a dialectician, an interpreter of doctrine and history.”
In the life of the USSR there were only two such principles, successively succeeding each other, with the second succeeding the first as a result of its evolutionary development to the highest stage: the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (the 1st program of the RSDLP, 1903, part of the “minimum,” in prospect; the 2nd program of the RCP(b), 1918, in action) and “the Nationwide State” (“All-National State”, “State of All the People”) (the 3rd program of the CPSU, 1961, based on the draft program of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 1947). They were developed, adopted, and implemented by the Soviet “board of philosopher-kings”, i.e., the Communist Party, whose program proclaimed this or that initial principle. The Party was the creator of the USSR, first in idea, then in deed, “in stone and iron”, and therefore it is quite logical that its program was the main document, a kind of “ideal plan” (in the Platonic sense) for Russia, the initial, statutory document on the basis of which constitutions were written and laws were created.
The emergence of the concepts of plurality (multipartyism, pluralism, i.e., polyideology, etc.) in the political discourse became a sign that the time of life of the superpower had come to an end. The penetration of this wave into the party program became a symptom of the fact that the history of the party, and thus the history of the USSR, was coming to an end—we are referring to the failed 4th Program of the CPSU, which was developed in 1991 under the conceptual leadership of academician Ivan Frolov and the official leadership of Mikhael Gorbachev. This draft program of the party was a project of liquidation of the party. It is hard to imagine how long the agony of the party lasted and what it would have led to. By a strange coincidence of circumstances and, apparently, by the mercy of history, the Frolov project was not brought to an end. The Plato’s-Leninist-Stalinist “party of philosophers,” this marvelous creation of history, left historical life in a way much more befitting a philosopher, having terminated its life by order of a tyrant (in the role played by Boris Yeltsin).
The two mentioned “unified guiding principles” of the Communist Party and the Soviet state had one ideological-conceptual source, a “proto-principle.” Both the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and the “Nationwide State” were an ideological development, emanations of this very proto-principle, which is called “Autocracy of the People” (“People’s Autocracy”—a political situation when the people themselves are sovereign; that is why they often say, “Autocratic People” or “Peuple Souverain“) and appears in the 1st program of the RSDLP. The Russian Social Democrats borrowed it from the ideological and political baggage of Narodnaya Volya, who were the first to write this energetic, Russoistically contradictory and enigmatic word combination on their banners. The concept of “Autocracy of the People” stands between autocratic Russia and Soviet Russia, as if linking together the seemingly torn history of the country. Hence its semantic polypotentiality: the “Autocracy of the People” is close to the past, i.e., to the “Autocracy of the Tsar” (as the entelechy of the people, as a superperson, thanks to which the people can only be united); and to the future, i.e., to the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (autocracy is a temporary dictatorship, while the people are easily reduced first to “the proletariat and the peasantry,” then to the proletariat alone), and then with the All-Nation State = State of All the People [Vsenarodnoe Gosudarstvo, or Obshchenarodnoe Gosudarstvo]—the State of the People-Sovereign/the State of the Autocratic People. In the concept of the “State of All the People” Soviet political thought returned to its Narodnik and ultimately Slavophile origins.
“Autocracy of the People” in the 1st program of the RSDLP
The wording (more precisely, a slogan or, in the terms of Gaetano Mosca, la formula politica) “Autocracy of the People” [Samoderzhavie Naroda] appears in the 1st program of the RSDLP, adopted at its II Congress (1903). The initial draft of the program was prepared by Georgy Plekhanov in January 1902. In this text the statement is as follows: “…Russian Social-Democrats set as their immediate political task the overthrow of the monarchy and its replacement by a republic on the basis of a democratic constitution, which will ensure: 1. The Autocracy of the People, i.e., the concentration of all supreme power in the hands of a legislative assembly composed of the people’s representatives.” There were well-known fierce disputes about the party program between Plekhanov and Lenin, the topics of which ranged from purely conceptual points to questions of style (not unimportant, it must be said, for the program), but the concept of “Autocracy of the People” did not appear in this polemic, and the uncompromising constants did not clash over this concept. The final text of the program adopted at the II Congress, in the part that interests us, reads as follows: the RSDLP “sets as its immediate political task the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy and its replacement by a democratic republic, the constitution of which would ensure: 1. Autocracy of the People, i.e., the concentration of all supreme state power in the hands of a legislative assembly composed of representatives of the people and forming one chamber.” “Monarchy” is replaced by “tsarist autocracy,” rhetorically tinged with “Autocracy of the People;” at the suggestion of Lev Trotsky, the “legislative assembly” is defined as unicameral. The text presents a certain tautology: the form of the state to be exhibited after the overthrow of the monarchy is a democratic republic, the essence of which is the “Autocracy of the People,” which is nothing other than, again, a democratic republic. The authors could have done without the “Autocracy of the People,” but the text and its history show that they insisted on this formula.
It cannot be said that the unexpected concept of “Autocracy of the People” did not arouse attention and criticism—by that time Marxist rhetoric had completely supplanted Narodnik rhetoric and almost replaced Narodnik rhetoric, so that the terminological relic concerned some Social Democrats. Konstantin Takhtarev (Strakhov), proposed to replace the “Autocracy of the People” with the words “the supremacy of the people,” justifying it by the fact that it was “the autocracy of the parliament or, more precisely, the supremacy of the people through the autocracy of the parliament. The term ‛Autocracy of the People’ as applied to this case is therefore unfortunate and legally incorrect.” He rightly argued that “Plekhanov’s formulation of ‛People’s Autocracy’ is uncomfortable—it smacks of narodnicism [Populism, in Russian: Narodnichestvo, here and throughout the text].” The concept sounded clearly non-Marxist, if not anti-Marxist, and this despite the fact that it was promoted by two politicians who positioned themselves as Marxists par excellence. Indeed, if the “Autocracy of the People” is identified with democracy, a democratic republic, it is not quite clear why a Narodnik-sounding concept should be introduced at all, “multiplying essences” in such an unorthodox way.
