Labor and socialist movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Labor and socialist movement Socialist movement in the early 20s
The most important qualitative changes took place in the development of the socialist and labor movement, in the forms of political organization and struggle, in its ideology and politics. The international socialist movement went through two main periods in its development. The first of them covers the time from the emergence of Marxism and the first proletarian party - the “Union of Communists” - to the First International. This was the time of the birth of socialist ideas and the entry of the working class onto an independent historical path of development. The new era demanded new forms of proletarian unification, new forms of the movement itself. The second period began, which was the time of the formation and maturation of socialist parties, the growth of class, proletarian consciousness on a Marxist basis. The socialist movement entered a period of preparation and gathering the forces of the working class, which, according to V.I. Lenin, “in all countries constitutes a necessary stage in the development of the world liberation struggle of the proletariat.” This period covered a little more than three decades. It lasted from 1871 to 1904.
The school of class struggle, which the proletariat has undergone since the emergence of scientific communism, gave its results after the Paris Commune. F. Engels noted that it was with the Paris Commune that the “most powerful upsurge” of the fighting proletariat began. In 1887, shortly before the emergence of the Second International, he wrote about the gigantic progress of “the international labor movement during the last fourteen years”2. The distinctive features of the socialist and workers' movement during the period of development of capitalism into imperialism were:
firstly, the collapse of pre-Marxist unscientific socialist teachings. The dominant ideology and policy in the labor movement at the turn of the 90s. becomes Marxism;
secondly, by the end of the 60s - early 70s. The process of separating the proletariat from the general democratic mass of the population is taking place. The labor movement is gradually liberating itself from the ideological influence and political leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois democracy and embarking on the path of independent class politics. This was one of the most important reasons for the transformation of the labor movement into a mass class-conscious political movement that openly opposed its class interests to the interests of the bourgeoisie;
thirdly, in vast areas from the USA to Australia, the formation, growth and maturation of mass socialist parties and organizations is taking place; the ideas of scientific socialism are combined with the spontaneous mass workers' movement;
fourthly, there is a huge growth of professional, cooperative, educational and other organizations of the proletariat, which, along with the political party, have become for him a comprehensive school of preparation for fulfilling his world-historical role;
fifthly, the center of the international labor movement, as a result of the defeat of the Paris Commune, moved temporarily from France to Germany. During this period, the German proletariat became the vanguard of the revolutionary movement. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. this center of the revolutionary movement moves further east, to Russia. This powerful upsurge of the labor movement was the great historical merit of K. Marx and F. Engels.
The socialist and labor movement after the Paris Commune did not develop in a straight line, but took place in conditions of intensifying class struggle. It was subjected to increasing attacks from both sides. From the outside, the ruling classes constantly fought against it, striving, with the help of carrots and sticks - both brutal violence and the special bourgeois labor policy of social reformism - to turn the working class movement away from the revolutionary path and to establish “class cooperation.” From within, it was constantly attacked by various opportunists on the right and “left,” reflecting bourgeois social reformist policies and petty-bourgeois revolutionism in the workers’ movement itself. Development of bourgeois society at the end of the 19th century. showed, wrote V.I. Lenin, that this period differs from the previous one in its “peaceful” character, in the absence of revolutions. The West is done with bourgeois revolutions. The East has not yet reached them.
The West is entering a period of “peaceful” preparation for the era of future transformations... Slowly but steadily the process of selecting and gathering the forces of the proletariat, preparing it for the coming battles, is moving forward.”1 Objective conditions of the last third of the 19th century. Thus, they did not put forward the struggle for the immediate conquest of political dominance as the immediate task of the working-class movement, but posed to the young socialist parties and other proletarian organizations a number of major theoretical and practical questions about the future fate of the socialist movement, the tasks of the proletariat and its party.
Related information:
- II. The emergence of national identity. Reformation movement, creation of the Indian National Congress
The formation of industrial society was accompanied by colossal social changes. Along with the remaining classes of traditional society - landowners (landowners) and peasants, new classes and social strata were formed. This is a class of capitalists, which was very heterogeneous in its composition, but which gradually took leading social positions. The wage-earning class—the working class—was the main productive force. In an industrial society, important social roles were played by such layers as the intelligentsia (scientific, technical, economic, artistic), officials serving the bureaucratic state machine, and military personnel. Noticeable in the conditions of industrialism was the process marginalization– an increase in the number of people in society who have lost touch with their traditional social group, its norms of behavior, its material support, which gives rise to sentiments of infringement of their own interests and pushes them to take active actions, often of a radical nature and anti-state orientation. A characteristic phenomenon of the beginning of the 20th century. become social movements– movements of various sectors of society for improving economic living and working conditions, for expanding their political and social rights.
By the beginning of the 20th century. The most active part of industrial society became wage workers, who became the numerically dominant class. Deprived of property, workers were the most socially vulnerable part of society, since they suffered most from the cyclical development of the economy, crises, economic and political instability. The situation of the workers was extremely difficult: 14–16 hour working days, terrible working conditions, low wages, arbitrariness of entrepreneurs, the threat of unemployment. The natural desire of the proletariat to defend its interests led to the emergence of a mass labor movement, which became an important factor in social life already in the 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century. the labor movement was organized thanks to the activities of trade unions. Under the leadership of trade unions, workers in Great Britain, France, Germany, the USA and other countries managed to achieve higher wages, the right to strike and insurance, the adoption of laws concerning the interests of workers and the regulation of their relations with employers. The next step in the development of the labor movement was the creation of workers' parties.
The most powerful trade unions were England. At the beginning of the 20th century. About 2 million workers were members of English trade unions, and at the end of 1910 they united more than 2.5 million people in 1153 organizations. In 1902, at the annual congress of trade unions, it was decided to establish an independent workers' party that would represent the interests of workers in parliament without the mediation of conservatives or liberals. Thanks to this decision, a labor or labor party was created - the Labor Party. In its program it defined itself as a federation consisting of trade unions, socialist societies, local workers' associations and cooperatives. For the first time, Labor took part in the elections in 1906, fielding 51 candidates, and brought 29 deputies into parliament. The number of party members was constantly growing and in 1913 more than 1,800 thousand people were represented in it. Under the leadership of the Labor Party and trade unions, the largest wave of strikes occurred in 1910–1912, although preference was given to the peaceful resolution of conflicts between workers and both entrepreneurs and the authorities.
Trade unions, or syndicates, in France forced to talk about themselves as a major social phenomenon somewhat later than in other Western European countries: only at the end of the 19th century. But immediately French syndicalism took on an acute political character, loudly declaring the failure of capitalist society and the inevitability of revolution. The number of workers' syndicates grew rapidly: from 820 in 1899 to more than 4,500 in 1905. The number of labor exchanges, which helped in finding work, acquiring new knowledge, etc., grew just as quickly. The majority of strikes were carried out under the leadership of workers' syndicates. In 1906 alone, in connection with the death of coal miners in northern France, 1,300 strikes were organized with 439 thousand participants, which turned into a mass strike of workers of various specialties. In 1903–1904 Representatives of various socialist parties in France tried to unite into the Socialist Party of France (or Social Revolutionary Unity) and the French Socialist Party. The main point of disagreement between these two organizations was the question of the possibility of socialists participating in a bourgeois government. In 1905, at the congress in Rouen, a resolution was adopted to restore unity and the “Socialist Party of the French Section of the Workers’ International” was created. After the unification, the Socialist Party achieved great parliamentary success: in the elections of 1914 it received 1,400 thousand votes and gained 103 deputies. The party was dominated by moderate-centrist sentiments and hopes for a peaceful transition of the French bourgeois republic to socialism.
