u/KiaKaha posted a link to Stalin’s 1901 work The Russian Social-Democratic Party and its Immediate Tasks a couple of days ago.

Obviously it’s a dangerous game to start plucking strategy and tactics from previous epochs and trying to apply them to our current situations, but god damn there are some passages that could’ve been written yesterday. Definitely some stuff we can reflect on. I pulled some choice quotes:

The Socialists had no roots among the working population and, consequently, their activities were abstract, futile. The workers, on the other hand, lacked leaders, organisers, and, consequently, their movement took the form of disorderly revolts.

…

in addition to their immediate enemy, the capitalist, [the workers] have another, still more vigilant foe—the organised force of the entire bourgeois class, the present capitalist state, with its armed forces, its courts, police, prisons and gendarmerie.

…

Unfortunately, the Russian peasantry is still downtrodden by agelong slavery, poverty and ignorance; it is only just awakening, it does not yet know who its enemy is. The oppressed nations in Russia cannot even dream of liberating themselves by their own efforts so long as they are opposed not only by the Russian government, but even by the Russian people, who have not yet realised that their common enemy is the autocracy.

…

Street demonstrations are interesting in that they quickly draw large masses of the people into the movement, acquaint them with our demands at once and create extensive favourable soil in which we can boldly sow the seeds of socialist ideas and of political freedom. Street demonstrations give rise to street agitation, to the influence of which the backward and timid sectionof society cannot help yielding.3 A man has only to go out into the street during a demonstration to see courageous fighters, to understand what they are fighting for, to hear free voices calling upon everybody to join the struggle, and militant songs denouncing the existing system and exposing our social evils. That is why the government fears street demonstrations more than anything else. That is why it threatens with dire punishment not only the demonstrators, but also the “curious onlookers.” In this curiosity of the people lurks the chief danger that threatens the government: the “curious onlooker” of today will be a demonstrator tomorrow and rally new groups of “curious onlookers” around himself. And today there are tens of thousands of such “curious onlookers” in every large town. Russians no longer run into hiding, as they did before, on hearing of disorders taking place somewhere or other (“I’d better get out of the way in case I get into trouble,” they used to say); today they flock to the scene of the disorders and evince “curiosity”: they are eager to know why these disorders are taking place, why so many people offer their backs to the lash of the Cossacks’ whip.

…

the whip lash is rendering us a great service, for it is hastening the revolutionisation of the “curious onlookers.” It is being transformed from an instrument for taming into an instrument for rousing the people.

…

even if street demonstrations do not produce direct results for us, even if the demonstrators are still too weak today to compel the government immediately to yield to the popular demands—the sacrifices we make in street demonstrations today will be compensated a hundredfold. Every militant who falls in the struggle, or is torn out of our ranks, rouses hundreds of new fighters.

Some stuff to think about, and a little bit of inspiration (if that isn’t too strong a word…) in those last couple of passages. It’s a very short read if you wanted to check it out.