THE PEASANT REVOLUTION IN THEORETICAL VIEWS AND POLITICAL PRACTICE OF ULYANOV-LENIN

Abstract

The purpose of the proposed article is to analyze the theoretical views of V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin on the social peasantry ability to an independent revolutionary struggle and their implementation during the practical revolutionary and state-political activities of Bolshevik leader.The methodology of the study is the principle of historicism, which consistently allowed to reveal the origins of Lenin's vision of the peasantry ability to the revolutionary struggle, forecast its results and then show its development of the concept of peasant revolution as a type of bourgeois transformation, the statement of this revolution as a reality in the period 1905–1907 and 1917–1918, and the recognition of the revolutionary achievements of the peasantry and the introduction in its social interests of the NEP policy. The scientific novelty consists in elucidating the type of bourgeois transformations that the leader of the Bolshevik Party was expecting and considered them feasible in the practice of political struggle in the Russian Empire and the stages of the peasant revolution identified by Lenin as a kind of bourgeois revolution, which, from his point of view, took place in reality in 1917 and subsequent years. Conclusions. Among modern approaches to the scientific comprehension of the revolutionary events of the early twentieth century the concept of peasant revolution takes an outstanding place. The presented article tackles the problem of perceiving of the peasantry’s ability for an independent revolutionary struggle. The article analyses the views of of the Bolshevik Party leader, V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin), and their influence on political practice in the process of the Soviet state creation. In particular: 1. The article clarifies that for V. I. Lenin, the ability of the peasantry for an independent revolutionary struggle was quite obvious. As a consequence of the political behavior of the peasantry during the period of the revolution during 1905–1907, he concluded that there was a special type of bourgeois revolution – the peasant agrarian revolution. According to his views, the peasant revolution opens the way for a farmer type of agrarian capitalism. 2. Firstly, Lenin believed that by mid-1918 a bourgeois peasant revolution had taken place in the village, which was replaced by socialist transformations. However, over time, he declined to state the socialist revolution in the countryside, a testimony to why the policy of the NEP became. 3. All the components of Lenin's revolutionary transformation program envisaged taking into account the fact of the peasant revolution. Thus, the possibility of the bourgeois-democratic revolution was assumed only in the form of a peasant revolution, the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power was planned through the use of the peasant revolution, the restoration of the acquired power – through the resolute satisfaction of the interests of the peasant revolution, the construction of socialism – through the adaptation of the results of the peasant revolution to socialist progress. Given Lenin’s correct definition of the peasant revolution nature, the claim about the bourgeois component of socio-economic transformations carried out by the Bolsheviks in October 1917 finds its confirmation.