Russian revolution. A very short introduction
Page 4
The fall of the Provisional Government
Kerensky became prime minister following the July Days, presenting himself as the 'man of destiny' summoned to 'save Russia'. His posturing merely masked his impotence. On 19 July, in a bid to halt the disintegration of the army, he appointed General L. С Kornilov Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Kornilov agreed to take up the post on condition that there was no interference by soldiers' committees in operational orders and that the death penalty was extended from soldiers at the front - already agreed - to those at the rear. Kerensky hoped to use the reactionary general to bolster his image as a strong man and restore the frayed ties with the Kadets, many of whom were openly talking about
32
6. General Kornilov
33
the need for a military dictatorship to save Russia from 'anarchy*. Kerensky and Kornilov agreed on the need to establish firm government' - code for suppressing the Bolsheviks - and each hoped to use the other to achieve his more particular ends. On 26 August, however, Kerensky lashed out at Kornilov after he received what seemed to be an ultimatum demanding that military and civil authority be placed in the hands of a supreme commander. Accusing Kornilov of conspiring to overthrow the government - and historians dispute as to whether he actually was- he sent a telegram relieving him of his duties. When Kornilov ignored the telegram and ordered troops to advance on Petrograd, he appears to have moved into open rebellion. His attempted coup, however, was poorly planned and the clandestine
counter-revolutionary organizations that had looked to him as their saviourfailed to respond. In a humiliating bid to save his government, Kerensky was forced to turn to the very Soviets he had been planning to bring to heel, since they alone could prevent Kornilov's troops reaching the capital.
Kornilov's rebellion dramatically demonstrated the danger posed by the 'counter-revolution' and starkly underlined the feebleness of the Kerensky regime. No one, however, could have predicted that its immediate consequence would be to allow the Bolsheviks to stage a dramatic recovery, following their defeat in the July Days. On 31 August the Petrograd Soviet passed the Bolshevik resolution 'On Power', and the Moscow Soviets followed on 5 September. In the first half of that month, 80 Soviets in large and medium towns backed the call for a transfer of power to the Soviets, although no one was entirely sure what the slogan 'All Power to the Soviets' - which belonged just as much to anarchists, Left SRs, and Menshevik Internationalists as to the Bolsheviks - actually meant. Whilst in hiding Lenin had written his most Utopian work, State and Revolution, outlining his vision of a 'commune state' in which the three pillars of the bourgeois state (the police, standing army, and the bureaucracy) would be smashed and in which parliamentary democracy would be replaced by direct democracy based on the Soviets. It is unlikely that many, even in the Bolshevik party, understood the slogan in this way. For most workers it meant a break with the coalition with the 'bourgeoisie', represented by the Provisional Government, and the formation of an all-socialist government representing all parties in the Soviet CEC.
The Bolshevik slogans of 'Bread, Peace, and Land' and 'All Power to the Soviets' were now taken up with alacrity. The party's consistent opposition to the government of 'capitalists and landowners', its rejection of the 'imperialist' war, and its calls for land to the peasants, power to the Soviets, and workers' control seemed to hundreds of thousands of workers and soldierstooffer a way forward. Seeing this
34
happen from his hiding-place in Finland, Lenin became convinced that nationally as well as internationally the time was now ripe for the Bolsheviks to seize power in the name of the Soviets. He blitzed the Central Committee with demands that it prepare an insurrection, even threatening to resign on 29 September.'History will not forgive us if this opportunity to take power is missed.' The majority of the leadership was unenthusiastic, believing that it would be better to allow power to pass democratically to the Soviets by waiting for the Second Congress of Soviets, scheduled to open on 20 October. Lenin returned in secret to Petrograd and on 10 October persuaded the Central Committee to commit itself to the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Significantly, no timetable was set. Zinoviev and Kamenevwere bitterly opposed to the decision, believing that the conditions for socialist revolution did not yet exist and that an insurrection was likely to be crushed. Lenin, however, argued that only by seizing power would popular support for a soviet government be consolidated. As late as 16 October, the mood in the party was against an insurrection and the decision of Zinoviev and Kamenevto make public their opposition drove Lenin to paroxysms of fury. It fell to Trotsky to make the practical preparations, which he did, not by following Lenin's scheme to launch an offensive against the capital by sailors and soldiers of the northern front, but by associating the insurrection with the defence of the Petrograd garrison and the Soviet.
