Vpered

Vpered (1909 - 1912) was an organization 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 group. Although it emerged from the Bolshevik wing of Russian Social Democracy, the group soon became highly critical of Lenin.

Rupture with Bolshevism

1902 edition of Lenin's What is to be done?

The group envisaged a strong role for the intellectuals as featured by Lenin in What is to be done?. During a period of counterrevolution, Speeder's founders focused on creating organizations for party intellectuals to "systematize" the socialist education of workers. This would allow workers to play a deserved leadership role in the Party.

The seeds of Diapered were sown when Zhdanov presented his statement to the Editorial Board of Proletarii to the conference of the Extended Editorial Board of Proprietary which Lenin called in June 1909 in Paris. In this text, Bogdanov raised the issue of the "practical work" of "widening and deepening of fully socialist propaganda" among the working class. He claimed that the editors of Proprietary had not properly attended to the intellectual development of workers. He said that the lack of any "theoretical and historical" elaboration of the peoples' armed struggle against the autocracy meant the absence of "conscious leaders" in workers' organizations. claimed the intelligentsia were necessary to train workers as conscious leaders. With the departure of many intellectuals from the Party, those remaining in its ranks would form the new party leadership. Bogdanov proposed to meet this challenge by organizing "Proletarian Universities," such as the Capri Party School in 1909. Bogdanov hoped to nurture an "influential nucleus of workers" who could act as conscious leaders in all forms of proletarian struggle. He believed party schools were the way to do this. Party schools would enable workers to gain the intellectual discipline obtained at the university.

The 1909 Paris Conference completely disavowed Bogdanov's proposal, and he promptly turned on his heels and left. Bogdanov then worked closely with [[Leonid RaisinBold text]] to produce a report, which appeared in July 1909. This was to serve as an outline of the 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. Bogdanov and Krasin complained that Proletarii had failed to produce even one pamphlet in 18 months, and that they had abandoned socialist propaganda work.

The defeat of the Russian Revolution of 1905 entailed the rise of "bourgeois liberalism" during the "Duma period" in the Social Democratic movement. Bogdanov and his allies accused Lenin and his partisans of extending this period through "parliamentarism at any price." The Otzovist constituted a reassertion of revolutionary Marxism. However, it was necessary to criticize the Otzovists from a tactical point of view, as the recall of the Duma deputies was impractical.

Proletarian Universities

The Vperedists created experimental proletarian universities on the Isle of Capri from August to December 1909, and then in Bologna from November 1910 to March 1911. According to Lenin, they also had 80,000 rubles at this time. Lenin argued that the Vperedists should be expelled from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).

While Bogdanov and Lunacharsky had become disenchanted with party politics and sought to focus on education and "proletarian culture", Alexinsky saw Vpered as perpetuating the "illegals" tradition which sought to use traditional means of subversion. Joined by Pokrovsky and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, this current group gained control of the editorial board and disassociated the journal from "proletarian culture and science".^[2]

References