Any sense of relief the Bolsheviks may have received from this agreement vanished the next day when they learned that the union, supported by the socialist parties, had raised its stakes and now demanded that the Bolsheviks remove themselves from the government altogether. The Bolshevik Central Committee, still minus Lenin and Trotsky, spent most of the day discussing this demand. It did so in a highly charged atmosphere, for the pro-Kerensky forces under Ataman Krasnov were expected to break into the city at any moment. Seeking to salvage something, Kamenev proposed a compromise: Lenin would resign the chairmanship of the Sovnarkom in favor of the SR leader Victor Chernov, and the Bolsheviks would accept secondary portfolios in a coalition government dominated by SRs and Mensheviks.26
It is difficult to tell what would have become of these concessions were it not that late that evening news arrived that Krasnov’s forces had been beaten back.
The military threat lifted, Lenin and Trotsky now turned their attention to the catastrophic political situation created by the “capitulationist” policy of the Central Committee. When the committee reconvened on the evening of November 1, Lenin exploded with uncontrolled fury.27 “Kamenev’s policy,” he demanded, “must be stopped at once.” The committee should have carried out negotiations with the union as “diplomatic camouflage for military action”—that is, presumably not in good faith, but only to secure its assistance against Kerensky’s troops. The majority of the Central Committee was unmoved: Rykov ventured the opinion that the Bolsheviks would not be able to keep power. A vote was taken: ten members favored continuing the talks with the other socialist parties about a coalition government, and only three sided with Lenin (Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and probably Dzerzhinskii). Even Sverdlov opposed Lenin.
Lenin faced a humiliating defeat: his comrades were prepared to throw away the fruits of the October victory, and instead of establishing a “proletarian dictatorship,” would share power as minor partners with “petty bourgeois” parties. He was saved by Trotsky, who intervened with a clever compromise. Trotsky began with a tirade against concessions:
We are told we are incapable of constructive work. But if this is the case, then we should simply turn power over to those who had been right in fighting us. In fact, we have already accomplished a great deal. It is impossible, we are told, to sit on bayonets. But without bayonets one cannot manage either.… This whole petty bourgeois scum which now is unable to side with either this or that side, once it learns that our authority is strong, will come over to us, [the union] included.… The petty bourgeois mass is looking for a force to which to submit.
28
As Alexandra liked to remind Nicholas: “Russia loves to feel the whip.”
Trotsky proposed a formula to gain time: negotiations over a coalition cabinet should continue with the Left SRs, the only party that accepted the October coup, but they should cease with the other socialist parties if no agreement was reached after one more attempt. This did not seem to be an unreasonable way out of the impasse and the proposal carried.
Lenin, determined to put an end to defeatism in his ranks, returned to the fray the next day with the demand that the Central Committee condemn the “opposition.” It was a strange demand, given that it was he who opposed the will of the majority. In the debates that ensued, he managed to split his rivals. A resolution condemning them won with a vote of 10–5. As a result, the five who stood up against Lenin to the end—Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, Miliutin, and Nogin—resigned. On November 4, Izvestiia carried a letter in which they explained their action:
On November 1, the Central Committee … adopted a resolution which, in effect, rejected agreement with [other] parties in the Soviet for the purpose of forming a socialist Soviet Government.… We regard the formation of such a government essential to the prevention of further bloodshed.… The dominant group in the Central Committee has undertaken a number of acts which demonstrate clearly its firm determination not to allow the formation of a government made up of soviet parties and insists on a purely Bolshevik Government, no matter what the consequences and how many victims the workers and soldiers will have to sacrifice. We cannot assume responsibility for this fatal policy of the Central Committee, pursued in opposition to the will of the vast part of the proletariat and the troops.… On these grounds, we resign from the Central Committee so as to have the right to defend our point of view openly before the mass of workers and soldiers and to appeal to them to support our slogan: “Long live the government of soviet parties!”
29
Two days later, Kamenev resigned as chairman of the CEC; four People’s Commissars (out of eleven) did likewise: Nogin (Trade and Industry), Rykov (Interior), Miliutin (Agriculture), and Teodorovich (Supply). Shliapnikov, the Commissar for Labor, signed the letter but stayed on the job. Several Bolshevik lower-level commissars resigned as well. “We take the position,” the commissars’ letter read:
that it is necessary to form a socialist government of all the soviet parties. We believe that only the formation of such a government would make it possible to consolidate the results of the heroic struggle of the working class and the revolutionary army in the days of October–November. We believe that there is only one alternative to this: the maintenance of an exclusively Bolshevik Government by means of political terror. This is the path taken by the Council of People’s Commissars. We cannot and do not want to go this way. We see that this leads to the removal of mass proletarian organizations from the management of political life, to the establishment of an irresponsible regime, and to the destruction of the Revolution and the country. We cannot bear responsibility for this policy and therefore tender to the CEC our resignations as People’s Commissars.
30
Lenin lost no sleep over these protests and resignations, confident that the straying sheep would soon return to the fold, as indeed they did. Where else could they go? The socialist parties ostracized them; the liberals, should they take power, would put them in jail; while the politicians of the right would hang them. Their very physical survival depended on Lenin’s success.