Other participants in the Congress also did not fail to note the fact that the concept contrasted with the Marxist socio-political “background,” but soon “Autocracy of the People” became quite a familiar element of party rhetoric, coming closer in meaning to the democratic republic, becoming in fact its sublime synonym. Thus, Bolshevik leaflets of the revolutionary 1905–1907 proclaimed the demand for “the immediate convocation of a constituent assembly of representatives of all the people on the basis of universal, direct, equal and secret voting, for the establishment of a democratic republic, for the replacement of the Autocracy of the Tsar by the Autocracy of the People.” The concepts of “democratic republic,” “free rule of the people,” “Autocracy of the People” were used semantically as interchangeable slogans calling the people to overthrow the tsar: “Rise up, comrades, quickly to fight against the enemy at hand—the Tsar’s Autocracy. We need to replace it with the Autocracy of the People.”
The concept became so familiar that Konstantin Takhtarev himself in his 1907 work uses it much more often than the concepts that are replaced by this term (“direct democracy,” “direct popular legislation,” “full self-government of citizens”). In the proper sense, according to Takhtarev, the Autocracy of the People was a political stage for socialism and at the same time the result of the socialist revolution: “Without achieving the autocracy of the people, socialism is impossible. Without socialism, the autocracy of the people cannot be the actual autocracy of the workers.” That is why, he argues, “the whole political theory of the proletariat finds its full expression in two simple but meaningful words: The Autocracy of the People.” It sounds a bit strange, because the “political theory of the proletariat” finds its “full expression” in other, much more “meaningful” words—the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
As for Vladimir Lenin, his purpose in supporting Plekhanov’s concept seems quite clear. The main thing that attracted him to this polysemous and rather vague concept was its unusually broad possibilities of reconceptualization in a variety of keys and directions. The rather simple reversal into the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” has already been mentioned; in addition, we should add the effectiveness of anti-self-owning rhetoric: the quasi-Rousseauist slogan “the Autocracy of the People” was powerfully opposed to the “Autocracy of the Tsar” (which can be clearly seen in the “Leaflets of the Moscow Bolsheviks”). In general, this successfully constructed binary formula easily changes its meaning when one component is strengthened and the other is leveled: by strengthening “people,” we get rebellion, revolution (the people without a tsar!), the riotous rhetoric of the Peuple souverain of the Great French Revolution; by strengthening “autocracy,” we get a formula with a bright etatist sound; by balancing between the extremes, we get a democratic republic. With his excellent command of the word, Lenin saw the most varied potencies of an unusual concept, highlighted by changing the optics and political perspective. An important point was that the concept of “Autocracy of the People” could easily be used to shade or disguise the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” desired by the Bolsheviks.
“We Have only the Word at our Disposal”
In order to appreciate Lenin’s attitude to working with language, one must bear in mind that the word was a weapon for him: concepts and ideas, theories and categories—all these were evaluated by him according to their effectiveness in the struggle, and not by any other criterion (e.g., conformity with Marxist orthodoxy). Thus, for the struggle against the autocracy in 1905–1907, Lenin’s “conceptual artistry” was the basis for the struggle against the autocracy in 1905–1907. In his “conceptual artillery,” Lenin used three “shock concepts” simultaneously: “Hegemony of the Proletariat”, “Autocracy of the People” and “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” (the latter clearly inspired by the Jacobin “temporary revolutionary order of government”). A master of the word, of the “word-weapon,” Lenin was very talented and resourceful in those cases where the word means so much and where it is necessary to use all the power contained in it. But to find the right word—here Vladimir Lenin was not always the first. “The Autocracy of the People” was Georgy Plekhanov’s discovery. But how did this discovery happen?
“The Autocracy of the People” in the Manifesto
Where does Plekhanov find such an unusual political formula with such multidirectional conceptual possibilities? The Russian Marxist introduces into his draft program a concept he became acquainted with when he critically examined in his work, Our Disagreements (1884) a rather influential text – the agitation-political work of Lev Tikhomirov (1884), which in turn was a kind of response to Plekhanov’s work, Socialism and Political Struggle (1883), which was a major manifesto of his ideological campaign against the Narodniks and Narodovists (the members of Narodnaya Volya, “the People’s Will”).
The article-manifesto, “What Should We Expect from the Revolution?” as Alexander Repnikov and Oleg Milevsky write, “contained a powerful charge of criticism against the thesis of the representatives of the Marxist socialist wing, about the inevitability of Russia passing through the capitalist stage of development in the image and likeness of European states;” and “the immediate task of the party in the article, ‛What Should We Expect from the Revolution?’ was a political upheaval with the aim of transferring power to the Constituent Assembly.” It is in this work that Tikhomirov shows himself not only as an ideologue of the “People’s Will,” but also as a profound political thinker, laying the foundations of the theory of supreme power that would be presented in his work in the future. In a latent form, both the work of 1884 and a number of documents of the “People’s Will” written with his participation, or even by him personally, already contain ideas that he would develop in his philosophical and political treatises, “Monocracy as a Principle of State Structure” (1897) and “Monarchical Statehood” (1905).
Tikhomirov, according to Plekhanov’s analysis, proceeds from the fact that “the supreme power, according to the views of the people, is a representation of the nation as a whole, and by no means class-based.” Already at the stage of disputes over the interpretation of the name of the revolutionary union (“Narodnaya Volya”), Tikhomirov defined the people’s will, or the will of the people, precisely as “the power of the people.” From this, according to the intellectual leader of Narodnaya Volya, stemmed the thesis that the provisional government, established after the seizure of power, had as its goal only the “organization of the people” in order to unleash the creative forces contained within them. In other words, the aim of the “People’s Will” was to help the “People’s Autocracy” to free itself from the oppression of the “Tsar’s Autocracy” and to appear on the arena of history “on its own behalf.”
