Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  Lenin’s policy was for the Bolsheviks to win over the majority of the workers to their side and thus to capture the Soviet; and for the Soviet then to seize power from the Provisional Government. He was not for another revolution immediately. He insisted on winning over a majority of the workers and the Soviet before the time came to overthrow the Provisional Government. He was hard on those who wished to cooperate with this government; that was betraying the revolution. He was equally hard on those who wanted to rush ahead to upset this government before the time for it had come; “a moment of action,” he said, “is no time to aim ‘a wee bit too far to the left.’ We look upon that as the greatest crime, disorganization.’’

  So, calmly but inexorably, like some agent of an inevitable fate, this lump of ice covering a blazing fire within went ahead to its appointed goal.

  151

  The Bolsheviks Seize Power

  April 9, 1933

  During a revolutionary period history seems to march with seven-league boots. There are rapid changes outwardly, but an even greater change takes place in the consciousness of the masses. They learn little from books, as they have not much opportunity of a bookish education; and books, often enough, hide more than they reveal. Their school is the harder but truer one of experience. During the life-and-death struggle for power in a period of revolution, the masks that usually hide people’s real motives come off, and the reality on which society is based can be seen behind them. So during this fateful year 1917 in Russia, the masses, and especially the industrial workers in the towns, who were at the heart of the revolution, learnt their lessons from events, and changed almost from day to day.

  There was no stability or equilibrium anywhere. Life was dynamic and changing, and people and classes were pulling and pushing in different ways. There were still people hoping and conspiring for the return of Tsardom, but they did not represent an important class, and we can ignore them. The main conflict developed between the Provisional Government and the Soviet; and yet the majority in the Soviet were for co-operation and compromise with the government. Those anxious for compromise were afraid of being put in charge of the government and the State power. “Who will take the place of the government? We? But our hands tremble . . .” said a speaker in the Soviet. It is a familiar cry which we have heard in India also from many a possessor of palsied hands and a terrified heart. But strong hands and stout hearts are not lacking when the time comes for them.

  The conflict between the Provisional Government and the Soviet was inevitable, however much the compromising elements on either side tried to avoid it. The government wanted to please the Allies by carrying on the war, and the possessing classes in Russia by protecting as far as possible their properties. The Soviet, being more in touch with the masses, sensed their demand for peace and land for the peasants, and many demands from the workers, such as the eight-hour day. Thus it happened that the government was paralysed by the Soviet, and the Soviet itself was paralysed by the masses, for the masses were far more revolutionary than the parties and their leaders.

  An effort was made to bring the government more in line with the Soviet, and a radical lawyer and an eloquent orator, Kerensky, became the leading member of the government. He succeeded in forming a coalition government to which the Menshevik majority in the Soviet sent some representatives. He also tried hard to please England and France by launching an offensive against Germany. The offensive failed, as the army and the people were in no mood for more war.

  Meanwhile, All-Russian Soviet Congresses were being held in Petrograd, and each subsequent Congress was more extreme than the last. More and more Bolshevik members were elected to them, and the two dominant parties, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries (an agrarian party), had their majority lessened. The Bolshevik influence increased, especially with the Petrograd workers. All over the country Soviets had sprung up, and they would not obey the orders of the government unless they were countersigned by the Soviet. One of the reasons why the Provisional Government was weak was the absence of a strong middle class in Russia.

  While a tussle for power was going on in the capital, the peasantry took the law into their own hands. As I have told you, these peasants were not very enthusiastic about the March Revolution, nor were they against it. They waited and watched. But the landlords of the large estates, fearing that their property would be confiscated, divided it up into small holdings and gave it to dummy owners who would keep it on their behalf. They also transferred much of their property to foreigners. In this way they tried to save their lands. The peasantry did not like this at all, and they asked the government to stop all land sales by a decree. The government hesitated; what could it do? It did not want to irritate either party. Then the peasants began to take action themselves. As early as April some of them arrested their landlords and seized and divided the estates. The soldiers back from the front (who were, of course, peasants) played the leading part in this. The movement developed till the lands were seized on a mass scale. By June even the Siberian steppes had been affected. In Siberia there were no big landlords, so the peasantry took possession of Church and monastery lands.

  It is interesting to note that this confiscation of the big estates took place entirely on the initiative of the peasants, and many months before the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin was in favour of the immediate transfer of the land to the peasants in an organized way. He was wholly against haphazard anarchist seizures. Thus, when the Bolsheviks came to power later on they found a Russia of peasant proprietors.

  Exactly a month after Lenin’s arrival another prominent exile came back to Petrograd. This was Trotsky, who had returned from New York after being detained on the way by the British. Trotsky was not one of the old Bolsheviks, nor was he now a Menshevik. But soon he lined up on the side of Lenin, and he took his place as the leading figure of the Petrograd Soviet. He was a great orator, a fine writer, and very much of an electric battery, full of energy, and he was of the greatest help to Lenin’s party. I must give you rather a long extract from his autobiography—My Life the book is called—in which he describes the meetings he addressed in a building called the Modern Circus. This is not only a fine piece of writing, but it also brings a vivid and pulsating picture before our eyes of those strange revolutionary days of 1917 in Petrograd.