At the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The trade union movement began to develop rapidly in Germany: if in the early 1890s. About 300 thousand people were united in trade unions, then in 1908 - already 1800 thousand, and 1400 thousand workers belonged to Social Democrats. Of all the political parties in Germany, it was the Social Democrats who showed the greatest interest in the trade union movement. The number of votes cast for the Social Democrats in elections at the beginning of the 20th century was constantly increasing. Thus, in 1912, the Social Democratic Party of Germany received over 4 million votes in the elections to the Reichstag and constituted the largest faction of 110 people. Trade unions and Social Democrats actively participated in the preparation and conduct of workers' protests, which often took the form of a mass political strike (1906, 1910) and often led to open clashes between workers and the police.
Trade union organizations of workers, as well as workers' and socialist parties, were created not only in European states, but also in USA, Japan. An important feature of the labor movement at the beginning of the 20th century. became not only mass, organized, clear socio-economic and political orientation, but also the desire to defend their interests and rights in representative bodies of power. This was facilitated by the rejection of some of the most radical provisions of Marxist theory, which was the ideological basis of the programs of socialist and social democratic parties. Marxism– a fairly coherent system of philosophical, economic and socio-political views, which substantiates the theory of revolutionary socialism (the idea of the inevitability of the death of capitalism, the world proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat); the founders of Marxism - K. Marx and F. Engels (second half of the 19th century), developed at the beginning of the 20th century. IN AND. Lenin.
The positive socio-economic and political changes that occurred in industrial society at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries led to the gradual liberation of hired workers from the psychology of outcasts. Reformist sentiments began to be heard increasingly in the labor and socialist movements. One of the leaders of German social democracy, Eduard Bernstein, published the book “The Prerequisites of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy” in 1899, laying the foundation for revisionism, i.e. revision of the Marxist teaching about the inevitability of an exacerbation of the class struggle, the communist revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. (Revisionism- an ideological movement within Marxism that revises its social, class and revolutionary provisions). E. Bernstein and his followers substantiated the need to renounce revolutionary violence, called for reconciliation and cooperation between classes, and argued that it was possible to satisfy the basic demands of workers through the development of democracy and social reforms. Supporters of social reformism in socialist parties in various countries (J. Jaurès in France, F. Ebert and F. Scheidemann in Germany, V. Adler in Austria-Vergia, Bisslati in Italy, etc.) advocated the use of legal parliamentary forms of activity to protect interests of the working class, for an evolutionary reformist path of transition to socialism. (Social reformism- an ideological and political current in the socialist and labor movement, which denies the inevitability of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and seeks, through social partnership and reforms, to transform capitalism into a society of “general welfare”).
The Second International, which called itself “the international parliament of the working class” and sought to establish “permanent communication between the socialist organizations of different countries,” without abandoning the ultimate goal - the struggle for socialism, paid great attention to the implementation of democratic tasks through the parliamentary legislative activities of parties. At the congresses of the Second International, questions were repeatedly raised about legal forms of struggle and even about the participation of socialists in bourgeois parliaments, but no consensus was reached on this matter. Essentially, in the international socialist movement, as well as in the national social democratic parties in the first decade of the 20th century, three leading trends emerged: social reformists advocated broad reforms as a way to defend the interests of the working class and create a more socially perfect social system, centrists called for combining legal forms of struggle with anti-government activities, radicals(revolutionary Marxists) defended the course towards revolutionary violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only way to build socialism. Appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. in a number of European countries and the United States, the course towards implementing broad reforms in the interests of various sectors of society, including the working classes, and the participation of workers' parties in parliamentary activities proved the realism of the reformists' positions.
The social movement of the late 19th century continues the trends of the past, in the 50s. The most influential was the populist movement. The founders of the ideology were A.I. Herzen and N.G. Chernyshevsky (the theory of peasant socialism). The Slavophiles gave the people their beginning.
Basic approaches:
Awareness of the fact of Russia's backwardness
An attempt to overcome
Search for a theoretical basis for overcoming
Abstracts:
-develop without capitalism
-the basis of the theory is the presence of a rural community
-the upcoming revolution was read as socialist
The populists believed that R. does not have to go through all the phases of development. European countries.
Stages of development of populism:
1)70-ies-revolutionary populism. They believed that capitalism was imposed “from above” and had no social roots in Russia. The future is communal socialism . The peasants are ready for this. Transformations through revolution.
2)80-90s - liberal populism. They shared the folk theory, but rejected violent methods of change. They placed emphasis on cultural and educational activities (the magazine “Russian Wealth”). Insisted on the unacceptability of capitalism
(Mikhailovsky, Danielson, Vorontsov)
Social Revolutionaries
In the second half of the 1890s, small populist-socialist groups and circles existed in St. Petersburg, Penza, Poltava, Voronezh, Kharkov, and Odessa.
Some of them united in 1900 Southern Socialist Revolutionary Party , another in 1901 - in “ Union of Social Revolutionaries " At the end of 1901, the “Southern Socialist Revolutionary Party” and the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries” merged, and in January 1902 the newspaper “Revolutionary Russia” announced the creation of the party.
Socialist Revolutionaries until 1917 -one of the leading parties . The first founding congress took place in December 1905-1906 .Leader - Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov.
Program:
Establishment of a Democratic Republic
Federal structure
The right of nations to self-determination
Universal suffrage
-bourgeois freedoms
-replacement of the army by the people's militia
- abolition of labor taxes, a progressive income tax is being introduced.
Agrarian question:
Confiscation of land from the private sector and its socialization
Distribution of land according to labor standards
Preservation of the land community
Additional cooperation of peasants in the future
Combat organization us. 15-20 roars, 25-30 militants. Ruk-Evno Azef, B. Savenkov. Killed min. Bogolepov in 1901 and in 1904 Plehve.
Marxist direction. It has been taking shape since the 2nd half of the 80s.
It is known within 2 currents
« Legal Marxism"
Philosophers: Struve P.B., Frank S.L., Berdyaev N.A., Bulgakov S.N.
Economists: Danielson, Tugan-Baranovsky
Capitalism is a natural stage in development
Improve society through democratic reforms.
Opposition to revolutionary Marxism
Reflects Marxism in bourgeois literature
Does not share Marx’s conclusions about the need to eliminate the exploitative system through revolutionary means.
From the teachings of Marx, legal Marxism took as a basis the thesis about the economic progressiveness of capitalism relative to feudalism and the thesis about the natural replacement of feudalism by capitalism.
During the discussions, 2 works with criticism of Nar stand out.
- “Critical notes on the issue of economic development of Russia.” P.B.Struve
- “Materials for the characteristics of our economic development” from Lenin’s teaching
« Revolutionary Marxism “It formed the leaders of Marxism, the first circles appeared, attempts to unite Marxism and the revolutionary movement. begin propaganda for the action of the working class. The propagandist was Georgy Plekhanov.
Plekhanov considered the liberation of the proletariat possible only through the use of revolutionary forms of political struggle on the basis of the social democratic program. According to this program, the revolution must be bourgeois, since on its own, without the help of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat will not be able to bring about changes in society. Therefore, the proletariat should simply receive the maximum benefits from this revolution, without claiming all the power in the new state. Thanks to Plekhanov's efforts, Marxism prevailed in the social democratic movement in Russia, and at the beginning of the 20th century, radical elements united around Vladimir Lenin began to play a significant role in it.
