HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

Often the deliberate refusal to escalate the violence in order to avoid massive casualties is the only correct solution, especially when the majority aren’t ready to take action if there’s no revolutionary situation in the country. But transforming this decision into a dogma, a conviction that in any circumstances  your protest must remain peaceful is the same as voluntarily giving in to the dictator and, in effect, giving up any realistic struggle for power. The regime should always be under pressure, aware that if any force is used there will be a counter-force, and that every crime will be punished. Only in such circumstances will those in opposition to the regime have any hope of success.

Nevertheless, peaceful pressure can only rarely be as peaceful as its proponents might wish it to be. Any peaceful protest that isn’t backed by some kind of violence can still ignite the authorities and lead them to employ their own forms of violence against it. This can happen for a wide variety of reasons. It may be because of the collapse of the structures of power, because of the depletion of resources (in such a situation a strike can be a very useful show of strength), or for various other reasons. However, there is the danger that if a regime collapses because it’s run out of resources, then the ones who gain most on the battlefield will be the looters, be they criminals or mercenaries. In this case, the protest movement will find itself having to use violence against a third party.

One thing alone is clear. The protest cannot be held back from within. If the revolution has a built-in restriction on how fast it can go, it will never get off the ground. Once they’ve started, the leaders of the protest must always be ready to take the next step. Once you’ve called people out onto the streets, then you have to accept that by that action you’ve already made revolutionary violence possible. It’s a different matter that as a tactical move you may call upon your supporters temporarily to hold back.

Calling for violence when there’s no revolutionary situation is just as much a betrayal of protest as completely refusing to use violence in a revolutionary situation, when this is essential to bring the revolution to an end. The latter would be the same as leaving the movement leaderless and at the demands of fate. As a rule that will lead to the swift defeat of the revolution and even greater violence and casualties, and not for the sake of the revolution but for the counter-revolution. This is why protest should, of course, always try to remain peaceful; and it will remain so if there is convincing evidence that you are prepared to answer violence with violence if necessary.

Chapter 2. Bringing the Protesters Together:

Many Parties or a Single Party?

Everyone knows the well-worn metaphor of the broken arrows. It’s been passed down through the ages. A wise leader (or a tsar) first demonstratively shows how easy it is to break a single arrow. He then helplessly throws up his hands after trying to break a whole quiver of such arrows all at once. It’s become a hackneyed image; but its basic message remains true. When any kind of protest is united, it’s this unity that’s the key feature that makes it effective. Few would argue with this; but each person tends to understand in their own way just what that unity actually is. Unity can be demonstrated by a multitude of voices. But sometimes everyone needs to sing with one voice.

This is exactly where the democratic opposition has slipped up in Russia today. When they speak, the leaders of all the supposedly significant protest movements say they are in favour of “unity”. Indeed, it would be very odd to hear them declaim that they’re against a wide front in the struggle with the dictatorship. Yet many of those who talk about unity, are guided in practice by a different principle, one that was put forward in similar historical circumstances by Lenin: “Before we can unite…we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation”. The danger of this slogan is that in the process of putting all their efforts into demarcation, the ultimate goal of unity slips into the background. This is exactly what we see happening today in Russia.

If we look back at history, we can see that protest movements have succeeded by following various paths. Among these, we can pick out two types of successful revolutions. Some were carried out by close-knit groups of like-minded people, united not only by their similar political views, but who organised themselves on pseudo-military lines. This gave them a structure on which to build the new state after their victory. Other successful revolutions were carried out by a wide coalition of the most varied political forces, linked by only a fragile political bond. This bond rarely survived the actual revolution.