Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  THE BOLSHEVIKS COME TO POWER

  Following the ill-fated July uprising, Lenin, alienated by moderate socialist attacks on the Bolsheviks and by their support of the Provisional Government and dismissive of the soviets’ revolutionary potential, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the party leadership to abandon its emphasis on transfer of power to the soviets and shift its strategy to a unilateral seizure of power. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the Kornilov affair, during which Lenin remained in hiding, he briefly reconsidered this position and allowed for a peaceful transition to soviet power. However, this moderation was fleeting. Isolated from day-to-day developments and decision making in the Russian capital, and evidently influenced primarily by clear signs of deepening social unrest at home and abroad, at the end of September (mid-September O.S.) Lenin decided that the time had come for another revolution in Russia: a socialist revolution that would serve as the catalyst for popular rebellions in other European countries. In two emphatic letters to Bolshevik committees in Petrograd written from a hideout in Finland, he now demanded that the party organize an armed uprising “without losing a single moment.”

  These letters were received in Petrograd at a time when prospects for peaceful creation of an exclusively socialist government suddenly brightened. After passage by the Petrograd Soviet of a momentous Bolshevik resolution to this effect proposed by Kamenev, the Bolsheviks won majority control of that key body. Trotsky became its chairman. Around the same time, the Bolsheviks also gained control of the Moscow Soviet. Moreover, the Bolshevik leadership was just then focused on trying

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  to persuade the Democratic State Conference, a national conference of “democratic” organizations convened to reconsider the government question, to abjure further coalition with the Cadets and to establish exclusively socialist rule. A hastily convened secret emergency meeting of the party Central Committee unceremoniously rejected Lenin’s directives within hours of their receipt. For the Bolsheviks, this was just as well. Not long after the October Revolution, Lenin himself acknowledged this. The party was saved from likely disaster by the stubborn resistance of national and lower-level Bolsheviks on the spot who, like Kamenev, were primarily concerned with building the broadest possible support for the formation of an exclusively socialist government or were skeptical of Lenin’s strategy of mobilizing the masses behind an “immediate bayonet charge” independent of the soviets.

  In part as a consequence of their continuing interaction with workers, soldiers, and sailors, these leaders on the scene possessed a more realistic appreciation than Lenin of the limits of the party’s influence and authority among the Petrograd lower classes, as well as of their allegiance to soviets as legitimate democratic organs in which all genuinely revolutionary groups would work to fulfill the revolution. They were forced to recognize that by appearing to usurp the prerogatives of the soviets they risked losing a good deal of their hard-won popular support and suffering a defeat as great as, if not greater than, the one they had suffered in July. Therefore, after hopes that the Democratic State Council would initiate fundamental political change were dashed, they reoriented their tactics toward the formation of an exclusively socialist government at another All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which at the insistence of leftist delegates to the Democratic State Conference was scheduled for early November (late October O.S.). At the same time, the Bolshevik Central Committee initiated steps to convene an emergency party congress just prior to the start of the soviet congress. This was to be the forum in which the party’s revolutionary tactics, and the closely related question of the nature and makeup of a future government, were to be decided.

  Meanwhile, Lenin had moved to the Petrograd suburbs and intensified pressure for immediate revolutionary action. As a result, on October 23 (October 10 O.S.), the Bolshevik Central Committee, with Lenin in attendance, resolved to make the seizure of power “the order of the day.” However, in the days immediately following, it became clear that most Petrograd workers and soldiers would not participate in a unilateral call to arms against the Provisional Government by the Bolsheviks prior to the start of the national Congress of Soviets, scheduled to open on November 7 (October 25 O.S.). Kamenev, the leader of party moderates, was so alarmed by the possibility that the party would act precipitously that he virtually disclosed the Central Committee’s decision in Novaia zhizn (New Life), the Left Menshevik newspaper edited by the writer Maxim Gorky.

  Consequently, with considerable wavering caused largely by pressure for bolder direct action from Lenin, the Bolshevik leadership in Petrograd pursued a strategy based on the following general principles: (1) that the soviets (because of their stature in the eyes of workers and soldiers), and not party groups, should be employed for the overthrow of the Provisional Government; (2) that for the broadest support, any attack on the government should be masked as a defensive operation on behalf of the soviet; (3) that action should therefore be delayed until a suitable excuse for giving battle presented itself; (4) that to undercut potential resistance and to maximize the possibility of success, every opportunity should be utilized to subvert the authority of the Provisional Government peacefully; and (5) that the formal removal of the existing government should be linked with and legitimized by the decisions of the Second Congress of Soviets. At the time, Lenin mocked this approach. However, considering the development of the revolution to that point, as well as the views of a majority of leading Bolsheviks around the country, it appeared as a natural, realistic response to the prevailing correlation of forces and popular mood.