The people are the original source of power (and this postulate Tikhomirov, by his own admission, “an ardent admirer of Rousseau,” would not change); and the Russian people—Tikhomirov believed when he participated in the activities of the “Narodnaya Volya”—is close to the supreme power, which he called “the Autocracy of the People” and interpreted in the style of Rousseau as “the power of the people” (and this postulate would be subjected to deep revision). The leading ideologist of “Narodnaya Volya” put forward “People’s Autocracy” as a principle of what comes after the destruction of the “Autocracy of the Tsar” and as a structure of the Russian state: “The mass of the people, a huge force—every time it is united, will put forward and support only such a system in which the main foundations of its worldview will be implemented: people’s autocracy in state relations, and the organization of land relations on the basis of the national right to land. In this sense, the seizure of power by the social-revolutionary party does not appear at all fantastic or fruitless.”
The passage from Tikhomirov’s work is by no means the first case of the use of the phrase “People’s Autocracy”/“Autocracy of the People” by the People’s Revolutionaries, who used the concept-image of the “People-Sovereign” (Souveraineté du Peuple) from the lexicon of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, then Maximilien Robespierre (“I am not the courtier, nor the moderator, nor the tribune nor the defender of the people, I am the People myself”) and Jean-Paul Marat (“Rise up, People-Sovereign!”), adjusted for the Russian realities into the “Autocratic People” as a shocking revolutionary anti-monarchist slogan (actually, as it was constructed by Rousseau), along with the concepts of this kind: “people’s power”, “power of the people” and so on. We encounter this concept in the Narodnaya Volya’s documents, written, as has already been emphasized, with the participation of Tikhomirov, if not by him personally, starting directly from 1879, in exactly the same sense—as the power of the people, originally belonging to it, which it wrests by force back from the autocratic tsar and vigorously defends. One of the documents of Narodnaya Volya of 1882 defines the goal of the organization as “People’s government, the transition of supreme power into the hands of the people. The task of the party is to promote the transition and consolidation of supreme power in the hands of the people… It was decided to begin the struggle with the government that denies the idea of People’s Power unconditionally and completely.”
We first read about the “People’s Autocracy” in the proclamation of the Executive Committee of the Narodnaya Volya, about the attempt on the Tsar’s train in November 1879: “Alexander II is the chief representative of the usurpation of the People’s Autocracy.” Not infrequently, “People’s Autocracy” is also mentioned in the following years: for example, in one of the Executive Committee reports of 1880, the author, speaking of “the transformation of the masses into a conscious political force,” continues as follows: “That is why we constantly spoke of the transfer of power to the people, of the people’s will, of the People’s Autocracy.” The “Autocracy of the People” is opposed to the “Autocracy of the Tsar” and is affirmed as a necessary condition for socialism: “…Everything that destroys the Autocracy of the Tsar, leads us fatefully to the appearance on the political field of the masses, leads to the Autocracy of the People. The People’s Autocracy is the direct precursor of socialism, because only in socialism the mass of people finds the simultaneous realization of their economic interest and their freedom.” Thus, this bright idea was carried out in the documents of the members of the Narodnaya Volya quite persistently and energetically. The concepts of “people’s power” and “power of the people” were also used, but of course they did not possess such verbal energy as “Autocracy of the People”/“People’s Autocracy.”
Lev Tikhomirov and the rest of the theorists of the “People’s Will,” according to Stepan Volk, “did not well imagine the future revolutionary state. They also underestimated the slogan of the republic. They dreamed of immediately creating a nationwide state, while the only possible state at that time was a class state. They dreamed of a socialist state, but in reality only a bourgeois-democratic state could establish itself in Russia.” After March 1, 1881, it became clear that the “overthrow of autocracy” was only a slogan, not a program—it was unclear not only what would happen afterwards, but also what this “overthrow” actually meant. However, Russian reality hardly provided arguments for the application of Marxist analysis to it, but rather for revolutionary doctrines such as those of Petr Tkachev and the Narodovists: as Vagarshak Ter-Vaganyan wrote, “a patriarchal sea with weak signs of capitalism—our country could not but provide the richest food for the most risky theories and constructions, which would never have arisen if our class relations had been clearer.” The problem of “Le Lendemain de la révolution” (the day after the revolution) had no theoretical solution, because it was wrongly formulated and posed, and it so happened that any programs and projects of anti-supremacist forces, parties and movements were of necessity utopias, and it was only a question of their greater or lesser emotionality and persuasiveness, but in no way about their applicability to the real state of affairs (not to mention their feasibility in practice).
After March 1, 1881, having realized that the tsar’s assassination could not have had the expected effect, and it was not about the reigning personality, but about the state behind it, which it embodied. Tikhomirov and a number of other ideologists and theorists of Narodnaya Volya strengthened the “state element” in their doctrine and, emphasizing the commitment to the goal of the coup d’état, the need to take the state into its own hands in order to establish the desired course (a kind of “readjustment of the state” as the only and all-powerful “motor” of Russian life), partly leaned toward Jacobinism in their new rhetoric; as for the “transfer of power to the people,” this thesis was obscured. In the famous “Letter of the Executive Committee of the People’s Will to Foreign Comrades,” composed by Tikhomirov at the end of 1881, whose motto is the words: “the coup d’état is our ‛to be or not to be,’” it is said: “As for our Jacobinism, again we do not know how to say it. Trouble with these foreign words. First, the word ‛Jacobinism’ in Russia is very riddled with talkers, and therefore, whatever it means, we do not agree to call ourselves Jacobins. Then, by our convictions and aspirations, we are statesmen [gosudarstvenniki], i.e., we recognize the element of the state, the element of political power as of great importance. It is power, and therefore it must be intelligently organized. The state power was, is and will be, probably, always, at all times. That is why we pay as much attention to its organization as to the organization of economic relations. The revolution will only take place when this power is in good hands, and therefore we seek to seize it, since the people, as long as they are slaves to a thousand other conditions, will not hold it anyway.” It was this attitude, which would later be further elaborated in Tikhomirov’s Narodnaya Volya thought, rather than the political exersises of Petr Tkachev or the “lessons” of Mariya Golubeva (Yasneva), that would become the starting point for Lenin’s doctrine. In the approach to the problem of the Samara period, specifically about the influence on Lenin of his communication with the Jacobin woman Yasneva, there are, as is often the case, two extreme points of view—“Valentinov’s” and “Ulam’s.” Nikolay Valentinov attaches great importance to Lenin’s meetings with Yasneva, believing that it was she who oriented Lenin in the direction of Jacobinism. Adam Ulam completely excludes any influence of Yasneva: “There is no reason to attribute such a decisive influence to an insignificant dissident woman.”
