Lenin: A Biography

by Robert John Service

  Yet their hilarity was of short duration. After Sverdlov had given a survey of current developments, Lenin spoke passionately for a whole hour in favour of insurrection. Every listener witnessed his anger and impatience. He declared that the Central Committee had shown ‘a kind of indifference to the question of insurrection’. Now the moment for decision had arrived. If the ‘masses’ were apathetic, it was because they were ‘tired of words and resolutions’. According to Lenin, ‘the majority are now behind us’. The peasants might not be voting Bolshevik, but they were seizing the land and this was disrupting the authority of the Provisional Government, which he accused of scheming to surrender Petrograd to the Germans. The debate was lengthy and spirited. No one could fail to recognise the danger of following Lenin’s line. But he won over the Central Committee. As dawn broke on 11 October, his motion was ratified by ten votes to two.36

  This meant that the Central Committee had committed itself to focusing its energies on ‘the technical side’ of planning insurrection.37 Lenin was pleased with the result and returned in triumph to Fofanova’s apartment. He had not got everything his own way. In particular he had argued that the Northern Congress of Soviets, scheduled to meet in Minsk on 11 October, should be ‘used for the start of decisive actions’.38 This proposal did not appear in the final resolution. The Central Committee, on the proposal of Trotski and others, strove to make the future insurrection look less like the seizure of power by a single party. For this purpose they were coming to the conclusion that the transfer of power should be delayed until the All-Russia Congress of Soviets in Petrograd later in the month.39 Lenin’s idea was completely impracticable; he had left things far too late. If his urgings had been hearkened to, moreover, the party might have put itself at risk by exposing its intentions before it had a chance to organise action in the capital. Although he had spoken eloquently on the need to treat the making of insurrection as an art, he had not practised what he preached. And yet the strength of his conviction was huge. He had proved himself a leader.

  The problem for Lenin was that his two main opponents during the night had been Kamenev and Zinoviev, who were in the front rank of the party leadership. Disinclined to let Lenin’s victory stand, they sent a jointly written letter to the party’s various major committees. Their argument was that popular opinion would shortly compel the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to form a government and include the Bolsheviks in the coalition. They denied that workers would support a violent assumption of power by the Bolsheviks. They pointed out, too, that Lenin’s faith in an imminent European socialist revolution was empirically unverifiable.40

  Another Central Committee meeting was held on 16 October to settle the dispute. Members gathered on the northernmost outskirts of the capital. The venue was the picturesque wooden building of Lesnoi district Duma, which by then was under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. As a precaution, the meeting took place at night. Representatives from the Petersburg Committee, the Military Organisation, the Moscow Committees and other major party bodies attended. Potential supporters of Kamenev and Zinoviev who had been absent at the earlier session had arrived. Lenin was in combative mood. He was late in getting to the building since he had had to take the usual conspiratorial precautions. By the time he started speaking, he was angry and impatient:41

  The situation is plain: either a Kornilovite dictatorship or a dictatorship of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry. It’s impossible to be guided by the mood of the masses. For it’s changeable and can’t accurately be gauged; we must be guided by an objective analysis and evaluation of the revolution. The masses have put their trust in the Bolsheviks and are demanding from them not words but deeds…

  And as the debate ensued, he had to listen to many local speakers, who otherwise would love to have supported him, explaining that workers and soldiers did not wish to take part in an uprising. Kamenev and Zinoviev re-expressed their doubts and Lenin pulled off his wig in frustration.42 But support for his critics ebbed in the night. When the vote was taken, nineteen members were with him and only two were against – with four abstentions.

  The only remaining question for most participants was whether the Bolsheviks should go out of their way to instigate a clash with the Provisional Government. Nothing specific was decided. Instead Lenin’s successful motion affirmed ‘complete confidence that the Central Committee and the [Petrograd] Soviet would at the right time indicate the propitious moment and the appropriate methods of the offensive’.43

  This vagueness gave Lenin what he needed to sanction rapid action. Back to Fofanova’s apartment he went. Politically he was pleased, but he was still in a grumpy mood. The problem was tiredness. Although the meeting had broken up at 3.00 a.m., it took him a couple of hours to trudge home. According to Lenin, his escort was incompetent. Moreover, it had been windy as well as rainy; both his hat and wig had been blown off and become muddy.44 Fofanova had to wash them in hot, soapy water. But she failed to calm him down. Lenin felt he could not assume that the Bolshevik Central Committee would do as agreed. Through the following days he bombarded its members with notes. Yet the Central Committee did not see fit to invite him to its three sessions between 20 and 24 October. It is reasonable to conclude that his fellow members thought he lacked the close knowledge and temperamental stability required for the necessary planning to be undertaken. They would organise the insurrection, but they would do it in their own fashion through the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet; they would time the armed action to coincide with the opening of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets.

