The Russian Revolution

by Richard Pipes

  Having heard from emissaries sent by Kolpino what had happened there, the major Petrograd factories suspended work. The Obukhov workers passed a resolution condemning the government and demanding an end to the “rule of commissars” (komissaroderzhavie). Zinoviev, the boss of Petrograd (the government having in March moved to Moscow), put in an appearance at Putilov. “I have heard,” he told the workers, “of alleged resolutions having been adopted here charging the Soviet Government with pursuing incorrect policies. But one can change the Soviet Government at any time!” At these words the audience broke into an uproar: “It’s a lie!” A Putilov worker named Izmailov accused the Bolsheviks of pretending to speak for the Russian workers while humiliating them in the eyes of the whole civilized world.145 A gathering at the Arsenal approved 1,500–2 with 11 abstentions a motion to reconvene the Constituent Assembly.146

  The Bolsheviks still prudently kept in the background. But to prevent these inflammatory resolutions from spreading, they shut down, permanently or temporarily, a number of opposition newspapers, four of them in Moscow. The Kadet Nash vek, which reported extensively on these events, was suspended from May 10 to June 16.

  Since they planned to hold the Fifth Congress of Soviets early in July (the Fourth Congress having been held in March to ratify the peace treaty with Germany), the Bolsheviks had to hold elections to the soviets. These took place in May and June. The outcome exceeded their worst expectations: had they any respect for the wishes of the working class, they would have given up power. In town after town, Bolshevik candidates were routed by Mensheviks and SRs: “In all provincial capitals of European Russia where elections were held on which there are data, the Mensheviks and SRs won the majorities in the city soviets in the spring of 1918.”147 In the voting for the Moscow Soviet the Bolsheviks emerged with a pseudo-majority only by means of outright manipulation of the franchise and other forms of electoral fraud. Observers predicted that in the forthcoming elections to the Petrograd Soviet the Bolsheviks would find themselves in a minority as well148 and Zinoviev would lose its chairmanship. The Bolsheviks must have shared this pessimistic assessment, for they postponed the elections to the Petrograd Soviet to the last possible moment, the end of June.

  These stunning developments meant not so much an endorsement of the Mensheviks and SRs as a rejection of the Bolsheviks. The electors who wanted to turn the ruling party out of power had no alternative but to vote for the socialist parties since they alone were permitted to put up opposition candidates. How they would have voted had they been given a full choice of parties cannot, of course, be determined.

  The Bolsheviks now had an opportunity to practice the principle of “recall,” which Lenin had not long before described as “an essential condition of democracy,” by withdrawing their deputies from the soviets and replacing them with Mensheviks and SRs. But they chose to manipulate the results, by using the Mandate Commissions, to declare the elections unlawful.

  To distract the workers, the authorities had resorted to class hatred, inciting them this time against the “rural bourgeoisie.” On May 20, the Sovnarkom issued a decree ordering the formation of “food supply detachments” (prodovol’stvennye otriady), made up of armed workers, which were to march on the villages and extract food from “kulaks.” By this measure (it will be described in greater detail in Chapter 16) the authorities hoped to deflect the workers’ anger over food shortages from themselves to the peasants, and, at the same time, gain a foothold in the countryside, still solidly under SR control.

  Petrograd workers were not taken in by this diversion. Their plenipotentiaries on May 24 rejected the idea of food supply detachments on the grounds that it would cause a “deep chasm” between workers and peasants. Some speakers demanded that workers who joined such detachments be “expelled” from the ranks of the proletariat.149

  On May 28, the excitement among Petrograd workers rose to a still higher pitch when the workers of Putilov demanded an end to the state’s grain monopoly, guarantees of free speech, the right to form independent trade unions, and fresh elections to the soviets. Protest meetings which passed similar resolutions took place in Moscow and many provincial towns, including Tula, Nizhnii Novgorod, Orel, and Tver.

