120. Reed, Ten Days [1919], 248.
121. Mal’chevskii, Vserossiiskoe, 217; Golikov, Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, V: 180–1.
122. Mal’chevskii, Vserossiiskoe Uchreditol’noe, 110.
123. Some scholars have argued that the Provisional Government was ultimately responsible for the Constituent Assembly’s failure: had elections been held earlier “a parliamentary regime in Russia would surely have had a fighting chance.” Gill, Peasants and Government, 98. See also Jonathan Frankel, “The Problem of Alternatives,” in Frankel, Revolution in Russia, 3–13. Kerensky may have tried to attend the Constituent Assembly, but he had not been elected a delegate and was rebuffed by the Central Committee of the SR party. Vishniak, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie, 106; Vishniak, Dan’ proshlomu, 365. Vishniak (b. 1883) served as secretary of the Constituent Assembly and bravely recorded its proceedings; he tried to fight Bolshevism, ended up in prison in Kiev, and emigrated to Paris in April 1919.
124. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy, 177–8 (citing Arkhiv INO OGPU, 17 458, vol. II: 215).
125. “Shall we convene the Constituent Assembly?” asked Moisei Uritsky, put in charge of overseeing it. “Yes. Shall we disperse it? Perhaps; it depends on circumstances.” Chamberlin, Russian Revolution, I: 368.
126. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 121 (citing Trotskii, Sochineniia, XVII/i: 201). On December 19, 1917, Trotsky had summoned “the iron steamroller of the proletarian revolution to crush the spinal column of Menshevism.” These were fellow Social Democrats, not to mention Trotsky’s former party. Volkogonov, Trotsky, 78.
127. Radkey speculated that given SR weaknesses, the Constituent Assembly “would have fallen of its own weight.” Radkey, Sickle Under the Hammer, 466.
128. Several Guards regiments, totaling perhaps 10,000 troops, pledged to turn out with their weapons if requested, but the Socialist Revolutionary leadership wanted no armed defense. The SR Central Committee went so far as to set up a commission to investigate efforts to defend the Constituent Assembly by force. B. F. Sokolov, “Zashchita vserossiiskogo uchreditel’nogo sobraniia,” in Gessen, Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii XIII: 5–70 (at 41–4), 50, 60–1; Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 380–4; Istochnik, 1995, 1: 25–40; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, 95 (citing Sokolov and Bakhmeteff Archive, Zenzinov Collection, SR Central Committee protocols, pp. 18–9). Later, however, one Socialist Revolutionary claimed “there was no attempt at force on January 5, not because we did not wish it, but because we had no strength.” Pravda, June 15, 1922 (Likhach). The Mensheviks did not have much of an answer to Bolshevik assertiveness either. Just a short time before the opening of the Constituent Assembly, at a Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party-Menshevik attended by some 100 delegates, Yuly Martov had put forth a resolution (which won majority support) accurately labeling Bolshevism a “regime of permanent anarchy.” But Martov’s own position was scarcely tenable: he urged the Mensheviks to pursue an all-socialist coalition—with Bolsheviks, too—even though the Bolsheviks had no desire to share power and even though, in Martov’s own mind, genuine socialism in Russia remained impossible at this historical stage. He embraced the ongoing expropriations of the bourgeoisie, and thought the workers would somehow help carry through the bourgeois-revolution phase of history. Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution, 13–6 (citing Novyi luch, December 3, 1917: 4); Haimson, “The Mensheviks.”
129. Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War, 40–69.
130. In Moscow, up to 2,000 demonstrators marched on January 9, 1918; at least 30 were trampled to death or shot. Pravda, January 22, 1918: 3, and January 24, 1918: 3; Yarkovsky, It Happened in Moscow, 267–75; Colton, Moscow, 87 (citing Tsentral’nyi arkhiv obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Moskvy [TsAOPIM], f. 3, op. 1, d. 46, l. 296).
131. Vishniak, Dan’ proshlomu, 289; Gorkii, Nesvoevremmenye mysli i rassuzhdenii, 110–1; Mal’chevskii, Vserossiiskoe uchreditel’noe sobranie; Radkey, Sickle Under the Hammer, 386–416; Novitskaia, Uchreditel’noe sobranie; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, 123–5; Bailey, “The Russian Constituent Assembly of 1918”; Avrich, Anarchist Portraits, 107–9. Zhelznyakov is said to have taken part in the “storming” of the winter palace. He was killed in the civil war in 1919, age twenty-four, by a shell from White artillery.