RADICAL LENINISTS The main efforts were directed towards creating a social-democratic “party of a new type”, consisting of professional revolutionaries who would lead and organize the struggle of the working masses.
Ulyanov V.I. (1870-1924)
History of the RSDLP
The first social democratic circles appeared in the Russian Empire in the 1880s. In 1883, G. Plekhanov founded the first Russian Marxist organization - the “Emancipation of Labor” group.
At the end of 1894 - beginning of 1895, on the initiative of Plekhanov, the “Union of Russian Social-Democrats” was created. Abroad".
In 1895, the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” arose from the St. Petersburg Social Democratic group, for which V.I. Lenin was greatly credited. In 1887, a meeting was held in Kyiv between the Kyiv social democratic group “Rabocheye Delo” and the social democrats of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Also in 1887, Jewish social democratic groups in the Northwestern and Privislensky regions united into the “General Jewish Workers' Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia,” or “Bund.”
July 1903-2 congress in Brussels, program and charter adopted.
Split into
Bolsheviks(a course on forming a new type of radical party in 2 parts:
Printed rev. body and local rev. organizations)
Mensheviks(followed the European line of Marxism)
Liberal movement
Intellectual liberalism and its tasks:
Find historical justifications for liberalism in Russia
Development of theories of Russian development. (soils, originality)
Among the first theorists of originality lib.B.N.Chicherin, K.D.Kavelin, Gradovsky A.D. Believed that the introduction of lib is the task of the authorities
2)Zemsky liberalism
The current is moderate in the political sense. Requests come down to the development of local self-government and general state people's representation (council body). We tried to use the historical experience of the Zemsky representation
New liberalism
« Union of Zemstvo Constitutionalists" - left zemstvo lib. in alliance with the intelligentsia. They wanted to create a more radical direction. 1902 - edited magazine “Liberation” by Struve
1903-1904 "Union of Liberation", "Union of Cons"
1905 - “Union of Unions” - union of trade unions
In October 1905, 2 parties emerged:
Cadets: the main liberal party - the Constitutional - democratic party, took shape at the I congress in Moscow October 12-18, 1905."People's Freedom Party", predominantly an intellectual party, the elite of the Russian intelligentsia. Members: V.I. Vernadsky, S.A. Muromtsev, V.M. Gessen, A.A. Kornilov (historian), prominent zemstvo figures I.I. Petrunkevich. The Cadets sought to rise above the parties. Leader: P.I. Milyukov.
Program:
The main goal is the introduction of a democratic constitution in the country.
Democratic political system (like an English-type monarchy).
They advocated for separate powers: legislative, executive and judicial
Radical reform of local government and courts
Free schooling
An 8-hour work schedule at enterprises, the right of workers to strike, to social insurance and labor protection.
Restoration of state autonomy of Fonland, Poland, but as part of Russia.
Agrarian question:
Partial alienation of land (60%) in favor of peasants, but at market prices; they advocated private land ownership and were opponents of its socialization.
They achieved their goals only through peaceful means - by obtaining a majority in the State Duma and through it carrying out the reforms that are written in their program. However, the Cadet Party did not represent unity: three directions: left, right Cadets and center.
Octobrists:“Union of October 17,” in honor of the Tsar’s manifesto of October 17, 1905, which, they believed, marked Russia’s entry onto the path of constitutional monarchy. The registration of the party began in October 1905 and ended on 1 its congress February 8-12, 1906 in Moscow. The party of big capital - the top of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie and landowners - are entrepreneurs. Chapter: major entrepreneur A.I. Guchkov
Program:
- hereditary.constitutional.monarchy, in which the emperor is limited by the decrees of the “Fundamental Laws”. They opposed the neo-German autocracy, but also against the parliamentary system.
Introduction of bicamerals. “People's representation” - the State Duma and the State Council, which are formed on the basis of qualification elections.
Granting of civil rights: freedom of conscience, religion, personal inviolability and home.
National issue: the principle of a united Russia, opposing any form of federalism. Excludes only Finland, subject to its state connection with the empire.
Agrarian question: transfer of empty state-owned, appanage and cabinet lands to peasants through special land committees, as well as assistance to peasants in purchasing land from private owners through the Peasant Bank. They allowed and forced the alienation of parts of privately owned lands with mandatory compensation of the owners at the expense of the treasury. The resettlement of landless and land-poor peasants to free lands, the equalization of rights of peasants with other classes, supported the Stolypin agrarian reform.
They recognized the freedom of workers' organizations, unions, assemblies and the right of workers to strike.
Limiting the length of the working day, but not to the detriment of industry
Supporters of expanding public education saw the need for reform of the court and administrative management.
The state structure is a constitutional monarchy with a State Duma. They advocated strong monarchical power, but also reforms in the business sector. The main program requirements are freedom of industry, trade, acquisition of property and its protection by law.
Conservative - protective:
Parties: “Union of the Russian People” and “Russian People’s Union named after Michael the Archangel.” The goal is to protect the Russian people. The rapid growth of Black Hundred organizations occurred after the Manifesto of October 17; in 1906, an attempt was made to create a single center - the “Main Administration of the United Russian People.”
« Union of the Russian People" took shape in November 1905 in St. Petersburg. He was assisted by government officials, provided financial assistance by the Police Department and even Nicholas II.
This union included the titular nobility, the highest bureaucrats and part of the creative intelligentsia. Party leaders: V.M. Purishkevich, A.I. Dubrovin, N.E. Markov. The governing body of the party was the Main Council. These representatives of right-wing extremism proclaimed “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.” They declared that they recognized the truly Russian people as their friends. Anti-Semitic demands were made to deprive Jews of all rights. Create a Jewish state and allocate all Russian Jews there
Rejected changes in state structure
They considered it necessary to convene a Zemsky Sobor and advocated a united Russia, not allowing national self-determination.
They rejected any alienation of private land, even for compensation.
Preserved the.unlimited.power of the Tsar and the dominant.Russian.Orthodox.Church.
They considered their opponents to be those who were trying to shake the unlimited power of the king.- split in November 1907 from the “Union of the Russian People”. Officially formed in March 1908. The party consisted of representatives of the most conservative part of the Orthodox clergy. Founder and leader: V.M. Purishkevich, pursued the same goals as the “Union of the Russian People”.
The revolution of 1905-1907 created favorable conditions for the creation of many political parties (both Russian and national), they acted legally, they represented a range of social, national and even religious interests expressed in their programs. 3 main classification groups:
1) revolutionary democratic (social-democr., and neo-populist)
2)liberal - opposition (Russian and national liberal bourgeoisie, liberal intelligentsia),
3)conservative - protective (right-wing bourgeois-landowner and clerical-monarchist, Black Hundred).
Social-democratic : Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) and Social Revolutionary Party (Socialist Revolutionaries).
RSDLP took shape in an organized manner at its Second Congress (1903) and then a split occurred into Bolsheviks and less. But formally, until March 1917, they continued to be considered members of the same party. At the II Congress, a single program was adopted (for major and minor), consisting of 2 parts. Program - minimum(solving the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution:
Overthrow of the autocracy
Introduction of a democratic republic and broad local self-government,
Granting the right to self-determination to all nations that are part of Russia
8-hour work schedule for employees
Agrarian question:
Initially, demands were put forward for the return to the peasants of the sections taken from their plots during the reform of 1861, the abolition of redemption and quitrent payments on land, and the return of previously spent redemption amounts, but in 1906 the agrarian issue was revised, now demands for the complete confiscation of all landowners' property. , state, appanage, church and monastic lands (this demand was stated by the peasants themselves at the 2nd congresses of the All-Russian Peasant Union and forced a change in the agrarian program of the RSDLP at the 4th congress). The agrarian program of the RSDLP was nationalization of all lands(i.e. the owner of the land is the state, and it becomes a landowner - a monopolist), and the peasants wanted the land for public use (i.e. the owner of the land is the people themselves)
Agricultural policy is smaller: proposed by P.P. Maslov. Program municipalization of land.( those. Lands confiscated from landowners and monasteries were transferred to the disposal of local government bodies, which then distributed the land among the peasants). The program was less against government interference in agrarian relations, because this will strengthen the state, turn it into the sole land owner, and the ruling bureaucracy will also strengthen.