The decisions adopted by the Bolshevik Central Committee signified that the Bolsheviks would share power only with parties that were prepared to accept a role of junior partner and rubber-stamp Bolshevik resolutions. Except for four months (December 1917–March 1918) when the Bolsheviks allowed a few Left SRs into their cabinet, the so-called Soviet Government never reflected the composition of the soviets: it was and remained a Bolshevik Government in soviet disguise.
Lenin had now managed to beat off the claims for a share of power by rival socialist parties, but he still had to cope with the insistence of the CEC that it was the soviet parliament to which his commissars owed responsibility.
The CEC which the Bolsheviks had handpicked in October thought of itself as a socialist Duma empowered to monitor the government’s actions, appoint the cabinet, and legislate.* The day after the coup, it proceeded to work out its statutes, providing for an elaborate structure of plenums, presidia, and commissions of all sorts. Lenin thought such parliamentary pretensions ridiculous. From the first day he ignored the CEC whether in appointing officials or in issuing decrees. This can be illustrated by the casual manner in which he elected the CEC’s new chairman. He decided that Sverdlov would be the best man to replace Kamenev. He had no reason to doubt that the CEC would approve his choice, but since he could not be absolutely certain, he bypassed it. He summoned Sverdlov: “Iakov Mikhailovich,” he said, “I would like you to become the chairman of the CEC: what do you say?” Apparently, Sverdlov said yes, for Lenin promised that after the Central Committee had approved the choice, he would be “carefully” voted in by the CEC’s Bolshevik majority. Lenin instructed him to count heads and make certain that the entire Bolshevik faction turned up for the vote.31 All went as planned, and on November 8, Sverdlov was “elected” by a vote of 19–14.* In this post, which he held until his death in March 1919, Sverdlov ensured that the CEC ratified all party decisions after per
functory discussion.
Lenin similarly ignored the CEC in choosing replacements for the commissars who had resigned from the cabinet: these he handpicked on November 8–11 after casual consultation with associates but without asking the CEC’s approval.
He still faced the critical issue of the legislative authority of the CEC, its right to approve or veto government decrees.
In the first two weeks of the new regime, Chairman Kamenev had managed to insulate the Sovnarkom from the CEC by convoking it on short notice and failing to provide it beforehand with an agenda. During this brief interlude, the Sovnarkom legislated without bothering to obtain the CEC’s approval. Indeed, government procedures at the time were so lax that some Bolsheviks who were not even members of the cabinet issued decrees on their own initiative without informing the Sovnarkom, let alone the Soviet Executive. Two such decrees brought about a constitutional crisis. The first was the Decree on the Press, issued on October 27, the initial day of new government. It bore the signature of Lenin, although it had been drafted by Lunacharskii, almost certainly with Lenin’s encouragement and approval.† This remarkable document asserted that the “counterrevolutionary press”—a term which it did not define, but which obviously applied to all papers that did not acknowledge the legitimacy of the October coup—was causing harm, for which reason “temporary and emergency measures had to be taken to stop the torrent of filth and slander.” Newspapers that agitated against the new authority were to be closed. “As soon as the new order has been firmly established,” the decree went on, “all administrative measures affecting the press will be lifted [and] the press will be granted full freedom …”
The country had grown accustomed since February 1917 to violence against newspapers and printing plants. First, the “reactionary” press was attacked and closed; later, in July, the same fate befell Bolshevik organs. Once in power, the Bolsheviks expanded and formalized such practices. On October 26, the Military-Revolutionary Committee carried out pogroms of the oppositional press. It closed the uncompromisingly anti-Bolshevik Nashe obschee delo and arrested Vladimir Burtsev, its editor. It also suppressed the Menshevik Den’ the Kadet Rech’ the right-wing Novoe vremia, and the right-of-center Birzhevye vedomosti. The printing plants of Den’ and Rech’ were confiscated and turned over to Bolshevik journalists.32 Most of the suppressed dailies promptly reappeared under different names.
The Decree on the Press went much further: if enforced, it would have eliminated in Russia the independent press whose origins went back to the reign of Catherine II. The outrage was universal. In Moscow, the Bolshevik controlled Military-Revolutionary Committee went so far as to overrule it, declaring on November 21 that the emergency was over and the press once again could enjoy full freedom of expression.33 In the CEC, the Bolshevik Iurii Larin denounced the decree and called for its revocation.34 On November 26, 1917, the Union of Writers issued a one-time newspaper, Gazeta-Protest, in which some of Russia’s leading writers expressed anger at this unprecedented attempt to stifle freedom of expression. Vladimir Korolenko wrote that as he read Lenin’s ukaz “blood rushed to his face from shame and indignation”:
Who, by what right, has deprived me, as reader and member of the [Poltava] community, of the opportunity to learn what is happening in the capital city during these tragic moments? And who presumes to prevent me, as a writer, of the opportunity to express freely to my fellow citizens my views on these events without the censor’s imprimatur?