132. Lenin wrote two sets of theses on the Constituent Assembly, one before and one after its dispersal. GARF, f. 130, op. 1, d. 7, l. 15–6, Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 21; Pravda, January 12, 1917, republished in PSS, XXXV: 162–6. Just as Lenin and Sverdlov had calculated, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, after taking some lesser portfolios in the Council of People’s Commissars, became significantly less steadfast in defense of the Constituent Assembly.
133. Keep, Debate on Soviet Power, 247. From December 24 to 27, 1917, Lenin had briefly gone to a resort in nearby Finland (Stalin signed a December 27 decree on the nationalization of the Putilov Works “for the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars”: Hoover Institution Archives, Volkogonov papers, container 14). Instead of resting, however, Lenin was busy writing. In any case, Bolshevik deputies of the Constituent Assembly showed up unannounced in Finland and retrieved Lenin.
134. Simultaneously, two congresses were taking place: one of peasant deputies and one of workers and soldiers’ deputies, which merged on January 13, 1918. The Congress of Soviets also reaffirmed “the right of all peoples to self-determination up to complete secession from Russia.” Tret’ii vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov rabochikh, soldatskikh i krest’ianskikh deputatov (Petrograd, 1918), 73.
135. Oldenbourg, Le coup d’etat bolcheviste, 169–70, 173–4. When the congress, the next day, approved the “Decree on Peace,” Lenin had repeated his caveat that “wars cannot end by a refusal to fight, they cannot be ended by one side alone.” Kotel’nikov, Vtoroi vserossiiskii s”ezd sovetov, 62.
136. Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, IV: 285–6; Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 75–6.
137. Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 268–75.
138. Izvestiia, November 10, 1917, translated in Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 242–4; Iroshnikov, Sozdanie, 166–7; DVP SSSR, I: 11–4
139. Warth, The Allies, 168.
140. The surreal quality of the new authority’s relation to the military was captured by Alexander Ilin (b. 1894), known as the “Genevan” (from his pre-revolutionary exile days), who was appointed the secretary to the new war commissariat and got a glimpse of the luxurious offices of the tsarist war ministry on St. Petersburg’s Moika Canal: “silken furniture, silken wallpaper, curtains over the doors and windows, mirrors, carved chandeliers and thick carpets into which one’s feet literally sank.” Ilin and his Bolshevik co-administrators insisted on eating “the same cabbage soup that the soldiers lived on,” to convey the “democratic character” of their authority. At the same time, Ilin recalled how Krylenko took offense when his authority went unacknowledged (“his entire small figure gave forth a real aura of power”). This imperiousness, however, did not bother Ilin, despite the “democratic” cabbage soup diet. “In circumstances in which we were subjected to lying, slander and, in part, refusal to recognize our authority [vlast’],” Ilin noted, “it was very important to maintain a firm line. After all, authority can only be recognized as such if it is convinced of its own competence and by its behavior inspires others with that conviction.” Il’in-Zhenevskii, Bol’sheviki u vlasti; Il’in-Zhenevskii, Bolsheviks in Power.
141. Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 232–42, 264–8; Spiridovich, Istoriia bol’shevizma v Rossii, 406–7; Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, II: 380–401.
142. Novaia zhizn’, December 13, 1917; Russkoe slovo, December 6, 1917; Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 267–8; Masaryk, Making of a State, 163–4. Dukhonin took over as acting supreme commander only on November 3, 1917, seventeen days befo
re his murder.
143. Fischer, Germany’s Aims, 477; Wildman, End of the Russian Imperial Army, II: 400–1; Sovetsko-Germanskie otnosheniia, I: 108; Niessel, Le triomphe des bolscheviks, 187–8.
144. Pravda, November 15, 1917: 1; Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 258–9. See also Izvestiia, December 2, December 3, December 4, December 5, December 6, and December 9, 1917; and Kamenev, Bor’ba za mir. In the event of a “general peace,” the Germans pledged to quit Belgium, northern France, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, thereby seeking to undercut the Allies’ contention that they needed to continue fighting to liberate these territories. But the pledge was insincere. Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 136.
145. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 109, d. 9, l. 23.
146. Buchan, History of the Great War, IV: 135. These divisions had just been brought from the western front to Riga in late 1917. Ludendorff, My War Memoires, II: 34.