The program is the maximum. Provided for the socialist reconstruction of society after the victory of the proletarian revolution. But the implementation of this program by both the Bolsheviks and the smaller representatives is different. Bolsheviks: the immediate construction of socialism after the victory of the proletarian revolution, they even considered the possibility of developing a bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one. Mensheviks: They considered the imposition of socialism in an economically and culturally backward country a utopia; they believed that a period of bourgeois development should pass after the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which would turn Russia into a capitalist country with bourgeois-democratic freedoms.
Social Revolutionaries. Organizationally took shape at the 1st founding congress end of December 1905 beginning of January 1906. Program:
Overthrown autocrat
Democratic Republic
Autonomy of regions and communities on a federal basis
Widespread use of federal relations between individual nationalities, recognition of their right to self-determination, introduction of their native language in all local public and government institutions
Universal suffrage without distinction of gender, religion or nationality
Free education
Separation of the church from the state and freedom of religion, free speech, press, meetings, strikes, inviolability of person and home
Destruction of the post-army and replacing it with the “people's militia”
8 hour working day
The abolition of all taxes related to labor, but the establishment of a progressive tax on the income of entrepreneurs.
Agrarian question:
Confiscation of land from private property. advocated socialization(public use). The land must be managed by the community, which will distribute its use according to the “labor” norm among all citizens of the republic, for whom labor on the land is the main source of existence. They wanted to socialize the land through various forms of cooperation among farmers. They advocated the preservation of peasant communities as the basis for creating social relations in the countryside.
Tactics: propaganda, agitation, organization of strikes, boycotts, armed actions, up to the use of political terrorism. But terror is a last resort. “Battle Group” - Yevno Azef Boris Savnikov. Organized the murder of major political figures (V.Ya. Pleve)
At the end of 1904, a separate group was formed from the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which used the position of terrorist struggle. End of 1906 - the group formed into"Union of Socialists - Revolutionaries - Maximalists"
- the extreme left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Leader - M.I. Sokolov. Also, a group emerged from the Socialist Revolutionaries
anarcho-communists. Labor People's Socialist Party (People's Socialist, Socialist Party)
Program:
– rejected violent methods of struggle. The first programmatic issue of its bulletins was published in September 1906, the final registration of the party was in November 1906. These were the city intelligentsia, zemstvo employees. Prominent ideologists: A.V. Peshekhonov, V.A. Myakotin, N.F. Annensky, V.I. Semenovsiy, belonged to the left flank of legal populism. They advocated a special path to socialism for Russia, bypassing capitalism.
Introduction of the democratic republic
Replacement of the post.army "people's policeman"
Equality of all before the law, abolition of the class system, freedom of speech, conscience, press, meetings, unions
Inviolability of person and home Supreme authority
Agrarian question:
- a unicameral People's Representative Assembly, elected by all citizens who have reached 20 years of age, regardless of their gender, faith and nationality. The Assembly must have all the legislative power.
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Confiscation of residential lands, state, appanage, church lands and their transfer to public ownership. But confiscation should not affect peasant allotments, as well as privately owned lands where labor work is carried out.
1) A special style of formation of political parties. Socialist world and national parties.
2) Actions of the government at the stage of the rise of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905.
4) Monarchist parties.
1) 5) The first experience of Russian parliamentarism. (1, 2, 3, to the State Duma chapter 28)
By the form of government, Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was an autocratic monarchy. The lack of political rights and freedoms turned Russia into a unique phenomenon among the relatively developed countries of the world. The contradictions between autocratic orders and a modernizing economy reached unprecedented intensity at the beginning of the 20th century.
*A political party is an organized group of like-minded people, representing the interests of a part of the people, setting goals and their implementation by coming to power or participating in its implementation. All political parties in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, in accordance with their vision of the future of Russia, political goals, means and methods of achieving these goals should be divided into several categories:
Left*(social democratic)
Trudoviks*
Liberal*(Cadet Party)
Monarchical * (Union of the Russian People and others) More than 20 who shared the ideas of Bokunin and Kropotkin. National and socialist parties arose, operating illegally. Social democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania 1893 Bund. 1897.
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. (1903)
Socialist Revolutionary Party. The peasantry saw their social support (T in the peasantry)
The main provisions of the Bolshevik program. Marxists.
1) The transition from one socio-economic formation to another is carried out through a social revolution.
2) The social support of the party is the working class - the proletariat.
The main driving force of the socialist revolution is the proletariat.
After the revolution comes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat!
The leadership of the party consisted of intellectuals. The origin and structure of the Russian political system, with a significant share of revolutionary socialist parties, was not very conducive to the smooth evolutionary development of Russia.
2.) The lack of political and agrarian reforms in the last decades of the 19th century led to a revolutionary explosion in January 1905.
Nicholas II ascended the throne at the end of the 19th century. During his reign it intensified the role of the emperor and his personal office. The revolution of 1905 forced tsarism to return to urgent socio-political transformations. On August 6, 1905, tsarism announced the establishment of the State Duma. Bulyminskaya. The concession of tsarism turned out to be insufficient. The Bulygin Duma was boycotted in October 5 in the context of a growing wave of revolution. In October, during the All-Russian October Strike, Nicholas II signed the Manifesto on the Improvement of State Order dated October 17, 1905, prepared by Witte. It proclaimed political freedoms. The word of the press, street processions, meetings of unions, abolition of estates. Duma parliament was endowed legislative rights. Sections of the population deprived of voting rights under the Bulykinsky bill were attracted to participate in the elections. The State Council was transformed into the highest chamber of the Duma with the right to approve laws.
Formally, the manifesto transformed the autocratic state system of Russia into a constitutional monarchy. Women, soldiers, sailors, students, and landless peasants were deprived of the right to choose.
3) During the revolution of 1905-7, the first Russian multi-party system arose.
The liberal movement was taking shape politically. Its right-wing conservative wing was the Union of October 17 party. Leaders: Heyden, Alexander Ivanovich Guchkov, Rodzianko.
Number of members: 65-70 thousand members. Social composition - large financial and industrial bourgeoisie, liberal landowners, wealthy intelligentsia. Program -
1. “assisting the government on the path of saving reforms”
2. Modernization of the country
3. Defense of the principle of constitutional monarchy and a single and indivisible Russian state.
4. Resolution of the peasant issue bypassing the forced alienation of landowners' lands. Resettlement of peasants beyond the Urals, intensification of the activities of the peasant bank.
5. Restriction of the right to strike, against the introduction of an eight-hour working day. The radical liberal wing was the constitutional democratic party. Brothers Dolgorukov, Kormilov, Kotlyarovsky, Maklakov, Pavel Nikolaevi Melyukov, Peter Struve.
