Formation and evolution of the Party Ideology of the Russian Social Democrats/Bolsheviks as the basis of the future state ideology of the Country of Soviets

Fokin Andrei Vladimirovich Senior Lecturer, Military Training Center, Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University 603022, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Gagarin Ave., 23 fokin_andrey78@mail.ru

The Soviet state, which existed for only seven decades, was in many ways a unique entity. One of its unique features was the Soviet ideology, which arose with the new state education and died with it. It was based on the ideology of the revolutionary party, originally designed to destroy the "institution of human exploitation by man. In this article, the main purpose will be to analyze the patterns and specifics of the origin of this construction of socio-political thought.

Due to the fact that the term "ideology" has several meanings, a brief summary of what is meant here is necessary. According to the Great Russian Encyclopedia, ideology is "a theoretically formulated system of ideas and ideas expressing the essence of the social interests of certain classes, strata, groups or society as a whole. Conceptually explains social reality (in the present and future) and forms its image, which is value-acceptable and desirable for society or individual social groups; ideology also includes programs of activity to achieve social goals formulated within its framework" [The Great Russian Encyclopedia].

The historiography of the issue we are interested in is extensive, but one-sided. In Soviet times, the standard methodology for studying the process of forming the ideology of the Russian Social Democrats, in their Bolshevik version, served as the postulates laid down in the "Short Course of the History of the CPSU (b)" ^[1]. The works that existed before that, designed to summarize the history of the party ^[2], were recognized as incorrect and sabotage. In the "Short Course" there was no scientific definition of the term "ideology", and certain provisions of the conceptual vision of society by V.I. Lenin and his supporters were stated uncritically, as an axiom. Any attempts to analyze the specifics of party ideology were rejected, its infallibility was considered a priori. In the post-Soviet period, the situation has changed "exactly the opposite." Researchers are more likely to focus on studying certain aspects of Bolshevik ideology. This is the attitude towards the peasantry, the internal party struggle in the RSDLP, etc. ^[3-7].

The term "ideology" appeared in the 17th century in France, but initially, for the classics of Marxism, it had a purely negative meaning ^{[8, p. 315]}. From their point of view, the theorization of ideas leads to complete abstraction, which has no connection with objective reality ^{[9, p. 4]}. On the contrary, V.I. Lenin filled the concept of "ideology" with positive content. Ideology is formulated by representatives of the social institutions that form the basis of society. For the Soviet period of national history, this is, of course, the Communist Party in all its guises.

When analyzing the transformations of the ideological structures of the Bolshevik Party (although part of this evolution occurred before the split of the RSDLP), two main stages of the formation of ideological structures can be distinguished: the initial one, when the ideology of the Russian Communists was formed "from scratch" - from the 90s of the XV century to the beginning of the World War. During this period, Lenin and his followers had no real chance to fight for power, and the victory of socialism seemed something far away; the second, the period of active participation in the direct struggle for power is not only the period of March-October 1917, but the preceding world war, which dramatically changed the status quo in relations social groups in Russian society and the possible victory of the proletarian revolution have turned from a "beautiful faraway" into a really foreseeable future.

In his early works, the leader of the Russian Social Democrats, following K. Marx, saw abstraction and subjectivity in "ideology" ^{[10, p. 137]}. But very quickly these characteristics of this term disappear in V. Lenin's texts, and "ideology" in his texts becomes synonymous with the "worldview of the social stratum" ^{[11, p. 412]}. This is how the most important characteristic of Lenin's understanding of the term is defined – the formation of ideological constructs exclusively against the background of "class interests", which, in turn, were formulated by the author, based on the attitude of a social group to ownership of the means of production, in full accordance with Marxist theory.