  By 24 October 1917 Lenin was at fever pitch. Fofanova spent the whole day running errands for him; each time she got back to the apartment, he had another message for her to deliver. He begged permission from the Central Committee to come and join his leading comrades. He extracted what information he could from Fofanova about the situation on Petrograd’s streets. What he heard was highly agitating. The bridges in the city were being raised: evidently the Provisional Government still had some fight left in it. The Central Committee infuriated Lenin: ‘I don’t understand them. What are they afraid of?’45

  He wrote a letter to its members in the evening and upbraided them as follows:46

  There can be no delay!! Everything may be lost!!…

  Who must seize power?

  This is now unimportant: let it be seized by the Military-Revolutionary Committee or ‘another institution’ that will announce that it will hand over power only to the genuine representatives of the people’s interests, the army’s interests (the immediate proposal of peace), the peasants’ interests (the land must be seized immediately and private property abolished), the interests of the starving.

  He promised Fofanova that he would wait until 11.00 p.m. for her return. But Rahja arrived at the flat in the meantime and Lenin could no longer contain himself: ‘Yes, it must begin today.’47 They drank a cup of tea and took something to eat. Then Lenin fixed his wig and wrapped a bandage around his head for additional disguise. He left a brief note for Fofanova: ‘I’ve gone where you wanted me not to go. Goodbye, Ilich.’48 They slipped out at 8.00 p.m. to catch a tram. On the way to the Smolny Institute, where the Petrograd Soviet had been based since the beginning of August, Lenin could not resist enquiring of the conductress what had been happening in the centre that day. Alighting at the tram stop, they picked their way through Kerenski’s army patrols.

  Rahja’s presence was crucial since he had no fear when confronted by inquisitive, boisterous soldiers. Lenin did not need to do much talking. On they walked towards the Smolny Institute. The leaders of the Bolshevik Central Committee and the Military-Revolutionary Committee were unaware that he was coming; they were busily preparing themselves for the agreed coup against the Provisional Government. Reaching the building, Rahja pulled out two forged admittance tickets. Throughout the building the lights were on. At about the same time Fofanova was travelling back to her apartment in accordance with
what she and Lenin had agreed. She was going to be late, so she took a horse cab. She arrived on time at 11.00 p.m. to find the brief note from Lenin explaining his absence. By then Vladimir Ilich Lenin was in room no. 71 of the Smolny Institute and was persuading, convincing, prodding, urging and haranguing his comrades to accelerate the locomotive of Revolution. Power – state power – was in sight of attainment. This was the moment, the historic moment, to which he had dedicated the three decades of his adult life. The moment of socialist Revolution had arrived.

  18. THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

  October to December 1917

  Sporadic violence took place on Petrograd streets on the night of 24–25 October. The Military-Revolutionary Committee ordered its loyal garrison soldiers and the armed worker-volunteers known as the Red Guards to control a list of places. When Kerenski had closed down Bolshevik newspapers and raised the bridges over the river Neva, Trotski was able to claim to be defending the soviets against harassment. The Military-Revolutionary Committee was intent on ensuring that the Second Congress, when it met on 25 October, could declare the overthrow of the Provisional Government as a fait accompli.

  Lenin exerted pressure for an uprising as soon as he arrived at the Smolny Institute. Not a few observers felt it to be an incongruous scene. Before 1917 the building had been a secondary school belonging to the Society for the Upbringing of Well-Born Girls. It had been constructed to a plan by the Italian architect Quarenghi. The façade of Grecian pillars and the generously proportioned main hall were symbols of an age of privilege, tradition and power. Now it was the workshop of Revolution as Lenin arrived to play his part. On arrival, he was spirited into room no. 71, where he perched himself on the edge of a table. The situation was chaotic in anticipation of the Second Congress of Soviets. Congress delegates were coming and going through the night and the place was a bustling, noisy, ill-kempt and smoke-filled hive of activity. Everyone knew that the decisions taken at the Congress would be decisive for the course of the Revolution and that the Provisional Government’s fate hung on what happened in the Institute. The Bolsheviks, at the very time they were seizing power, operated in the same building as Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who wished to prevent this. As Lenin sat with his comrades, into the room wandered the Menshevik Fëdor Dan, the Socialist Revolutionary Abram Gots and the Bundist Mark Liber, all of them major figures in their parties. One of the three had left his overcoat hanging there and had come to retrieve a bag of bread, sausage and cheese to share with his companions. Lenin sat tight, thinking that his wig and facial bandage would disguise him. But Dan and his friend were no fools; they recognised him immediately. And they quickly fled the room.1

  Dan, Gots and Liber had a sense of what might be called revolutionary decorum: they wanted to confront adversaries across a Congress hall and not in a private verbal brawl. Lenin split his sides laughing. Already his presence was having its effect on his Bolshevik comrades; he could afford a moment of jollity. At 2.35 p.m. there was an emergency meeting of the Petrograd Soviet in the main hall of the Institute. The introductory speaker was Trotski, the soviet chairman. There was, unusually, total silence. Trotski’s announcement was historic: ‘Kerenski’s power has been overthrown. Some of the ministers have been arrested. Those who remain unarrested will soon be arrested.’2

  To applause from the Petrograd Soviet, Trotski went on to explain that a socialist administration would be assuming power. Then he announced that a speech would be given by none other than Lenin. The ovation lasted several minutes.3 Once it had died down, Lenin spoke triumphantly:4

  Comrades! The workers’ and peasants’ revolution, which the Bolsheviks have all this time been talking about the need for, has been accomplished.

