Vpered (1909 - 1912) was an organisation within Russian Social Democracy set up by Alexander Bogdanov in December 1909.[1] Alongside Bogdanov Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Grigory Aleksinsky, Stanislav Volski and Martyn Liadov, were involved in the breakaway group.
The group retained a strong role for the intellectuals as advocated by Lenin in What is to be done?. However, Lenin had developed a new view which allowed for the working class a greater role in developing their own ideology. Bogdanov sowed the seeds of Vpered at the Conference of the Extended Editorial Board of Proletary which Lenin called in Paris, in June 1909 in Paris. He presented his Statement to the Editorial Board of Proletary. In this text he raised the issue of the "practical work" of "widening and deepening of fully socialist propaganda" amongst the working class. He claimed that the editors of Proletarii had not properly attended to the intellectual development of workers. He said that the lack of any "theoretical and historical" elaboration of the people's armed struggle against the autocracy meant the absence of "conscious leaders" in workers' organizations. The intelligentsia were necessary to train workers as conscious leaders. With the departure of many intellectuals from the Party, the few intellectuals remaining in its rank should train workers would form the new party leadership. Bogdanov proposed to meet this challenge by organising "Proletarian Universities" Such as the Capri Party School that autumn. During a period of counter-revolution, the most important "task of the moment" was creating organisations for party intellectuals to "systematize" the socialist education of workers and so "allow" workers to play the leadership role in the Party "they ought to play" but were not now playing. "The question of a Party university is the question of the day." The Paris Conference completely disavowed Bogdanov's proposal, who promptly turned on his heels and left. Bogdanov worked closely with Leonid Krassin to produce a Report which appeared in July 1909. This was to serve as an outline of Vpered viewpoint:That Lenin and his allies had fundamentally deviated from "revolutionary Marxism" and the centrality of the hegemonic role of the proletariat in the coming democratic revolution. the defeat of the 1905 Revolution The had entailed the rise of "bourgeois liberalism" during the "Duma period" in the Social Democratic movement. They accused Lenin and his partisans of extending this period through parliamentarism" at any price". The otzovists constituted a reassertion of revolutionary Marxism. However it was necessary to criticise the otzovists from a tactical point of view, as the recall of the Duma deputies was impractical. Bogdanov and Krasin go onto complain that Proletarii had failed to produce one pamphlet in eighteen months and had abandoned socialist propaganda work. After reviewing propaganda work prior to 1905, they called for propaganda of a "much higher type," "more complete and encyclopaedic". This was nurture an "influential nucleus of workers" who could act as conscious leaders in all forms of proletarian struggle. Party Schools were the way to do this. They would enable workers to gain the intellectual discipline which the intelligentsia obtained at university.
The Vperedists created experimental "proletarian universities" on the Isle of Capri between August to December 1909, and then in Bologna from November 1910 to March 1911.