October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

by China Miéville

  The flamboyant lawyer and politician Alexander Kerensky, 1917.

  Maria Spiridonova, who, at age twenty, shot and killed a brutal security chief.

  Menshevik leader Julius Martov, ‘a rather charming type of bohemian … by predilection a haunter of cafés, indifferent to comfort, perpetually arguing and a bit of an eccentric’.

  Demonstration in Petrograd, February 1917.

  Revolutionary soldiers on the streets of Petrograd as news spreads of the tsar’s abdication, March 1917.

  ‘In March demonstrations in favour of the revolution shook Baku, Azerbaijan … a patchwork of medieval and modern edifices, watched over by the steep ziggurats of oil derricks.’

  An advanced outpost of Petrograd Soviet soldiers ready to face General Kornilov, August 1917.

  Members of the Red Guard below a banner reading, ‘To the health of the armed peoples, above all the workers’.

  Cadets besieged in the Winter Palace on the eve of the October Revolution.

  The armoured ship Aurora, after the revolution.

  Yaroslav Sergeevich Nikolaev, Lenin’s Death Day (1957), oil on Canvas, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. ‘The revolution of 1917 is a revolution of trains.’

  6

  June: A Context of Collapse

  On the first day of June, the Bolshevik Military Organisation met with representatives of the Kronstadt party and approved plans for a garrison demonstration. To the Central Committee, the MO sent a list of regiments it was confident it could persuade to take part. Together they numbered 60,000 men.

  At that moment the CC was focused on affairs of state: from 3 to 24 June, that First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies – the gathering planned at the All-Russian Conference of Soviets, at the start of April – was meeting in Petrograd. Its 777 delegates comprised 73 unaffiliated socialists, 235 SRs, 248 Mensheviks, 32 Menshevik–Internationalists, and 105 Bolsheviks. The congress quickly elected a new SR- and Menshevik-dominated executive committee.

  Almost as soon as proceedings opened, a visibly furious Martov went on the attack – against fellow Mensheviks. He deplored Tsereteli’s collaboration with the Provisional Government, particularly over the recent deportation of his Swiss comrade Robert Grimm. He appealed to the Mensheviks in the hall: ‘You, my past comrades in revolution, are you with those who give carte blanche to their minister to deport any category of citizen?’

  From the Mensheviks came an extraordinary response: ‘Tsereteli is not a minister, but the conscience of the revolution!’

  Then, Sukhanov wrote with admiration, Martov – ‘slight, meek, somewhat awkward’ – bravely faced down the ‘voracious, screeching monster’ of the crowd. The attack by his own party was so ugly that Trotsky himself, hardly a close comrade, ran forward to offer solidarity to the embattled internationalist. ‘Long live the honest socialist Martov!’ he shouted.

  Tsereteli’s speech, by contrast, provoked ‘rapturous, never-ending applause’ from his fraction. Here was evidence of an ongoing shift among the leading party moderates towards being gosudarstvenniki – ‘statists’, of a sort. The crisis of April had strengthened the beliefs of those Mensheviks who saw socialist participation in power as necessary for authoritative government, and as a way to push their policies. With which, pari passu, grew their sense of themselves as custodians of the state itself – a state that might get things done.

  It was not as if that state powered from success to success. After a month of governmental coalition, the mood in the country was hardening. Unrest in the countryside, the cities and at the front was increasing to the point of provoking serious social alarm. Urban crime and violence were still rising. Shortages grew worse. Hauling themselves feebly through the traffic on the streets of Petrograd in these high summer days, the horses were skeletal. The people were famished.

  Despite all this, to the impatience of some on the left of his party, Lenin stuck to his patient programme of ‘explaining’ Bolshevik opposition to coalition, and of what he insisted was the real reason for social problems. ‘The pilfering of the bourgeoisie’, he told the congress, ‘is the source of the anarchy.’

  Against such intransigence, on 4 June, Tsereteli, the minister of posts and telegraphs, justified the Soviet’s collaboration with the bourgeoisie to the gathered delegates. ‘There is’, he said, ‘no political party in Russia which at the present time would say “Give us power”.’