35
Anticipating that this and similar measures, especially those concerning the economy, would arouse strong opposition in the Congress of Soviets and the CEC, the Bolsheviks issued yet another law bearing on the question of relations between government and soviets. Called “Concerning the Procedure for the Ratification and Promulgation of Laws,” the decree claimed for the Sovnarkom the right to act in a legislative capacity: the CEC’s power was limited to ratifying or abrogating decrees after they had gone into effect. This document, which completely subverted the conditions under which the Congress of Soviets only a few days before had authorized the Bolsheviks to form a government, bore Lenin’s signature. But it is claimed in the recollections of Iurii Larin, a Menshevik who in September had gone over to Lenin and become his most influential economic adviser, that it was he who had drafted and issued it on his own authority without Lenin’s knowledge: Lenin is said to have learned of this law only when he read it in the official Gazette.36
The Larin-Lenin decree claimed to have validity only until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. It declared that until then laws would be drafted and promulgated by the Provisional Government of Workers and Peasants (Sovnarkom). The Central Executive Committee retained the right to “suspend, change, or annul” such laws retroactively.* With this decree, the Bolsheviks claimed the right to legislate by the equivalent of Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws of 1906.
This simplified procedure, which rid the government of parliamentary “obstructionism,” would have warmed the heart of Goremykin and any other conservative bureaucrat of the old regime, but it was not what the socialists had expected of the “Soviet” Government. The CEC followed these developments with growing alarm; it protested the Sovnarkom’s infringement of its authority through uncontrolled “bossing” (khoziaistvovanie) and the promulgation of decrees in the CEC’s name but without its approval.37
The issue came to a head at a meeting of November 4 which decided the fate of “soviet democracy.” Lenin and Trotsky were invited to explain themselves, much as before the Revolution Imperial ministers had been subject to Duma “interpellations” about the legality of their actions. The Left SRs wanted to know why the government was repeatedly violating the will of the Second Congress of Soviets, which had made the government responsible to the Central Executive Committee. They insisted that the government cease ruling by decree.38
Lenin regarded this as “bourgeois formalism.” He had long believed that the Communist regime had to combine both legislative and executive powers.39 As was his wont when confronted with questions he could not or would not answer, he immediately went on the offensive, filling the air with countercharges. The Soviet Government could not be bound by “formalities.” Kerensky’s inactivity had proven fatal. Those who questioned his actions were “apologists of parliamentary obstructionism.” Bolshevik power rested on the “confidence of the broad masses.”40 None of this explained why he was violating the terms under which he had assumed office a mere week before. Trotsky gave a slightly more substantive response. The Soviet parliament (meaning the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee), unlike the “bourgeois” one, had no antagonistic classes and therefore no need for the “conventional parliamentary machinery.” The implication of the argument was that where there were no class differences there could be no differences of opinion: from which it followed that differences of opinion signified ipso facto “counterrevolution.” The government and the “masses,” Trotsky went on, were linked not by formal institutions and procedures but by a “vital and direct bond.” Anticipating Mussolini, who would use analogous arguments to justify fascist practices, he said: “It may be true that our decrees are not smooth … but the right of vital creativity transcends formal perfection.”41
Lenin’s and Trotsky’s irrelevancies and inconsistencies failed to persuade the majority of the CEC; even some Bolsheviks felt uneasy. The Left SRs responded sharply. V. A. Karelin said:
I protest the abuse of the term “bourgeois.” Accountability and strict order in detail are mandatory not only for a bourgeois government. Let us not play on words and cover up our mistakes and blunders with a separate, odious word. Proletarian government, which in its is essence popular, must also allow controls over itself. After all, the workers taking over an enterprise does not lead to the abolition of bookkeeping and accounting. This hasty cooking of decrees, which not only frequently abound in juridical omissions but are often illiterate, leads to still greater confusion of the situation, e
specially in the provinces, where they are accustomed to accepting a law in the form in which it is given from above.
42
Another Left SR, P. P. Proshian, described the Bolshevik Press Decree as a “clear and determined expression of a system of political terror and incitement to civil war.”43
The Bolsheviks readily won the vote on the Press Decree: a motion to abrogate the decree, introduced by Larin, went down 34–24, with one abstention.* Despite this endorsement, the Bolsheviks were unable to silence the press until August 1918, when they eliminated in one fell swoop all independent newspapers and periodicals. Until then, Soviet Russia had a surprising variety of newspapers and journals, including those of a liberal and even conservative orientation: heavily fined and harassed in other ways, they somehow managed to stay alive.
There still remained the critical issue of the Sovnarkom’s responsibility to the CEC. On this matter, the Bolshevik Government, for the first and last time, submitted itself to a vote of confidence. It came on a motion of the Left SR V. B. Spiro: “The Central Executive Committee, having heard the explanations offered by the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, finds them unsatisfactory.” The Bolshevik M. S. Uritskii responded with a counter-motion expressing confidence in Lenin’s government:
In regard to the interpellation, the Central Executive Committee determines: 1. The Soviet parliament of the working masses can have nothing in common in its procedures with the bourgeois parliament, in which are represented various classes with antagonistic interests and where the representatives of the ruling class transform rules and instructions into weapons of legislative obstruction;
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