On 6 October the government announced that half the garrison were to be moved out of the city to defend it against the sweeping German advance. Interpreting this as an attempt to rid the capital of its most revolutionary elements, the Soviet on 9 October created the embryo of a Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) to resist the transfer. This was the organization that Trotsky used to unseat the government. There would have been no possibility of obeying Lenin's injunction to seize power prior to the Second Congress had the moderate socialists on the Soviet CEC not postponed its opening from 20 to 25 October, evidentlytoallowKerenskytimeto prepare a pre-emptive strike against
35
1ч-
; ■
7. Red Guards in Ekaterinburg
the Bolsheviks. On 20 October when the government ordered the transfer of troops to commence, the MRC ordered units not to move without its permission. On the night of 23-4 October Kerensky gave Trotsky the pretext he was looking for when he ordered the Bolshevik printing press to be shut down, as a preiudeto moving against the MRC. On 24 October military units, backed by armed bands of workers, known as Red Guards, took control of bridges, railway stations, and other strategic points. Kerensky fled, unable to muster troops to resist the insurgents. By the morning of 25 October, only the Winter Palace, the headquarters of the government, remained to be taken. That afternoon Lenin appeared for the first time in public since July, proclaiming to the Petrograd Soviet that the Provisional Government
Dear Kolia
Why have you not written? Are you busy, or is it for some political reason? It's hard to believe you haven't written for six months. What are you up to? How are grandma and your mother? Are they in good health? What's happening in Tambov? What news have you? Here nothing remarkable is happening at present. True, these Bolshevik days have caused me great anxiety. I've been sitting here in the telegraph office until three or four in the morning. The office is guarded by Cossacks. We're in the theatre of military operations and political life is registered much more strongly than in Tambov, as strongly as in the capitals. Please write. I'm waiting to hear from you. The situation here is complicated, but no matter, I'm calm. We have here in Smolensk the icon of the Blessed Virgin, so in the past all disasters have passed us by. We believe this will continue in the future.
Your uncle
Smolensk, 29 October 1917
37
had been overthrown. 'In Russia we must now set about building a proletarian socialist state.' At 10.40 p.m. the Second Congress of Soviets finally opened against the sound of distant artillery bombardment of the Winter Palace. The Mensheviks and SRs denounced the insurrection as a provocation to civil war and demonstratively walked out, Trotsky's taunt echoing in their ears: 'You are miserable bankrupts; your role is played out. Co where you ought to be: into the dustbin of history.'
The seizure of power is often presented as a conspiratorial coup against a democratic government. It had all the elements of a coup - albeit one much advertised in the press - except for the fact that a coup implies the seizure of a functioning state machine. Arguably, Russia had not had this since February. The reasons for the failu
re are not hard to pinpoint. Lacking legitimacy from the first, the Provisional Government relied on the moderate socialists in the Petrograd Soviet to make its writ felt.
£ From the summer it was engulfed by a concatenation of crises - at the
g front, in the countryside, in industry, and in the non-Russian periphery.
e Few governments could have coped with such a situation, and certainly
jg not without an army to rely on.
a:
.c
1-
Many historians argue that democratic government was simply a non-starter in Russia in 1917. The analysis above leans to that conclusion but we should note that in spring there was widespread enthusiasm for 'democracy'. Workers, soldiers, and peasants showed enthusiasm for a constitution, a republic, and civil rights; yet such matters were always secondary to the solution of their pressing socio-economic problems. It was the Soviets and the factory committees, the institutions dedicated to promoting the social revolution, that were perceived as truly democratic. In other words, from the first, a heavily 'socialized' conception of democracy vied with a liberal notion of democracy tied to the defence of private property. The fact that the bases for a democratic regime were slender does not mean that they were non-existent, not at least if we think in terms of a regime that was socialist ratherthan liberal in complexion. If the Petrograd Soviet, having taken power in March,
38
had hastened to summon the Constituent Assembly and to tackle the land question, the SRs and Mensheviks might have been able to consolidate a parliamentary regime. Following the Kornilov rebellion, a majority of moderate socialists finally came round to the view that the coalition with the 'bourgeoisie' had to end, and took up demands for a speedy end to the war, the transfer of land to the land committees, and the immediate summoning of the Constituent Assembly. If these demands had been raised in the spring it might have made all the difference. But then again, there were many in the SR party whose instincts were little different from those of Keren sky and who would have insisted on continuing the war, at least pending an international peace conference (something the Allies had no intention of agreeing to). And therein lay the rub. For the fate of democracy in 1917 was ultimately sealed by the decision to continue the war. It was the war that focused the otherwise disparate grievances of the people. It was war that exacerbated the deep polarization in society to a murderous extent. In 1902 Karl Kautsky, the leader of the German Social Democrats, had warned:
Revolution which arises from war is a sign of the weakness of the revolutionary class, and often the cause of further weakness, because of the sacrifice it brings with it, and because of the moral and intellectual degradation to which war gives rise.
In the last analysis, it was the war that made the Bolshevik seizure of power irresistible.