147. Freund, Unholy Alliance, 3. Radek retained his Austrian passport until 1918.
148. Ottokar, In the World War [1920], 246; Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 113.
149. Trotsky made the point slightly differently: History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk, 5.
150. Sovetsko-germanskie otnosheniia, I: 194–6.
151. Michael Geyer has persuasively argued that societies that mobilized intensively (the Russian empire, Germany) rather than extensively (France and Britain, which relied on their colonies as well as loans from the United States) suffered the greatest dislocation and social upheaval. Geyer, “The Militarization of Europe,” 65–102.
152. Izvestiia, March 2, 1922 (Ioffe).
153. Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, 82; Trotsky, My Life, 311, 319–20; Trotsky, Lenin, 128.
154. Pavliuckenkov, Krest’ianskii Brest, 22 (citing GARF, f. 130, op. 2, d. 11, l. 20: report by Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, a former tsarist officer who now headed the Red general staff, to the Council of People’s Commissars).
155. Pravda, February 24, 1918: 2–3 (Lenin’s theses, delivered January 7); Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 500–5; PSS, XXXV: 243–51; Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 139. Bolshevik party officials from around the country were in town for an upcoming Congress of Soviets, and Lenin included nearly fifty provincial party chiefs at the Central Committee meeting, hoping to use them as a pressure group. Debo, Revolution and Survival, 72–90.
156. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP (b), 171; The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Central Committee Minutes, 177.
157. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP (b), 173. See also VII ekstrennyi s”ezd RKP (b), mart 1918 goda, xxvi–xxvii; and Krupskaya, Reminiscences, 448.
158. PSS, XXXV: 253–4.
159. Pravda, January 17 and 18, 1918; Sochineniia, IV: 36–7.
160. Price, My Reminiscences, 224–5.
161. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo Komiteta RSDRP (b), 174–80; The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Central Committee Minutes, 185. On January 13, the Central Committees of both the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs had met together, and a majority favored Trotsky’s formula of “end the war, don’t sign a peace” (283).
162. Wargelin, “A High Price for Bread.”
163. Von Kuhlmann, Erinnerungen, 531.
164. As Hoffmann explained, “the difficulties were transitory; at any time we could support the [Rada] with arms and establish it again.” Hoffmann, War Diaries, II: 216.
165. Fedyshyn, Germany’s Drive to the East, 65–86.
166. Fischer, Germany’s Aims.
167. Ioffe, Mirnye peregovory v Brest-Litovske, I: 207–8; Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, 172–3; Hoffmann, War Diaries, II: 218–9; D. G. Fokke, “Na tsene i za kulisami,” 207; Wheeler Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 227–9; Freund, Unholy Alliance, 6; PSS, XXII: 555–8.
168. Trotsky, My Life, 386. “Versatile, cultivated, and elegant, he could be charming in his occasions of good-humor,” one scholar observed of Trotsky. “But in his more usual attitude of contemptuous anger, he was freezing fire.” Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 152.
169. Il’in-Zhenevskii, Bolsheviks in Power, 21–2.
170. Ottokar, In the World War [1919], 328; Hoffmann, War Diaries, II: 219. Austria-Hungary did not even have a border any longer with Russia, given the separate treaty with Ukraine. (Poles left Austrian military ranks and marched into Ukraine to retake “Polish” territory.)
171. Fischer, Germany’s Aims, 501–5; Sovetsko-germanskie otnoshniia, I: 328.
172. Magnes, Russia and Germany, 109–123.
173. Nowak, Die Aufzeichnungen, I: 187 (entry of February 22, 1918).
174. Khalid, “Tashkent 1917,” 279.
175. Chokaeiv, “Turkestan and the Soviet Regime,” 406.
176. Gordienko, Obrazovanie Turkestanskoi ASSR, 309–10.
177. Khalid, Politics of Cultural Reform, 273–4. Using contemporary Turkic-language newspapers, this corrects the version set down by Safarov, Kolonial’naia revoliutsiia, 64.
178. Pobeda oktiabr’skoi revoliutsii, II: 27.
179. Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan, 15–22.
180. Khalid, Politics of Cultural Reform, 277.
181. Chokaiev, “Turkestan and the Soviet Regime,” 408.
182. Chaikan, K istorii Rossiikoi revoliutsii, 133.
183. Alekseenkov, Kokandskaia avtonomiia, 58.
184. Etherton, In the Heart of Asia, 154.
185. PSS, XXXV: 245–54; Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 217–39.
186. The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Central Committee Minutes, 206; Protokoly Tsentral’nogo komiteta RSDRP (b) [1958], 171–2, 199, 202–4, 212–3, 215–7; “Deiatel’nost’ Tsentral’nogo komiteta partii v dokumentakh (sobytiia i fakty”), Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 4: 142–4.