  Between November 3 and 6 (October 21-24 O.S.), a majority of Bolshevik leaders staunchly resisted immediate revolutionary action in favor of preparing for a decisive struggle against the Provisional Government at the congress. Among other things, in the party’s press and at huge public rallies they attacked the policies of the Provisional Government and reinforced popular support for the removal of the Provisional Government by the Congress of Soviets. Moreover, they reached out to the Menshevik-Internationalists and Left SRs. Simultaneously, using as an excuse the Provisional Government’s announced intention of transferring the bulk of the Petrograd garrison to the front, and cloaking every move as a defensive measure against the counterrevolution, they utilized the Bolshevik1092

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  Red Guards marching through the streets of Moscow in 1917. © CORBIS dominated Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet (MRC), established to monitor the government’s troop dispositions, to take control of most Petrograd-based military units. Weapons and ammunition from the city’s main arsenals were distributed to supporters. Although the MRC did not cross the boundary between moves that could be justified as defensive and moves that might infringe on the prerogatives of the congress, for practical purposes the Provisional Government was disarmed without a shot being fired.

  In response, early on the morning of November 6 (October 24 O.S.), only hours before the scheduled opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, a majority of which was poised to vote in favor of forming an exclusively socialist, Soviet government, Kerensky took steps to suppress the left. Orders were issued for the rearrest of leading Bolsheviks who had been detained after the July uprising and released at the time of the Kornilov Affair. Loyalist military school cadets and shock battalions from the suburbs were called to the Winter Palace, the seat of the government, and the main Bolshevik newspaper, Rabochii put (Workers’ Path), was shut down. Not until these steps had been taken, and even then only after Lenin’s personal direct intervention in the party’s headquarters at Smolny, did the military action against the Provisional Government begin, action that Lenin had been demanding for a month. This occurred before dawn on November 7 (October 25 O.S.). At that time, all pretense that the MRC was simply defending the revolution and attempting primarily to maintain the status quo pending expression of the congress’s will was abruptly
dropped. Rather, an open, all-out effort was launched to confront congress delegates with the overthrow of the Provisional Government prior to the start of their deliberations.

  During the morning of November 7, military detachments supporting the MRC seized strategically important bridges, key government buildings,

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  Soldiers fire rifles in Palace Square outside the Winter Palace. © BETTMANN/CORBIS rail and power stations, communication facilities, and the State bank without bloodshed. They also laid siege to the Winter Palace, defended by only meager, demoralized, and constantly dwindling forces. Kerensky managed to flee to the front in search of troops before the ring was closed. The “storming of the Winter Palace,” dramatically depicted in an Eisenstein film, was a Soviet myth. After nightfall, the historic building was briefly bombarded by cannon from the Fortress of Peter and Paul and occupied with little difficulty, after which remaining members of the government were arrested.

  The Soviet Congress was faced with a fait accompli. Lenin proclaimed the demise of the Provisional Government even before the congress opened that night. The thunder of cannon punctuated its first sessions. The effect was precisely what Lenin hoped for and what Bolshevik moderates, Menshevik-Internationalists, and Left SRs feared. The Mensheviks, SRs, and even the Menshevik-Internationalists responded to Bolshevik violence by walking out of the congress. Lenin now superintended passage of the revolutionary Bolshevik program by the rump congress and the appointment of an interim Soviet national government (the Soviet of People’s Commissars or Sovnarkom) made up exclusively of Bolsheviks.

  Still, as delegates departed Smolny at the close of the Second Congress on the morning of November 9 (October 27 O.S.), the vast majority of them, most Bolsheviks included, expected that all genuine revolutionary groups would unite behind the interim government they had created and that it would quickly be reconstructed according to the Bolshevik pre-October platform: that is, as an exclusively socialist, Soviet coalition government reflecting the relative strength of the various socialist parties originally in the congress and supportive of its revolutionary decrees. Important exceptions to

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  Revolutionaries unfurl the red flag in Moscow in 1918. © BETTMANN/CORBIS Bolshevik leaders holding this views included Lenin and Trotsky who, having successfully engineered the overthrow of the Provisional Government before the start of the Congress of Soviets, were now most concerned to retain complete freedom of action at virtually any price. Most departing delegates also believed that the new government would in any case yield its authority to the Constituent Assembly, scheduled to be elected at the end of November.

  Among political parties seeking to restore a broad socialist alliance and to restructure the Sov-narkom in the immediate aftermath of the Second Congress, most prominent were the Menshevik-Internationalists and the Left SRs; the latter were especially important to the success of the revolution because of their growing strength among peasants in the countryside, where Bolshevik influence was critically weak. Among labor organizations seeking to play a similar role was the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Union of Railway Workers (Vikzhel). Vikzhel announced that it would declare an immediate nationwide rail stoppage if the Bolsheviks did not participate in negotiations to create a homogeneous socialist government responsible to the soviets and including all socialist groups.