A striking example of explaining the process of forming class interests is the "Draft and explanation of the program of the Social Democratic Party". In explaining the program, the future "leader of the world proletariat" examines in detail the motivation of political activity of both Russian manufacturers and workers ^{[12, pp. 91-93]}. Almost at the same time, Lenin indicates the institution that will formulate the ideology and form the consciousness of the working class – "the workers ... and the mighty revolutionary party" ^{[13, p. 461]}. He points out bluntly: "The workers could not have a social democratic consciousness. It could only have been brought from outside" ^{[14, p. 30]}. "Since there can be no question of an independent ideology being developed by the working masses themselves in the very course of their movement, then the only question is: bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle ground here (because humanity has not developed any "third" ideology, and in general, in a society torn apart by class contradictions, there can never be an extra-class or supra-class ideology)" ^{[14, p. 39]}. This quote has entered all the annals of Soviet Leninism, but it definitively confirms V.I. Lenin's understanding of ideology as a class worldview, and also reinforces the role of party institutions in its creation.

The RSDLP was conceived by the Bolshevik leader as a revolutionary party aimed at destroying the existing state. This provision was set out in Lenin's draft program of the RSDLP ^{[15, p. 210]}. At the same time, each member of the party was required to actively participate personally in the activities of the organization. According to some researchers, it was this agenda item that led the party to split: "Lenin and Plekhanov thought of the party as a militant revolutionary organization of the proletariat, which leads the working class. From this point of view, it is conceivable to include only conscious, devoted people in the party who can at any given moment, no matter how difficult the party finds themselves in, represent the party with honor, speak on its behalf and lead along an irreconcilable path that does not allow any deals with the bourgeoisie against the interests of the proletariat… According to Martov, access to the party should be the widest, while Martov's supporters, on the one hand, like Axelrod, allowed free entry into the party of all even liberal elements, since they verbally expressed solidarity with the party's program" ^{[2, p. 225]}.

The expansion of the opportunity for membership in the party of people with a wide range of views, alternative on certain issues to the party leadership, posed a threat to ideological unity and the "blurring" of the social democratic worldview and worldview. Each member of the party had to actively and purposefully participate in the formation of the communist worldview of the proletariat. This was the principled position of V. I. Lenin.

In order to create a full-fledged "picture of the world", Russian Marxists needed to include in their program a vision of two issues that worried society, but went beyond the theory of K. Marx and F. According to Engels, they did not elaborate in detail: national (ethnic) and peasant (land). German theorists, when creating their theory, did not dwell on these problems in detail, because in Western Europe at that time, the concept of a "nation-state" formed the ethnic homogeneity of the country's population. In turn, the colonial system of exploitation led to the idea of the inevitability of analyzing interethnic contradictions in line with the exploiter/exploited dichotomy, which ideally fit into the schemes of Marxism. The Russian state has been multiethnic and multicultural since its inception and the interaction of various cultures and religions in the country did not fit into the "Procrustean bed" of the original Marxism.

In Europe of the second half of the 19th century, there were no socio-legal remnants of feudalism preserved in Russia, such as legally formed estate statuses and communal land ownership. Therefore, the European followers of Marx and Engels did not distinguish agricultural production into a special type of production relations: there were either capitalist landowners, large and small, or landless farm labourers, the rural proletariat. In the Romanov Empire, the situation was much more complicated, and in order to explain it, it was necessary to supplement the theoretical legacy of Marxism. Therefore, both of the above issues are reflected in the ideology of the RSDLP.

In the first program of the party, adopted at the First Congress in 1903, the peasant question was assigned to the third block of demands devoted to "the elimination of the remnants of the serfdom order" ^{[16, p. 423]}. The place of these problems in the hierarchy of demands of the Russian Social Democrats is also indicated by the fact that the list of goals of the struggle for the needs of the industrial proletariat was 16 points, and on the land issue – only five. The main requirements were: the cancellation of redemption payments and the return to the peasants of the amounts previously paid for them; the return of "segments"; the freedom of peasants to dispose of allotments ^{[16, pp. 423-424]}.