  To which from the depths of the room an immediate heckle came back.

  ‘There is such a party,’ shouted Lenin.

  On the 4th, the Bolshevik left showed its strength. On Petrograd’s Mars Field, the party held a rally in honour of the fallen of February. Alongside the Kronstadt sailors, the MO had organised hundreds of troops from the Moskovsky, Grenadier, Pavlovsky, Finlyandsky, Sixth Engineer, 180th Infantry, and First Machine Gun regiments. In his speech on behalf of the MO, Semashko pointedly praised the radicalism of Kronstadt – to an audience that included Krylenko of the Bolshevik CC, which had chided the soldiers, and the caution of which was provoking such exasperation among radicals.

  Two days later, at a joint meeting with the CC and executive of the Petersburg Comittee, the MO again proposed an armed demonstration. At this point Lenin was in favour; Kamenev, ever cautious, was against, as were several others on the Petersburg Committee, including Zinoviev. Even Krupskaya, unusually, took a different line from Lenin – in her view the demonstration was unlikely to be peaceful, so perhaps, given the risks of it escalating beyond the party’s control, it should not go ahead.

  In the end the leadership made no decision. A decision would soon be made for them.

  The Bolsheviks were the most organised and largest group on the far left, but they were not the only one. To their own left were groups of anarchists of various sizes, inclinations and degrees of influence. Decidedly a minority current, anarchism nonetheless enjoyed localised support across the empire, with various strongholds, such as Odessa – and Petrograd.

  There in the capital, the most radical and influential were the Anarchist–Communists. Some of their leaders were held in esteem, like Iosif Bleikhman, a fiery, unkempt, charismatic figure who spoke his native Russian with what Trotsky described as a ‘Jewish-American accent’ which his audiences enjoyed, and Shlema Asnin, a respected militant with the First Machine Gun Regiment, a dark-bearded former thief who dressed like a gothic cowboy, wide-brimmed hat, guns and all.

  In the same chaotic expropriatory post-February wave during which the Bolsheviks moved into the Kshesinskaya Mansion, revolutionaries had taken and retooled the Vyborg summer home of the official P. P. Durnovo. Its gardens were now a park, with facilities for local children, and the building was hung with black banners reading ‘Death to all capitalists’. The house was the headquarters of several groups including the district bakers’ union, some far-left SR-Maximalists, and an Anarchist–Bolshevik group grandly styling itself the Soviet of the Petrograd People’s Militia. This last, desiring better facilities to produce its leaflets, on 5 June decided with staggering chutzpah to send eighty gun-toting members to occupy the press of the right-wing Russkaya volia. After only a day, two regiments easily forced them out. But the authorities were ruffled. Up with these anarchists, they decided, they would not put.

  On the 7th, Minister of Justice P. N. Perevezev issued them a deadline of twenty-four hours to vacate their villa. The anarchists appealed to Vyborg workers for protection. It is a measure of the moment, and of the respect these anarchists commanded, that the next day saw sizeable armed demonstrations in support. Several thousand workers came out on their behalf, closing twenty-eight factories.

  The contradictions of the Soviet immediately resurfaced. The Ispolkom, the Executive Committee, lobbied by workers’ delegations, asked Perevezev to rescind his ultimatum while they looked into the matter: simultaneously, they drafted an appeal to the demonstrators to return to work. Meanwhile the delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets overwhe
lmingly voted for full cooperation with and support for Lvov’s government, and prohibited armed demonstrations without Soviet authorisation.

  Such a commitment to maintaining order was, to the Bolsheviks, an irresistible opportunity for agitation: the party hurriedly brought forward to the evening of that day, the 8th, a discussion between the CC, the Petersburg Committee, the MO, and representatives of regiments, trade unions and factories of the MO’s proposal. Now, by 131 votes to 6, with 22 abstentions, the meeting agreed that the moment was propitious for organising a demonstration.

