REQUEST TO READERS Progress Publishers would be glad to have your opinion of this book, its translation and design and any suggestions you may have for future publications. Please send your comments to 17, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow, U.S,S.R. Boris Baluyev AND TBE BOURGEOIS PRESS Progress Publishers Moscow Translated from the Russian by James Riordan Designed by Yuri Davydov 6opac 6aJiyee JIEHMH IlOJIEMl1311PYET C 6YJ>)l(YA3HO'A IlPECCO'A Ha Qlj2J1UUCKOM 11301Ke © IlOJIHTH3L(aT, 1977 English translation © Progress Publishers 1983 Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 0102020000-346 _ E 32 83 014(01)-83 Contents Introduction . 5 "Highly Interesting-from the Negative Aspect" 8 "Capitalism and the Press" . 23 "For Lack of a Clean Principled Weapon They Snatch at a Dirty One" . 53 "I Would Rather Let Myself Be Drawn and Quartered... " 71 "A Socialist Paper Must Carry on Polemics" 84 "But What Do These Facts Mean?" . 98 "All Praise to You, Writers for Rech and Duma!" 106 "Our Strength Lies in Stating the Truth!" 120 "The Despicable Kind of Trick People Who Have Been Ordered to Raise a Cheer Would Use" . 141 "The Innumerable Vassal Organs of Russian Liberalism" 161 "This Appeared Not in Novoye Vremya, but in a Paper That Calls Itself a Workers' Newspaper" . 184 ··one Chorus. One Orchestra·· 201 INTRODUCTION The polemical writings of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin continue to set an unsurpassed standard of excellence for journalists and all representatives of the progressive press. They teach ideo­ logical consistency and develop the ability to link political issues of the moment to Marxist philosophical theory. They serve as an example of profound ·analysis of facts and real­ life phenomena , of the perfect timing in the discussion of urgent topical questions, of perceptiveness and scientific pre­ cision in making conclusions and recommendations, and faultless political forecasting. They are a model of work packed with information from the most diverse fields: his­ tory, philosophy, natural science, literature, economics and technology. They are distinguished by graphic description and accuracy of political detail, by their vigour and the emo­ tionally-charged language. Pamphleteering is unthinkable without polemics, in so far as it is born in the campaign against forces that hamper his­ torical development. Lenin's pamphleteering is a model of polemical passion. Each article is a blow to the forces which, in one way or another, stood opposed to the struggle by the working class against tsarism and the bourgeoisie, opposed to the triumph of a socialist revolution and the building of a new life. Lenin believed that no Marxist publication could overlook polemics, inasmuch as "one cannot develop new views other than through polemics" .1 This precept and its practical embodiment in Lenin's journalism are of particular value to �esearchers and practitioners engaged in communist journal­ ism. I V. I. Lenin, "A Talk on 'Cadet-Eating'", Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 297. (Unless otherwise stated, all quotations are taken from the English •edition of Lenin's Collected Works in 45 volumes, prepared by Progress Publishers, Moscow.) We live today at a time of acute ideological struggle between the worlds of socialism and capitalism, of unceasing, daily skirmishing between the communist and bourgeois press on vital issues of the moment, the destiny of human development ; it is here that the Leninist school of journalis­ tic polemic acquires invaluable significance. It is a school in which employees of the ,press as well as other mass media can learn a great deal. It can be of great assistance to jour­ nalists of communist and workers' parties in capitalist coun­ tries as they conduct an unequal but courageous battle in their press against bourgeois press propaganda, which pos­ sesses all the advantages of modern technology and a whole army of well-taught and skilful manipulators of public opinion and fabricators of falsehood. Lenin invariably viewed journalism as the mission of con­ temporary history. Different organs of the press and differ­ ent journalists would write differently, but in every case their writings would display class and partisan positions. This is what interested Lenin above all. The way different press organs treated the same facts enabled Lenin to show the class, partisan stance of a journalist or press organ as a whole, and not infrequently also enabled him to define the stance of an entire class or party whose mouthpiece the par­ ticular periodical was. We should note at once that pre-revolutionary newspapers and magazines in Russia did not normally declare themselves organs of particular political parties. This was done both for censorship reasons and for the sake of freedom of political manoeuvre and manipulation. In his polemical attacks against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois press organs, Lenin sought to define and underline their precise class, partisan position; he did this largely through analysing their assess­ ments of various facts, events and phenomena of the time. Naturally, he also took