  The air, intense with breathing and waiting, fairly exploded with shouts and with the passionate yells peculiar to the Modern Circus. Above and around me was press of elbows, chests, and heads. I spoke from out of a warm cavern of human bodies; whenever I stretched out my hands I would touch someone, and a grateful movement in response would give me to understand that I was not to worry about it, not to break off my speech but to keep on. No speaker, no matter how exhausted, could resist the electric tension of that impassioned human throng. They wanted to know, to understand, to find their way. At times it seemed as if I felt, with my lips, the stern inquisitiveness of this crowd that had become merged into a single whole. Then all arguments and words thought out in advance would break and recede under the imperative pressure of sympathy, and other words, other arguments utterly unexpected by the orator but needed by these people, would emerge in full array from my subconsciousness. On such occasions I felt as if I was listening to the speaker from the outside, trying to keep pace with his ideas, afraid that, like a somnambulist he might fall off the edge of the roof at the sound of my conscious reasoning.

  Such was the Modern Circus. It had its own contours, fiery, tender and frenzied. The infants were peacefully sucking the breasts from which approving or threatening shouts were coming. The whole crowd was like that, like infants clinging with their dry lips to the nipples of the revolution. But this infant matured quickly.

  So the ever-changing drama of revolution went on in Petrograd and in other cities and villages of Russia. The infant matured and grew big. Everywhere, as a result of the terrible strain of the war, economic collapse was becoming evident. And yet, profiteers went on making their war profit
s!

  The Bolshevik strength and influence went on increasing in the factories and Soviets. Alarmed by this, Kerensky decided to suppress them. At first there was a great campaign of slander against Lenin, who was described as a German agent sent to bring trouble to Russia. Had he not come across Germany from Switzerland with the connivance of the German authorities? Lenin became terribly unpopular with the middle classes, who considered him a traitor. Kerensky issued a warrant for Lenin’s arrest, not as a revolutionary, but as a pro-German traitor. Lenin himself was keen on facing a trial to disprove this charge; his colleagues would not agree to this, and forced him to go into hiding. Trotsky was also arrested, but later released on the insistence of the Petrograd Soviet. Many other Bolsheviks were arrested; their newspapers were suppressed; workers, who were supposed to favour them, were disarmed. The attitude of these workers had been growing more and more aggressive and threatening towards the Provisional Government, and huge demonstrations had been held repeatedly against it.

  There was an interlude when counter-revolution raised its head. An old general, Kornilov, advanced on the capital with an army to crush the whole revolution, including the Provisional Government. As he drew near to the city his army melted away. It had gone over to the side of the revolution.

  Events were marching rapidly. The Soviet was becoming a definite rival to the government and often cancelled the government’s orders or issued contrary directions. The Smolny Institute was now the seat of the Soviet and the headquarters of the Revolution in Petrograd. This place had been a private school for the girls of the nobility.

  Lenin came to the outskirts of Petrograd, and the Bolsheviks decided that the time had come to seize power from the Provisional Government. Trotsky was put in charge of all the arrangements for the insurrection, and everything was carefully mapped, what vital points to seize and when. November 7th was fixed for the rising. On that day there was going to be a session of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Lenin fixed this date, and his reason for it is interesting. “November the 6th will be too early,” he is reported to have said. “We must have an All-Russian basis for a rising, and on the 6th all the delegates to the Congress will not have arrived. On the other hand, November 8th will be too late. By that time the Congress will be organized, and it is difficult for a large body of people to take swift, decisive action. We must act on the 7th, the day the Congress meets, so that we may say to it, ‘Here is the power! What are you going to do with it?’” Thus spoke the clear-headed expert in revolution, knowing full well that the success of revolutions often depends on apparently trivial happenings.1

  November 7 came, and Soviet soldiers went and occupied government buildings, especially the vital and strategic places like the telegraph office, telephone exchange, and the State Bank. There was no opposition. “The Provisional Government simply melted away,” said the official report sent to England by a British agent.

  Lenin became the head of the new government, the President, and Trotsky, the Foreign Minister. The next day, November 8, Lenin came to the Soviet Congress at the Smolny Institute. It was evening. The Congress welcomed the leader with a mighty cheer. An American journalist, Reed, who was present on this occasion, has described what the “great Lenin” looked like when he marched to the platform.

  A short, stocky figure with a big head set down on his shoulders, bold and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide, generous mouth and heavy chin; clean-shaven now, but already beginning to bristle with the well-known beard of his past and future. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressive to be the idol of the mob. A strange popular leader—a leader purely by virtue of intellect; colourless, humourless, uncompromising and detached, without picturesque idiosyncrasies—but with the power of explaining profound ideas in simple terms, of analysing a concrete situation. And combining with shrewdness the greatest intellectual audacity.