  The size of this majority, though, disguised unease. Asked to vote on whether there was a general inclination among people to come out, and also on whether the masses would do so against Soviet opposition, the results were much less clear-cut. To the first question, the ayes had it, but only by fifty-eight to thirty-seven, with almost as many abstentions – fifty-two – as voted yes. To the second question, the affirmative margin was tiny: forty-seven to forty-two. And this time, among a group of militants not renowned for sitting on their hands, there were almost as many abstained as voted for yes and no combined: eighty. This bespoke immense uncertainty about the demonstration’s chances in the face of Soviet disapproval.

  Still, the decision was made. The demonstration would go ahead at 2 p.m. on Saturday 10 June, which left only one day to organise. The call was to go out the next morning. A special edition of the MO daily paper, Soldatskaya pravda – a starker, blunter publication than Pravda, with a less educated reader in mind – was quickly prepared, containing routes, instructions and slogans. The key demand would be the end of dvoevlastie, Dual Power, and the transfer of all power to the Soviet.

  That night, in an unrelated crackdown against militants, the authorities arrested Khaustov, editor of the Bolshevik MO’s frontline paper, Okopnaya pravda, and charged him with treason for writing against a military offensive. His incarceration would not, as we shall see, be without consequence.

  The Anarchist–Communists, of course, were fully behind the upcoming demonstration. Late in the afternoon, the Mezhraiontsy were informed of the plans, and with Trotsky supporting them and over the objections of Lunacharsky, they voted to join the preparations. Across the capital, within military units and factories, Bolshevik agitators tabled resolutions in favour of coming out – and, for the most part, they won them, not least because, given that they were a minority within it, their call for all power to the Soviet did not appear partisan.

  However, one important group remained in the dark. Almost unbelievably, in what was either a lamentable oversight or some ill-thought-through machination, the party’s organisers failed to alert their own Bolshevik delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

  At around 3 p.m. on the 9th, Bolshevik leaflets about the demonstration hit the streets. At once, the Coalition Government appealed for law and order, and warned that force would be met by stern force. It was only now, as word spread, that the Bolshevik Congress delegates got wind of the plans. Tacking somewhat to the right of their Petrograd comrades in general, many had concerns at the politics behind the decision: besides which they were, unsurprisingly, incandescent at their treatment.

  At an emergency meeting with representatives from the CC, including Viktor Nogin, they made their fury clear. ‘Here I, a representative, only now found out that a demonstration was being organised,’ one said. They insisted that Nogin – who was himself opposed to the coming-out – dissuade the CC from its planned course.

  The Soviet’s Executive Committee, too, was doing its utmost to prevent it. Many in the Soviet were terrified that any such armed provocation would provoke bloody clashes with the right, strengthening reaction; they also feared that this presaged some Bolshevik attempt to take control. And there was in fact a minority on the party left, including Old Bolsheviks Latsis, Smilga and Semashko, who wondered if the action might not indeed be a way to seize the city’s communications – perhaps even power.

  Evening fell amid a flurry of rushed debates, miscommunications, preparations. False rumours spread that Kerensky had mobilised military forces to crush any march. Chkheidze, Gots, Tsereteli and Fydor Dan of the Soviet Congress presidium appealed desperately for order. Lunacharsky and other Mezhraiontsy tried to stop the congress from declaring action against the demonstration, stalling, it seems, in the hopes that caution would prevail among the Bolsheviks.

  At 8:30 p.m., Zinoviev, Nogin and Kamenev reached the Kshesinskaya Mansion and reported the fury of the party’s delegates. The Bolshevik leadership hastily convened a meeting. In view of the tense situation, the naysayers vociferously counselled cancellation. But, despite the growing opposition, the meeting voted fourteen to two to go ahead.

  Within a few hours, the Soviet Congress, meeting late and excluding Bolsheviks and Mezhraointsy, was unanimously condemning the Bolsheviks for their plans. It ruled that ‘not a single demonstration should be held today’, and prohibited any such action for three days. To police this, the Congress quickly inaugurated the splendidly named Bureau for Counteracting the Demonstration. The forces ranged against the plans were growing in anger and strength.

  At last, at 2 a.m. on the 10th itself, the increasingly agitated Lenin, Zinoviev and Sverdlov met once again with Nogin, Kamenev and the Bolshevik delegation to the Congress, who demanded of the rump CC present – only five members – that it cancel the plans.