39
Chapter 2
Civil war and the foundation
of the Bolshevik regime
The October seizure of power generated an exhilarating sense that a new world was in the offing where justice and equality would triumph over arbitrariness and exploitation, where the powerof nature would be
harnessed to ensure plenty for all. In the eyes of most workers and soldiers, as well as many peasants, a soviet government signalled land and freedom, the triumph of equality and justice, vengeance on the old privileged classes, and rule bythetoilers. The Bolsheviks deprecated the charge that they were Utopians, insisting that the seizure of power was in step with the logic of capitalist development. Yet like revolutionaries everywhere they could not have endured without an idealized vision of the future society. According to the constitution of July 1918, the aim was nothing less than the:
abolition of all exploitation of man by man, the complete elimination of the division of society into classes, the ruthless suppression of the exploiters, the establishment of a socialist organization of society, and the victory of socialism in all countries.
Determined to project their radical difference from the temporizing Provisional Government, they issued no fewer than 116 different decrees up to 1 January 1918 - on the burning questions of peace, land, and workers' control, and on such varied matters as divorce, self-determination for the Armenians in Turkey, and reform of the alphabet.
40
In spite of their utopianism, the Bolsheviks were initially circumspect as
to whether socialism was immediately on the cards, since they were
well aware that none of the material preconditions for socialism existed
in this torn and backward country. They hoped that revolution would
break out in the more developed countries of Europe, by no means an
idle hope given the devastation wrought by the First World War. In the
course of 1918 the war did indeed bring about the demise of the
German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires, and the Bolsheviks
were particularly excited by the prospect of a revolution in Germany,
since it had a large industrial base and well-organized working class.
A. A. loffe, Soviet representative in Berlin, spent over a million marks
attempting to promote a Bolshevik-style revolution that would come to
the assistance of Soviet Russia. But although the Kaiser was overthrown, -
following the armistice in November 1918, and although German*
soldiers and workers formed Soviets, most of them came to the^
conclusion that the short-term benefits of reform outweighed the costs £.
с
I
of revolution. Right up to 1923, however, Europe continued to be profoundly unsettled and Bolshevik hopes were regularly raised by uprisings in Germany, Italy, and the former Habsburg empire.
On 26 October 1917 the Soviet government called on the belligerent powers to begin peace negotiations on the basis of no annexations or indemnities and self-determination for national minorities. They also published the secret treaties of the Allies to expose the 'filthy machinations of imperialist diplomacy'. Not surprisingly, the Entente spurned the Peace Decree, leaving the Bolsheviks little option but to make a separate peace with Germany. The terms proposed by Germany were toughandthe majority of the Central Committee refused to accept them. On 18 February 1918 the German High Command sent 700,000 troops into Russian territory meeting virtually no resistance. On 23 February they proffered terms that were even more draconian. At the Central Committee meeting that evening, Lenin insisted that the terms be accepted, gaining seven votes; Trotsky, who favoured doing nothing, gained four votes; and the left, who favoured a revolutionary
41
5Г
S
1
war against Germany, gained four votes. The peace treaty was duly signed at Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. It was massively punitive, excising from the former empire the Baltic provinces and a large part of Belorussia and Ukraine, depriving Russia of access to one-third of the former empire's agricultural land and railways, virtually all its oil and cotton, and three-quarters of its coal and iron.
We must organize our lives according to new labour and socialist principles whereby exploitation by landlords and capitalists, division between masters and slaves no longer exists; whereby only labour and equality reign, whereby all rights, benefits, and wealth belong exclusively to the toilers. The strengthening of these new labour principles demands acceptance and implementation of emergency economic and other measures by the toiling people, starting with the village, then the market town, the township, county, province, region, and ending with the all-Russian centre. It demands the creation of a single toilers' government to guarantee speedily the gains of the toilers. Declaration of the Perm county soviet of peasant and worker deputies,
14March1918
The other major decree issued bytheBolsheviks wasthat on land, which legitimized the spontaneous seizure of lands owned by the landed gentry, church, and crown and their transfer into peas
ant hands. Significantly, it did not embody the party's policy of nationalization -taking land into state ownership - but the SR policy of socialization: 'land passes into the use of the entire toiling people'. This left communes free to decide how they would apportion land. It was a hugely popular measure. In the central black-earth provinces three-quarters of landowners' land was confiscated between November 1917 and January 1918. How much better off peasants were as a result, is hard to say, since there was no uniformity in the amount of land peasants
42
received even within a single township, not to speak of the many regions where there were no gentry estates to redistribute. Nationwide the average allotment expanded by about an acre, but this masks substantial variation. Slightly over a half of all communes received no additional land, and since two-thirds of the land confiscated was already farmed by peasants, the amount of new land that passed into the hands of the peasants only represented just over a fifth of the entire cultivated area. In addition, however, the situation of the peasants was improved by the abolition of rents and loan repayments. Overall, the principal result of the land redistribution was to reduce the extent of social differentiation among the peasantry, reducing the number of wealthy and very poor households and strengthening the ranks of the middling smallholders. Of great concern to the government was the fact that in Russia and Ukraine the most commercialized and technically sophisticated estates and farms were broken up, thereby exacerbating the already lamentable productivity of agriculture.