187. Trotsky, My Life, 382–4; Trotsky, Lenin, 106–10. To the 7th Party Congress in March 1918, Lenin divulged of his dealings with Trotsky, “it was agreed between us that we would hold out until the Germans presented an ultimatum, and then we would yield.” PSS, XXXVI: 30; Debo, Revolution and Survival, 80.
188. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo komiteta RSDRP (b), 204; The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Central Committee Minutes, 210–1; VII ekstrennyi s”ezd RKP (b), mart 1918 goda, 197–201; PSS, XXXV: 486–7; Deutscher, Prophet Armed, 383, 390. In favor were Lenin, Stalin, Sverdlov, Zinoviev, Sokolnikov, Smilga, and Trotsky; opposed were Joffe, Lomov, Bukharin, Krestinsky, and Dzierzyn΄ski.
189. Pravda, February 20, 1918.
190. Upton, Finnish Revolution, 62–144.
191. PSS, XXXVI: 10.
192. Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 254.
193. Trotsky, My Life, 333.
194. Trotsky, My Life [1930], 388–9.
195. Protokoly Tsentral’ngo komiteta RSDRP (b), 211–8; Pravda, February 24, 1918; Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, 176–7; Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 255–7; Debo, Revolution and Survival, 142.
196. Protokoly Tsentral’nogo komiteta RSDRP (b), 215; The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Central Committee Minutes, 223; Pravda, February 24, 1918; PSS, XXXV: 369–70, 490; Volkogonov, Stalin: Politicheskii portret, I: 86; Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, 36. The other abstentions were Krestinsky, Dzierz˙ynski, and Joffe. Bukharin voted no.
197. Pravda, February 26, 1918: 3.
198. PSS, XXXV: 381; Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, 172–8.
199. Sokolnikov pronounced “this triumph of the imperialist and the militarist over the international Proletarian Revolution . . . only a temporary and passing one.” Proceedings of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference, 180.
200. Bunyan and Fisher, Bolshevik Revolution, 521–3; Wheeler-Bennett, Forgot
ten Peace, 308.
201. Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 275–6. Lenin’s refusal to discuss the consequences of a revolution before the Bolsheviks had seized power is analyzed in Kingston-Mann, “Lenin and the Beginnings of Marxist Peasant Revolution.”
202. Hahlweg, Diktatfrieden, 51; Novaia zhizn’, April 30, 1918: 2 (S. Zagorsky).
203. Pipes, Russian Revolution, 595–7.
204. Dohan, “Soviet Foreign Trade in the NEP Economy,” 218.
205. It has been argued that Lenin’s German orientation, by cleaving off Bolshevik allies on the left such as the Left SRs, proved conducive to dictatorship, but first, the German orientation almost destroyed the Bolsheviks. Wheeler-Bennett, Forgotten Peace, 345–8; Mawdsley, Russian Civil War, 39–44.
206. VII ekstrennyi s”ezd RKP (b), mart 1918 goda, 11–3, 127–9, 133, 176–7; PSS, XXXVI: 1-77. Kin and Sorin, Sed'moi s'ezd.
207. Petrograd industries would also be evacuated to the interior. Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, V: 23, 30–1; Rabochii put’, October 6, 1916; Pethybridge, Spread of the Russian Revolution, 188; Colton, Moscow, 96. In Kerensky’s plan, the Petrograd Soviet and its central executive committee and soviet would have had to fend for themselves being, technically, “private” and not governmental entities. Miliukov, “From Nicholas II to Stalin.”
208. On October 9, when the Provisional Government announced it would deploy up to half the immense capital garrison (nearly 200,000) at the city’s approaches, to defend it, this provoked additional charges of wanting to snuff out the revolution by dispatching the (radicalized) garrison troops to the front. Avdeev, Revoliutsiia 1917 goda, V: 52.
209. “Iz perepiski E. D. Stasovoi.”
210. Bonch-Bruevich later claimed that the ruminations over relocating to Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga had been an elaborate charade played out with the SR-dominated railway union (Vikzhel). Bonch-Bruevich, Pereezd Sovetskogo pravitel’stva. See also Malinovskii, “K pereezdu TsK RKP (b).” Ryazanov made an analogy to the Communards of Paris in 1871, who went down with the city.
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