Of the many revolutionary ideologies percolating in late
19th-century Russia, Marxism garnered the most popularity. Karl
Marx, a 19th- century German thinker, claimed to have unlocked
the mechanisms of history. In his "Communist
Manifesto" (Marxism and Communism are roughly synonymous)
Marx declared that the development of human society was determined
by class warfare. In an industrial society, he claimed, the triumph
of the middle class, or bourgeoisie, inevitably led to the rise
of a proletariat, or laboring class who supported their decadent
ways. As wealth came to be concentrated in bourgeois hands, the
working class would grow ever more impoverished, leading to a revolution
and the establishment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
In this utopian setting, all class distinctions would be abolished,
as would national governments and religion, both of which Marx
regarded as tools of bourgeois oppression. "The Communist Manifesto"
closed with a great call for revolt: "let the ruling classes tremble
at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose
but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all
countries, unite!"
The 20th century would see countless crimes committed
in the name of "revolution"; dozens of Marxist states now lie in
ruins from Poland to Pyongyang; thus in our era, it is difficult
to understand how such an ideology managed to achieve such a huge
following among the educated classes. Even by the time Lenin was studying
law, a scant five years after Marx's death, scholars had begun
to discredit Marxism's intellectual framework. The theory's particular
vision of the past as a record of class struggle had received scorn
from historians for its oversimplicity; and the economic predictions
made by Marx and his co-writer, Friedrich Engels–namely, that the
industrial working class would grow ever poorer while the bourgeois
grew richer–had been proven false by history itself. But the Communist
idea retained its allure, largely through its claim to have discovered
the "laws" of history at a time when it appeared that the brilliant
light of science would soon illumine not only the natural world,
but the human world as well. If Darwin
could discover the laws of biology and evolution, and Freud could
establish a system for the interpretation of dreams, then it seemed
only logical that "scientific socialism" could provide a blueprint
for the future of economic and political development.
Marx's scientific language, then, provided a rational
patina for what was, at bottom, an irrational movement. Marxism,
despite its intellectual pretensions, was a kind of a prophetic
religion, an atheistic faith that predicted the future and, more
importantly, promised ultimate triumph over the forces of evil.
Like Christians awaiting the Second Coming, young Communists anticipated
the "revolution," but while Christ promised a kingdom in heaven, Marxism
prophesied a paradise here on earth–once the offending bourgeois
had been dealt with, that is.
Russia–with its fierce piety, frenzied millennial sects,
and strong revolutionary movements– provided fertile ground for
the scientific mysticism of Marxism. The first notable Russian
Marxists were Georgy Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod, who formed the
Liberation of Labour group in 1883. When Lenin moved to St. Petersburg
in 1891 and began to practice law, he soon found himself moving
in Marxist circles–attending meetings, writing pamphlets, and as
his command of the material became obvious, giving speeches. It
was during this time that he met Nadezhda Krupskaya, a committed Marxist
who would become his wife and life-long political ally.
From May to September of 1895, Lenin went abroad for the
first time, making a tour of Europe in which he established valuable
contacts among the Marxists living there. Notable among these
was Plekhanov, the chief of the previous generation of Marxists,
who met Lenin in Switzerland. Upon his return to Russia, Lenin
threw himself into the movement with redoubled enthusiasm, working
to help found a new organization, entitled–rather cumbrously–"Union
of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class." However,
his new group was infiltrated by a police agent–a common occurrence
in Tsarist Russia, and a police swoop in December caught Lenin,
and a number of his compatriots, in possession of illegal literature.
His imprisonment in St. Petersburg jails would last more than
a year, but conditions were far from harsh, and he was able to
begin writing his first major work, entitled The Development
of Capitalism in Russia. Then, in February of 1897, he
was sentenced to three years exile in Siberia, the vast and frosty
region that covered most of northern and eastern Russia.
Exile in the Tsarist era differed greatly from Siberian
imprisonment under the Soviet regime that Lenin would found. Prisoners enjoyed
a significant degree of freedom (escapes were common) and access
to reading material, as well as the company of other revolutionaries.
Sent to the town of Shushenskoye, which lay a few hundred miles
north of the border with China, Lenin soon settled into a routine
of writing and study, interrupted only by the arrival, in 1898,
of Krupskaya, who had also been arrested and sentenced to exile.
The two received permission to live in the same village on condition
that they get married at once, and thus Lenin and Krupskaya were
joined in matrimony on July 22, 1898–four months after the founding
of the first Russian Marxist party, known as the Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party (the "Social Democrats"). Lenin's exile
officially ended in 1900, but he had returned to St. Petersburg
even before his scheduled release.