into account the political orientation of the staff and authors of the publications. Such an approach enabled Lenin to determine the posi­ tion, condition, intentions, and tactical and strategic line of conduct of hostile political forces- of classes, parties and groups. This made it possible to follow their evolution. At the same time, he was able to evaluate and identify the line of conduct of a particular press organ. Lenin not only made evident his attitude towards individ­ ual hostile organs of the press, but also gave an assessment 6 of the bourgeois press as a whole, exposing its intrms1c nature, the likely pattern of its development and its charac­ teristic features. By pointing out certain inevitable demerits of that press, he helped his readers see, via specific facts, the social phenom­ enon as a whole. He thereby also created a methodological basis for criticising the bourgeois press in the pages of the communist press. This book reveals Lenin's views on such important contro­ versial and still relevant political issues as the feasibility or non-feasibility of a communist press representative working on a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois paper. Although Lenin's strictures on this question do not constitute a polemic with the bourgeois press, they do indirectly reflect a most impor­ tant aspect of that polemic. The author saw his main task as that of identifying the pamphJeteering methods used by Lenin himself in his battle with the bourgeois press and its impact on the ordinary peo­ ple. The focus is on the content of the polemics, on revealing the methods he used to strike at the very essence of judge­ ments, commentaries and evaluations made by inimical organs of the press of whatever political hue. It was extremely important here to single out the distinguishing features of the polemical method adopted in each case. This is especially im­ portant if we are to speak of adopting Lenin's experience in fighting the bourgeois press. It must be remembered that the modern world of the capitalist press is by no means homo­ geneous. In every bourgeois state there are publications that reflect the positions of extreme Right-wing, moderate and liberal, pseudo-socialist, Right-wing revisionist and ultra­ Left, Trotskyist parties and groups. In this connection, Lenin's experience as a polemicist is by no means without relevance, since he dealt ably with each of them, differentiat­ ing them according to their particular characteristics. Of par­ ticular interest are Lenin's post-revolutionary polemicals against bourgeois publications of other countries, including the White emigre press. The author has therefore relied in his conclusions on Lenin's entire pamphleteering experience, in both the pre­ and post-revolutionary periods. "HIGHLY INTERESTING- FROM THE NEGAT IVE ASPECT" Throughout his entire socio-political activity, Lenin was an avid reader of the bourgeois press. His interest in newspaper and magazine periodicals developed while he was still a young man at home with his family. The Ulyanov family library in the town of Samara (nowadays Kuibyshev) con­ tained both the revolutionary-democratic Otechestvenniye Zapiski (FatherlandNo tes) and bourgeois-liberal publications such as Russkoye Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth), Vestnik Yev­ ropy (European Herald), Russkaya Mys/ (Russian Thought), Sevemy Vestnik (Northern Herald) and Russkiye Vedomosti (Russian Recorder) . In her reminiscences, Lenin's sister Maria Ulyanova testifies that even at that time he was an exceedingly punctilious and attentive reader of periodicals: "He kept all the papers he had read and marked issues that had something of interest to him." 1 As the years went by the urge to systematise material he had read in the press became a habit. Moreover, a Marxist outlook enabled him to use a strictly scientific, class-partisan principle in systematising and characterising the newspapers and magazines themselves, as well as the material they published. It must be noted, however, that Lenin's private circum­ stances often made it difficult for him to obtain Russian bourgeois periodicals. When �e arrived in St Petersburg from Samara in 1893, his parlous financial state often pre­ vented him from obtaining newspapers and magazines. The small law practice of the young barrister did not provide him with income sufficient to enable him to subscribe to papers. While in exile in the Siberian village of Shushenskoye, Lenin experienced great difficulties because of the irregular arrival of newspapers and magazines. Even on the way to Shushenskoye he had a foreboding of these difficulties and I Reminiscences of Vladimir llyich Lenin, in five volumes, Vol. 1, Poli­ tizdat, Moscow, 1968, p. 157 (in Russian). on April 17, 1897 he wrote from Krasnoyarsk to his other sister, Anna, in Moscow about his desire to subscribe to cer­ tain periodicals. "Depending on available finances", he sug­ gested two alternatives. The first was: Russkiye Vedomosti, Russkoye Bogatstvo, Vestnik Finansov (Financial Herald) (without any supplements) and Archiv far soziale Gesetzge­ bW1g W1d Statistik (Social Legislation and Statistics Archives).