Quiz: The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky

All 30 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. What does Lenin credit the Soviet government with doing in foreign policy?

   Tearing the veil of mystery from it Joining the Entente Restoring the tsarist alliances Abolishing the Foreign Commissariat
2. 2. When does Lenin say the Bolsheviks first raised the questions of the soviets as state organs and of changing their party’s name?

   April 1917 1905 November 1917 January 1918
3. 3. Which is not among the advantages Lenin says the exploiters keep after a revolution?

   Money and movable property Habits of organisation and management A majority in the soviets Knowledge of military affairs
4. 4. How did Kautsky characterise the demand that factories belong to the workers?

   As a measure already taken by the Paris Commune As the core of Marx’s own programme in the Manifesto As an Anarcho-Syndicalist, not Social-Democratic, demand As a Menshevik demand from the 1905 revolution
5. 5. Why, according to Lenin, could Marx in the 1870s think of a peaceful transition in England and America?

   They then lacked a militarist army and bureaucracy Marx had never studied their politics Their workers already formed a parliamentary majority Their bourgeoisie had promised to abdicate without a struggle
6. 6. Why does Lenin list his earlier writings against Kautsky in the preface?

   To show that he had once agreed with Kautsky on the State To answer Kautsky’s charge that he had plagiarised him To advertise his collected works To prove he had denounced Kautsky long before taking power
7. 7. What did Plekhanov declare at the 1903 party congress, according to Lenin?

   That the party must never take power That the peasantry was the only truly revolutionary class in Russia That Russia must first pass through a constitutional monarchy like Germany’s That revolution could disfranchise capitalists and suppress a hostile parliament
8. 8. How does Lenin answer Kautsky’s claim that the Bolsheviks staked everything on a European revolution?

   They admitted it was a mistake They counted on it, but not by any given date They had never expected any revolution abroad They had relied on Germany’s defeat in the war instead
9. 9. Where had Kautsky’s pamphlet on the dictatorship of the proletariat recently been published?

   Berlin Vienna Geneva Stockholm
10. 10. What position does Lenin note Vandervelde held in the Second International?

    Secretary of the Zimmerwald Commission in Berne President of the International Socialist Bureau Editor of Die Neue Zeit Leader of the German Independent Social-Democrats
11. 11. Which socialist does Lenin note was at Versailles during the Commune?

    Jules Guesde Auguste Blanqui Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Louis Blanc
12. 12. What does Lenin say Kautsky concealed about the land decree he quoted?

    It was never published or applied, remaining a dead letter after its adoption It restored some estates to the landlords, contrary to the clauses he quoted It had five clauses plus an eight-clause Instruction, not just the two he quoted It had been drafted by the Kadets and merely adopted unchanged by the Bolsheviks
13. 13. To whom does the 1920 publisher’s introduction offer the book?

    British trade-union leaders German Social Democrats Russian émigrés in New York American workers
14. 14. According to Lenin’s table, what share of delegates were Bolsheviks at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets?

    13 per cent 66 per cent 90 per cent 51 per cent
15. 15. Whose invented figure, the “thrifty Agnes”, does Lenin say Kautsky has revived?

    Ferdinand Lassalle’s August Bebel’s Eduard Bernstein’s Eugen Richter’s
16. 16. How did Kautsky characterise the Bolsheviks’ appeal to the dictatorship of the proletariat?

    As a borrowing from Blanqui As resting on “one single word” Marx once used in an 1875 letter As a misreading of the Communist Manifesto and its ten measures As an invention of Engels after Marx’s death in 1883
17. 17. How does Lenin describe bourgeois democracy?

    A form that withers away of itself A step backward compared with feudal and absolutist rule The same thing as proletarian democracy A paradise for the rich and a trap for the exploited
18. 18. How does Lenin classify the disfranchisement of the exploiters?

    As a Russian question, not a necessary part of dictatorship As a temporary error to be corrected As the essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat everywhere As a measure Marx demanded in 1875
19. 19. Which statement of Kautsky does Lenin accept as true but say he draws the wrong conclusion from?

    That the exploiters always formed a small minority That the Commune was a dictatorship That Russia was ripe for socialism That the soviets should become organs of state power
20. 20. What example does Lenin give of the Bolsheviks’ successful use of bourgeois parliamentarism?

    Their seats in the Pre-Parliament Their majority in the Constituent Assembly of 1918 Winning the whole labour representation in the Fourth Duma Their alliance with the Kadets in the First Duma of 1906
21. 21. In thesis 3, what does Lenin call the republic of soviets besides a higher democratic type?

    The only form for the most painless transition to socialism The final and permanent form of communist society A temporary expedient until the Constituent Assembly meets A form suited only to Russia
22. 22. How did Kautsky describe the Bolsheviks’ war policy, as against the Mensheviks’?

    They proposed an alliance with Germany against Britain They supported the formula of no annexations, no indemnities with the army ready They demanded peace at any price, even a separate one They wanted to continue the war until a final victory over Germany
23. 23. What did the Central Executive Committee decide on 14 June 1918, to Kautsky’s indignation?

    To exclude the SRs and Mensheviks from the soviets To dissolve the Constituent Assembly by decree To abolish private property in land To sign the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany
24. 24. What, according to Kautsky, did the Bolsheviks wrongly do with the soviets?

    Hand them over to the trade unions and factory committees Turn them from a fighting body of one class into a state organisation Dissolve them in favour of the Constituent Assembly once elected Open them to the bourgeoisie
25. 25. When, according to Lenin, is the Russian revolution a bourgeois revolution?

    So long as it marches with the peasantry as a whole As long as the war continues Until the Constituent Assembly meets and adopts a constitution Only before February 1917
26. 26. According to thesis 5, why did the Constituent Assembly fail to reflect the voters’ will?

    The Bolsheviks had boycotted the elections Women had been denied the vote The SRs ran united lists but split after the elections The elections were held under the old tsarist franchise
27. 27. In his 1915 pamphlet, into what did Lenin say Kautsky’s verbal Marxism had been transformed?

    Christian socialism, a doctrine of social reform preached in the name of the Gospel Blanquist conspiracy, a seizure of power by a small secret band of revolutionaries Anarchism of the Bakuninist type, rejecting political struggle and the state entirely “Struveism” or “Brentanism”, a liberal doctrine of non-revolutionary class struggle
28. 28. When does Lenin say the countryside passed through its own “November” (proletarian) revolution?

    In the summer and autumn of 1918 In November 1917, with the cities In the spring and summer of 1917 In January 1918
29. 29. How does Lenin define dictatorship?

    Government by a single party under a written constitution of its own A state of majority rule under universal suffrage An authority relying directly upon force and not bound by any laws The rule of one individual for a limited term
30. 30. Whom does Lenin quote calling revolution “the most authoritarian thing in the world”?

    Plekhanov Marx Bebel Engels