  Zinoviev tried to calm the storm with economic concessions. He apparently persuaded Moscow to allocate to Petrograd additional food shipments, for on May 30 he was able to announce that the daily bread ration of workers would be raised to eight ounces. Such gestures failed to achieve their purpose. On June 1, the meeting of plenipotentiaries resolved to call for a city-wide political strike:

  Having heard the report of the representatives of factories and plants of Petrograd concerning the mood and demands of the worker masses, the Council of Plenipotentiaries notes with gratification that the withdrawal of the mass of workers from the government that falsely calls itself a government of workers is proceeding apace. The Council of Plenipotentiaries welcomes the readiness of workers to follow its appeal for a political strike. The Council of Plenipotentiaries calls on the workers of Petrograd vigorously to prepare the worker masses for a political strike against the current regime, which, in the name of the worker class, executes workers, throws them into prison, strangles freedom of speech, of press, of trade unions, [and] of strikes, which has strangled the popular representative body. This strike will have as its slogan the transfer of authority to the Constituent Assembly, the restoration of the organs of local self-government, the struggle for the integrity and independence of the Russian Republic.

  150

  This, of course, was what the Mensheviks had been waiting for: workers, disenchanted with Bolsheviks, striking for democracy. Initially they did not favor the plenipotentiary movement because its leaders, suspicious of politicians, wanted independence from political parties. But by April they were sufficiently impressed to throw support behind the movement: on May 16, the Menshevik Central Committee called for the convocation of a nationwide conference of workers’ representatives.* 151 The SRs followed suit.

  If the situation were reversed, with the socialists in power and the Bolsheviks in opposition, the Bolsheviks undoubtedly would have encouraged worker discontent and done all they could to topple the government. But the Mensheviks and their socialist allies had strong inhibitions against such behavior. They rejected the Bolshevik dictatorship and yet felt beholden to it. The Menshevik Novaia zhizn’, while unsparing in its criticism, made its readers understand that they had a vital interest in the survival of Bolshevism. This thesis it had expressed the day after the Bolshevik power seizure:

  It is essential, above all, to take into account the tragic fact that any violent liquidation of the Bolshevik coup will, at the same time, result inevitably in the liquidation of all the conquests of the Russian Revolution.

  152

  After the Bolsheviks had disposed of the Constituent Assembly, the Menshevik organ lamented:

  We did not belong and do not belong to the admirers of the Bolshevik regime, and have always predicted the bankruptcy of its foreign and domestic policies. But neither have we forgotten nor do we forget for an instant that the fate of our revolution is closely tied to that of the Bolshevik movement. The Bolshevik movement represents a perverted, degenerate revolutionary striving of the broad popular masses …

  153

  Such an attitude not only paralyzed the Mensheviks’ will to act but made them into allies of the Bolsheviks, in that instead of fanning the flames of popular discontent, they helped put them out.*

  When the Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries reassembled on June 3, the Menshevik and SR intellectuals opposed the idea of a political strike, on the familiar grounds that it would play into the hands of the class enemy. They persuaded the workers’ representatives to reconsider their decision and, instead of striking, send a delegation to Moscow to explore the possibility of founding a similar organization there.

  On June 7, a delegate from Petrograd addressed a gathering of Moscow factory representatives; he ac
cused the Bolshevik Government of pursuing anti-labor and counterrevolutionary policies. Such talk had not been heard in Russia since October. The Cheka viewed the matter very seriously, for Moscow was now the country’s capital and unrest there was more dangerous than in “Red Petrograd.” Security agents seized the Petrograd delegate when he finished speaking, but were forced to release him under pressure from fellow workers. It transpired that Moscow labor, although sympathetic, was not yet ready to form its own Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries.154 This may be explainable by the fact that the labor force in Moscow and surrounding areas had lower skills and weaker traditions of trade unionism than the workers in Petrograd.