  Under Vikzhel’s aegis, intensive talks were held in Petrograd November 11-18 (October 29- November 5 O.S.). With Kamenev in charge of negotiations for the Bolsheviks, they began auspiciously. Indeed, on November 2 even the Bolshevik press reported that the discussions were on the verge of success. However, they ultimately foundered, primarily because of such factors as the impossibly high demands made by the moderate socialists (essentially requiring repudiation of Soviet power and most of the accomplishments of the Second Congress, as well as the exclusion of Lenin and Trotsky from any future government), the defeat by Soviet forces of an internal insurrection and of loyalist Cossack units outside Petrograd, and the consolidation of Soviet power in Moscow. These factors immeasurably strengthened Lenin’s and Trotsky’s hands, enabling them to torpedo the Vikzhel talks. During the run-up to the Constituent Assembly in December, Bolshevik moderates made a valiant bid to steer the party’s delegation toward

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  support of its right to define Russia’s future political system. However, by then the moderates had been squeezed out of the party leadership, and this effort also failed. All of this made a long and bitter civil war inevitable.

  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

  The October Revolution cannot be adequately characterized as either a military coup d’?tat or a popular uprising (although it contained elements of both). Its roots are to be found in the peculiarities of prerevolutionary Russia’s political, social, and economic development, as well as in Russia’s wartime crisis. At one level, it was the culminating event in a drawn-out battle between leftists and moderates: on the one hand, an expanding spectrum of left socialist groups supported by the vast majority of Petrograd workers, soldiers, and sailors dissatisfied by the results of the February revolution; and on the other, the increasingly isolated liberal-moderate socialist alliance that had taken control of the Provisional Government and national Soviet leadership during the February days. By the time the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened on November 7 (October 25 O.S.), the relatively peaceful victory of the former was all but assured. At another level, the October Revolution was a struggle, initially primarily within the Bolshevik leadership, between proponents of a multiparty, exclusively socialist government that would lead Russia to a Constituent Assembly in which socialists would have a dominating voice, and Leninists, who ultimately favored violent revolutionary action as the best means of striking out on an ultra-radical, independent revolutionary course in Russia and triggering decisive socialist revolutions abroad.

  Muted for much of 1917, this conflict erupted with greatest force in the wake of the February Revolution, in the immediate aftermath of the July uprising, and during the periods immediately preceding and following the October Revolution. Such factors as the walkout of Mensheviks and SRs from the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, prompted by the belated military operations pressed by Lenin and precipitated by Kerensky; the adoption of the Bolshevik program at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets; the intransigence of the moderate socialists at the Vikzhel talks; and the Bolsheviks’ first military victories over loyalist forces decisively undermined the efforts of moderate Bolsheviks to achieve a multiparty, socialist democracy and facilitated the rapid ascendancy of Leninist authoritarianism. In this sense, the October Revolution extinguished prospects for the development of a Western-style democracy in Russia for the better part of a century. Also, in the immediate post-revolutionary years, it led to the catastrophic Russian civil war. Finally, it laid the foundation for Stalinism and the Cold War. However, despite these outcomes, the October revolution was in large measure a valid expression of popular aspirations. See also: BOLSHEVISM; CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; JULY DAYS; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; REVOLUTION OF 1905; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Acton, Edward. (1990). Rethinking the Russian Revolution. London: Edward Arnold. Acton, Edward; Cherniaev,Vladimir Iu.; and Rosenberg, William G., eds. (1997). Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914-1921. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Figes, Orlando. (1989). A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Melgunov, S. P. (1972). Bolshevik Seizure of Power, tr. James S. Beaver. Santa Barbara, CA: Clio. Pipes, Richard. (1990). The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf. Rabinowitch, Alexander. (1976). The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd. New York: Norton. Raleigh, Donald J. (1986). Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bone, Ann, tr. (1974). The Bolshev
iks and the October Revolution: Minutes of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) August 1917-February 1918. London: Pluto Press. Sukhanov, N. N. (1962). The Russian Revolution, 1917, tr. and ed. Joel Carmichael. New York: Harper. Wildman, Allan. (1987). The End of the Russian Imperial Army, Vol. 2: The Road to Soviet Power and Peace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  ALEXANDER RABINOWITCH

  OCTOBRIST PARTY

  The Octobrist Party was founded in 1906 by Russian moderate liberals, taking its name from the October Manifesto. Unequivocal support for the new constitutional system and rejection of compulsory

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  land expropriation except in extreme state need distinguished it from the major left party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets), which represented more radical liberal opinion.

  In the elections to the First and Second Dumas (1906-1907), the Octobrist Party fared relatively poorly while parties to its left had strong showings. The government, finding itself unable to work with the first two Dumas, dissolved them. Alexander Guchkov, the Octobrists’ first leader, during the Second Duma softened some of the party’s positions, thus enabling cooperation with the government. Loyalty to the new constitutional system and willingness to work with the government to achieve its full implementation and accompanying social reform were now the broad guiding principles of the party. Dissolving the Second Duma, Peter Stolypin, chairman of the Council of Ministers (1906-1911), restricted the voting franchise which lessened the voting power of the peasants and working classes. His goal was to limit the number of radical left deputies and increase Octobrist Party representation so that it could provide a solid base of support for the government in the Duma. Stolypin found himself in a difficult position in the Duma, stuck between the right with its hatred for the new system and the radical left. In the 1907 elections to the Third Duma the Octobrist Party more than tripled its representation, receiving 153 seats.