“You’re a Real Narodnik Revolutionary!”
(Tikhomirov’s words addressed to Plekhanov)
In Our Disagreements, Plekhanov severely criticizes the concept presented in the article, “What Shall We Expect from the Revolution?” In Plekhanov’s area of special attention is Tikhomirov’s concept of “Autocracy of the People”/“People’s Autocracy.” The Marxist ideologue rejects the idea that “supreme power is a representation of the nation as a whole, and by no means a class representation” from the outset: “It is this conviction in the nationwide character of our supreme power that strengthens Mr. Tikhomirov’s belief in the imminent triumph of the people’s government. The transition to the latter from the Autocracy of the Tsars is not something original (?). The French people in the same way, from the idea of an autocratic king, able to say l’état c’est moi, passed without difficulty (?!) to the idea of a Peuple Souverain. The rule of the Autocratic People could not actually be established there, thanks to the power of the bourgeoisie; we have no bourgeoisie, so nothing prevents the triumph of the people’s rule.”
The Marxist Plekhanov could not accept a theory which was not based on the axiom of the class struggle, but which proceeded from the principles of the nation as a whole, or which appealed to the people at all. Accordingly, the hypothetical transition from the “Autocracy of the Tsar” to some undefined in Marxist theory “Autocracy of the People” is for a Marxist utter nonsense, unworthy even to mention. The bourgeois revolution, the proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat—such and only such is the course of history, according to Marxist thought, which does not take seriously the unity of the people, burning the unity of the people in the eternal Heraclitean fire of the class struggle. It should be noted that the idea of the supra-class / extra-class, people’s nature of autocracy emerges shortly before the disputes described, it is actively developed in the works of Sergey Soloviev and would be deepened by Vasily Klyuchevsky; already in the first third of the twentieth century. The “extra-class state” was severely criticized, if not ridiculed, in the works of Mikhael Pokrovsky, then for a while (around the 2nd half of the 1940s) it was rehabilitated by Stalin—in order to become an additional historical justification for the postulation of the “All-People’s State” in 1947.
Capitalism will not pass away, Plekhanov argues, rebelling against Tikhomirov’s postulation of the “Autocracy of the People” as the future political state of Russia after the coup: “…The people become disillusioned with ‛the Autocracy of the Tsars’ only where their economic relations lose their primitive character and become more or less bourgeois; but at the same time the bourgeoisie also begins to acquire strength, i.e., the direct transition to capitalism becomes impossible; it becomes impossible to make a direct transition to the Autocracy of the People,” says Plekhanov and puts forward a cardinally important thesis: when “the mutual relations of the social classes become sharply defined, the place of the ‛people’ will be taken by the working class, and the People’s Autocracy will turn into the dictatorship of the proletariat.” “People’s Autocracy” for some obscure reason is not quoted by Plekhanov, although it would have been logical to do so. As for reducing the “people” to the “proletariat”—this idea would be highly developed by Lenin and Stalin (but Plekhanov was the first, as we see, to make such an unexpected theoretical leap). Tikhomirov makes a fair accusation against Plekhanov and his fellow Marxists of “wanting to create a class in whose name he can act—the proletariat.” He sarcastically says, as if following Plekhanov’s logic and bringing it to the point of absurdity (but is it absurd?): “Being consistent and putting the interests of the revolution above his personal moral purity, the socialist here should have allied himself directly with the knights of ‛initial accumulation.’”
Thus, Georgy Plekhanov, from a Marxist position, theoretically trashes the idea of popular autocracy in Lev Tikhomirov’s quasi-Jacobin pamphlet – a classic ideological clash between the ideologists of Marxism and Populism, nothing more. But at the same time Plekhanov singles out the formula “Autocracy of the People”, puts it in a special order, puts it aside in his ideological baggage. What is the point here? What are the reasons that prompted the father of Russian Marxism not to pass over a highly non-Marxist concept? Marxism with its proletarian hegemonism absolutely does not accept any “Autocracy of the People”. Even verbally, this formula sounds counter-Marxist (as does the “All-Peoples State”). Despite all this, Plekhanov nevertheless adopts it, even though, in theory, for him “Autocracy of the People” and “Dictatorship of the People” are equally meaningless phrases.
For all the rigor of Plekhanov’s rejection of Narodnicism (=Populism), it cannot be said that in his transition to Marxism he completely abandoned the ideological system which he had shared before Marxism; nor can it be said that he was completely “anti-Narodnaya Volya”: it is not without reason that Tikhomirov apparently once (in 1882, to be precise) said to him: “You are a real Narodnik!” The deep, not completely outlived Narodnicism continued to dominate his political thought, and the reason for his acceptance of the highest political principle of Narodnaya Volya, i.e. “Autocracy of the People,” is certainly connected with it. Plekhanov’s “liberation” from Narodnik ideas was quite painful—he never fully succeeded in rejecting Narodnicism and fully embracing Marxism. This is where the dogmatism of Plekhanov’s thought, noted by many contemporaries, especially by Tikhomirov, seems to stem from. Dogmatism is a good remedy for confusion of thought and doubt, but thought and doubt are still stronger than “unquestionable” truths.
