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Lenin as Election Campaign Manager
Lessons from election campaigns organized by the Bolsheviks in Russia under the tsar.
23 pages, Pamphlet
First published December 1, 1971
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June 21, 2025
Before Georgi Plekhanov formed the first Marxist group, almost all opposition to tsarism was terrorist. Lack of democratic rights doesn't mean that terrorism is the only answer. This pamphlet was put out because almost all groups that called themselves Marxist-Leninist (a term used primarily by Maoists) called for boycotting the elections. As always, a large number of workers wouldn't vote, and the Maoists, tiny groups, would dishonestly take credit for that fact.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks took advantage of all possibilities to do legal work under the authoritarian regime, in addition to the work they did with helping the working class to organize unions. When there were elections to the Duma, no matter how little power they had, Lenin almost always favored participation in them, unless a revolutionary insurrection could be counterposed. They couldn't run under their party name, since their party was illegal. But workers recognized them by their ideas, and despite the fact that it was illegal for them to publish a newspaper (they did anyway), they received many votes. And they made speeches and put out illegal leaflets containing the text of these speeches. The bourgeois press also could not totally ignore them.
A few years earlier, the German Social Democrats, which Lenin looked on as the leading party at the time in the Socialist International, had been in the same situation. The Anti-Socialist Laws pushed by Bismark in 1878 and renewed through 1888 put the German socialist movement in much the same situation as the Russians. And yet they had their period of fastest growth under these repressive laws.
In both Germany and Russia, the electoral gains of these parties, couldn't be ignored in the bourgeois press.
While the Bolsheviks were in opposition to the "Legal Marxists" who only published what the tsarist government permitted them to, they were not against publishing books legally. Lenin's book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism was published legally to get as wide an audience as possible for it, but the conclusions he drew on how to prepare for the first inter-imperialist war had to be written in banned pamphlets and newspapers.
Another question this pamphlet takes up is how to deal with the question of police informers, who always join socialist organizations. In fact, without absolute proof, the worst thing one can do is organize an internal witch-hunt against informers. This is what the Black Panther Party did in the US, and for the most part it was police agents expelling legitimate members!
Lenin was well aware of the rumors that Roman Malinovsky, the head of the Bolshevik fraction in the Duma was an informer, but there was no proof, and Malinovsky functioned in a disciplined manner. After the revolution it turned out that the rumors were true, and Malinovsky was executed. But you can't expel (much less execute) a member because of rumors. You can't build an organization that members will trust on such a basis.
This short pamphlet is a good introduction--to read more you can probably get a used copy of The Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma, published after the revolution. One should also read Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder: A Popular Essay in Marxian Strategy and Tactics, and for a really detailed account of Marx and Engels' and then Lenin's work as their best student, The Ballot, the Streets―or Both: From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks took advantage of all possibilities to do legal work under the authoritarian regime, in addition to the work they did with helping the working class to organize unions. When there were elections to the Duma, no matter how little power they had, Lenin almost always favored participation in them, unless a revolutionary insurrection could be counterposed. They couldn't run under their party name, since their party was illegal. But workers recognized them by their ideas, and despite the fact that it was illegal for them to publish a newspaper (they did anyway), they received many votes. And they made speeches and put out illegal leaflets containing the text of these speeches. The bourgeois press also could not totally ignore them.
A few years earlier, the German Social Democrats, which Lenin looked on as the leading party at the time in the Socialist International, had been in the same situation. The Anti-Socialist Laws pushed by Bismark in 1878 and renewed through 1888 put the German socialist movement in much the same situation as the Russians. And yet they had their period of fastest growth under these repressive laws.
In both Germany and Russia, the electoral gains of these parties, couldn't be ignored in the bourgeois press.
While the Bolsheviks were in opposition to the "Legal Marxists" who only published what the tsarist government permitted them to, they were not against publishing books legally. Lenin's book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism was published legally to get as wide an audience as possible for it, but the conclusions he drew on how to prepare for the first inter-imperialist war had to be written in banned pamphlets and newspapers.
Another question this pamphlet takes up is how to deal with the question of police informers, who always join socialist organizations. In fact, without absolute proof, the worst thing one can do is organize an internal witch-hunt against informers. This is what the Black Panther Party did in the US, and for the most part it was police agents expelling legitimate members!
Lenin was well aware of the rumors that Roman Malinovsky, the head of the Bolshevik fraction in the Duma was an informer, but there was no proof, and Malinovsky functioned in a disciplined manner. After the revolution it turned out that the rumors were true, and Malinovsky was executed. But you can't expel (much less execute) a member because of rumors. You can't build an organization that members will trust on such a basis.
This short pamphlet is a good introduction--to read more you can probably get a used copy of The Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma, published after the revolution. One should also read Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder: A Popular Essay in Marxian Strategy and Tactics, and for a really detailed account of Marx and Engels' and then Lenin's work as their best student, The Ballot, the Streets―or Both: From Marx and Engels to Lenin and the October Revolution.
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