Number 55 thousand, social composition - intelligentsia Liberal bourgeois and landowners. The share of the working class in the party did not exceed 15%. The program is a rule of law state in the form of a constitutional monarchy. 2) Civil rights, national, class, cultural equality. 3) Solving the agrarian issue through the forced alienation of part of the landowners' lands. 4) Recognition of the workers' right to races and to an eight-hour working day.
4) Monarchist parties. An obstacle to the implementation of reforms was the monarchical-noble bloc. Russian Monarchist Party, Union of Russian People, All-Russian Union of Land Owners. The main force was the union of the Russian people. Leaders: Dubrovin, Pureshkevich. Russian patriotism, protection of the principles of Orthodoxy, unity and inviolability of the Russian Empire and autocracy. A protest against the home-grown bourgeoisie, infected with the rot of the West. Black Sofia organized pogroms in 150 cities of the country.
The most important result of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907 was the creation of Parliament and the introduction of political freedoms.
The new system of political organization of the state in 1907 to 1914 was called the Third of July political system (the union of the tsar, nobles and big bourgeoisie united by the state duma)
A series of lectures on the history of the communist and labor movement
In Japan, despite the ban on the socialist party and the persecution of socialists, Marxist circles continued to emerge, the number of which gradually grew. The communists, against the backdrop of the ongoing labor struggle, understood the need for unification. The special position of Japan as the only independent Asian country also attracted attention from the Comintern, which monitored the development of the situation and was ready to assist in the creation of the Communist Party.
In 1920, the Congress of the Peoples of the Far East was held, at which the Council of Propaganda among the Peoples of the Far East under the ECCI was established and issues of unity of action of the national liberation movement were discussed. Sen Katayama, while in exile, did a lot of theoretical work, analyzing the situation in Japan and showing how it was necessary to organize the struggle in its conditions.
Another milestone towards the organizational formation of the Communist Party of Japan was the 1st Congress of Communist and Revolutionary Organizations of the Far East, held in January 1922. The Japanese delegation at the congress, headed by Sen Katayama, included: Chairman of the socialist “Environment Society” Kyuichi Tokuda , Chairman of the Publishing Committee of the Communist Group of the People's Awakening Society Kiyoshi Takase, trade union leaders Hajime Yoshida, Kintaro Wada and others. At the congress, a decision was made to create the Japanese Communist Party (JCP). On July 15, 1922, the founding congress of the party was held, the Central Committee was elected and a temporary charter was adopted, and then a resolution on joining the Comintern. At the same time, in the party, which was just uniting from circles and societies, there were many people who were influenced by social democratic or anarchist views, which subsequently negatively affected the work of the CPJ. Thus, Yamakawa was elected to the Central Committee, who later showed himself to be an opportunist.
The Comintern accepted the CPY into its membership at the 4th Congress, and Sen Katayama became a member of the presidium of the ECCI and was given the opportunity to exercise general management of the activities of the CPJ and conduct theoretical work.
The CPJ immediately encountered problems; at the 2nd Congress, the delegates were unable to adopt the program; only a general political line was determined; the immediate goal at that time was the fight against intervention in Soviet Russia and the withdrawal of Japanese troops from the Far East. In November 1922, an emergency commission was convened to discuss the program. A project was created that declared the struggle for the overthrow of the monarchy, the introduction of universal suffrage, an 8-hour working day, the confiscation of landowners' lands, the elimination of the standing army, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Soviet Russia, Korea and Taiwan.
Shortly after the founding of the Communist Party, in April 1923, the Japanese Communist Youth League was created. A young worker, communist Yoshitora Kawai, was elected chairman of the union's Central Committee.
The central slogan of the CPY during this period was the “turn to political struggle,” which was especially important, since the proletariat should not be limited only to economic struggle.
To win over the masses, the CPJ placed emphasis on working with mass organizations and significantly strengthened its position in Sodomei (Japanese Labor Federation Nihon Rodo Sodomei, formerly Yuaikai), created a number of new trade unions: their number increased from 300 to 389. Negotiations were started to strengthen the labor movement about unification with anarchist trade unions that were not part of Sodomey. The unification had opponents both among the leadership of Sodomey (from those who did not want to lose sole leadership) and among the anarchists who defended the position of federalism in the trade union movement and opposed a single center.
Overcoming the resistance of opponents of unity, progressive trade unions managed, with the support of the Communist Party, to convene on September 30, 1922, a congress of representatives of 60 different unions in Japan with the aim of creating a single trade union center in the person of the All-Japan Federation of Workers' Unions (Zenkoku rodo kumi-ai sorengo). The conference was dispersed by the police, but, nevertheless, it united the most militant leaders of trade unions and communists, which affected the XI Congress of Sodomei. In October 1922, the congress adopted a class combat program, which stated that “peaceful coexistence between labor and capital is impossible.” In addition, the program contained a demand “to immediately withdraw troops from Russian territory, recognize the government of workers’ and peasants’ Russia and begin negotiations with it.”
Through the Union of Communist Youth, the CPJ maintained constant contact with worker-peasant youth and revolutionary-minded students. Of particular importance was the strengthening of communist influence in the League of Progressive Student Organizations of Tokyo (Gakusei Rengokai) and the Union of Student Organizations (Koto Gakko Remmei). Here the Marxists had to fight the influence of the anarchists, who, after they were ousted by the League, created their own organization, the Union of Builders, which was mainly engaged in street protests.
The sharp strengthening of the workers' and peasants' movement after the First World War, the emergence of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the rapid growth of its influence among the masses caused great concern in the ruling camp. In an effort to bring the internal political situation in the country under control, the Kato government attempted to pass through parliament reactionary bills “On control over the socialist movement”, “On control over trade unions” and “On the settlement of rental conflicts”. The CPJ called on all mass organizations to protest against the reactionary laws, and the All-Japan League of Workers' Unions to Struggle Against the Three Reactionary Laws was created. It included not only trade unions from Sodomey, but also students and progressive intelligentsia. Mass protests forced the government to abandon these laws, and the CPJ won a major victory.
The government did not forgive the KPJ of this company and began repression on June 5, 1923. The police raided Waseda University in Tokyo. The reason was a fight between opponents and supporters of military training for students. The police, along with the dispersal of the fighting, arrested Sonno Gaku, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, who worked as a laboratory assistant at the university, found party documents in the laboratory and began arresting communists and sympathizing professors. There was hysteria in the press about the transformation of universities into communist strongholds.
On September 1st, a powerful earthquake occurred in Japan, which sparked fires. The capital prefecture and its neighboring territories suffered great damage: telephone communications stopped, transport stopped, and 80 to 90% of industrial enterprises were seriously damaged or completely destroyed. Under these conditions, rumors and panic began to spread, which the police took advantage of. On September 2, a rumor was started that the Koreans were poisoning the wells. Right-wing and police provocateurs began to create “self-guard” units that began pogroms of the Korean population. Simultaneously with the pogroms, arrests and reprisals against leftists and trade union activists began. In Kameda Prefecture, police arrested more than 750 people, many of whom were killed in police custody. Among them were the leader of the Communist Youth League, Yoshitoro Kawai, and the anarchist Osugi Sakae, along with his wife and children. The killings and arrests were carried out along with the propaganda campaign that “the socialists are plotting a civil war” and “the Koreans have organized a rebellion.” The repressions temporarily undermined the political struggle of the working class, the arrests of communists strengthened the positions of opportunists in the Communist Party, primarily Yamakawa, who raised the question of liquidating the Communist Party, since its creation was premature: it was necessary to wait until the working class itself matured before creating a party. This situation was determined by several factors: firstly, the working class of Japan was not yet so large and had numerous peasant feudal remnants in its consciousness; secondly, the CPJ developed as a federation of circles, and therefore it included the influence of both social democrats and anarcho-syndicalists. At the same time, the anarchists were ideologically exposed by everyone, including the Social Democrats, but they themselves were not subjected to serious criticism.