But there is one specific circumstance. Plekhanov was looking for a substitute for the thesis of “direct people’s legislation,” which he put forward in two programs developed and published in 1883–1888: The Program of the Social-Democratic Group ‛Liberation of Labor’ (written in 1883, published in 1884) and The Second Draft Program of the Russian Social-Democrats (written in 1887, published in 1888). The principle of direct popular legislation also appears in the work, Socialism and Political Struggle (1883), the first polemical work of the thinker, written from Marxist positions and directed against Narodnik ideas. The point here, understandably, is not a simple “verbal castling.” In the first document, Plekhanov puts forward the thesis of the inevitable elimination, as a result of the destruction of capitalism, of “the modern system of political representation and its replacement by direct popular legislation.” In the second text, the idea unfolds: “This communist revolution will cause the most radical changes in the whole fold of social and international relations. Replacing the present domination of product over producer by the domination of producer over product, it will bring consciousness where blind economic necessity now prevails; simplifying and conceptualizing all social relations, it will at the same time give every citizen the real economic opportunity to participate directly in the discussion and solution of all social affairs. This direct participation of citizens in the management of public affairs presupposes the elimination of the present system of political representation and its replacement by direct popular legislation.” In Socialism and Political Struggle, he says: “…The representative (monarchical or republican) system was the brainchild of the bourgeoisie; the proletariat demands direct popular legislation as the only form in which the realization of its social aspirations is possible.” What do we get—the realization of the aspirations of the proletariat requires the political actualization of the ancient polis with its isopolitics?
The leader of the group Liberation of Labor, in his work, Socialism and Political Struggle names the source of the idea of direct popular legislation—it was the little-known even at that time German Social-Democrat Moritz Rittinghausen, author of the book, Direct Legislation by the People (Die direkte Gesetzgebung durch das Volk); it is clear that Plekhanov, disguising himself as a German ideologist, pursues a concept consonant with Narodnik (i.e., quite dear to him) ideas. At the same time—let us recall Tikhomirov’s words above, “his ideal was, of course, the German Social Democrats”—Plekhanov follows the line of German Social Democracy in supporting the postulate of direct popular legislation exhibited in the Gotha Program (1875), which in this respect would be followed by the Erfurt Program (1891), and the Paris Congress of the Second International (1900), “summarizes”: “Considering the people to be autocrats and believing that direct popular legislation constitutes an appurtenance of the Autocracy of the People, the Congress declares the necessity of securing the exercise of this Autocracy of the People by means of the popular rights of initiative and referendum.” And this is what Marx raised his voice against, who wanted to see as the hegemon of politics and history, not some incomprehensible and diffuse “people” (of which, by the way, there were many in Europe, though less than the polis in ancient Hellas), but a unified messianic class within the framework of European civilization—the proletariat. Marx’s critique of the Gotha program, in which “direct popular legislation” figured, was published by Friedrich Engels in early 1891, and this critique, among other circumstances, became an insurmountable obstacle to the retention of the thesis of direct popular legislation in the new program for the new party (“the party of a new type”), so that it was necessary to look for a worthy conceptual replacement for it (which Plekhanov already had at the ready). “Direct people’s legislation” was later sharply criticized by Lenin, who, in full accordance with the letter of the teachings of Marx and Engels, wrote in 1899 that this point should not be introduced into the program, because “it is impossible to connect the victory of socialism in principle with the replacement of parliamentarism by direct people’s legislation.” It is impossible, because “people” can be understood only as the proletariat par excellence, or it can be taken out of the doctrinal constructions of the Marxists altogether.
Thus, Plekhanov, we must suppose, out of a desire to avoid criticism, but not being able to part easily with the thesis of “direct popular legislation,” which was in clear contrast to the maxim of the dictatorship of the proletariat, looked for a substitute—which was already in his ideological baggage. Of course, he could not fail also to be enchanted by the power and beauty of the sound of the Narodik’s supreme principle, “Autocracy of the People.” Having made a quite equivalent (and even more successful in sound) substitution, in 1902, in his Comments on the Draft Program of the RSDLP, Plekhanov wrote: “The program of the Liberation of Labor group cannot be called obsolete even now. True, there are two points in it which… do not stand up to criticism from the point of view of ‛orthodox’ Marxism: direct people’s legislation and state aid to productive associations of workers in all branches of our national economy.” In other words, the theorist was inspired by the idea of direct democracy, but had to substitute only its verbal form; the second point, it should be noted, is also close to the Narodnik political attitudes.
In Commentary on the Draft Program of the RSDLP, Plekhanov pursues the idea of “Autocracy of the People”: “…We will preach the ideas of a ‛republican’ republic; we want a truly democratic republic, in practice and not only on paper, ensuring the political Autocracy of the People.” But why such a “struggle for the people?” Is the people an idée fixe for Plekhanov? Is Plekhanov—like Rousseau—an admirer of antique political forms, and is he dominated by the images of the antique agora? If Tikhomirov puts the people on the pedestal of history, then for Plekhanov, as for any Marxist, the people are no more than a fiction, and only the classes (above all, the proletariat, the “most real” class) are real—and so the two thinkers must speak different languages. But here, in discussing the proletariat and the future social order befitting it, Plekhanov returns to the people, demanding their “political autocracy.” Plekhanov paints the society of the coming triumph of socialism in Narodnik tones and colors; otherwise the reasons for his persistence in pursuing and defending the concepts of “direct popular legislation” and “Autocracy of the People” are not clear.