During the first Russian Revolution, the attitude of the party leader, V.I. Lenin, to this issue began to change. It becomes "twofold": in his opinion, it is necessary to support the actions of the peasantry when they shake the foundations of the existing political regime and weaken the Russian autocracy, but to refuse to support the peasants in terms of their demands for the transfer of land to their private ownership, since this would be "settling accounts indifferent to the proletariat ... between two factions of the landowning class" ^{[17, p. 344]}. A little later, these views become even more radicalized – the complete confiscation of "all church, monastery, appanage, state, cabinet and landowner lands" ^{[18, p. 269]}, and their subsequent nationalization. This Bolshevik approach to the agrarian question persisted, mainly until 1917.

An important point that clarifies the future policy of the Bolsheviks at the head of the country is the constant attribution of the peasants, who made up about three quarters of the country's population, to the petty bourgeoisie. The "rural proletariat" highlighted by the author in many works are landless peasants deprived of the main factor of production – land.

The second most important issue was the national one. Marxist theory proclaimed that cultural issues, on which the ethnic differentiation of mankind is based, are secondary to ownership of the means of production, referring them to the sphere of industrial relations. From Engels' point of view, "modern nationalities are also a product of the oppressed classes" ^{[19, p. 409]}. The Russian practice of interethnic relations was markedly different from the European one. The legal status of most "foreigners" in the Russian Empire was determined in relation to public service and could be either above the status of a Russian peasant or below. The exception was Jews, against whom there was their own discriminatory legislation. The main target of these laws was not Jews as a community, but Judaism as a religion. The "pale of settlement" was a measure designed to stop the spread of this creed. However, Jews who were in the civil service had precisely the official status, restrictions did not apply against them, except for public worship, which were prohibited. Any Jew who renounced Judaism was out of the power of discriminatory norms. This led to the creation of an ethnic socialist party, the Bund, among Jewish workers and artisans. The relations of this party with the RSDLP were very complicated.

V.I. Lenin initially perceived the state as an institution of coercion and therefore believed that "class antagonism has now pushed national issues far into the background" ^{[20, p. 239]}, accordingly advocating the right of peoples to self-determination as a form of class struggle aimed at overthrowing autocracy. Such a position of the leader of the Russian Social Democrats led to their constant confrontation with any ethnically oriented socialist organizations. It was in this form that the national question entered the first program of the RSDLP and remained in the ideology of Lenin and his followers until the World War. A few months before the outbreak of the world massacre, the Bolshevik Leader wrote a work "On the right of nations to self-determination", in which he argues that due to the situation when "the development of capitalism and the general level of culture are often higher in the "foreign" suburbs", "the specific features of the national question in Russia give ... special urgency to the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination self-determination" ^{[21, p. 271]}. In his opinion, the more "capitalist" suburbs should "lead" the backward center, contribute to the speedy extinction of the remnants of capitalism and thus bring the socialist revolution closer.

It is important to clarify Lenin's understanding of the term "nation". By "nation" V.I. Lenin did not mean the state, nor an ethnic community, although in the conditions of the domination of the primordialist and social Darwinist approaches in these matters it would be logical. According to Lenin, a "nation" is a market organized on the capitalist method of production, "the state cohesion of territories with a population speaking the same language ... the unity of the language ... is one of the most important conditions for a truly free and broad, corresponding to modern capitalism, trade turnover" ^{[21, p. 258]}. Lenin's "nation" is, first of all, an organized capitalist market that has received a political superstructure in the form of a "nationally" organized state. The "right to self-determination" thus becomes only a hypothetical recognition of the possibility of forming such a market with an appropriate superstructure in the relevant territory.