  The second revolution within the year had succeeded, and it had been a remarkably peaceful one so far. The transfer of power took place with very little shedding of blood. There had been much more fighting and killing in March. The March Revolution had been a spontaneous, unorganized one, the November one had been carefully planned out. For the first time in history the representatives of the poorest classes, and especially of the industrial workers, were at the head of a country. But they were not going to have such an easy success. Tempests were gathering all round them, to burst on them with uncontrolled fury.

  What was the situation that faced Lenin and his new Bolshevik Government? The German war was still on, although the Russian army had gone to pieces and there was no chance of its fighting; there was disorder all over the country and roving bands of soldiers and brigands did much as they liked; the economic structure had broken down; food was scarce and people were hungry; all round him were representatives of the old order ready to crush the Revolution; the organization of the State was capitalist, and most of the old government servants refused to co-operate with the new government; bankers would not give money; even the telegraph office would not send telegrams. A difficult enough situation to frighten the bravest.

  Lenin and his colleagues put their shoulders to the wheel. Peace with Germany was their first anxiety, and they immediately arranged for an armistice. The delegates of the two countries met at Brest Litovsk. The Germans knew well enough that there was no fight left in the Bolsheviks and, in their pride and folly, they made tremendous and humiliating demands. Much as the Bolsheviks desired peace, they were taken aback by this, and many of them were for a rejection of the terms. Lenin stood out for peace at any cost. There is a story that Trotsky, who was one of the Russian delegates at the peace conference, was asked by the Germans to go to a function in evening dress. He was perturbed; was it proper for a workers’ delegate to put on this kind of bourgeois clothing? He telegraphed to Lenin for advice, and Lenin immediately replied: “If it will help to bring peace, go in a petticoat!”

  While the Soviet argued about the peace terms, the Germans started advancing on Petrograd, and they made their peace offer stiffer than before. Lenin’s advice was accepted in the end by the Soviet, and they signed the peace of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, much as they hated it. By this peace a huge slice of Russian territory on the west was annexed by Germany, but peace at any cost had to be accepted as, according to Lenin, “the army had voted for peace with its legs”.

  The Soviet had tried at first to bring about a general peace among all the Powers involved in the World War. On the very next day after their seizure of power they had issued a decree offering peace to the world, and they made it quite clear that they renounced all claims under the Tsarist secret treaties. Constantinople, they said, must remain with the Turks, and there should be no other annexations. The Soviet’s suggestion went unanswered, as both the warring parties still had hopes of success and were keen on taking the spoils of war. Partly the object of the Soviet in making the offer was no doubt propaganda. They wanted to influence the masses in each country and the war-weary soldiery, and to provoke social revolutions in other countries. For they were after world revolution; only thus, they thought, could they protect their own revolution. I have already told you that Soviet propaganda had great effect on the French and German armies.

  Lenin looked upon the Brest-Litovsk peace with Germany as a temporary affair which would not last long. As it happened, it was annulled by the Soviet nine months later, as soon as Germany was defeated on the western front by the Allies. What Lenin wanted was to give a little rest, a breathing-space, to the weary workers and peasants in the army so that they might go back home and see with their own eyes what the Revolution had done. He wanted the peasants to realize that the landlords had gone and that the land belonged to them, and the industrial workers to feel that their exploiters had also gone. This would make them appreciate the gains of the Revolution and eager to defend them, and they would realize who their real enemies were. So Lenin thought, knowing full well that civil war was comi
ng. His policy was triumphantly justified later. These peasants and workers went back from the front to their fields and factories; they were no Bolsheviks or socialists, but they became the staunchest supporters of the Revolution because they did not want to give up what they had got by it.

  While they were trying to settle with the Germans somehow, the Bolshevik leaders also turned their attention to internal conditions. Large numbers of ex-army officers and adventurers with machine guns and war material were carrying on a brigand’s trade, shooting and plundering in the heart of the big cities. There were also some members of the old Anarchist parties who disapproved of the Soviets and gave a lot of trouble. The Soviet authorities came down with a heavy hand on all these gangsters and others and crushed them.

  A greater danger to the Soviet regime came from the members of the various civil services, many of whom refused to work under the Bolsheviks or co-operate with them in any way. Lenin laid down the principle that “he that will not work, neither shall he eat”; no work, no food. All civil servants who did not co-operate were immediately dismissed. The bankers refused to open their safes; they were opened by dynamite. But the supreme example of Lenin’s contempt for the servants of the old order who refused to co-operate was seen when the Commander-in-Chief refused to obey orders. He was dismissed, and within five minutes a young Bolshevik lieutenant, Krylenko, was made the Commander-in-Chief!