The point, of course, is not only in Plekhanov’s “underlying Narodnicism,” from which he wanted to dissociate himself at all costs. The point here is also that, as a result of the ideological and political transformation of Slavophilism, mainly through the strengthening of the “state approach,” in its basic postulates Narodnicism was firmly imprinted in Russian political thought, deeply rooted in it, Thus, for all his sometimes obsessive desire to “Europeanize” and “Marxize” (to give a Marxist appearance) the supposedly “oppressive” Russia, ridding Russian thought of the archaic and “irrationality,” Plekhanov does not stray so far from Narodnicism as to become a “pure” Marxist.
As for the substantive proximity between Narodnicism, especially in the form of the Narodnaya Volya, and Bolshevism, it is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks in the study of the history of Russian political doctrines. In passing, we may say only that Lenin’s conceptual and direct textual dependence on Narodnik texts is somewhat greater than is generally recognized; and we may also cite an unexpected statement by Plekhanov, made in one of the thinker’s last days: “Lenin, Trotsky and others, who for twenty years had marched with the Marxists, in essence became Narodniks after the February Revolution. They acted according to the program of Lev Tikhomirov.” And to clarify with regard to Lenin—did he become one or was he always one?—and then address this question back to Plekhanov himself.
As is well known, around 1902, Lenin reconsidered the role of the state in Russia, discarding the class interpretation and putting forward the thesis of the autocracy as an “independently organized political force.” He adopted the attitude that it is possible and necessary to seize this power in order to carry out the transformations being advocated. But then, this approach to the Russian autocratic state was developed by those of the Narodnaya Volya: thus, in the first issue, No1. (1879) of the bulletin Narodnaya Volya. Social-Revolutionary Review, we read: “It seems to us that one of the most important, purely practical, questions of the present time is the question of state relations. Anarchist tendencies have long diverted and still divert our attention from this important question. Meanwhile, it is precisely in Russia that it should not be ignored. Our state is not at all like a European state. Our government is not a commission of commissioners from the ruling classes, as in Europe, but is an independent, existing-for-tself organization, a hierarchical, disciplined association, which keeps the people in economic and political slavery, even if we did not have any exploiting classes.” In No. 2 of the same bulletin, it is said almost in a Slavophile vein: “History has created in us, in Russia, two main independent forces: the people and the state organization.”
There is an interesting pattern in Plekhanov’s attitude to concepts and slogans—he proposes potentially strong developments but fails to dispose of them correctly. This was evident in the history of the “Autocracy of the People,” but no less vividly in the history of the concept of the “Hegemony of the Proletariat.” Plekhanov was the first to put forward this idea—to close the theoretical gap between the goal of the proletariat (socialist revolution) and its role in the coming bourgeois revolution (not “serving” the bourgeoisie in “its” revolution, but also not “frightening” it into pursuing—in a way that is not clear—its own path). As a result, Plekhanov reduced the “Hegemony of the Proletariat” to an insignificant and inarticulate “spiritual leadership,” to a kind of “Platonic” hegemony. Lenin, having taken over this concept, turned it (like the “Autocracy of the People”) into a real battle slogan, a “slogan of action,” a striking concept.
Whatever considerations Plekhanov may have been guided by, the concept of “Autocracy of the People”/“People’s Autocracy” was successfully incorporated into the First Program of the RSDLP and was effectively used in the revolutionary years 1905–1907. However, the concept developed “in parallel” to its development in party rhetoric and “application” in Bolshevik practice in the work of Lev Tikhomirov.
Autocracy of the People in Lev Tikhomirov’s Works of the Monarchical Period
There is often talk of the “two lives” of Lev Tikhomirov, about “two Tikhomirovs.” Despite all the life-political collisions of Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov, we clearly see before us one political thinker, surprisingly logical and consistent in his philosophical and political thought.
After 1888, Lev Tikhomirov, as is known, switched to the position of monarchism, the “Autocracy of the Tsar.” It would seem that with the transition to the monarchist camp, Tikhomirov should have abandoned not only the Rousseauist-Popularist interpretation and political statement of the “Autocracy of the People”—the logical step would have been to reject the concept itself altogether, not to use it in the future. However, the thinker does not do this. The concept of “Autocracy of the People” is gradually filled with another meaning—the monarchical; the former meaning is retained underneath, and in the course of his reflections on the events of 1905–1907 perhaps even began to overpower the monarchical interpretation. And so, as the helplessness and political weakness of the incumbent monarch was revealed, the concept in Tikhomirov’s writings is re-filled with the “old,” Rousseauist and nationalist meaning in order to become a new ideological and political synthesis.
After his spiritual turn, the thinker comes to the conclusion that the will of the people of Russia requires (or rather, has always required) an autocratic monarchy. The real Autocracy of the People in some mysteriously true sense—and is the Autocracy of the Monarch, because the unity of the people can be realized only by his personality. In the work, Why I Stopped being a Revolutionary (1888) he states: “…One can hear many phrases about ‛returning power to the people.’ But these are nothing more than empty words. After all, the people do not ask for it at all, but, on the contrary, they are constantly ready to break the head of the ‛liberators’ for it… The Russian Tsar does not steal power; he received it from his solemnly elected ancestors, and so far the people, with all their masses, at every occasion show their readiness to support with all their strength the cause of their great-grandfathers.”