The party, which developed as a federation of circles and worked with the working class through trade unions, did not have cells at enterprises and was built on a territorial principle, which led to its rapid weakening as a result of repression, and this also led to the rapid departure of trade unions “to the right.”
Sodomey published a statement on the “New Deal” in January 1924, indicating that he was returning to his original policy (cooperation between labor and capital). However, all these events could not stop the economic struggle of the workers. According to official data, the number of labor disputes in 1924 was 933 compared to 647 in 1923, and the number of participants increased from 68,814 in 1923 to 94,047 in 1924. In many cases, labor conflicts developed into strikes. In 1924, there were 333 such strikes and 54,526 workers took part in them.
Such activity led to the fact that the government was forced to resort to a policy of appeasement to prevent Sodomey from radicalizing again. The bourgeois parties also put pressure on the government (in their own interests, of course). This led to the creation of party cabinets. The first of these was the cabinet headed by Kato, the leader of the Kenseikai Party (bourgeois-landowner party). Party cabinets took the path of combining partial reforms and minor concessions with repression against communists and struggling trade unions.
In the CPJ, in 1924, after the repressions, ideological confusion and vacillation began. The Yamakawa group, which took a liquidationist position, turned out to be the strongest of all and in March, without convening a congress, announced the dissolution of the party. To reassure ordinary communists and revolutionary-minded members of the Central Committee. The liquidators were forced to create a committee for propaganda work and international relations. There was no unity in the committee, the liquidators were in the “propaganda faction”, and the leftists in the “action group”.
The self-liquidation of the CPJ attracted the close attention of the Comintern, which did not recognize the decision to dissolve itself and gave instructions for the restoration of the party. With the support of the Comintern and Sen Katayama, a party conference was convened in Shanghai in January 1925. In accordance with the recommendations of the Comintern, the Shanghai Conference reorganized the Committee on International Relations and Propaganda into the Central Bureau, introducing into its composition party members who had not lost the trust of the masses and showed steadfastness and courage during police persecution - Kyuichi Tokuda, Masanosuke Watanabe, Shoichi Ichikawa and etc., thus, preparations began for the restoration of the party.
In accordance with the decision of the Shanghai Conference in September 1925, the newspaper “Musansya Shimbun” (“Proletarian Newspaper”) began to be published as the legal organ of the party, which played the same role as “Iskra” for Russian Social Democracy.
Yamakawa and his supporters did not agree with the course of restoring the party. They continued to propagate liquidationist theory, declaring that there was no need for a communist party in Japan, that in Japanese conditions only a legal political party of the "united front" type was needed, and that the labor movement needed to be kept within the framework of economic struggle only.
The liquidators also appealed to the policy of partial reforms carried out by the Kato cabinet. Thus, in 1925, universal suffrage was introduced for men over 25 years of age. However, even such partial concessions were accompanied by repression. Thus, the police law “On the Protection of Public Order” adopted on April 21, 1925 was even more reactionary in nature than what had been in force until now. It provided for punishment of up to 10 years of hard labor for any idea or action to abolish the monarchy or the private property system.
No less draconian was the resolution “On the control of printed publications” adopted in May 1925. The law “On Arbitration in Labor Conflicts”, adopted in April 1926, became an important weapon in the hands of the government in the fight against the labor movement. According to it, administrative institutions could intervene in labor conflicts by carrying out forced arbitration even “in the absence of demands from interested parties.” At the same time, the law considered the management of strikes by trade unions as interference by “disinterested persons” and prohibited it.
However, concessions in suffrage gave workers the opportunity to vote, and the CPJ faced the question of whether the organization of a legal proletarian party was necessary to use the parliamentary platform in agitation. Under the new censorship law, the communists really needed it for campaigning.
However, at this time there was a split in Sodomei; the class militant trade unions, dissatisfied with the right-wing course of Bunzu Suzuki, were expelled from the federation. The split was almost equal. Thirty expelled trade unions and two more trade union organizations formed the Trade Union Council of Japan (Nihon rodo Kumiai Hyogikai - abbreviated as Hyogikai) in June 1925. There are 35 trade unions left in Sodomey. In the created Hyokigai, the communists (Kenzo Yamamoto, Masanosuke Watanabe) enjoyed the greatest influence, so he immediately accepted the proposal of the peasant union.
In August, a congress was convened to organize a party, which was called the Peasant-Worker Party. The congress adopted a program that contained a number of radical demands: the abolition of police laws; providing the people with broad voting rights; abolition of secret diplomacy and unequal treaties with dependent countries; limiting militarism; abolition of indirect taxes, introduction of progressive income tax; control over the production and distribution of agricultural implements and fertilizers, etc. The government, seeing the danger in such a batch, immediately banned it.
Now the right-wing Social Democrats and Sodomey have seized the initiative. The leadership of Sodomey stated that when creating the party they would make every effort to ensure that its views were hostile to the CPJ.
The creation of a new party was initiated this time by the Japanese Peasant Union together with the Federation of Trade Unions of Government Enterprises. Left-wing organizations were not invited there, and Hyokigai initially refrained from participating, but then recognized this decision as erroneous.
At the founding congress of the Workers' and Peasants' Party (Rodo nominto - abbreviated Ronoto) held on March 5, 1926 in Osaka, right-wing elements enjoyed predominant influence. By decision of the Central Committee, admission to the party of left-wing organizations was prohibited. However, representatives of the Hyokigai protested and began to fight against this decision of the Central Committee and to change the party's course in order to organize the protection of workers' rights. Particularly relevant at this time was the unfolding movement of struggle against “rationalization,” that is, against the reduction of workers, increasing production standards, reducing prices and the introduction of Taylorism.
This struggle unfolded against the backdrop of a campaign for the immediate dissolution of parliament and its re-election under the new law of 1925, which was launched by the Communist Party of Ukraine. The petition campaign involved not only workers, but also progressive representatives of the petty and middle bourgeoisie.
In 1926, a massive struggle began against three reactionary laws, which resulted not only in mass protests, but also in the creation of permanent committees to coordinate protest actions. They included not only leftists, but also representatives of Sodomei. All this changed the situation within the Workers' and Peasants' Party, and a discussion began about admitting leftists into it. Supporters of the right course suffered defeat not only in local organizations, but also in the Central Committee, and therefore took extreme measures. In October 1926, Sodomey leaders left the Workers' and Peasants' Party along with some centrists and created their own Social Democratic Party.
The departure of the right and some centrists ensured the victory of the left in the party. A prominent left-wing figure, Ikuo Oyama, was elected leader of the Workers' and Peasants' Party. And although the party has shrunk significantly, it has become more organized and stronger. However, the strengthening of the left put the party in a difficult position; it was forced to act in a semi-legal position. Because of this, the right wing of the peasant union left it and, uniting with the left wing of Sodomey, created Japanese Workers' and Peasants' Party(Nihon ronoto).
As a result, by the end of 1926, three legal parties of workers appeared in Japan: the Workers' and Peasants' Party led by Ikuo Oyama (over 15 thousand members), the Social Democratic Party led by Iso Abe (88 thousand members) and the Japanese workers' and peasants' party led by Hisashi Aso (about 20 thousand members). Each party formed its own trade union federation. The Communists tried, through the Workers' and Peasants' Party, to achieve unity of action among all working parties, but the Social Democrats disrupted the negotiations.