  What is the significance of this workers’ and peasants’ revolution? Above all, the significance of this coup [perevorot] consists in the fact that we’ll have a Soviet government as our own organ of power without any participation whatever by the bourgeoisie. The oppressed masses themselves will create their power. The old state apparatus will be destroyed at its roots and a new apparatus of administration will be created in the form of the soviet organisations.

  Lenin was exaggerating. In fact the Provisional Government had not yet been eliminated and the struggle in Petrograd had only just begun. But yet another stage in Lenin’s advance on power had been attained: the caution of the Bolshevik Central Committee and the Military-Revolutionary Committee had been surmounted and the Petrograd Soviet had been convinced that the decisive struggles of the socialist seizure of power had already largely been won.

  The left-wing Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov entered the hall halfway through Lenin’s speech, and was stupefied:5

  As I entered, there was on the platform a bald, shaved man who was unknown to me. But he spoke with a strangely familiar hoarse, loud voice, with a throaty quality and very characteristic stresses on the end of his sentences… Bah! It was Lenin. He made his appearance that day after four months of an underground existence.

  The Bolshevik leader had taken hold of his party and of the Revolution.

  Power could now be presented as a fait accompli to the Congress of Soviets. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries might object to the Provisional Government’s overthrow, but they could not reverse what had happened. This was a first concern that could now be forgotten. A second had also become less acute. This was the possibility – feared especially by Lenin – that the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves might turn against the Provisional Government and demand Kerenski’s removal. The Pre-Parliament had passed a vote of no confidence in him late on 24 October and called for peace to be concluded immediately on the eastern front and for the landed estates of the gentry to be distributed to the peasantry. Lenin had no intention of sharing power with the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. He had cunningly refrained from spelling this out to the Bolshevik Central Committee before the insurrection had started. If he had done so, the Central Committee would probably have refused to support armed action altogether. Consequently it remained a priority for him on the night of 24–25 October to keep the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries at arm’s length, and he strove to manufacture a situation in which the Bolsheviks would have the dominant role in forming the next government. Thus power had to be seized without the slightest delay.

  Lenin knew much needed to be done to establish his government. The battleship Aurora, loyal to the Bolsheviks, moved up the river Neva towards the Winter Palace. The State Bank, the post and telegraph offices and the rail terminals were occupied by the insurgents. Kerenski arranged his escape through the cordon around the Winter Palace in order to rally forces outside the capital.

  The Bolshevik Central Committee met in the early hours and took decisions about the general complexion of the government. This was done on the initiative of V. P. Milyutin and not Lenin. The fact that Milyutin, who had not slept for several nights and was also associated normally with the right wing of Bolshevism, had instigated such a discussion indicates that not everything done in the early hours of 25 October was the work of Lenin’s hands. He was back among a group of revolutionaries who knew that they had gone too far to turn back. If there was going to be a revolution, then let it be undertaken efficiently. But, of all the participants in the Bolshevik Central Committee in room no. 36, Lenin was the least exhausted, and it was he who was asked to write a proclamation on behalf of the Military-Revolutionary Committee. He passed it to one of its leading officials, Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, for publication at 10 a.m. It ran as follows:6

  To the Citizens of Russia:

  The Provisional Government has been overthrown. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the Military-Revolutionary Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.

  The cause for which the people has struggled: the immediate proposal of a democratic peace, the abolition of the gentry’s landed
property, workers’ control over production, the creation of a Soviet Government – victory for this cause has been secured.

  Long live the revolution of the workers, soldiers and peasants!

  By asserting that the Military-Revolutionary Committee was acting as the government, Lenin knew that he would infuriate the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries when he came to address the Congress of Soviets.

  The Congress was scheduled to start at 2 p.m., but the Bolshevik central leadership wanted to achieve the occupation of the Winter Palace beforehand. This took longer than expected by the Military-Revolutionary Committee. Lenin gave vent to his anger: ‘Why so long? What are our military commanders doing? They’ve set up a real war! What’s it all for? Encirclement, transfers, linkages, expanded deployment… Is this really a war with a worthy enemy? Get on with it! On to the attack!’7 But the Military-Revolutionary Committee refused to commit its forces to an unconditional offensive. Kerenski had escaped and there was no significant military threat. The siege continued throughout the day around the last remaining stronghold of the Provisional Government in the capital.