Vpered

Vpered (Forward or Hasten) (1909 - 1912) was an organization emanating from within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Russian Social Democracy or RSDLP). The faction was gathered by Alexander Bogdanov (1873 - 1928) in December 1909. The group included: Alexander Bogdanov, Maxim Gorky, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Grigory Aleksinsky, Stanislav Volski, and Martyn Liadov. Although Vpered emerged from the Bolshevik wing of Russian Social Democracy, the group was critical of Lenin.

Vpered developed in a political atmosphere of counterrevolution and squabbling for political control, authenticity and funds within the RSDLP. Philosophically, Bogdanov and his supporters envisaged a strong role for intellectuals in the party, along the lines of Lenin's What is to be done?. They advocated ways for intellectuals of the party to systematise the socialist education of workers, in order to allow workers a greater and deserved role in the leadership of the party. Otherwise, with the departure of many intellectuals from the party, those remaining in its ranks would form the new party leadership. Meanwhile, Lenin had distanced himself from this work.

Vpered began when Zhdanov presented a statement to the editors of Proletarii (Workers, the Bolshevik journal). In a meeting with the editorial board in late June 1908, Lenin succeeded in having Bogdanov excluded from the board (but not from the party). and to the conference of the extended editorial board called by Lenin in June 1909 in Paris. In this context, Bogdanov raised the issue of the "practical work" of "widening and deepening the fully socialist propaganda" among the working class. He argued that the editors of Proletarii had not adequately addressed the intellectual development of the 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 and that the intelligentsia were necessary to train workers as "conscious leaders". Bogdanov aimed to meet this challenge by organizing proletarian universities. Bogdanov hoped to nurture an "influential nucleus of workers" who could act as "conscious leaders" in all forms of proletarian struggle.

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