In March 1927, a financial crisis broke out in Japan, which had a great impact on the entire economic and political life of the country. The government implemented a number of financial measures to assist large banks, increased taxes on the population and began to accelerate the “rationalization” of production, during which tens of thousands of workers were thrown onto the streets, wages were reduced, and the already brutal exploitation of Japanese workers intensified. Chauvinism was offered to the people as a substitute for social benefits.
In 1927, the Tanaka cabinet came to power and set a course for open interference in Chinese affairs. Therefore, propaganda directed against the Kuomintang and the NRA, which during this period were advancing to the north, intensified. The propaganda demanded "to protect the interests and dignity of Japanese citizens in China."
In response to these actions, the JCP and the Hyokigai began their campaign against attacks on workers' rights and against chauvinism. A company of meetings was organized between representatives of all factories on joint actions against the advance of capital. Not only the Hyokigai trade unions, but also Sodomei and even factories where there were no trade union organizations joined the struggle.
"Musansya Shimbun" published a number of sharp materials in which it demanded the immediate withdrawal of troops from China and an end to aggression in any form. And she called on all workers to join the protest against interference in the affairs of the Chinese Revolution.
In May 1927, the League of Non-Interference in Chinese Affairs (Taishi Hikansho Domei) was created, which spoke with the slogans: “Hands off China!”, “Let's defend the Chinese revolution!”
There were also attempts to organize united actions of the two workers' and peasants' parties, but after several joint rallies, the Japanese Workers' and Peasants' Party refused to continue cooperation.
The successes of the CPJ could have been greater if it had not appeared in 1925-1926. leftist deviation, or Fukumotoism. Kazuo Fukumoto studied for a long time in France, where he became acquainted with the works of Hegel, Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin. To a certain extent, Fukumoto was reacting to Yamasaki's right-wing bias. He demanded that the theoretical struggle be put at the forefront, since, in his opinion, the condition of Japan corresponded to the position of Russia before the organization of the RSDLP. The result of the theoretical struggle was supposed to be a period of splits and unifications that would help identify the correct revolutionary subject.
At the same time, the everyday economic struggle of workers was considered economism. Accordingly, Fukumotism viewed trade unions as a kind of burden that prevented it from rising to the level of a general class political struggle. He assigned the tasks of political struggle to mass organizations: the Workers' and Peasants' Party and the Trade Union Council. The CPJ, in this state of affairs, should have been engaged in identifying itself as a correct revolutionary subject and in theoretical struggle. The communists had to separate their consciousness from trade unionism and opportunism. Thus, the party had to turn not into a mass proletarian organization, but into a narrow group of intellectuals.
In 1925-1926, when Fukumoto had great influence, all party publications were filled with scholastic-theoretical articles, which the majority of ordinary party members did not understand. Since a significant part of the communists were in prison, and the path to the CPJ was practically closed to new comrades, especially from the workers, its number was very low - several hundred people. At the same time, Fukumoto argued that Japanese capitalism had already exhausted itself and an imminent proletarian revolution was inevitable.
As a result, the Comintern and Sen Katayama intervened. Yamakawa and Fukumoto offered to come for consultations, the first only sent abstracts, and the second agreed. As a result of the consultations, the theses of the Comintern were created. They noted that Japan had become the only imperialist state on the entire Asian continent, and pointed out that Japanese imperialism was preparing an aggressive war against China and was “the most dangerous enemy of the Chinese revolution.”
At the same time, it was emphasized that the Japanese military was hatching plans to launch a war against the Soviet Union. The aggressiveness of Japanese imperialism is caused, first of all, by its very large dependence on the foreign markets of Korea and China and the militaristic traditions of the aristocracy, closely associated with the big bourgeoisie or directly bourgeoisified. The Comintern pointed out that the struggle against the war of aggression of Japanese imperialism is the primary task of the Communist Party of Japan.
At the same time, Japan remained a significant problem for Marxists due to its characteristics; the level of monopolization and the connection of monopolies with the state was extremely high. The Mikado (emperor) was the owner of the land, a major shareholder in many companies and owned a powerful bank, as well as up to 30% of the capital invested in industry and railways. Thus, bourgeois content was given to the old feudal forms.
On the other hand, two parties of the bourgeoisie - Seiyukai and Kenseikai - were directly connected with the Mitsui and Mitsubishi companies, representing their interests in the government, alternately composing cabinets. At the same time, Seiyukai was closely connected with military and aristocratic circles, and therefore took an irreconcilable position towards the USSR, and Kensekai, which did not have such connections, on the contrary, tried to play democracy. Thus, the bourgeoisie was already allowed into power and turned into a counter-revolutionary factor. Its interests were closely intertwined with the aristocracy and the military, since without an armed hand they could neither suppress their workers nor seize markets.
But, despite the high concentration of capital in industry, the semi-feudal system of land relations continued to be preserved in the countryside. Thus. In Japan, the prerequisites for a bourgeois-democratic revolution (agrarian question and monarchy) and its development into a socialist revolution (high concentration of capital and state capital) had developed.
However, there were no subjective prerequisites; the proletariat and peasantry for the most part did not yet have the experience of class struggle, were fragmented and suffered from feudal remnants in their consciousness.
Therefore, communists must actively work to form the class consciousness of the proletariat. It is the workers who will have to take upon themselves the completion of all bourgeois-democratic transformations, to create for this a strong bloc with the peasants and to use the support of the urban petty bourgeoisie. Any hopes that the bourgeoisie can play a revolutionary role are groundless.
The following demands were put forward as the immediate program of action of the CPJ: the elimination of the monarchical system, the fight against imperialist wars (in particular, against interference in the Chinese revolution), the provision of independence to the colonies, support for the Soviet Union, the provision of democratic freedoms to the people, the introduction of an 8-hour working day, the transfer land to peasants.
The Theses emphasized the role of the mass communist party, relying on illegal cells in enterprises, and criticized both Yamakawa’s liquidationist proposals to turn the Communist Party into a legal party, as well as attempts to turn the party into a narrow group, and shift the tasks of direct struggle against the monarchy to the left factions of trade unions and legal of the Workers' Party from Fukumoto.
Without the creation of a powerful, centralized and deeply rooted communist party, the revolution and its development into a socialist one were impossible.
The Yamakavistas opposed illegal activities in any form. They criticized the CPJ for continuing to remain an illegal party and putting forward supposedly overly revolutionary slogans. Advocating for the transformation of the CPJ into a legal party, the leaders of Ronoh put forward the slogan of the merger of all proletarian parties, including the CPJ. Achieving this task, in their opinion, was the main goal of the revolutionary movement.
The CPJ, having gotten rid of the opportunists, began restructuring the apparatus and successfully increased its numbers, creating cells in enterprises and attracting advanced workers. To promote revolutionary Marxism, the party's illegal press organ, the newspaper Sekki (Red Banner), was created.
Building its work on the basis of the “theses of 1927,” the CPJ made a rapid leap forward. From December 1927 to March 1928, the size of the party tripled, primarily due to the workers.
In 1928, the CPJ took part in the parliamentary elections with its program and under the slogan of creating a government of workers and peasants, but the communists followed the lists of the friendly Workers' and Peasants' Party (Ronoto) for secrecy.