The World War led to a transformation of the views of the Bolsheviks, both on the national question and many other problems. Speaking, unlike most other social democratic parties, for the "defeat of the tsarist monarchy" ^{[22, p. 21]}, they expected the final victory of Russian capitalism over the remnants of feudal relations, which would accelerate socio-economic processes and bring the revolution closer. The failures of the Russian army in 1914-1915 sharply aggravated the long-standing contradictions within society. This significantly brought the "horizon of the revolution" closer in the eyes of V.I. Lenin, making radical changes and the fall of the autocracy accessible and tangible. Under these conditions, the Bolshevik party and its leader begin to prepare for a power struggle, and this affects the transformation of party ideology. The Bolshevik leader proclaims the formation of a new revolutionary situation and declares the tasks of implementing the revolution in the context of the World War ^{[23, pp. 26-27]}. The peasantry, the "petty-bourgeois mass", dreaming of their "prosperity", seems to Lenin to be a resource of political struggle, which should push the revolutionary proletariat in the right direction ^{[23, p. 28]}. The understanding of the national issue is changing accordingly: "We demand freedom of self-determination, ... independence ... freedom of secession of oppressed nations, not because we dream of economic fragmentation or the ideal of small states, but ... because we want large states and the rapprochement, even fusion, of nations, but on a truly democratic, truly internationalist basis, unthinkable without freedom of secession" ^{[24, p. 68]}.

Class determinism in the understanding of the national question was clearly manifested in the thesis that: "financial capital, in its aspirations for expansion, will "freely" buy and bribe the freest democratic and republican government and elected officials of any, even "independent" country. The dominance of financial capital, as well as capital in general, cannot be eliminated by any transformations in the field of political democracy; and self-determination entirely and exclusively belongs to this area" ^{[25, p. 254]}. In the context of a hypothetical, but already possible struggle for power, the question of the political organization of society is in the focus of V.I. Lenin's attention. In a multiethnic society, he prefers "federation to national inequality as the only way to full democratic centralism" ^{[25, p. 256]}.

The February Revolution fully opened the "window of opportunity" for the Bolshevik Party. In the context of the political crisis and power vacuum that emerged after the overthrow of the monarchy, the struggle for dominance between political forces has entered a new phase. And in this struggle, a well-formed worldview, the presence of a well-thought-out ideology that could be offered to society, gave the Bolsheviks the opportunity to compensate for the weakness of their starting positions.

The most important point of the theory, which had been developed rather poorly before, was the idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." This term, introduced but not yet disclosed by K. Marx and F. In the first program of the RSDLP, Engels interpreted it as "the conquest by the proletariat of such political power that will allow it to suppress all resistance from exploiters" ^{[16, p. 420]}. In 1917, in the work "The State and the Revolution", the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was revised and supplemented. Describing its tasks, the Bolshevik leader pointed out: "The doctrine of the class struggle ... leads necessarily to the recognition of the political domination of the proletariat, its dictatorship, i.e., power that is not shared with anyone and relies directly on the armed force of the masses. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie is feasible only by turning the proletariat into the ruling class" ^{[26, p. 26]}. The realization of these tasks is impossible without the institution of state power, which the proletariat will use to its advantage. Lenin believed that the working class itself was incapable of making the necessary changes, therefore, "by educating the workers' Party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of taking power and leading the entire people to socialism, directing and organizing a new system" ^{[26, p. 26]}.

The work emphasized that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" cannot use the old state institutions, but must create its own. New authorities should be based on the principles of absolute electability and turnover. "We, the workers, ... by creating ... iron discipline, supported by the state power of armed workers, we will reduce government officials to the role of simple executors of our orders, responsible, replaceable, modestly paid "overseers and accountants" ^{[26, p. 49]}. As an example of the future socialist management, V.I. Lenin cites the post office: "the post office is an economy organized according to the type of state capitalist monopoly" ^{[26, p. 50]}. The Bolshevik leader considered such a system of organizing economic activity to be the most promising.

Conclusions. Even before the Bolsheviks seized power in the country as part of the formation of party ideology, they had an image of the future organization of a socialist society. This allowed, on the one hand, to offer a ready-made "public project" to all interested representatives of Russian society, and on the other hand, to plan practical steps to achieve the desired result. Of course, the Bolshevik ideology that had developed by October 1917 was far from ideal, it contained many simplifications and omissions, and the class approach itself ignored a lot of aspects of social development. All these shortcomings will be most fully revealed in the period after the October revolution, when the main practical need for the Bolsheviks to retain power will not be destruction, but creation. This, among other things, will require a change in many ideological and ideological approaches. But, to seize power, the Bolsheviks had enough accumulated theoretical and ideological baggage.