  The process of worker disengagement from the soviets, begun in Petrograd, spread to the rest of the country. In many cities (Moscow was soon among them) where the local soviets were prevented from holding elections or where the elections had been disqualified, workers formed “workers’ councils,” “workers’ conferences,” or “assemblies of workers’ plenipotentiaries” free of government control and unaffiliated with any political party.

  Faced with a rising tide of discontent, the Bolsheviks struck back. In Moscow on June 13, they took into custody fifty-six individuals affiliated with the plenipotentiary movement, all but six or seven of them workers.155 On June 16, they announced the convocation in two weeks of the Fifth Congress of Soviets, and in this connection instructed all soviets to hold new elections once again. Since such elections would certainly have again yielded Menshevik and SR majorities and placed the government in the position of an embattled minority at the Congress, Moscow moved to disqualify its rivals by ordering the expulsion of SRs and Mensheviks from all the soviets as well as from the CEC.156 At the caucus of the Bolshevik faction of the CEC, L. S. Sosnovskii justified the decree with the argument that the Mensheviks and SRs would overthrow the Bolsheviks just as the Bolsheviks had toppled the Provisional Government.* The only choice offered the voters, therefore, was among official Bolshevik candidates, Left SRs, and a broad category of candidates without party affiliation known as “Bolshevik sympathizers.”

  This step marked the end of independent political parties in Russia. The monarchist parties—Octobrists, Union of the Russian People, Nationalists—had dissolved in the course of 1917 and no longer existed as organized bodies. The outlawed Kadets either shifted their activities to the borderlands, where they were beyond the reach of the Cheka, but also out of touch with the Russian population, or else went underground, where they formed an anti-Bolshevik coalition called the National Center.157 The June 16 decree did not explicitly outlaw the Mensheviks and SRs but it did render them politically impotent. Although, as a reward for their support against the White armies, the two socialist parties were later reinstated and allowed to rejoin the soviets in limited numbers, this was a temporary expedient. Essentially, Russia now became a one-party state in which organizations other than the Bolshevik Party were forbidden to engage in political activity.

  On June 16, the day the Bolsheviks announced the Fifth Congress of Soviets, which neither the Mensheviks nor the SRs would attend, the Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries called for the convocation of an All-Russian Conference of Workers.158 This body was to discuss and solve the most urgent problems facing the nation: the food situation, unemployment, the breakdown of law, and workers’ organizations.

  On June 20, the head of the Petrograd Cheka, V. Volodarskii, was assassinated. In its search for the killer, the Cheka detained some workers, which set off protest meetings in factories. The Bolsheviks occupied the Neva worker district with troops and imposed martial law. The workers of Obukhov, the most troublesome factory, were locked out.159

  It was in this highly charged atmosphere that elections to the Soviet took place in Petrograd. During the electoral campaign, Zinoviev was booed and prevented from speaking at Putilov and Obukhov. In factory after factory, workers, ignoring the decree prohibiting the two parties from participating in the soviets, gave majorities to Mensheviks and SRs. Obukhov chose 5 SRs, 3 partyless, and 1 Bolshevik. At Semiannikov, the SRs won 64 percent of the vote, the Mensheviks 10 percent, and the Bolshevik–Left SR bloc 26 percent. Similar results were obtained in other establishments.160

  The Bolsheviks refused to be bound by these results. They wanted majorities and obtained them, usually by tampering with the franchise: some Bolsheviks were given as many as five votes.* On July 2, the results of the “elections” were announced. Of the 650 newly chosen deputies to the Petrograd Soviet, 610 were to be Bolsheviks and Left SRs; 40 seats were allotted to the SRs and Mensheviks, whom the official organs denounced as “Judases.”† This rump Petrograd Soviet voted to dissolve the Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries: a delegate from the council who sought to address the gathering was prevented from speaking and physically assaulted.

  The Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries sat in almost daily session. On June 26, it voted unanimously to call for a one-day political strike on July 2, under the slogans “Down with the Death Penalty,” “Down with Executions and the Civil War,” “Long Live the Freedom to Strike.”161 SR and Menshevik intellectuals again came out against the strike.162

  The Bolshevik authorities posted placards all over the city which described the organizers of the strike as hirelings of White Guardists and threatened to turn all strikers over to Revolutionary Tribunals.163 For good measure they set up machine gun posts at key points in the city.