Ronoto conducted the election campaign in difficult conditions, the government and the police put all possible barriers to it. Rallies were dispersed by the police, candidates were arrested, newspapers were confiscated. But still, despite severe persecution, the proletarian parties received a total of 490 thousand votes (about 4.7%) and achieved the election of eight of their candidates as deputies of parliament. Of the left parties, Ronoto received the largest number of votes (more than 190 thousand), from which two candidates were elected to parliament. Among the candidates elected from it was a prominent figure in the labor movement, Senji Yamamoto, who stood for the positions of the Communist Party. The communists and Ronoto were able to agree on interaction with the rest of the left in parliament and acted as a united front on major issues.
The success of the leftists and communists alarmed the government. Seeing the growing influence of the CPJ, it intensified repression. On March 15, 1928, 1,600 members of the CPJ were arrested and preparations for the 4th Congress were disrupted. Then, on April 10, Ronoto, the Trade Union Council (Hyokigai), and the All-Japan Proletarian Youth League were banned. The repression also hit hard students and progressive professors protesting against the party's bans and repression.
The government of General Tanaka issued an emergency decree to revise the Law on the Protection of Public Order in the direction of further tightening. According to the new decree, The 10-year hard labor was replaced by the death penalty or indefinite hard labor.
In June 1928, a secret police (tokko) was established, which began searching for communists who had gone underground. Despite the blows from the tokko and the arrests of prominent figures of the Communist Party, the party was able to maintain its organizational structure and at the end of October the Central Committee was restored, headed by Shoichi Ishitikawa, who returned from the 4th Congress of the Comintern.
The communists together created the All-Japan Council of Trade Unions (Zenkyo), instead of the banned Hyokigai, and took measures to organize the anti-war movement. Thus, mass protests were organized against the sending of the 3rd Infantry Division to Shandong. Attempts were made to restore Ronoto under a new name, but they were suppressed by the government.
Only the cultural front remained relatively open to mass propaganda. Thus, in 1928, the party managed to form the All-Japan Union of Proletarian Art Workers (Zen Nihon Musansya Geijutsu Remmei - NAPF), which began publishing the magazine “Senki” (Battle Banner). The magazine soon became an important organ of mass political propaganda. Its pages published materials on scientific socialism, as well as popular articles aimed at party activists and intended for the political self-education of the broad working masses. The magazine's circulation reached 20 thousand copies, which in the conditions of Japan at that time was a major achievement for the party. Subsequently, the All-Japan Union of Proletarian Art Workers and the Union of Japanese Proletarian Writers began publishing the magazines “NAPF” and “Puroretaria bungaku” (“Proletarian Literature”).
In April 1929, the police unleashed a new wave of repression on the Communist Party and leaders of the revolutionary wing of the labor movement. On April 16 alone, up to a thousand revolutionary figures were arrested. All members of the CPJ Central Committee were captured, including party general secretary Shoichi Ichikawa.
Despite these blows, the communists again maintained their organization and, just a month after the mass arrests, restored the publication of the Sekki newspaper and continued organizing cells in enterprises and preparing for parliamentary elections.
At the end of 1929, the entire capitalist world was gripped by a deep economic crisis, which lasted for several years. It hit Japan especially hard, which had previously been developing at a fairly rapid pace. The economic crisis has greatly affected industry and trade. In 1930, Japanese exports fell by 31%, and imports by 30% compared to 1929. In 1931, the volume of Japanese foreign trade decreased by another 30% compared to the corresponding figures in 1930. For some of the most important goods, the price drop reached up to 60%. The number of unemployed and semi-unemployed reached 3 million. Agriculture found itself in a particularly difficult situation. Purchase prices for rice in 1930 fell by almost half compared to 1929. The government tried to shift the full burden of the crisis onto the workers, this led to an increase in mass protests by workers.
The largest protests of this period included strikes by Tokyo tram and bus drivers, workers of the Yokohama Dokku and Shibaura Seisakusho companies, and workers of the Kanegafuchi Boseki and Toyomo Surin companies. In 1930, the number of strikes was 2,289 with more than 191 thousand participants; in 1931 there were 2,456 strikes, in which 154 thousand workers took part. The struggle of peasants intensified, and the number of rental conflicts grew. If in 1929 there were 2434 of them, then in 1930 - 2478, and in 1931 - 3419.
At the same time, a new blow was dealt to the CPJ, which completely knocked out the leadership center of the party, and the leadership of Zenkyo was also arrested. Under these conditions, adventurist sentiments began to grow in the party. Group C Tanaka and X Sano actually seized the leadership of the Communist Party of Japan and put forward the thesis of an imminent revolution. They actually curtailed the daily economic struggle, leaving the workers to fend for themselves, and embarked on adventures. Thus, they declared the May holiday of 1930 “Armed May Day” and prompted the Zenkyo trade union center to hold a demonstration in the city of Kawasaki, which was attended by several hundred people armed with bamboo lances. The putschist actions led to the fact that the CPJ and Zenkyo were isolated from the masses, and the same people in the Central Committee, under the pretext of correcting the mistakes made by the party leadership, formed the League for the Renewal of Zenkyo (Zenkyo sassin domei) in June 1930, thereby beginning , factional struggle in the trade union center.
At the same time, provocateurs from the Union of Laborers created the Red Front (Sekisen) group and launched an attack on the Communist Party, accusing it of the dominance of intellectuals and demanding the replacement of the Communist Party of the People's Party with another organization that would rely directly on trade union cells. However, they were able to quickly deal with Sekisen, revealing his connection with the police.
The “CPY Working Group”, created from renegades, opportunistic elements and police agents, caused great harm to the CPY. In 1931, she released “theses” that revised the point of view of the Communist Party of Ukraine on the bourgeois-democratic nature of the upcoming revolution. Phariseeically declaring its support for the Comintern line on the Japanese question, the “CPJ Working Group” tried to prove that the coming revolution in Japan can only be proletarian, and not bourgeois-democratic, as defined in the theses of the Comintern of 1927.
“Political power in present-day Japan,” said the “theses” of this group, “is entirely bourgeois in nature and is headed by finance capital. Thus, the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Japan has already been carried out... The revolution will be directly proletarian, and its main task will be the overthrow of the imperialist bourgeoisie, and the confiscation of the landowners’ land and the overthrow of the monarchy will be tasks, although important, but derivative.” And further: “since the emperor is a specific feature of Japan, he and his court can be brought to the side of the proletariat.”
The “CPJ Working Group”, that is, the “left”, also began to receive support from the opportunists from Ronoh (Yamakawa and others), who also argued that feudalism in Japan was already over and therefore the revolution would be proletarian in nature. As for the monarchy, in their opinion, it occupied a neutral position in the class struggle.
The V Congress of the Profintern, held in the summer of 1930, paid serious attention to the strengthening of the economic struggle of trade unions in the conditions of the global economic crisis and pointed out the need to link this struggle with political demands. At the congress, adventurist mistakes in the mass movement of Japan were criticized, and a decision was made to dissolve the Zenkyo sassin domei, which stopped the factional struggle of the left trade unions.
Takekichi Kazama was appointed the responsible leader of the CPJ, and Yoshimichi Iwata, Ejiro Konno and other consistent Marxists became members of the leadership.
The new leadership of the Communist Party put forward the slogan “Every plant should become a party fortress.” The Communist Party, which at the beginning of 1929 had several dozen members as a result of arrests, again grew into a significant political force. Party organizations were restored in almost all the most important industrial centers of Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, northern Kyushu, Hokkaido, etc.). The Sekki newspaper began to appear again, the publication of which had been suspended since June 1930. It was in this state that the Communist Party of Japan approached the beginning of a long and difficult period of struggle against militarism and fascism in Japan, which had been increasingly intensifying since the early 1930s.
Mikhail Markov
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