The will of the Russian people, according to the “new Tikhomirov,” consists in having the Tsar at its head, and only in this way, i.e., in the person of the Tsar, can the people be a political unity. This volonté générale of the Russian people has already been embodied, and there is no need to return any “freedoms,” any “power” to the people—the people have freely and by their own power erected over themselves and for themselves the Autocracy of the Tsar. Thus, the present Autocracy of the People by its autocratic (sovereign) will asserts nothing else but the Autocracy of the Tsar, and to raise the question of limiting the monarchy means to raise the question of limiting the will of the people: “I look at the question of autocratic power in the following way. First of all, it is a result of Russian history, which does not need anyone’s recognition and cannot be destroyed by anyone, as long as there are tens and tens of millions in the country, who in politics do not know and do not want to know anything else. It would be impermissible not to respect the historical will of the people, not to mention that a fact, very solid in its life, always has for itself some solid grounds. Therefore, every Russian must recognize the power established in Russia and, thinking about improvements, must think about how to make them with autocracy, under autocracy.” Or also in an 1895 work: “The Russian autocratic system is not some conquering despotism, but the system is deeply national, it is not based on the slavish subordination of people who know nothing and are conscious of nothing, but is the conscious property of the Russian people, sacredly kept by them and safely carried through the long and severe trials of history.”
In Tikhomirov’s works of the monarchical period, the term “Autocracy of the People” is portrayed in an unusual, partly unexpected way—the concept is not rejected, but it is no longer reduced to Western-type democracy; rather, it is even sharply distanced from it; Rousseauism in the interpretation of the formula “Autocracy of the People,” outwardly, almost disappears (at least until 1905). Even when in a letter to Emperor Alexander III he writes: “…The Autocracy of the People, of which I once dreamed, is in reality a complete lie”—the thinker makes it clear that it is not the Autocracy of the People itself that is a lie, but the very one he once dreamed of (i.e., reduced to the power of the people). However, for all that, the “Autocracy of the People” and the “Autocracy of the Monarch” are nowhere explicitly and precisely identified. In situations where these “two autocracies” are placed side by side, the “Autocracy of the People” is presented by the thinker in a special, different way from the earlier formulation. Thus, in the article, “Autocracy and People’s Representation” (1907), defending the possibility and necessity of people’s representation in the autocratic monarchy, Tikhomirov, without any contradiction with his theory of the unity of the supreme principle of power (in this case monarchical), says: “The opinion, as if popular representation inevitably leads to the complete abolition of the Tsarist autocracy, is based on the fact that popular representation is understood exclusively in the sense of expressing the supreme power of the people. Of course, introduced in this sense, it excludes tsarist power, for there cannot be two supreme powers in a state at the same time.” Here the thinker does not use the expression “Autocracy of the People,” but writes “supreme power of the people.”
It is clear that the Autocracy of the People does not exist alongside the Autocracy of the Tsar, for there cannot be two supreme powers in one state. Divine ordination precedes the [all]-people’s election—thus, Tikhomirov in his work devoted to the Constituent Charter of 1613, which he evaluates as “a document that has no equal in the world state-legal creative activity,” notes that in this document, “it is fully emphasized that Mikhail Fedorovich is appointed to the kingship by the election of God, and only then by the election of the entire Russian people.” It is possible to present the Autocracy of the People as preceding the Autocracy of the Tsar; but at some point the Autocratic People transfer their power (autocracy), all of it, to the tsar (Roman-Byzantine political staging). And so it turns out that the “two autocracies,” at this moment and in further history, are identical in essence. The tsar is appointed not by the people’s will, but by God, but is elected by all the people—for the first time or at the establishment of a new dynasty. The autocrat in this construction appears as a “political entelechy” of the people.
Thus, what can be said about monarchy as a principle of supreme power? What is the source of monarchy as a type of supreme power? It is, without doubt, the people. How should the people be understood as the source of supreme power? In the work, Monocracy as a Principle of State Structure, we find: “It is often said that the source of supreme power is still the ‘people.’ This idea is embedded in the political teachings of Rousseau, but it is true only if we understand by the word ‛people’ not a numerical ‛mass,’ but “nation” as a successively living collective whole. The nation, that is, the people, internally merged into something whole, with known habits, traditional experience, common character, with known spirit and worldview, that is, therefore, with known ideals—this nation is the primary source of power.” It is not difficult to see that here the nation is understood in a different way than Rousseau: Tikhomirov interprets the nation in its inextricable connection with history, with the dynamics of historical development; that is, in a completely different way than the Citizen of Geneva (i.e., Rousseau) does. The Russian thinker, a subject of Emperor Alexander III, does not speak of a People-Sovereign who gather in a forum and decide by their will (volonté générale) whether to establish a republic or, let us say, a monarchy. “The nation, that is, the people, internally merged into something whole,” determines the type of supreme power, but does not gather at agoras or forums and does not make political volonté générale decisions. However, it should be emphasized that both—Tikhomirov (of the monarchist period) and Rousseau—did not specifically reduce the people to the poor and low-income strata (“workers,” as the Bolsheviks would do). For them, the people—with all the conceptual differences and nuances in their approach to the “political subdivisions” of the people—are always a politically integral whole; there are no and cannot be immanently “warring sides” in it; for Rousseau, the people are united by their integral will (volonté générale), in their sovereignty; for Tikhomirov, the people are united in the person of the Tsar.
How does the “return to Rousseauism” occur in Tikhomirov’s political thought, and are we dealing here with an intellectual révérence? “About Tikhomirov’s evolution from monarchism back to the ideas of the social contract in the spirit of J.-J. Rousseau, which Lev Alexandrovich adhered to in the times of his revolutionary youth,” states Sergey Chesnokov, “we can speak evidently, starting from the revolution of 1905–1907.” The researcher establishes this reverse ideological evolution on the basis of Tikhomirov’s diary entries and letters. Thus, in a letter to Alexey Suvorin in 1906, Tikhomirov admits: “As for the organization of Russia, only one authority can be competent for this—the Zemsky Sobor… The subject of the Sobor: a special question about the Supreme Power. What the Sobor wishes, seeks and will establish, further constitution to build later, when the people will decide the question of the essence, i.e., the Supreme Power.” In his diary entry of 1917, the thinker exclaims: “…The Russian people have no need to receive the Supreme Power from anyone. They have it by themselves and can take it from the ‛trusted one’ (i.e., the Tsar) when it seems necessary to them.” Again from the 1905–1907 diaries, 1905 entry: “If the Russian people want it, they will restore the monarchy, and now there is no monarchy anyway.” This idea is carried out in the highest degree of persistence.