  Sympathetic reporters described the workers as vacillating: the Kadet Nash vek wrote on June 22 that they were anti-Soviet but confused. The difficult domestic and international situation, food shortages, and the absence of clear solutions induced in them “an extreme imbalance, a depression of sorts, and even perplexity.”

  The events of July 2 confirmed this assessment. The first political strike in Russia since the fall of tsarism sputtered and went out. The workers, discouraged by socialist intellectuals, intimidated by the Bolshevik show of force, uncertain of their strength and purpose, lost heart. The organizers estimated that between 18,000 and 20,000 workers obeyed the call to strike, which was no more than one-seventh of Petrograd’s actual labor force. Obkuhov, Maxwell, and Pahl struck, but most of the other plants, Putilov included, did not.

  This result sealed the fate of independent workers’ organizations in Russia. Before long, the Cheka closed down the Council of Workers’ Plenipotentiaries in Petrograd along with its provincial branches, sending the most outspoken leaders to prison.

  Thus ended the autonomy of the soviets, the right of workers to their own representation, and what was still left of the multiparty system. These measures, enacted in June and early July 1918, completed the formation in Russia of a one-party dictatorship.

  *This device was surprisingly successful with foreigners. In the 1920s Communist Russia was widely perceived by foreign socialists and liberals as a democratic government of a new, “soviet” type. Early visitors’ accounts rarely mentioned the Communist Party and its dominant role, so effectively was it concealed.

  †Hitler, who fashioned the Nationalist-Socialist Party closely on the Bolshevik and Fascist models, told Hermann Rauschning that the term “party” was really a misnomer for his organization. He preferred it to be called “an order”: Rauschning, Hitler Speaks (London, 1939), 198, 243.

  *B. Eltsin in VS, No. 6/7 (May 1919), 9–10. The author claims that these institutions, created on orders of the Central Committee and the government, initiated the process of the “gathering of the Russian lands,” a term traditionally applied to early modern Moscow.

  *These tendencies were exacerbated by the government’s refusal to fund provincial soviets. In February 1918, Petrograd responded to the requests from provincial soviets for money by telling them that they should obtain it by “mercilessly” taxing the propertied classes: PR, No. 3/38 (1925), 161–62. This order led local authorities to levy arbitrary “contributions” on the “bourgeoisie” in their area.

  *W. Pietsch, Revolution und Staat
(Köln, 1969), 63. The old CEC, disbanded by the Bolsheviks, continued to meet, sometimes in the open, sometimes clandestinely, until the end of December 1917: Revoliutsiia, III, 90–91.

  *The Left SRs on this occasion voted against him: Revoliutsiia, VI, 99.

  † Dekrety, I, 24–25. Lunacharskii is credited with its authorship by Iurii Larin in NKh, No. 11 (1918), 16–17.

  * Dekrety, I, 29–30. The date when the decree was issued cannot be established: it appeared in the Bolshevik press on October 31 and November 1, 1917.

  *A. L. Fraiman, Forpost sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Leningrad, 1969), 169–70. The Bolsheviks took the precaution of increasing their representation on the CEC with five reliable members (Revoliutsiia, VI, 72).

  *In December 1919, the few powers still nominally vested in the CEC were transferred to its chairman, who thereby became “head of state.” CEC meetings, which originally had been intended to be continuous, took place ever less frequently: in 1921, the CEC met only three times. See E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, I (New York, 1951), 220–30.

  † “kak pravitel’stvo”: L. Trotskii, O Lenine (Moscow, 1924), 102. The English translator distorted this passage to read that Lenin “acted as a government should”: L. Trotsky, Lenin (New York, 1971), 121.

  ‡As we shall note below, there were exceptions to this rule.