  The CC voted. Kamenev and Nogin held firm to their opposition. Zinoviev had earlier switched sides, to support the proposal: now in these last tumultuous minutes he switched back again. And Sverdlov and Lenin abstained.

  With what can only have been anxious relief, the Central Committee cancelled the demonstration, by three votes to none, with those two key abstentions.

  The vote was ludicrously small. No members of the Petersburg Committee or the MO itself were present. Had there been any opposition to this final-second decision, the process could easily and reasonably have been denounced as inquorate and undemocratic. But Lenin made no objection. The demonstration was off.

  An undignified, pell-mell rush. The unhappy Bolsheviks scrambled to inform party organisations and cadre, and the Anarchist– Communists themselves, that the action was cancelled. At 3 a.m., party printers got word. Urgently they rejigged the layouts of Pravda and Soldatskaya pravda, shuffling and reconfiguring stories, removing instructions for the demonstration. At dawn, party militants raced to factories and barracks to argue against what they had so keenly promoted scant hours before.

  Delegates from the Soviet Congress, too, spread through Petrograd, pleading with workers and soldiers not to come out. Some local committees passed resolutions insisting that though they stood down, they did so in response to the Bolsheviks’ request, not to that of the Soviet Congress or the Coalition Government.

  Not that the Bolsheviks could avoid censure. In the factories, barracks and courtyards of Vyborg, militants were furious at the volte-face. They inveighed against the party. Incredulous members, reported the Bolsheviks’ own Izvestia, heaped insults on their leaders. Soldatskaya pravda washed its hands of the decision: the order, it stressed, came from above. Stalin and Smilga proffered their resignations from the CC, in protest at the highly questionable vote from which they had been absent (their resignations were rejected). A disgusted Latsis reported members tearing up their party cards. In Kronstadt, one prominent Bolshevik, Flerovsky, described the wrath of his fellow sailors that morning as ‘among the most unpleasant’ hours of his life. He was able to dissuade them from a unilateral demonstration only by suggesting that a delegation sail to Petrograd to find out from the CC precisely what was going on.

  The Bolshevik leadership had a lot of explaining to do.

  At a special commission of Mensheviks and SRs on 11 May, Tsereteli gave voice to the rage of the moderates. The recent events, he said, were evidence of a shift in Bolshevik strategy from propaganda to an overt attempt to seize power by arms, and thus he called for the party’s suppression.

  The deb
ate continued at a meeting of the Congress.

  Fyodor Dan was in his late forties, a committed high-profile Menshevik, a doctor who had served in the war as a surgeon, though he had been an anti-war ‘Zimmerwaldist’, close to the Menshevik left intellectually and personally – his wife Lydia was Martov’s sister. After February, however, he took a revolutionary defencist position, contending that newly revolutionary Russia had the right and the duty to hold out in the war. Notwithstanding certain leftist leanings, Dan was also, as he saw it perforce, an advocate of the ‘democracy’ – the democratic masses – working with the Provisional Government, and he supported Tsereteli’s ascension to minister for posts and telegraph in May. But despite that solidarity with his party comrade, and the vitriolic attacks it had earned him from the Bolsheviks, now, along with Bogdanov, Khinchuk and several others of his party, he opposed Tsereteli from the left.

  On principles of revolutionary democracy, rather than of any particular support for the Bolsheviks, he argued against Tsereteli’s punitive stance. Dan’s group proposed a compromise. Armed demonstrations should be prohibited, and the Bolsheviks condemned rather than officially suppressed.

  In Lenin’s absence, it was Kamenev who responded for the Bolsheviks – an interesting choice, given his consistent opposition to the demonstration that never was. He now insisted, not very persuasively, that the march was always to have been peaceful, and would have made no calls to seize power. Besides which, it had been cancelled at Congress’s request. What, he wondered, butter not melting in his mouth, was all the fuss about?

  Between Dan’s suggestion of slapped wrists, and Kamenev’s wide-eyed ingenuousness, the situation seemed to be defusing. But then, out of order, Tsereteli took the floor again.