One cannot but recognize that these unexpectedly arising thoughts contrast with the fundamental maxims of Tikhomirov the monarchist. But a return to the earlier Tikhomirov the monarchist, to the original Russoist impulse of the “Autocratic People,” cannot be fully recognized. It is not that the entries are mere diary entries, i.e., not intended to express theoretical changes. And it is not that when the diaries of 1905–1907 were being written—at the same time the thinker was busy publishing, Monarchical Statehood. And not even that Tikhomirov understands the people not as a “Sovereign Nation” in the style of Rousseau, but as a “successively living collective whole,” the nation in its historical dynamics. What is it?
The diary entries of 1905–1907 reflect the thinker’s horror at the fall of the monarchy, the lack of prospects for the state under such a weak monarch as Emperor Nicholas II; these same ideas, but in a subdued and veiled form, are also present in Tikhomirov’s published works. Maybe it is not a matter of a particular emperor, but of the monarchical principle itself? Where is the way out? It is in the “saving personality.” In a 1906 entry, Tikhomirov states that “only people of genius mind and energy could save the situation… A great man is needed.” After a conversation with Petr Stolypin in 1907 he records: “Today I was at Stolypin’s… I outlined the situation of Russia, its moral state; pointed out that it was waiting for a leader who would say: ‛The past, with its fall, is over; a new era begins,’ and would lead the united national forces… That leader, who is needed by Russia, must gather around him comrades imbued with the same new spirit, and at once systematically impel the work of Russia’s revival.” The idea of a “saving personality” is developed in the further work of Tikhomirov—in the article, which is so entitled, “Saving personality and saving idea” (1912)—he states: “We can say without being offended that Russia now longs for the emergence of a saving man. She is looking for him, longs for him and the slightest semblance of such a man is ready, so to speak, ‛on credit’ to surround him with glory. This mood is apparently growing.”
The thinker does not abandon the idea of the autocracy of the people—after all, the leader can only be the leader of the people (and their state); the “saving personality” can only save his people and state, that is, the autocratic people; but the monarchical principle—at least in his diaries—is completely discarded. In the diary entry of May 3, 1916, proceeding from the fact that “longstanding foolish policy has led Russia to one of the terrible crises of its history,” Tikhomirov, in fact, rejects it: “This is, if not the beginning of the end of Russia, then certainly the beginning of huge internal upheavals, the instrument of which can no longer be the monarchical principle for lack of trust in its bearers in the country.” From October 22, 1916: “I am some kind of gravedigger. I wrote ‛Monarchical Statehood,’ in which, rightly, as no one before me in the world, outlined its philosophy. And it appeared in the days of the death of the monarchical principle. Some epitaph or eulogy on the grave of a once great dead man.”
Can personal records be considered a political verdict? Here is an entry from March 2, 1917, and it is quite convincing: “I think, however, that it would be more practical to introduce a Limited Monarchy. The dynasty has apparently rotted to the root. What kind of autocracy is there, if the people have been instilled with disgust for it—by the actions of the Tsar himself.” For Tikhomirov, the harshest statements about the Tsar and the monarchy, up to and including fierce curses, were hardly as strong an expression of rejection of the monarchical principle as the last quoted phrase about “limited monarchy”: strong expressions said in the heart can be taken back or crossed out (since this is a personal diary), but here we have a detached and calm, quite scientific-political diagnosis. “I think, however, that it would be more practical to introduce a limited monarchy,” is the verdict of an eyewitness and a profound analyst to the Russian autocracy. The point now is not monarchy; now it is to save the state, which he already thinks of as a non-monarchy: “That the monarchy has perished is beyond doubt. But now it is important that Russia should not perish” (September 8, 1915) .
In Favor of What Other Principle was the Monarchical Principle Abandoned?
On March 3, 1917. Tikhomirov writes, let us quote again: “The Russian people have no need to receive the Supreme Power from anyone—they has it by itself and can take it from the ‛trusted one’ (i.e., the Tsar) when it seems necessary to so.” Does Tikhomirov come to the Slavophile view of the source of royal power, especially strongly expressed by Alexey Khomyakov and no less strongly criticized by Pavel Florensky (and, following him, by the monarchist Sergey Fomin, who doubted Tikhomirov’s monarchism)? It is quite clear that Tikhomirov is not looking for a new tsar (“trusted,” but this trust was not justified) to replace Nicholas II, but for a new leader, so the monarchical principle is rejected and a new, monocratic principle of supreme power is introduced, and this principle, in full accordance with Tikhomirov’s general theory of supreme power (the people as a nation is its source), is derived from the people.
In the diaries of 1915–1917, the rhetoric of the “saving personality” intensifies—the thinker is highly insistent in pursuing this idea. “Now we need a dictator, but instead we are creating anarchy” (August 26, 1915). Does Tikhomirov believe in a “saving personality?” Yes, he believes, but he does not see it coming: “If God had sent a man whom the people believed, the whole of Russia would have risen. But there is no such saving person, clearly and obviously not” (October 16, 1916). “There is a need for a genius figure who would be able to understand the idea of the time and situation, and realize it without allowing the country to collapse. And there is no such figure” (July 21, 1917). “Genius figure”, “leader”, “dictator”—in him the thinker sees salvation for Russia, but does not find a concrete embodiment (or does not want to admit that he found it). However, history and the people of Russia put forward such a personality, i.e., the “saving personality,” leader and dictator, future teacher of the people—and it was Lenin.
For full references, please consult the original:
Featured: A Gathering (By the Light of a Lamp), by Ilya Repin; painted in 1883.
